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Taking a few turns on the quarter-deck, he paused to gaze over the side, then slowly getting into the main-chains he took Stubb's long spade still remaining there after the whale's decapitation and striking it into the lower part of the half-suspended mass, placed its other end crutchwise under one arm, and so stood leaning over with eyes attentively fixed on this head.
他在后甲板上轉了幾轉，停了下來，瞪眼掠過船邊望了一會，然后慢慢地鉆到那些大錨鏈里去，順手撿起斯塔布那只長鏟子——這只鏟子在斬過鯨頭后還是放在那里——把它直對那只半懸空著的大東西的下半截猛擊一下，又把鏟子掉過頭來，撐拐杖似的抵在腋下，就這么倚著站在那里，全神貫注地緊瞪著這只頭。
It was a black and hooded head; and hanging there in the midst of so intense a calm, it seemed the Sphynx's in the desert. "Speak, thou vast and venerable head," muttered Ahab, "which, though ungarnished with a beard, yet here and there lookest hoary with mosses; speak, mighty head, and tell us the secret thing that is in thee. Of all divers, thou hast dived the deepest. That head upon which the upper sun now gleams, has moved amid this world's foundations. Where unrecorded names and navies rust, and untold hopes and anchors rot; where in her murderous hold this frigate earth is ballasted with bones of millions of the drowned; there, in that awful water-land, there was thy most familiar home. Thou hast been where bell or diver never went; hast slept by many a sailor's side, where sleepless mothers would give their lives to lay them down.
這一只黑色的。包了頭巾似的頭，掛在那里，掛在這樣非常靜寂的氛圍里，象是沙漠里的獅身男頭的巨像。"你說呀，你這個又大又老的頭，"亞哈喃喃道，"你雖然沒有長上胡須，可是，這里那里都象是讓苔鮮弄得毛茸茸了；說話呀，你這大頭，把你那里面的秘密告訴我們吧。在一切潛水者中，數你潛得最深。這只上天的太陽現在正在照著的頭，一向是在海底里活動的、在海底里，多少未經泄漏的希望和寄托爛了；在它那兇殘的艙房里，這個快速艦似的人間，不知有多少被淹溺者的尸骨做了它的壓艙物；而在那個可怕的水鄉里，卻有你的最親切的家。你曾經到過潛水鐘和潛水者從未到達的地方，在那里，你曾經睡在許多水手的身邊，那地方，也是許多睡不著的母親會獻出她們自己的生命去躺下的地方。
