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From the chocks it hangs in a slight festoon over the bows, and is then passed inside the boat again; and some ten or twenty fathoms (called box-line) being coiled upon the box in the bows, it continues its way to the gunwale still a little further aft, and is then attached to the short-warp-- the rope which is immediately connected with the harpoon; but previous to that connexion, the short-warp goes through sundry mystifications too tedious to detail.
接著，又從木楔那里，把它兜在艇頭的小花飾上，然后又拉回艇里來；在艇頭的索桶上繞它六十或者一百二十英尺，再把它繼續繞過艇舷，直拉到艇尾后頭，這才接在那根短絞船索上——也就是同標槍的繩子緊接在一起；不過，把它接上去之先，還得在那根短絞船索上做完各式各樣叫人看得眼花繚亂的動作，這些動作細敘起來，未免過于嚕蘇。
Thus the whale-line folds the whole boat in its complicated coils, twisting and writhing around it in almost every direction. All the oarsmen are involved in its perilous contortions; so that to the timid eye of the landsman, they seem as Indian jugglers, with the deadliest snakes sportively festooning their limbs. Nor can any son of mortal woman, for the first time, seat himself amid those hempen intricacies, and while straining his utmost at the oar, bethink him that at any unknown instant the harpoon may be darted, and all these horrible contortions be put in play like ringed lightnings; he cannot be thus circumstanced without a shudder that makes the very marrow in his bones to quiver in him like a shaken jelly.
捕鯨索就這樣錯綜復雜地把整只小艇都繞住了，幾乎打四面八方把這只小艇給糾纏住。所有的槳手都被卷在它這種危險的迷陣里，所以，在膽怯的陸地人看來，這些槳手就象是一群印第安的耍戲法者，讓那些最可怕的毒蛇巨蟒興致勃勃地繞著他們的四肢。任何一個是爹娘養出來的人，初次置身在這種大麻繩的天羅地網里，總是一邊在死勁扳槳，一邊在擔心那支不知何時就要拋出去的標槍，在擔心所有這些可怖的羅網，不知什么時候會象雷霹一般發作起來。他在這種情況下，當然免不了要抖得骨子里也象凍肉一般在打顫。
