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Seated on the transom was what seemed to me a most uncommon and surprising figure. It turned out to be Captain Bildad who along with Captain Peleg was one of the largest owners of the vessel; the other shares, as is sometimes the case in these ports, being held by a crowd of old annuitants; widows, fatherless children, and chancery wards; each owning about the value of a timber head, or a foot of plank, or a nail or two in the ship. People in Nantucket invest their money in whaling vessels, the same way that you do yours in approved state stocks bringing in good interest.
據(jù)我看來,坐在船尾橫木上的是一個極其非凡而奇異的人物。原來他就是跟法勒船長同屬這只船的最大股東老板之一的比勒達(dá)船長。至于其余的股份,按照這些商港的情形,往往是屬于一群領(lǐng)年金的老年人的;其中也有一些寡婦。孤兒和受保護(hù)的未成年人;每個人大概是擁有一根船骨,一英尺船板或者是船里一兩枚釘子的價值。南塔開特人都把他們的錢投資到捕鯨船中,就跟人們把錢投資到有好出息的。信用良好的股票生意上一樣。
Now, Bildad, like Peleg, and indeed many other Nantucketers, was a Quaker, the island having been originally settled by that sect; and to this day its inhabitants in general retain in an uncommon measure the peculiarities of the Quaker, only variously and anomalously modified by things altogether alien and heterogeneous. For some of these same Quakers are the most sanguinary of all sailors and whale-hunters. They are fighting Quakers; they are Quakers with a vengeance.
且說比勒達(dá),象法勒,實在也象許多南塔開特人一樣,也是一個桂克,這海島本來就是這種教派的人定居的地方;直到如今,這里的居民一般都還多多少少保存有桂克的特征,只不過受了許多化外與異類的事物所沖淡而有所懸殊罷了。在這些桂克中,有一些就是殘忍無比的水手和捕鯨手。他們都是好戰(zhàn)的桂克;他們都是復(fù)仇心切的桂克。
