評論
打印
All right then! Imagine this weapon to be ten times stronger and the animal ten times more powerful, launch it at a speed of twenty miles per hour, multiply its mass times its velocity, and you get just the collision we need to cause the specified catastrophe.
好吧！現在假定那武器還要厲害十倍，那動物的力量還要大十倍，如果它的前進速度是每小時二十英里，那么拿它的體重去乘它的速度平方，就能求出憧壞斯各脫亞號的那股沖擊力。
So, until information becomes more abundant, I plump for a sea unicorn of colossal dimensions,
因此，在還沒有得到更多的材料之前，我認為這是一只海麒麟，這只海麒麟身軀非常巨大，
no longer armed with a mere lance but with an actual spur, like ironclad frigates or those warships called 'rams,' whose mass and motor power it would possess simultaneously.
身上的武裝不是劍戟，而是真正的沖角，像鐵甲船或戰艦上所裝有的那樣，它同時又具備有戰艦的重量和動力。
This inexplicable phenomenon is thus explained away--unless it's something else entirely, which, despite everything that has been sighted, studied, explored and experienced, is still possible!
這樣便說明了這種神秘不可解的現象。或者相反地，不管人們所見到的、所感到的是怎樣，實際上什么都不是；那也是可能的。
These last words were cowardly of me; but as far as I could, I wanted to protect my professorial dignity and not lay myself open to laughter from the Americans, who when they do laugh, laugh raucously.
最后幾句話只能說明我沒有主見，看問題搖擺不定；這是為了在一定程度上保全我教授的身份，同時不愿意讓美國人笑話，因為美國人笑起來，是笑得很厲害的。
I had left myself a loophole. Yet deep down, I had accepted the existence of the monster.
我于是自下這一條退路。其實我是承認這個怪物的存在的。
