英语听书《白鲸记》第637期

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Chapter 69 The Funeral

第六十九章 葬礼

Haul in the chains! Let the carcase go astern!

把锚链拖进来！让尸体往后漂去！

The vast tackles have now done their duty. The peeled white body of the beheaded whale flashes like a marble sepulchre; though changed in hue, it has not perceptibly lost anything in bulk. It is still colossal. Slowly it floats more and more away, the water round it torn and splashed by the insatiate sharks, and the air above vexed with rapacious flights of screaming fowls, whose beaks are like so many insulting poniards in the whale.The vast white headless phantom floats further and further from the ship, and every rod that it so floats, what seem square roods of sharks and cubic roods of fowls, augment the murderous din. For hours and hours from the almost stationary ship that hideous sight is seen. Beneath the unclouded and mild azure sky, upon the fair face of the pleasant sea, wafted by the joyous breezes, that great mass of death floats on and on, till lost in infinite perspectives.

这会儿，那两只大复滑车已经完成它们的职责了。这条被砍了头。身体剥得雪白的鲸，象座大理石墓似的闪着光，虽然变了颜色，可是，就大小说来，却一点也看不出有什么消缩。它还是硕大无朋。它慢慢地越漂越远了，它四周的海水，被那些贪得无厌的鲨鱼穿跃得浪花四溅，上空又激荡着贪婪的鸟群的尖叫声，它们的嘴喙有如许多匕首，在无礼地戳这条鲸。这条无头的白色大妖怪越漂越远离大船，而且好象它每漂一步，鲨鱼群便前进一尺，禽鸟群则前进一丈，四下尽是一片杀气腾腾的喧闹声。从那只差不多是静止着的船上看去，还时时可以望到这个可怕的场面。在柔和明朗的苍空下，在平静鲜明的海洋上，快意的和风在飘拂着，吹得那只庞大的尸体不住向前漂去，最后，消失在眼力望不到的地方。

There's a most doleful and most mocking funeral! The sea-vultures all in pious mourning, the air-sharks all punctiliously in black or speckled. In life but few of them would have helped the whale, I ween, if peradventure he had needed it; but upon the banquet of his funeral they most piously do pounce.

这真是一个最悲哀而又最富有讽刺意味的葬礼！海上的贪心汉都在虔诚地祭吊着，空中的骗子也都拘泥形式地穿黑戴孝。在鲸活着的时候，如果万一它真需要帮助的话，我相信，它们肯来帮助的，实在为数不多。但是，在吃它的出丧酒时，它们却都顶虔诚地穷扑猛抓了。