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More than all, his treacherous retreats struck more of dismay than perhaps aught else. For, when swimming before his exulting pursuers, with every apparent symptom of alarm, he had several times been known to turn around suddenly,
尤其是它那種可說是比之任何事情都更使人喪膽的奸詐的退卻。因為,它在它那些興高采烈的追擊者面前一路游去的時候,就顯得非常警覺,
and, bearing down upon them, either stave their boats to splinters, or drive them back in consternation to their ship.
還故意突然轉了幾次身,可是,一下子就撲上他們,不是把他們的小艇撞得粉碎,就是把他們嚇得手足無措,趕緊逃回大船。
Already several fatalities had attended his chase.
為了追擊它,已經發生了好幾次慘案。
But though similar disasters, however little bruited ashore, were by no means unusual in the fishery;
雖則這些類似的不幸事件,在岸上是不大傳布的,但在捕魚業中,也決不是什么了不起的;
yet, in most instances, such seemed the White Whale's infernal aforethought of ferocity, that every dismembering or death that he caused, was not wholly regarded as having been inflicted by an unintelligent agent.
而且,在多數場合上,似乎還有人并不完全把白鯨每次使得人們斷肢失體或者喪命的兇殘的預謀,看成是遭到無理性的神力的打擊。
Judge, then, to what pitches of inflamed, distracted fury the minds of his more desperate hunters were impelled, when amid the chips of chewed boats,
那么,看一看那些身處險境的獵手的內心給迫得多么激動。氣得發昏的情況吧。當時,他們的四周盡是些被嚼得細碎的小艇殘片,
and the sinking limbs of torn comrades, they swam out of the white curds of the whale's direful wrath into the serene, exasperating sunlight, that smiled on, as if at a birth or a bridal.
同伴們被折斷了的。行將下沉的肢體,他們總算從大鯨那可怕的怒火所發出來的白色漿液中游了出來,游到那仿佛在對著新生嬰孩或者新娘含笑相迎的。恬靜而強烈的陽光里來。
His three boats stove around him, and oars and men both whirling in the eddies;
那個船長的四周是三只被沖破了的小艇,船槳和水手都在渦流里旋來旋去;
one captain, seizing the line-knife from his broken prow, had dashed at the whale, as an Arkansas duellist at his foe, blindly seeking with a six inch blade to reach the fathom-deep life of the whale.
他從那破爛的艇頭抓到一把小刀,朝大鯨猛地擲去,象個阿肯色州人在跟他的宿敵決斗,胡亂地找到一把六英寸的刀,想結束那條大鯨的深不可測的生命。
That captain was Ahab. And then it was, that suddenly sweeping his sickle-shaped lower jaw beneath him, Moby Dick had reaped away Ahab's leg, as a mower a blade of grass in the field.
那個船長就是亞哈。而且正在這時,莫比－迪克突然從他下邊揮起它那鐮刀似的下顎,如同一架刈草機在地里刈草一樣,把亞哈的腿給刈掉了。
