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Nevertheless, so potent an influence did this thing have on those seamen in the Pequod who came to the full knowledge of it, and by such a strange delicacy, to call it so, were they governed in this matter, that they kept the secret among themselves so that it never transpired abaft the Pequod's main-mast. Interweaving in its proper place this darker thread with the story as publicly narrated on the ship, the whole of this strange affair I now proceed to put on lasting record. Footnote：Town-Ho—The ancient whale-cry upon first sighting a whalefrom the mast-head, still used by whalemen in hunting the famous Gallipagos terrapin. End of footnote.
虽然这事情对于那些终于完全知道得清清楚楚的“裴廓德号”的水手说来，的确有了非常重大的影响，可是，他们控制这件事情却可以说是巧妙得出奇，而且他们之间都能保守秘密，所以从来没有传到“裴廓德号”的主桅以后的地方去。等到这个故事在船上公开出来的时候，人们把一些隐秘的线索给织进原来的故事里，我现在打算把这整个奇特的故事弄成一种垂之久远的记录。（原注：这是古代捕鲸者在桅顶上一看到大鲸就叫出来的呼号，迄今仍为那些捕著名的卡利巴哥斯鳖的捕鲸船所应用。）
For my humor's sake, I shall preserve the style in which I once narrated it at Lima, to a lounging circle of my Spanish friends, one saint's eve, smoking upon the thick-gilt tiled piazza of the Golden Inn. Of those fine cavaliers, the young Dons, Pedro and Sebastian, were on the closer terms with me; and hence the interluding questions they occasionally put, and which are duly answered at the time.
为了我的幽默，我还是保持我某回在利马所讲的那种方式，当时是在某一圣节的前夕，在幸福客店那重镶金色瓦片的。烟雾缭绕的走廊上，对我那些懒洋洋的坐在一圈的西班牙朋友讲的。在这些漂亮的骑士中，有两个青年绅士，佩德罗和塞瓦斯蒂安，是我的至交；因此，他们偶尔插进一些问题来，我也随时给以适当的答复。
Qoute: Some two years prior to my first learning the events which I am about rehearsing to you, gentlemen, theTown-Ho, Sperm Whaler of Nantucket, was cruising in your Pacific here, not very many days' sail eastward from the eaves of this good Golden Inn.
“各位先生，在我初次得知这故事——也就是我现在要向你们讲的这个故事——约两年前左右，那时候，那艘叫做‘大鲸出来了号’的南塔开特捕抹香鲸船，正在你们这里的太平洋巡游，也就是从这个讨人喜欢的幸福客店的门口，坐船向西驶上不消几天就可到达的地方。
