The natural leadership with which my uncle procured6 the instruments from the laboratories of Brown University and the Cranston Street Armory7, and instinctively8 assumed direction of our venture, was a marvelous commentary on the potential vitality9 and resilience of a man of eighty-one. Elihu Whipple had lived according to the hygienic laws he had preached as a physician, and but for what happened later would be here in full vigor10 today. Only two persons suspected what did happen—Carrington Harris and myself. I had to tell Harris because he owned the house and deserved to know what had gone out of it. Then too, we had spoken to him in advance of our quest; and I felt after my uncle's going that he would understand and assist me in some vitally necessary public explanations. He turned very pale, but agreed to help me, and decided12 that it would now be safe to rent the house.
To declare that we were not nervous on that rainy night of watching would be an exaggeration both gross and ridiculous. We were not, as I have said, in any sense childishly superstitious13, but scientific study and reflection had taught us that the known universe of three dimensions embraces the merest fraction of the whole cosmos14 of substance and energy. In this case an overwhelming preponderance of evidence from numerous authentic15 sources pointed16 to the tenacious17 existence of certain forces of great power and, so far as the human point of view is concerned, exceptional malignancy. To say that we actually believed in vampires19 or werewolves would be a carelessly inclusive statement. Rather must it be said that we were not prepared to deny the possibility of certain unfamiliar20 and unclassified modifications21 of vital force and attenuated22 matter; existing very infrequently in three-dimensional space because of its more intimate connection with other spatial23 units, yet close enough to the boundary of our own to furnish us occasional manifestations24 which we, for lack of a proper vantage-point, may never hope to understand.
In short, it seemed to my uncle and me that an incontrovertible array of facts pointed to some lingering influence in the shunned house; traceable to one or another of the ill-favored French settlers of two centuries before, and still operative through rare and unknown laws of atomic and electronic motion. That the family of Roulet had possessed25 an abnormal affinity26 for outer circles of entity27—dark spheres which for normal folk hold only repulsion and terror—their recorded history seemed to prove. Had not, then, the riots of those bygone seventeen-thirties set moving certain kinetic28 patterns in the morbid29 brain of one or more of them—notably the sinister30 Paul Roulet—which obscurely survived the bodies murdered and buried by the mob, and continued to function in some multiple-dimensioned space along the original lines of force determined31 by a frantic32 hatred33 of the encroaching community?
Such a thing was surely not a physical or biochemical impossibility in the light of a newer science which includes the theories of relativity and intra-atomic action. One might easily imagine an alien nucleus34 of substance or energy, formless or otherwise, kept alive by imperceptible or immaterial subtractions from the life-force or bodily tissue and fluids of other and more palpably living things into which it penetrates35 and with whose fabric36 it sometimes completely merges37 itself. It might be actively38 hostile, or it might be dictated39 merely by blind motives40 of self-preservation. In any case such a monster must of necessity be in our scheme of things an anomaly and an intruder, whose extirpation41 forms a primary duty with every man not an enemy to the world's life, health, and sanity42.
What baffled us was our utter ignorance of the aspect in which we might encounter the thing. No sane43 person had ever seen it, and few had ever felt it definitely. It might be pure energy—a form ethereal and outside the realm of substance—or it might be partly material; some unknown and equivocal mass of plasticity, capable of changing at will to nebulous approximations of the solid, liquid, gaseous44, or tenuously45 unparticled states. The anthropomorphic patch of mold on the floor, the form of the yellowish vapor46, and the curvature of the tree-roots in some of the old tales, all argued at least a remote and reminiscent connection with the human shape; but how representative or permanent that similarity might be, none could say with any kind of certainty.
We had devised two weapons to fight it; a large and specially47 fitted Crookes tube operated by powerful storage batteries and provided with peculiar48 screens and reflectors, in case it proved intangible and opposable only by vigorously destructive ether radiations, and a pair of military flame-throwers of the sort used in the World War, in case it proved partly material and susceptible49 of mechanical destruction—for like the superstitious Exeter rustics50, we were prepared to burn the thing's heart out if heart existed to burn. All this aggressive mechanism we set in the cellar in positions carefully arranged with reference to the cot and chairs, and to the spot before the fireplace where the mold had taken strange shapes. That suggestive patch, by the way, was only faintly visible when we placed our furniture and instruments, and when we returned that evening for the actual vigil. For a moment I half doubted that I had ever seen it in the more definitely limned51 form—but then I thought of the legends.
Our cellar vigil began at ten p. m., daylight saving time, and as it continued we found no promise of pertinent52 developments. A weak, filtered glow from the rain-harassed street-lamps outside, and a feeble phosphorescence from the detestable fungi53 within, showed the dripping stone of the walls, from which all traces of whitewash54 had vanished; the dank, fetid and mildew-tainted hard earth floor with its obscene fungi; the rotting remains55 of what had been stools, chairs, and tables, and other more shapeless furniture; the heavy planks57 and massive beams of the ground floor overhead; the decrepit58 plank56 door leading to bins59 and chambers60 beneath other parts of the house; the crumbling61 stone staircase with ruined wooden hand-rail; and the crude and cavernous fireplace of blackened brick where rusted62 iron fragments revealed the past presence of hooks, andirons, spit, crane, and a door to the Dutch oven—these things, and our austere63 cot and camp chairs, and the heavy and intricate destructive machinery64 we had brought.
We had, as in my own former explorations, left the door to the street unlocked; so that a direct and practical path of escape might lie open in case of manifestations beyond our power to deal with. It was our idea that our continued nocturnal presence would call forth65 whatever malign18 entity lurked66 there; and that being prepared, we could dispose of the thing with one or the other of our provided means as soon as we had recognized and observed it sufficiently67. How long it might require to evoke68 and extinguish the thing, we had no notion. It occurred to us, too, that our venture was far from safe; for in what strength the thing might appear no one could tell. But we deemed the game worth the hazard, and embarked69 on it alone and unhesitatingly; conscious that the seeking of outside aid would only expose us to ridicule70 and perhaps defeat our entire purpose. Such was our frame of mind as we talked—far into the night, till my uncle's growing drowsiness71 made me remind him to lie down for his two-hour sleep.
Something like fear chilled me as I sat there in the small hours alone—I say alone, for one who sits by a sleeper72 is indeed alone; perhaps more alone than he can realize. My uncle breathed heavily, his deep inhalations and exhalations accompanied by the rain outside, and punctuated73 by another nerve-racking sound of distant dripping water within—for the house was repulsively74 damp even in dry weather, and in this storm positively75 swamp-like. I studied the loose, antique masonry76 of the walls in the fungus-light and the feeble rays which stole in from the street through the screened window; and once, when the noisome77 atmosphere of the place seemed about to sicken me, I opened the door and looked up and down the street, feasting my eyes on familiar sights and my nostrils78 on wholesome79 air. Still nothing occurred to reward my watching; and I yawned repeatedly, fatigue80 getting the better of apprehension81.
Then the stirring of my uncle in his sleep attracted my notice. He had turned restlessly on the cot several times during the latter half of the first hour, but now he was breathing with unusual irregularity, occasionally heaving a sigh which held more than a few of the qualities of a choking moan.
I turned my electric flashlight on him and found his face averted82; so rising and crossing to the other side of the cot, I again flashed the light to see if he seemed in any pain. What I saw unnerved me most surprisingly, considering its relative triviality. It must have been merely the association of any odd circumstance with the sinister nature of our location and mission, for surely the circumstance was not in itself frightful83 or unnatural84. It was merely that my uncle's facial expression, disturbed no doubt by the strange dreams which our situation prompted, betrayed considerable agitation85, and seemed not at all characteristic of him. His habitual86 expression was one of kindly87 and well-bred calm, whereas now a variety of emotions seemed struggling within him. I think, on the whole, that it was this variety which chiefly disturbed me. My uncle, as he gasped88 and tossed in increasing perturbation and with eyes that had now started open, seemed not one but many men, and suggested a curious quality of alienage from himself.
All at once he commenced to mutter, and I did not like the look of his mouth and teeth as he spoke11. The words were at first indistinguishable, and then—with a tremendous start—I recognized something about them which filled me with icy fear till I recalled the breadth of my uncle's education and the interminable translations he had made from anthropological89 and antiquarian articles in the Revue des Deux Mondes. For the venerable Elihu Whipple was muttering in French, and the few phrases I could distinguish seemed connected with the darkest myths he had ever adapted from the famous Paris magazine.
Suddenly a perspiration90 broke out on the sleeper's forehead, and he leaped abruptly91 up, half awake. The jumble92 of French changed to a cry in English, and the hoarse93 voice shouted excitedly, "My breath, my breath!" Then the awakening94 became complete, and with a subsidence of facial expression to the normal state my uncle seized my hand and began to relate a dream whose nucleus of significance I could only surmise1 with a kind of awe95.
He had, he said, floated off from a very ordinary series of dream-pictures into a scene whose strangeness was related to nothing he had ever read. It was of this world, and yet not of it—a shadowy geometrical confusion in which could be seen elements of familiar things in most unfamiliar and perturbing96 combinations. There was a suggestion of queerly disordered pictures superimposed one upon another; an arrangement in which the essentials of time as well as of space seemed dissolved and mixed in the most illogical fashion. In this kaleidoscopic97 vortex of phantasmal images were occasional snap-shots, if one might use the term, of singular clearness but unaccountable heterogeneity98.
Once my uncle thought he lay in a carelessly dug open pit, with a crowd of angry faces framed by straggling locks and three-cornered hats frowning down on him. Again he seemed to be in the interior of a house—an old house, apparently—but the details and inhabitants were constantly changing, and he could never be certain of the faces or the furniture, or even of the room itself, since doors and windows seemed in just as great a state of flux99 as the presumably more mobile objects. It was queer—damnably queer—and my uncle spoke almost sheepishly, as if half expecting not to be believed, when he declared that of the strange faces many had unmistakably borne the features of the Harris family. And all the while there was a personal sensation of choking, as if some pervasive100 presence had spread itself through his body and sought to possess itself of his vital processes.
I shuddered101 at the thought of those vital processes, worn as they were by eighty-one years of continuous functioning, in conflict with unknown forces of which the youngest and strongest system might well be afraid; but in another moment reflected that dreams are only dreams, and that these uncomfortable visions could be, at most, no more than my uncle's reaction to the investigations102 and expectations which had lately filled our minds to the exclusion103 of all else.
Conversation, also, soon tended to dispel104 my sense of strangeness; and in time I yielded to my yawns and took my turn at slumber105. My uncle seemed now very wakeful, and welcomed his period of watching even though the nightmare had aroused him far ahead of his allotted106 two hours.
Sleep seized me quickly, and I was at once haunted with dreams of the most disturbing kind. I felt, in my visions, a cosmic and abysmal107 loneness; with hostility108 surging from all sides upon some prison where I lay confined. I seemed bound and gagged, and taunted109 by the echoing yells of distant multitudes who thirsted for my blood. My uncle's face came to me with less pleasant association than in waking hours, and I recall many futile110 struggles and attempts to scream. It was not a pleasant sleep, and for a second I was not sorry for the echoing shriek111 which clove112 through the barriers of dream and flung me to a sharp and startled awakeness in which every actual object before my eyes stood out with more than natural clearness and reality.
点击收听单词发音
1 surmise | |
v./n.猜想,推测 | |
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2 surmises | |
v.臆测,推断( surmise的第三人称单数 );揣测;猜想 | |
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3 shunned | |
v.避开,回避,避免( shun的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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4 mechanism | |
n.机械装置;机构,结构 | |
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5 protracted | |
adj.拖延的;延长的v.拖延“protract”的过去式和过去分词 | |
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6 procured | |
v.(努力)取得, (设法)获得( procure的过去式和过去分词 );拉皮条 | |
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7 armory | |
n.纹章,兵工厂,军械库 | |
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8 instinctively | |
adv.本能地 | |
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9 vitality | |
n.活力,生命力,效力 | |
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10 vigor | |
n.活力,精力,元气 | |
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11 spoke | |
n.(车轮的)辐条;轮辐;破坏某人的计划;阻挠某人的行动 v.讲,谈(speak的过去式);说;演说;从某种观点来说 | |
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12 decided | |
adj.决定了的,坚决的;明显的,明确的 | |
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13 superstitious | |
adj.迷信的 | |
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14 cosmos | |
n.宇宙;秩序,和谐 | |
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15 authentic | |
a.真的,真正的;可靠的,可信的,有根据的 | |
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16 pointed | |
adj.尖的,直截了当的 | |
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17 tenacious | |
adj.顽强的,固执的,记忆力强的,粘的 | |
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18 malign | |
adj.有害的;恶性的;恶意的;v.诽谤,诬蔑 | |
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19 vampires | |
n.吸血鬼( vampire的名词复数 );吸血蝠;高利贷者;(舞台上的)活板门 | |
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20 unfamiliar | |
adj.陌生的,不熟悉的 | |
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21 modifications | |
n.缓和( modification的名词复数 );限制;更改;改变 | |
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22 attenuated | |
v.(使)变细( attenuate的过去式和过去分词 );(使)变薄;(使)变小;减弱 | |
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23 spatial | |
adj.空间的,占据空间的 | |
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24 manifestations | |
n.表示,显示(manifestation的复数形式) | |
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25 possessed | |
adj.疯狂的;拥有的,占有的 | |
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26 affinity | |
n.亲和力,密切关系 | |
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27 entity | |
n.实体,独立存在体,实际存在物 | |
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28 kinetic | |
adj.运动的;动力学的 | |
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29 morbid | |
adj.病的;致病的;病态的;可怕的 | |
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30 sinister | |
adj.不吉利的,凶恶的,左边的 | |
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31 determined | |
adj.坚定的;有决心的 | |
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32 frantic | |
adj.狂乱的,错乱的,激昂的 | |
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33 hatred | |
n.憎恶,憎恨,仇恨 | |
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34 nucleus | |
n.核,核心,原子核 | |
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35 penetrates | |
v.穿过( penetrate的第三人称单数 );刺入;了解;渗透 | |
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36 fabric | |
n.织物,织品,布;构造,结构,组织 | |
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37 merges | |
(使)混合( merge的第三人称单数 ); 相融; 融入; 渐渐消失在某物中 | |
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38 actively | |
adv.积极地,勤奋地 | |
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39 dictated | |
v.大声讲或读( dictate的过去式和过去分词 );口授;支配;摆布 | |
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40 motives | |
n.动机,目的( motive的名词复数 ) | |
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41 extirpation | |
n.消灭,根除,毁灭;摘除 | |
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42 sanity | |
n.心智健全,神智正常,判断正确 | |
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43 sane | |
adj.心智健全的,神志清醒的,明智的,稳健的 | |
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44 gaseous | |
adj.气体的,气态的 | |
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45 tenuously | |
薄地; 细地; 空洞无物地; 无关紧要地 | |
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46 vapor | |
n.蒸汽,雾气 | |
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47 specially | |
adv.特定地;特殊地;明确地 | |
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48 peculiar | |
adj.古怪的,异常的;特殊的,特有的 | |
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49 susceptible | |
adj.过敏的,敏感的;易动感情的,易受感动的 | |
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50 rustics | |
n.有农村或村民特色的( rustic的名词复数 );粗野的;不雅的;用粗糙的木材或树枝制作的 | |
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51 limned | |
v.画( limn的过去式和过去分词 );勾画;描写;描述 | |
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52 pertinent | |
adj.恰当的;贴切的;中肯的;有关的;相干的 | |
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53 fungi | |
n.真菌,霉菌 | |
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54 whitewash | |
v.粉刷,掩饰;n.石灰水,粉刷,掩饰 | |
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55 remains | |
n.剩余物,残留物;遗体,遗迹 | |
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56 plank | |
n.板条,木板,政策要点,政纲条目 | |
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57 planks | |
(厚)木板( plank的名词复数 ); 政纲条目,政策要点 | |
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58 decrepit | |
adj.衰老的,破旧的 | |
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59 bins | |
n.大储藏箱( bin的名词复数 );宽口箱(如面包箱,垃圾箱等)v.扔掉,丢弃( bin的第三人称单数 ) | |
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60 chambers | |
n.房间( chamber的名词复数 );(议会的)议院;卧室;会议厅 | |
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61 crumbling | |
adj.摇摇欲坠的 | |
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62 rusted | |
v.(使)生锈( rust的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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63 austere | |
adj.艰苦的;朴素的,朴实无华的;严峻的 | |
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64 machinery | |
n.(总称)机械,机器;机构 | |
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65 forth | |
adv.向前;向外,往外 | |
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66 lurked | |
vi.潜伏,埋伏(lurk的过去式与过去分词形式) | |
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67 sufficiently | |
adv.足够地,充分地 | |
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68 evoke | |
vt.唤起,引起,使人想起 | |
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69 embarked | |
乘船( embark的过去式和过去分词 ); 装载; 从事 | |
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70 ridicule | |
v.讥讽,挖苦;n.嘲弄 | |
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71 drowsiness | |
n.睡意;嗜睡 | |
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72 sleeper | |
n.睡眠者,卧车,卧铺 | |
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73 punctuated | |
v.(在文字中)加标点符号,加标点( punctuate的过去式和过去分词 );不时打断某事物 | |
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74 repulsively | |
adv.冷淡地 | |
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75 positively | |
adv.明确地,断然,坚决地;实在,确实 | |
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76 masonry | |
n.砖土建筑;砖石 | |
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77 noisome | |
adj.有害的,可厌的 | |
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78 nostrils | |
鼻孔( nostril的名词复数 ) | |
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79 wholesome | |
adj.适合;卫生的;有益健康的;显示身心健康的 | |
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80 fatigue | |
n.疲劳,劳累 | |
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81 apprehension | |
n.理解,领悟;逮捕,拘捕;忧虑 | |
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82 averted | |
防止,避免( avert的过去式和过去分词 ); 转移 | |
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83 frightful | |
adj.可怕的;讨厌的 | |
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84 unnatural | |
adj.不自然的;反常的 | |
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85 agitation | |
n.搅动;搅拌;鼓动,煽动 | |
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86 habitual | |
adj.习惯性的;通常的,惯常的 | |
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87 kindly | |
adj.和蔼的,温和的,爽快的;adv.温和地,亲切地 | |
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88 gasped | |
v.喘气( gasp的过去式和过去分词 );喘息;倒抽气;很想要 | |
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89 anthropological | |
adj.人类学的 | |
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90 perspiration | |
n.汗水;出汗 | |
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91 abruptly | |
adv.突然地,出其不意地 | |
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92 jumble | |
vt.使混乱,混杂;n.混乱;杂乱的一堆 | |
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93 hoarse | |
adj.嘶哑的,沙哑的 | |
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94 awakening | |
n.觉醒,醒悟 adj.觉醒中的;唤醒的 | |
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95 awe | |
n.敬畏,惊惧;vt.使敬畏,使惊惧 | |
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96 perturbing | |
v.使(某人)烦恼,不安( perturb的现在分词 ) | |
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97 kaleidoscopic | |
adj.千变万化的 | |
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98 heterogeneity | |
n.异质性;多相性 | |
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99 flux | |
n.流动;不断的改变 | |
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100 pervasive | |
adj.普遍的;遍布的,(到处)弥漫的;渗透性的 | |
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101 shuddered | |
v.战栗( shudder的过去式和过去分词 );发抖;(机器、车辆等)突然震动;颤动 | |
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102 investigations | |
(正式的)调查( investigation的名词复数 ); 侦查; 科学研究; 学术研究 | |
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103 exclusion | |
n.拒绝,排除,排斥,远足,远途旅行 | |
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104 dispel | |
vt.驱走,驱散,消除 | |
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105 slumber | |
n.睡眠,沉睡状态 | |
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106 allotted | |
分配,拨给,摊派( allot的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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107 abysmal | |
adj.无底的,深不可测的,极深的;糟透的,极坏的;完全的 | |
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108 hostility | |
n.敌对,敌意;抵制[pl.]交战,战争 | |
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109 taunted | |
嘲讽( taunt的过去式和过去分词 ); 嘲弄; 辱骂; 奚落 | |
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110 futile | |
adj.无效的,无用的,无希望的 | |
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111 shriek | |
v./n.尖叫,叫喊 | |
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112 clove | |
n.丁香味 | |
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