And then—thud!—another fell twenty feet behind. "Are they aiming at us?" asked Scrubb.
“咣当!”又一块大家伙落在了他们身后20英尺的地方。“巨人在砍我们吗?”斯库波问。
"No," said Puddleglum. "We'd be a good deal safer if they were. They're trying to hit that—that cairn over there to the right. They won't hit it, you know.
“不是。”帕德格莱姆说,“如果目标真是我们,那反而比现在安全多了。他们想要砍右边那个石塚。但谁都掷不中,你知道。
It's safe enough; they're such very bad shots. They play cock-shies most fine mornings. About the only game they're clever enough to understand." It was a horrible time.
那个石塚很安全;他们一点准头都没有。这帮家伙喜欢在天气好的时候玩投掷游戏。凭他们的智商,也只能玩这个。”这个游戏恐怖至极。
There seemed no end to the line of giants, and they never ceased hurling stones, some of which fell extremely close.
巨人多得数不过来,他们还在不停地扔石头,有好几次差点砸到他们。
Quite apart from the real danger, the very sight and sound of their faces and voices were enough to scare anyone. Jill tried not to look at them.
即使不被砸,光看他们的样子、听他们发出的声音就够吓人的了。吉尔尽量不去看它们。
After about twenty-five minutes the giants apparently had a quarrel. This put an end to the cock-shies, but it is not pleasant to be within a mile of quarrelling giants.
大约过了二十五分钟,巨人们吵起架来。虽然他们不扔石头了,但离这些吵架的巨人们太近了绝不是什么好事。
They stormed and jeered at one another in long, meaningless words of about twenty syllables each.
他们互相发脾气,互相嘲弄,嘴里说着一连串毫无意义的单词,每串大约20个音节。
They foamed and gibbered and jumped in their rage, and each jump shook the earth like a bomb.
他们喋喋不休,唾沫横飞,气得直跳脚。每跳一下,大地都被震得摇晃起来,那威力一点儿不逊于炸弹。
They lammed each other on the head with great, clumsy stone hammers; but their skulls were so hard that the hammers bounced off again, and then the monster who had given the blow would drop his hammer and howl with pain because it had stung his fingers.
他们用笨拙的大石斧敲击对方的脑袋;但他们的头实在太硬了,斧子被震得反弹起来。这时,袭击别人的那个巨人会一把扔掉斧头,疼得哇哇大叫,原来他砍到自己的手指了。
But he was so stupid that he would do exactly the same thing a minute later.
他们实在太愚蠢了,一分钟后巨人们又开始互相对砍。
This was a good thing in the long run, for by the end of an hour all the giants were so hurt that they sat down and began to cry.
这样循环往复很有意思,一小时过后,所有巨人都被砍疼了,于是他们开始坐在地上大声哭泣。
When they sat down, their heads were below the edge of the gorge, so that you saw them no more; but Jill could hear them howling and blubbering and boo-booing like great babies even after the place was a mile behind.
一坐下,他们的头就藏到了峡谷边缘之下,你也就看不见他们了,但即使已经离开山谷一英里,吉尔仍然能听到他们的喊声,就像巨型婴儿般哭闹个不停。
That night they bivouacked on the bare moor, and Puddleglum showed the children how to make the best of their blankets by sleeping back to back (The backs keep each other warm and you can then have both blankets on top). But it was chilly even so, and the ground was hard and lumpy.
当天夜里,他们在沼泽地露营,帕德格莱姆教他们背对背睡,这样能最大限度地利用毛毯(背对背不仅暖和,而且能把两条毛毯都盖在他俩身上)。即便如此,天气还是冷得很,地面硬得要命,而且还高低不平。
The Marsh-wiggle told them they would feel more comfortable if only they thought how very much colder it would be later on and farther north; but this didn't cheer them up at all.
沼泽人告诉他俩,只要想着越往北越冷就会感觉舒服一点,而这对他俩来说根本不管用。
They travelled across Ettinsmoor for many days, saving the bacon and living chiefly on the moor-fowl (they were not, of course, talking birds) which Eustace and the wiggle shot.
三人在艾斯汀荒地走了好多天,留着熏肉没吃,主要靠沼泽人和斯库波打来的红松鸡度日(当然,这些鸡不会说话)。
Jill rather envied Eustace for being able to shoot; he had learned it on his voyage with King Caspian. As there were countless streams on the moor, they were never short of water.
吉尔非常嫉妒斯库波会使用弓箭,他是在和凯斯宾一起出航时学会的。沼泽地里有的是小溪,水是不用发愁的。
Jill thought that when, in books, people live on what they shoot, it never tells you what a long, smelly, messy job it is plucking and cleaning dead birds, and how cold it makes your fingers.
吉尔记得书里只描绘了人们如何靠打猎为生,却从没提到过给鸟拔毛及在河里清洗死鸟是多么恶心和烦人的事,手指都快冻僵了。
But the great thing was that they met hardly any giants. One giant saw them, but he only roared with laughter and stumped away about his own business.
但幸运的是他们没再碰到巨人。途中只遇上一个,他看见他们后只是大声笑了几声就笨拙地走去忙自己的事了。
About the tenth day, they reached a place where the country changed. They came to the northern edge of the moor and looked down a long, steep slope into a different, and grimmer, land.
大约第十天,他们来到一个地方,此地风景和沼泽地带大不相同。这是沼泽的北部边界。他们站在边界向下俯瞰,那是一条既长且陡的坡,通往一片不同的、更加令人毛骨悚然的地带。
At the bottom of the slope were cliffs: beyond these, a country of high mountains, dark precipices, stony valleys, ravines so deep and narrow that one could not see far into them, and rivers that poured out of echoing gorges to plunge sullenly into black depths.
坡的底部是悬崖:悬崖之外高山入云,黑色的陡崖,铺满石头的峡谷,山涧又深又窄,根本望不到底,河水从山谷奔腾而下,轰隆作响,一直流入暗黑的深渊。
Needless to say, it was Puddleglum who pointed out a sprinkling of snow on the more distant slopes. "But there'll be more on the north side of them, I shouldn't wonder," he added.
不用说,又是帕德格莱姆指出更远的山坡上残留着一点雪。“山北坡雪更多,我一点都不奇怪。”他又说道。
It took them some time to reach the foot of the slope and, when they did, they looked down from the top of the cliffs at a river running below them from west to east.
他们花了些时间才走到山坡下面,俯视崖底,看见一条由西向东奔流的河。
It was walled in by precipices on the far side as well as on their own, and it was green and sunless, full of rapids and waterfalls. The roar of it shook the earth even where they stood.
河流被峭壁包围在当中。河水呈绿色,阴暗无光,到处都是湍流和瀑布。激流呼啸,山摇地动,甚至连他们站的这个地方都在晃动。