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How at such an apparently unassailable surface, they contrive to gouge out such symmetrical mouthfuls, remains a part of the universal problem of all things. The mark they thus leave on the whale, may best be likened to the hollow made by a carpenter in countersinking for a screw.
在這樣一種顯然是沒誰爭奪的海面上，它們為什么偏偏要挖出如此勻稱的一大口，卻仍然是一個宇宙間具有普遍性的問題的一部分。它們這樣在鯨身上留下的印記，可以說，真象木匠為了要裝螺絲釘而先打下的孔眼。
Though amid all the smoking horror and diabolism of a sea-fight, sharks will be seen longingly gazing up to the ship's decks, like hungry dogs round a table where red meat is being carved, ready to bolt down every killed man that is tossed to them; and though, while the valiant butchers over the deck-table are thus cannibally carving each other's live meat with carving-knives all gilded and tasselled, the sharks, also, with their jewel-hilted mouths, are quarrelsomely carving away under the table at the dead meat; and though, were you to turn the whole affair upside down, it would still be pretty much the same thing, that is to say, a shocking sharkish business enough for all parties; and though sharks also are the invariable outriders of all slave ships crossing the Atlantic, systematically trotting alongside, to be handy in case a parcel is to be carried anywhere, or a dead slave to be decently buried; and though one or two other like instances might be set down, touching the set terms, places, and occasions, when sharks do most socially congregate, and most hilariously feast;
雖然在這么一片烏煙瘴氣的恐怖和窮兇極惡的大海戰中，可以看到那些鯊魚在渴切地仰望著船上的甲板，象一群餓狗圍著一張擺有切好的血淋淋的肉塊的桌子，隨時準備吞下拋給它們的每一個死人。雖然那些在甲板飯桌旁的勇敢的屠夫們，正這樣操著各種鑲邊和帶有纓絡的小刀，在同類相殘地切著彼此的鮮肉，這些鯊魚也正在用它們那鑲嵌珠寶似的嘴巴，在飯桌底下吵吵鬧鬧地撕搶著死人肉，雖然你把整個事情都顛倒過來看一看，它還是幾乎毫無不同之處，也就是說，大家彼此干的都是足以令人驚駭的鯊魚式（鯊魚在英文中又有欺詐的意義，這里的“鯊魚式”也就是“欺詐”的意思。）勾當；雖然鯊魚也是一切橫渡大西洋的販賣奴隸船只的不變的跟班，總是跟在旁邊，萬一有個包包需要帶到什么地方去，或者有個死奴隸需要加以隆重地埋葬，它就可以隨時效勞；雖然還可以舉出一兩個其它類似的例子來，比如有關鯊魚在赴最有社交禮節的集會和最為鬧鬧熱熱的筵席時的固定期限、地方和場合，
