英語聽書《白鯨記》第606期

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It is then they change places; and the headsman, the chief officer of the little craft, takes his proper station in the bows of the boat.

他們就在這時候對換了位子；那個指揮員，就是這只小艇的大副，應該站到他那船頭的本位上去。

Now, I care not who maintains the contrary, but all this is both foolish and unnecessary. The headsman should stay in the bows from first to last; he should both dart the harpoon and the lance, and no rowing whatever should be expected of him, except under circumstances obvious to any fisherman. I know that this would sometimes involve a slight loss of speed in the chase; but long experience in various whalemen of more than one nation has convinced me that in the vast majority of failures in the fishery, it has not by any means been so much the speed of the whale as the before desCRIbed exhaustion of the harpooneer that has caused them.

那么，我不管誰會對我的看法表示異議，我還是認為這是又愚蠢又不必要的辦法。指揮者本來就該從頭到底留在船頭上；他本來就該既投標槍兼投魚槍，隨便怎樣都不必叫他劃船，除非是情況真正到了大家都心里明白的時候。我知道，這往往是會使追擊的速度稍微遭到損失；而且，根據(jù)各國各種捕鯨人的經(jīng)驗，也教我認為，在捕魚業(yè)的大部分損失中，決不是由于大鯨的快速，而大都是由于上述的標槍手精力疲憊所致。

To insure the greatest efficiency in the dart, the harpooneers of this world must start to their feet from out of idleness, and not from out of toil.

為了保證投槍收到最大效果，這世界的標槍手就必須從安逸中，而不是從辛苦中一躍而起。

Chapter 63 The Crotch

第六十三章 叉柱

Out of the trunk, the branches grow; out of them, the twigs. So, in productive subjects, grow the chapters.

樹干長出枝椏；枝椏又長出小枝。同樣的，從許多題材中，就產生出了各種故事來。

The crotch alluded to on a previous page deserves independent mention. It is a notched stick of a peculiar form, some two feet in length, which is perpendicularly inserted into the starboard gunwale near the bow, for the purpose of furnishing a rest for the wooden extremity of the harpoons, whose other naked, barbed end slopingly projects from the prow.

上一章所提到的叉柱，值得在這里單獨提一提。那是一種形式特殊的椏杈，約有兩英尺長，垂直地插在靠近艇頭的右舷邊上，用來擱放標槍木柄。垂直地插在靠近艇頭的右舷邊上，用來擱放標槍木柄。