海底两万里 第13期 第2章 正与反(2)

And indeed, unless this reef had an engine in its belly, how could it move about with such prodigious speed?

理由是：除非这暗礁在腹部有一架机器，不然的话，它怎能这样快地一会儿到达这里一会儿又到那里呢?

Also discredited was the idea of a floating hull or some other enormouswreckage, and again because of this speed of movement.

同样地，说它是一只浮动的船壳或是一只巨大的破船，这假设也不能成立，理由仍然是因为它转移得那么快。

So only two possible solutions to the question were left, creating two very distinct groups of supporters:

归根结底，这问题只可能有下面两种解释，因此人们分成了抱着不同主张的两派：

on one side, those favoring a monster of colossal strength; on the other, those favoring an "underwater boat" of tremendous motor power.

一派说这是一个力大无穷的怪物，另一派说这是一艘动力十分强大的“潜水艇”。

Now then, although the latter hypothesis was completely admissible, it couldn't stand up toinquiries conducted in both the New World and the Old.

后面那种假设虽然很可以成立，但到欧美两洲调查之后，便站不住了。

That a private individual had such a mechanism at his disposal was less than probable. Where and when had he built it, and how could he have built it in secret?

如果说私人可以有这样一种机器，实在是不大可能的事。

Only some government could own such an engine of destruction, and in these disaster-filled times,

在什么地方，什么时候。他造了这个东西?他又怎能保守秘密而不泄露呢?

when men tax their ingenuity to build increasingly powerful aggressive weapons, it was possible that,

只有一国政府可以拥有这种破坏性的机器，在人们绞尽脑汁要增强武器威力的不幸时代，

unknown to the rest of the world, some nation could have been testing such a fearsome machine.

一个国家瞒着其他国家制造这种武器是可能的。