"Aye, aye, I thought as much," soliloquized Stubb, when the boats diverged, "as soon as I clapt eye on 'em, I thought so. Aye, and that's what he went into the after hold for, so often, as Dough-Boy long suspected. They were hidden down there. The White Whale's at the bottom of it. Well, well, so be it! Can't be helped! All right! Give way men! It ain't the White Whale to-day! Give way!"
“是呀,是呀,我也是這么個想法,”斯塔布在兩只小艇分開的時候,這樣獨(dú)白道,“我眼睛一瞟到他們,心里就這么想。是呀,所以他才老要跑到艙里去呀,湯團(tuán)老早就懷疑了。他們就躲在那下面。白鯨也就在那底下。唔,唔,很好,很好!沒法啦!不錯,用勁劃呀,大家,今天碰到的可不是白鯨呀,用勁劃呀!”
Now the advent of these outlandish strangers at such a CRItical instant as the lowering of the boats from the deck, this had not unreasonably awakened a sort of superstitious amazement in some of the ship's company; but Archy's fancied discovery having some time previous got abroad among them, though indeed not credited then, this had in some small measure prepared them for the event. It took off the extreme edge of their wonder; and so what with all this and Stubb's confident way of accounting for their appearance, they were for the time freed from superstitious surmisings; though the affair still left abundant room for all manner of wild conjectures as to dark Ahab's precise agency in the matter from the beginning. For me, I silently recalled the mysterious shadows I had seen creeping on board the Pequod during the dim Nantucket dawn, as well as the enigmatical hintings of the unaccountable Elijah.
且說正當(dāng)大家在這樣緊要關(guān)頭,把小艇從甲板上放下去的時候,卻教大家先看到這些奇怪的陌生人,這就不免在一些船員中引起一種迷信和驚愕;不過,好在阿基那種出自想象的發(fā)現(xiàn),已是早在他們中間傳播開了,當(dāng)時雖然大家都不很相信,可是至少卻使他們對這事情有所準(zhǔn)備了。這就使他們的驚奇大打了折扣;因此,再加上斯塔布在說到他們的出現(xiàn)時那副沉著的態(tài)度,就使大家暫時不去做迷信的揣測了,雖然大家對于隱晦的亞哈這種真正的意圖,還是打一開始就大有胡猜亂測的余地。至于我呢,卻不禁悄悄地想起我在南塔開特天蒙蒙亮?xí)r分,看到一些偷偷地爬上“裴廓德號”的神秘的影子,想起那個不可理解的以利亞那番謎一般的話語來了。
Meantime, Ahab, out of hearing of his officers, having sided the furthest to windward, was still ranging ahead of the other boats; a circumstance bespeaking how potent a crew was pulling him. Those tiger yellow creatures of his seemed all steel and whalebone; like five trip-hammers they rose and fell with regular strokes of strength, which periodically started the boat along the water like a horizontal burst boiler out of a Mississippi steamer.
這時,亞哈聽不到他幾個頭目的談話,正朝上風(fēng)駛得很遠(yuǎn),依然劃在其它幾只小艇前頭。這就說明劃他的那些水手多有勁道。他那些褐色的奴才似乎全都是銅筋鐵骨;他們隨著有規(guī)律的劃槳而一俯一仰的姿勢,就象五把快錘子似的,每一扳槳而使得小艇在水面一沖,就象一只平式大鍋爐打密西西比河汽輪中跳出來那樣。