英語聽書《白鯨記》第745期
On more accounts than one, a pity it is that the whale does not possess this prehensile virtue in his tail; for I have heard of yet another elephant, that when wounded in the fight, curved round his trunk and extracted the dart.
總之，從許多方面說來，可惜大鯨的尾巴沒有這種抓握力；因?yàn)槲疫€聽到有另一只象，說是當(dāng)它在戰(zhàn)斗中受傷時(shí)，它的鼻子一彎，就把那支戳在身上的槍矛給拔了出來。
Fourth: Stealing unawares upon the whale in the fancied security of the middle of solitary seas, you find him unbent from the vast corpulence of his dignity, and kitten-like, he plays on the ocean as if it were a hearth. But still you see his power in his play. The broad palms of his tail are flirted high into the air! Then smiting the surface, the thunderous concussion resounds for miles. You would almost think a great gun had been discharged; and if you noticed the light wreath of vapor from the spiracle at his other extremity, you would think that that was the smoke from the touch-hole.
第四，趁大鯨一無戒備地在它那自認(rèn)為安全地帶的孤洋中時(shí)，你不妨去悄悄地瞧它一瞧，就可以看到它一卸它那偉大的雄姿，象一只躺在火爐旁的小貓似的在大洋里嬉戲。然而，在它嬉戲中，你還是可以看到它的威力。它那平坦的大尾巴倏地向空一聳，然后砰地一聲落在水面上，雷鳴似的激蕩聲，回旋好幾英里遠(yuǎn)，簡(jiǎn)直教人以為放了大炮。如果你同時(shí)再看一看它另一端的噴水孔里所迸射出來的閃亮而霧氣重重的圈圈的話，你準(zhǔn)會(huì)認(rèn)為那是火門迸射出來的火藥煙。
Fifth: As in the ordinary floating posture of the leviathan the flukes lies considerably below the level of his back, they are then completely out of sight beneath the surface; but when he is about to plunge into the deeps, his entire flukes with at least thirty feet of his body are tossed erect in the air, and so remain vibrating a moment, till they downwards shoot out of view. Excepting the sublime breach— somewhere else to be desCRIbed—this peaking of the whale's flukes is perhaps the grandest sight to be seen in all animated nature.
第五，大鯨在通常的游姿中，總是先把裂片深埋在它屁股下面，接著就沉在水里，完全看不見了；不過，在它要猛地潛到海底去時(shí)，它整個(gè)裂片就會(huì)連同它的部分身軀（至少有三十英尺）騰空聳起，晃動(dòng)一會(huì)兒，這才向下一潛不見了。除了那種雄壯的鯨跳——這將在另外的地方談到——大鯨的豎尾也許應(yīng)該算是一切生物中僅有的最壯麗的景象。
