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First: The mariner, when drawing nigh the coasts of foreign lands, if by night he hear the roar of breakers, starts to vigilance, and feels just enough of trepidation to sharpen all his faculties;
第一,在船只逐渐驶近异乡口岸时,如果当时正是夜间,有个水手听到激浪的号啸而惊醒过来,他会觉得那种恐惧刚好把他的精神都激发起来;
but under precisely similar circumstances, let him be called from his hammock to view his ship sailing through a midnight sea of milky whiteness-as if from encircling headlands shoals of combed white bears were swimming round him, then he feels a silent, superstitious dread;
不过,如果是在同样的情况下,人们把他从吊床上叫醒起来,让他去看看船只穿过午夜的乳白色的大海时。。。。。。仿佛正有一群白熊打从崎岬里冲了出来,在他四周起伏漫游,那他就会感到一阵悄然而来的。非常迷信的恐怖了;
the shrouded phantom of the whitened waters is horrible to him as a real ghost;
那种幽灵似的白浪滔滔的洋面,在他看来,可跟碰上一个真正的魔鬼一样可怖;
in vain the lead assures him he is still off soundings; heart and helm they both go down; he never rests till blue water is under him again.
任凭那个叫醒他的人怎样对他说,他还是不放心,他们既定不下心,又掌不来舵,要等到他又看到蔚蓝的海面,这才能安定下来。
Yet where is the mariner who will tell thee, Sir, it was not so much the fear of striking hidden rocks, as the fear of that hideous whiteness that so stirred me?
然而,有哪一个水手会对你说:老哥,触礁的可怕,比起那使我如此激动的讨厌的白色来简直算不上什么可怕。
Second: To the native Indian of Peru, the continual sight of the snowhowdahed Andes conveys naught of dread, except, perhaps, in the mere fancying of the eternal frosted desolateness reigning at such vast altitudes, and the natural conceit of what a fearfulness it would be to lose oneself in such inhuman solitudes.
第二,在秘鲁的印第安土著看来,雪轿似的安第斯山那连绵不绝的景色,一点也看不出有什么恐怖,不过,当他稍微想到那种笼罩在这种高峰上的永恒的冰冻凄凉景象时,他也许会自然而然地想到,如果一旦迷失在这样渺无人烟的荒地里,该有多么可怖。
Much the same is it with the backwoodsman of the West, who with comparative indifference views an unbounded prairie sheeted with driven snow, no shadow of tree or twig to break the fixed trance of whiteness.
同样的,如果有一个西部的偏远林区居民,看到一望无际的大草原,覆着纷飞的白雪,连打破这个入定了似的白色境界的一棵树。
Not so the sailor, beholding the scenery of the Antarctic seas;
一枝树影都看不见,他也是相当冷淡的。
where at times, by some infernal trick of legerdemain in the powers of frost and air, he, shivering and half shipwrecked, instead of rainbows speaking hope and solace to his misery, views what seems a boundless churchyard grinning upon him with its lean ice monuments and splintered crosses.
可是,水手在看到南极海的景色时,却就不是这样了;在那里,他好象时时感到霜雪和空中有鬼神在耍可怖的妖法,教他尽抖索着,有如船只已给撞破了,而看不到满露希望的虹彩,可以安慰他的惨境,看到的似乎就是一片辽阔的墓地,和它那冰封的细长墓碑以及破碎的十字架在对他狞笑。
But thou sayest, methinks this white-lead chapter about whiteness is but a white flag hung out from a craven soul; thou surrenderest to a hypo, Ishmael.
但是,你所说的这番关于白色的涂铅粉似的插话,我却认为就正是从懦夫心里扯出来的一面白旗;以实玛利呀,我看你就干脆向忧郁症投降吧。
