On his broad back, flaxen-haired Flask seemed a snow-flake. The bearer looked nobler than the rider. Though truly vivacious, tumultuous, ostentatious little Flask would now and then stamp with impatience; but not oneadded heave did he thereby give to the negro's lordly chest. So have I seen Passion and Vanity stamping the living magnanimous earth, but the earth did not alter her tides and her seasons for that.
在他那闊大的背上,這個(gè)淡黃色發(fā)的弗拉斯克,就象一片雪花。背負(fù)者看來比騎者還更顯得高貴。雖然這個(gè)著實(shí)顯得很快活。激昂和自負(fù)的矮小的弗拉斯克會(huì)不時(shí)焦躁地頓著腳,卻沒有叫這個(gè)黑人的堂堂的胸口多透出一口氣來。我就這樣看到了“苦難”和“浮華”在踐踏著氣量宏大的大地,大地卻并不因此而改變它的潮汐和季節(jié)
Meanwhile Stubb, the third mate, betrayed no such far-gazing solicitudes. The whales might have made one of their regular soundings, not a temporary dive from mere fright; and if that were the case, Stubb, as his wont in such cases, it seems, was resolved to solace the languishing interval with his pipe. He withdrew it from his hatband, where he always wore it aslant like a feather. He loaded it, and rammed home the loading withhis thumb-end; but hardly had he ignited his match across the rough sandpaper of his hand, when Tashtego, his harpooneer, whose eyes had been setting to windward like two fixed stars, suddenly dropped like light fromhis erect attitude to his seat, crying out in a quick phrensy of hurry, "Down, down all, and give way!--there they are!"
這時(shí),那個(gè)三副斯塔布并沒有流露出遠(yuǎn)眺景致的要求。大鯨也許是在做一種有規(guī)律的潛水,而不是純?nèi)挥捎诳謶侄鴷簳r(shí)沉下去的;如果是這樣的話,看來斯塔布就要按照他在這種場合的老習(xí)慣,決定先吸一筒煙來提提神再說。他從帽帶上抽出煙斗來,他始終把煙斗象插一片羽毛似的斜插在那里。他裝上煙葉,又用大拇指把斗里的煙葉撳撳緊。但是,他剛在他那粗得象沙皮紙的手上擦亮了火柴棒,他的標(biāo)槍手塔斯蒂哥(他那雙眼睛一直就象兩顆固定的星星似的直瞪著上風(fēng))突然從他那坐得筆挺的座位上,象火光一般落下來,叫出一陣狂急的喊聲來,“下去啦,都下去啦,加緊劃呀!大鯨就在那邊啦!”
To a landsman, no whale, nor any sign of a herring, would have been visible at that moment; nothing but a troubled bit of greenish white water, and thin scattered puffs of vapor hovering over it, and suffusingly blowing off to leeward, like the confused scud from white rolling billows. The air around suddenly vibrated and tingled, as it were, like the air over intensely heated plates of iron. Beneath this atmospheric waving and curling, and partially beneath a thin layer of water, also, the whales were swimming. Seen in advance of allthe other indications, the puffs of vapor they spouted, seemed their forerunning couriers and detached flying outriders.
這時(shí),在陸地人看來,既沒有大鯨,連一條青魚的影子也看不到,只不過是一片攪濁了的青白色的海水,上面漂泛著四散的陣陣水霧,向下風(fēng)彌漫開去,有如滔天白浪里迸射出來的飛沫??墒?,周遭的天空突然沸騰騷動(dòng)起來了,仿佛天空是擱在一塊熾熱的烙鐵上。在這種起伏打旋的大氣下面,有一塊地方在一層薄薄的水面下,大鯨也正在游著。從各種征象,從它們所噴出來的陣陣水霧看來,它們似乎正在派出先頭的信使和先遣的快馬侍從。