海底兩萬里 第236期 第18章 太平洋下四千里(8)

I could make out only its wooded mountains on the horizon, because Captain Nemo hated to hug shore. There our nets brought up some fine fish samples: dolphinfish with azure fins, gold tails, and flesh that's unrivaled in the entire world, wrasse from the genus Hologymnosus that were nearly denuded of scales but exquisite in flavor, knifejaws with bony beaks, yellowish albacore that were as tasty as bonito, all fish worth classifying in the ship's pantry.

我只看到天邊滿是叢林密布的山嶺，因為尼摩船長不喜歡接近陸地，所以我沒看見別的。在這一帶海面上，魚網(wǎng)打得了好些美麗的魚類。比如哥利芬魚，天藍色的鰭，金黃色的尾巴，肉味鮮美無比。赤裸魚，差不多沒有鱗甲，但也很好吃;帶骨腮的骨眶魚，黑黃的塔查魚，比鯉魚還好吃;所有這些魚都值得放到船上餐廳中供人食用。

After leaving these delightful islands to the protection of the French flag, the Nautilus covered about 2,000 miles from December 4 to the 11th. Its navigating was marked by an encounter with an immense school of squid, unusual mollusks that are near neighbors of the cuttlefish. French fishermen give them the name "cuckoldfish," and they belong to the class Cephalopoda, family Dibranchiata, consisting of themselves together with cuttlefish and argonauts. The naturalists of antiquity made a special study of them, and these animals furnished many ribald figures of speech for soapbox orators in the Greek marketplace, as well as excellent dishes for the tables of rich citizens, if we're to believe Athenaeus, a Greek physician predating Galen.

離開了由法國國旗保護的這些使人神往的美麗海島后， 從12月4日至11日，諾第留斯號共走了四千里左右。這次航行碰見了一大群搶烏賊，這是很奇異的軟體動物，跟墨魚很相像。法國漁人稱它們?yōu)樗S蜂，它們屬于頭足綱。雙鰓目，其中包括肛魚和墨魚。這類魚，古代生物學家特別加以研究，它們給古代希臘公眾會場的演說家提供了好些譬喻語，根據(jù)生于嘉利安之前的希臘醫(yī)生阿典尼所說的話，這類魚在希臘的有錢公民的食桌上，也是一盤很美味的菜。

It was during the night of December 9-10 that the Nautilus encountered this army of distinctly nocturnal mollusks. They numbered in the millions.

就是在12月9日和10 日夜間，諾第留斯號碰見一大群喜歡夜出的軟體動物。估計起來，它們的數(shù)目不止數(shù)千百萬。