英語聽書《白鯨記》第732期

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Chapter 85 The Fountain

第八十五章 噴泉

That for six thousand years—and no one knows how many millions of ages before—the great whales should have been spouting all over the sea, and sprinkling and mistifying the gardens of the deep, as with so many sprinkling or mistifying pots; and that for some centuries back, thousands of hunters should have been close by the fountain of the whale, watching these sprinklings and spoutings— that all this should be, and yet, that down to this blessed minute (fifteen and a quarter minutes past one o'clock P.M. of this sixteenth day of December, A.D. 1851), it should still remain a problem, whether these spoutings are, after all, really water, or nothing but vapor—this is surely a noteworthy thing.

六千年來——誰也不知道在以前還有幾百萬年——那些大鯨都一直象是用許多澆水壺和噴霧罐似的噴遍了海洋，把那些海洋樂園都澆噴得霧氣騰騰；過去幾百年來，成千上萬的獵人都一直緊挨在大鯨的噴泉旁邊，瞅著這些澆澆噴噴的動作——雖然有過所有這一切，然而，直到此時此刻（公元一八五一年十二月十六日，午后一時十五分十五秒），這些噴水究竟是真的水，還是不過是些氣，卻依然是個問題——這肯定是件值得注意的事情。

Let us, then, look at this matter, along with some interesting items contingent. Every one knows that by the peculiar cunning of their gills, the finny tribes in general breathe the air which at all times is combined with the element in which they swim; hence, a herring or a cod might live a century, and never once raise its head above the surface. But owing to his marked internal structure which gives him regular lungs, like a human being's, the whale can only live by inhaling the disengaged air in the open atmosphere. Wherefore the necessity for his periodical visits to the upper world.

那么，我們就把這問題連同一些附帶的有趣的細目研究一下吧。人人都知道，一般鰭類動物因為有特別靈活的鰓，所以在呼吸空氣時，總是把空氣跟它們所游的水一起吸了進去，因此，青魚或者鳘魚可能活上一百年，而從來不曾把頭冒出海面過?？墒?，大鯨卻由于它那特殊的內部構造，使它象人類一般，長有正常的肺，它只有靠吸進太空那些不混有水的空氣才能活下來。因此，它必須定期出來看望一下上邊的世界。