英語聽書《白鯨記》 第272期

　　For the sea is his; he owns it, as Emperors ownempires; other seamen having but a right of waythrough it. Merchant ships are but extensionbridges; armed ones but floating forts; even piratesand privateers, though following the sea ashighwaymen the road. they but plunder other ships,other fragments of the land like themselves, withoutseeking to draw their living from the bottomlessdeep itself. The Nantucketer, he alone resides andriots on the sea; he alone, in Bible language, goesdown to it in ships; to and fro ploughing it as hisown special plantation. There is his home; there lies his business which a Noah's flood would notinterrupt, though it overwhelmed all the millions in China. He lives on the sea, as prairie cocksin the prairie; he hides among the waves, he climbs them as chamois hunters climb the Alps.For years he knows not the land; so that when he comes to it at last, it smells like anotherworld, more strangely than the moon would to an Earthsman. With the landless gull, that atsunset folds her wings and is rocked to sleep between billows; so at nightfall, the Nantucketer,out of sight of land, furls his sails, and lays him to his rest, while under his very pillow rushherds of walruses and whales.

　　因為海洋是屬于他們的;他們擁有海洋,猶如皇帝之擁有他自己的皇土;別國的水手不過有一種通行權而已。商船不過是橋梁的延伸;兵艦不過是浮動炮臺;甚至在海上游弋的海盜船和私掠船,雖然象攔路大盜在大道上打劫一樣,在海上打劫,它們只劫掠別的船只,攔路大盜也象海盜船和私掠船那樣只在別的地段上劫掠,決不妄圖到這無底的深淵里來謀生計。于是,單獨住在海上,在海上騷擾的便只有南塔開特人了;按照《圣經(jīng)》上的說法,他們是單獨坐船下海的;把海洋當作他們的特有的農(nóng)場往復地耕耘著。那里是他們的家;他們的事業(yè)就在那里,這種事業(yè)不是挪亞的大洪水所妨礙得了的,雖然大水會淹沒中國的無數(shù)生靈。他們住在海上,猶如野雉之生活于大草原中;他們隱伏在驚濤駭浪中,他們攀登巨浪,一如羚羊獵戶之攀登阿爾卑斯山。多少年來,他們不知道有陸地;因此,等到他們終于來到陸地,它就象是另一個世界的味道,比穴居人看到月亮還要覺得希奇。象無地可容的海鷗,每當夕陽西下就卷起兩翼,躺在浪濤中晃來晃去地睡著了;南塔開特人也是這樣地在薄暮時分,遠離陸地,卷起風帆,躺下來休息了,而在他們的枕頭底下,卻正是川流不息的海象群和鯨群。