PEMBE KUBWA, THE BIG TUSKER
長牙象彭博·庫巴
Mary Hastings Bradley
作者:瑪麗·黑斯廷斯·布蘭得利
Mrs. Bradley, whose home is in Chicago, has made a number of trips to Africa to study the wild animals and the tribes of people who live there. In this story she tells of a very wise and a very wicked elephant—how he won and kept the leadership of the herd.
布拉德利夫人的家在芝加哥,她多次到非洲去研究那里的野生動物和人類部落。在這個故事中,她講述了一頭非常聰明而又非常邪惡的大象——如何贏得并保持了象群領(lǐng)導(dǎo)地位。
WHEN KUBWA WAS YOUNG
庫巴年輕的時候
Pembe Kubwa was a very wise and wicked elephant. He was so big that he stood shoulders high over the rest of the herd and so old that his tusks had grown to such a length that they were crossed in front of him.
彭博·庫巴是一只非常聰明和邪惡的大象。它長得那么大,站在象群中,肩膀那么高,那么老,它的獠牙已經(jīng)長得那么長,在它面前交叉在一起了。
He had no idea how old he was—perhaps a hundred, perhaps two hundred years old, but he was still so strong that he was the leader of the herd, and no bull had dared turn against him now for a long, long time.
他不知道自己有多大年紀(jì)——也許一百歲,也許二百歲,但他仍然很強(qiáng)壯,是象群領(lǐng)袖,很久以來,沒有一頭雄象敢和他作對。
As a matter of fact, his tusks were not so dangerous in a fight now as when they were shorter and he could thrust deeper with them, but no elephant had fought with him for so long that none of the herd had found this out. However, he suspected it himself.
事實上,他的象牙現(xiàn)在在搏斗中并不像以前那么危險了。但是沒有一頭大象和他搏斗太久,以致于象群中沒有象發(fā)現(xiàn)這一點。然而,他自己也產(chǎn)生了懷疑。
Kubwa did not remember very much about his young days. He knew that he had trailed about with his mother in a big herd, and he knew that he had given his mother a good deal of trouble, because her temper was often very short with him. He had a way of straying off that particularly provoked her, and he did remember very clearly one day when she finally grabbed him with her trunk and just boosted him along, bumpity bump, through the forest trail.
庫巴不太記得他年輕時候的事。他只知道和母親在很大的象群中走著,他知道自己給母親帶來了很多麻煩,因為母親經(jīng)常發(fā)脾氣。他有一種特別惹她生氣的走神的方式,他清楚地記得有一天,她終于用她的大鼻子抓住他,推著他在森林小徑上顛簸著前進(jìn)。