評(píng)論
打印
Chapter 69 The Funeral
第六十九章 葬禮
Haul in the chains! Let the carcase go astern!
把錨鏈拖進(jìn)來！讓尸體往后漂去！
The vast tackles have now done their duty. The peeled white body of the beheaded whale flashes like a marble sepulchre; though changed in hue, it has not perceptibly lost anything in bulk. It is still colossal. Slowly it floats more and more away, the water round it torn and splashed by the insatiate sharks, and the air above vexed with rapacious flights of screaming fowls, whose beaks are like so many insulting poniards in the whale.The vast white headless phantom floats further and further from the ship, and every rod that it so floats, what seem square roods of sharks and cubic roods of fowls, augment the murderous din. For hours and hours from the almost stationary ship that hideous sight is seen. Beneath the unclouded and mild azure sky, upon the fair face of the pleasant sea, wafted by the joyous breezes, that great mass of death floats on and on, till lost in infinite perspectives.
這會(huì)兒，那兩只大復(fù)滑車已經(jīng)完成它們的職責(zé)了。這條被砍了頭。身體剝得雪白的鯨，象座大理石墓似的閃著光，雖然變了顏色，可是，就大小說來，卻一點(diǎn)也看不出有什么消縮。它還是碩大無朋。它慢慢地越漂越遠(yuǎn)了，它四周的海水，被那些貪得無厭的鯊魚穿躍得浪花四濺，上空又激蕩著貪婪的鳥群的尖叫聲，它們的嘴喙有如許多匕首，在無禮地戳這條鯨。這條無頭的白色大妖怪越漂越遠(yuǎn)離大船，而且好象它每漂一步，鯊魚群便前進(jìn)一尺，禽鳥群則前進(jìn)一丈，四下盡是一片殺氣騰騰的喧鬧聲。從那只差不多是靜止著的船上看去，還時(shí)時(shí)可以望到這個(gè)可怕的場面。在柔和明朗的蒼空下，在平靜鮮明的海洋上，快意的和風(fēng)在飄拂著，吹得那只龐大的尸體不住向前漂去，最后，消失在眼力望不到的地方。
There's a most doleful and most mocking funeral! The sea-vultures all in pious mourning, the air-sharks all punctiliously in black or speckled. In life but few of them would have helped the whale, I ween, if peradventure he had needed it; but upon the banquet of his funeral they most piously do pounce.
這真是一個(gè)最悲哀而又最富有諷刺意味的葬禮！海上的貪心漢都在虔誠地祭吊著，空中的騙子也都拘泥形式地穿黑戴孝。在鯨活著的時(shí)候，如果萬一它真需要幫助的話，我相信，它們肯來幫助的，實(shí)在為數(shù)不多。但是，在吃它的出喪酒時(shí)，它們卻都頂虔誠地窮撲猛抓了。
