英语听书《白鲸记》 第33期

Not a forger, any way, he mutters; and Jonah is putdown for his passage. 'Point out my state-room, Sir,'says Jonah now, 'I'm travel-weary; I need sleep.''Thou lookest like it,' says the Captain, 'there's thyroom.' Jonah enters, and would lock the door, butthe lock contains no key. Hearing him foolishlyfumbling there, the Captain laughs lowly to himself,and mutters something about the doors of convicts'cells being never allowed to be locked within. Alldressed and dusty as he is, Jonah throws himself intohis berth, and finds the little state-room ceilingalmost resting on his forehead. The air is close, and Jonah gasps. Then, in that contracted hole,sunk, too, beneath the ship's water-line, Jonah feels the heralding presentiment of that stiflinghour, when the whale shall hold him in the smallest of his bowels' wards.

"Screwed at its axis against the side, a swinging lamp slightly oscillates in Jonah's room; andthe ship, heeling over towards the wharf with the weight of the last bales received, the lamp,flame and all, though in slight motion, still maintains a permanent obliquity with referenceto the room; though, in truth, infallibly straight itself, it but made obvious the false, lyinglevels among which it hung. The lamp alarms and frightens Jonah; as lying in his berth histormented eyes roll round the place, and this thus far successful fugitive finds no refuge for hisrestless glance. But that contradiction in the lamp more and more appals him. The floor, theceiling, and the side, are all awry. 'Oh! so my conscience hangs in me!' he groans, 'straightupwards, so it burns; but the chambers of my soul are all in crookedness!'

"Like one who after a night of drunken revelry hies to his bed, still reeling, but with conscienceyet pricking him, as the plungings of the Roman race-horse but so much the more strike hissteel tags into him; as one who in that miserable plight still turns and turns in giddy anguish,praying God for annihilation until the fit be passed; and at last amid the whirl of woe he feels,a deep stupor steals over him, as over the man who bleeds to death, for conscience is thewound, and there's naught to staunch it; so, after sore wrestlings in his berth, Jonah's prodigyof ponderous misery drags him drowning down to sleep.

"And now the time of tide has come; the ship casts off her cables; and from the deserted wharfthe uncheered ship for Tarshish, all careening, glides to sea. That ship, my friends, was the firstof recorded smugglers! the contraband was Jonah. But the sea rebels; he will not bear thewicked burden. A dreadful storm comes on, the ship is like to break.