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In his youth Daggoo had voluntarily shipped on board of a whaler, lying in a lonely bay on his native coast. And never having been anywhere in the world but in Africa, Nantucket, and the pagan harbors most frequented by the whalemen; and having now led for many years the bold life of the fishery in the ships of owners uncommonly heedful of what manner of men they shipped; Daggoo retained all his barbaric virtues, and erect as a giraffe, moved about the decks in all the pomp of six feet five in his socks.
在他少年的時候,大個兒就自動跑上那只停泊在他故鄉的荒涼的港灣上的捕鯨船。于是,他除了到過非洲。南塔開特以及捕鯨者最常到的那些異教的港口外,從來沒有到過別的什么地方;現在大個兒雖然已在那些非常注意他們的船員是些什么人的船東的船上,過了多年勇猛的捕魚生活;他依然保持著他所有的野性的特點,象只長頸鹿般昂著頭,足足六英尺五英寸的雄姿,在甲板上走來走去。
There was a corporeal humility in looking up at him; and a white man standing before him seemed a white flag come to beg truce of a fortress. Curious to tell, this imperial negro, Ahasuerus Daggoo, was the Squire of little Flask, who looked like a chess-man beside him. As for the residue of the Pequod's company, be it said, that at the present day not one in two of the many thousand men before the mast employed in the American whale fishery, are Americans born, though pretty nearly all the officers are.
誰一抬頭向他一望,都不免感到相形見絀;一個白種人站到他面前去,仿佛就是一面去向要塞求降的白旗。說來也真奇怪,這個合乎帝王身份的黑人,這個亞哈隨魯式的大個兒,竟就是小小的弗拉斯克的隨從,而他站在大個兒的旁邊,可活象只棋子。至于"裴廓德號"上的其余一些人物,請記住,在現代的美國捕鯨業中,在那些被雇用的水手中,是美國人的還不上一半呢,而且這不上一半的人又差不多都是船上的頭目。
Herein it is the same with the American whale fishery as with the American army and military and merchant navies, and the engineering forces employed in the construction of the American Canals and Railroads. The same, I say, because in all these cases the native American literally provides the brains, the rest of the world as generously supplying the muscles. No small number of these whaling seamen belong to the Azores, where the outward bound Nantucket whalers frequently touch to augment their crews from the hardy peasants of those rocky shores.
因此,美國捕鯨業的情形,就跟美國海陸軍隊和商船,以及受雇于建造美國大運河和鐵路的那些工程人員的情況一樣。我所以說是一樣,是因為在所有這些場合上,美國人只是提供智慧,至于力氣呢,則由世界其它各地去慷慨輸捐了。在這些捕鯨的水手中,有不少是來自亞速爾群島的,那里是許多外航的南塔開特捕鯨船經常駛去,把那些生長在巖石的岸邊的能吃苦耐勞的農民找來補充他們的水手的地方。
