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How vain and foolish, then, thought I, for timid untravelled man to try to comprehend aright this wondrous whale, by merely poring over his dead attenuated skeleton, stretched in this peaceful wood. No. Only in the heart of quickest perils; only when within the eddyings of his angry flukes; only on the profound unbounded sea, can the fully invested whale be truly and livingly found out.
于是，我心里想，那些足不出戶的膽小鬼，只是對著這架躺在平靜的樹林里的干枯的死尸瞄了一眼，就想正確了解這條驚人的大鯨，是多么枉費而愚蠢。不，只有在最危急的關(guān)頭；只有在它那怒沖沖的裂尾的大渦流里；只有在無涯無底的大海上，才能真切而逼真地看到這條充滿生氣的大鯨的雄姿。
But the spine. For that, the best way we can consider it is, with a crane, to pile its bones high up on end. No speedy enterprise. But now it's done, it looks much like Pompey's Pillar.
但是，關(guān)于那脊骨，現(xiàn)在我們所想得出的最好的辦法，就是用一架起重機，把它的骨胳高高地堆起。這可不是一下子就辦得到的。不過，一經(jīng)堆了起來，它可就活象龐彼的大柱（龐彼的大柱——十五世紀時埃及的玫瑰色花崗石的紀念物，高六十七英尺，柱腳有二十一英尺寬。）了。
There are forty and odd vertebrae in all, which in the skeleton are not locked together. They mostly lie like the great knobbed blocks on a Gothic spire, forming solid courses of heavy masonry. The largest, a middle one, is in width something less than three feet, and in depth more than four. The smallest, where the spine tapers away into the tail, is only two inches in width, and looks something like a white billiard-ball. I was told that there were still smaller ones, but they had been lost by some little cannibal urchins, the priest's children, who had stolen them to play marbles with. Thus we see how that the spine of even the hugest of living things tapers off at last into simple child's play.
脊椎骨一共約有四十多根，它可不是一起放在骷髏里的。它們大多象峨特式塔尖上的大瘤木頭，結(jié)結(jié)實實地堆得象一排排笨重的泥水作物。中間那根最大的脊椎骨，大約還不到三英尺闊，厚薄卻有四英尺多。那根尖端接著尾巴的最小椎骨，只不過有兩英寸闊，樣子有點象只白色的臺球。據(jù)說還有比這更小的東西，可惜，它們已被許多小野人，那些僧人的孩子們偷去玩打彈子游戲了。這樣，我們就看到，甚至最為魁梧的生物的脊骨，到頭來也會縮成無知的小孩的玩物了。
