Besides her hoisted1 boats, an American whaler is outwardly distinguished2 by her try-works. She presents the curious anomaly of the most solid masonry3 joining with oak and hemp4 in constituting the completed ship. It is as if from the open field a brick-kiln were transported to her planks5.
The try-works are planted between the foremast and mainmast, the most roomy part of the deck. The timbers beneath are of a peculiar6 strength, fitted to sustain the weight of an almost solid mass of brick and mortar7, some ten feet by eight square, and five in height. The foundation does not penetrate8 the deck, but the masonry is firmly secured to the surface by ponderous9 knees of iron bracing10 it on all sides, and screwing it down to the timbers. On the flanks it is cased with wood, and at top completely covered by a large, sloping, battened hatchway. Removing this hatch we expose the great try-pots, two in number, and each of several barrels' capacity. When not in use, they are kept remarkably11 clean. Sometimes they are polished with soapstone and sand, till they shine within like silver punchbowls. During the night-watches some cynical12 old sailors will crawl into them and coil themselves away there for a nap. While employed in polishing them--one man in each pot, side by side-- many confidential13 communications are carried on, over the iron lips. It is a place also for profound mathematical meditation14. It was in the left hand try-pot of the Pequod, with the soapstone diligently15 circling round me, that I was first indirectly16 struck by the remarkable17 fact, that in geometry all bodies gliding18 along the cycloid, my soapstone for example, will descend19 from any point in precisely20 the same time.
Removing the fire-board from the front of the try-works, the bare masonry of that side is exposed, penetrated21 by the two iron mouths of the furnaces, directly underneath22 the pots. These mouths are fitted with heavy doors of iron. The intense heat of the fire is prevented from communicating itself to the deck, by means of a shallow reservoir extending under the entire inclosed surface of the works. By a tunnel inserted at the rear, this reservoir is kept replenished23 with water as fast as it evaporates. There are no external chimneys; they open direct from the rear wall. And here let us go back for a moment.
It was about nine o'clock at night that the Pequod's try-works were first started on this present voyage. It belonged to Stubb to oversee24 the business.
"All ready there? Off hatch, then, and start her. You cook, fire the works." This was an easy thing, for the carpenter had been thrusting his shavings into the furnace throughout the passage. Here be it said that in a whaling voyage the first fire in the try-works has to be fed for a time with wood. After that no wood is used, except as a means of quick ignition to the staple25 fuel. In a word, after being tried out, the crisp, shrivelled blubber, now called scraps26 or fritters, still contains considerable of its unctuous27 properties. These fritters feed the flames. Like a plethoric28 burning martyr29, or a self-consuming misanthrope30, once ignited, the whale supplies his own fuel and burns by his own body. Would that he consumed his own smoke! for his smoke is horrible to inhale31, and inhale it you must, and not only that, but you must live in it for the time. It has an unspeakable, wild, Hindoo odor about it, such as may lurk32 in the vicinity of funereal33 pyres. It smells like the left wing of the day of judgment34; it is an argument for the pit.
By midnight the works were in full operation. We were clear from the carcass; sail had been made; the wind was freshening; the wild ocean darkness was intense. But that darkness was licked up by the fierce flames, which at intervals35 forked forth37 from the sooty flues, and illuminated38 every lofty rope in the rigging, as with the famed Greek fire. The burning ship drove on, as if remorselessly commissioned to some vengeful deed. So the pitch and sulphur-freighted brigs of the bold Hydriote, Canaris, issuing from their midnight harbors, with broad sheets of flame for sails, bore down upon the Turkish frigates39, and folded them in conflagrations40.
The hatch, removed from the top of the works, now afforded a wide hearth41 in front of them. Standing42 on this were the Tartarean shapes of the pagan harpooneers, always the whale-ship's stokers. With huge pronged poles they pitched hissing43 masses of blubber into the scalding pots, or stirred up the fires beneath, till the snaky flames darted44, curling, out of the doors to catch them by the feet. The smoke rolled away in sullen45 heaps. To every pitch of the ship there was a pitch of the boiling oil, which seemed all eagerness to leap into their faces. Opposite the mouth of the works, on the further side of the wide wooden hearth, was the windlass. This served for a sea-sofa. Here lounged the watch, when not otherwise employed, looking into the red heat of the fire, till their eyes felt scorched46 in their heads. Their tawny47 features, now all begrimed with smoke and sweat, their matted beards, and the contrasting barbaric brilliancy of their teeth, all these were strangely revealed in the capricious emblazonings of the works. As they narrated48 to each other their unholy adventures, their tales of terror told in words of mirth; as their uncivilized laughter forked upwards49 out of them, like the flames from the furnace; as to and fro, in their front, the harpooneers wildly gesticulated with their huge pronged forks and dippers; as the wind howled on, and the sea leaped, and the ship groaned50 and dived, and yet steadfastly51 shot her red hell further and further into the blackness of the sea and the night, and scornfully champed the white bone in her mouth, and viciously spat52 round her on all sides; then the rushing Pequod, freighted with savages53, and laden54 with fire, and burning a corpse55, and plunging56 into that blackness of darkness, seemed the material counterpart of her monomaniac commander's soul.
So seemed it to me, as I stood at her helm, and for long hours silently guided the way of this fire-ship on the sea. Wrapped, for that interval36, in darkness myself, I but the better saw the redness, the madness, the ghastliness of others. The continual sight of the fiend shapes before me, capering57 half in smoke and half in fire, these at last begat kindred visions in my soul, so soon as I began to yield to that unaccountable drowsiness58 which ever would come over me at a midnight helm.
But that night, in particular, a strange (and ever since inexplicable) thing occurred to me. Starting from a brief standing sleep, I was horribly conscious of something fatally wrong. The jaw-bone tiller smote59 my side, which leaned against it; in my ears was the low hum of sails, just beginning to shake in the wind; I thought my eyes were open; I was half conscious of putting my fingers to the lids and mechanically stretching them still further apart. But, spite of all this, I could see no compass before me to steer60 by; though it seemed but a minute since I had been watching the card, by the steady binnacle lamp illuminating61 it. Nothing seemed before me but a jet gloom, now and then made ghastly by flashes of redness. Uppermost was the impression, that whatever swift, rushing thing I stood on was not so much bound to any haven62 ahead as rushing from all havens63 astern. A stark64, bewildered feeling, as of death, came over me. Convulsively my hands grasped the tiller, but with the crazy conceit65 that the tiller was, somehow, in some enchanted66 way, inverted67. My God! what is the matter with me? thought I. Lo! in my brief sleep I had turned myself about, and was fronting the ship's stern, with my back to her prow69 and the compass. In an instant I faced back, just in time to prevent the vessel70 from flying up into the wind, and very probably capsizing her. How glad and how grateful the relief from this unnatural71 hallucination of the night, and the fatal contingency72 of being brought by the lee!
Look not too long in the face of the fire, O man! Never dream with thy hand on the helm! Turn not thy back to the compass; accept the first hint of the hitching73 tiller; believe not the artificial fire, when its redness makes all things look ghastly. To-morrow, in the natural sun, the skies will be bright; those who glared like devils in the forking flames, the morn will show in far other, at least gentler, relief; the glorious, golden, glad sun, the only true lamp--all others but liars74!
Nevertheless the sun hides not Virginia's Dismal75 Swamp, nor Rome's accursed Campagna, nor wide Sahara, nor all the millions of miles of deserts and of griefs beneath the moon. The sun hides not the ocean, which is the dark side of this earth, and which is two thirds of this earth. So, therefore, that mortal man who hath more of joy than sorrow in him, that mortal man cannot be true--not true, or undeveloped. With books the same. The truest of all men was the Man of Sorrows, and the truest of all books is Solomon's, and Ecclesiastes is the fine hammered steel of woe76. "All is vanity." ALL. This wilful77 world hath not got hold of unchristian Solomon's wisdom yet. But he who dodges78 hospitals and jails, and walks fast crossing graveyards79, and would rather talk of operas than hell; calls Cowper, Young, Pascal, Rousseau, poor devils all of sick men; and throughout a care-free lifetime swears by Rabelais as passing wise, and therefore jolly;--not that man is fitted to sit down on tomb-stones, and break the green damp mould with unfathomably wondrous80 Solomon.
But even Solomon, he says, "the man that wandereth out of the way of understanding shall remain" (i.e. even while living) "in the congregation of the dead." Give not thyself up, then, to fire, lest it invert68 thee, deaden thee; as for the time it did me. There is a wisdom that is woe; but there is a woe that is madness. And there is a Catskill eagle in some souls that can alike dive down into the blackest gorges82, and soar out of them again and become invisible in the sunny spaces. And even if he for ever flies within the gorge81, that gorge is in the mountains; so that even in his lowest swoop83 the mountain eagle is still higher than other birds upon the plain, even though they soar.
1 hoisted | |
把…吊起,升起( hoist的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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2 distinguished | |
adj.卓越的,杰出的,著名的 | |
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3 masonry | |
n.砖土建筑;砖石 | |
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4 hemp | |
n.大麻;纤维 | |
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5 planks | |
(厚)木板( plank的名词复数 ); 政纲条目,政策要点 | |
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6 peculiar | |
adj.古怪的,异常的;特殊的,特有的 | |
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7 mortar | |
n.灰浆,灰泥;迫击炮;v.把…用灰浆涂接合 | |
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8 penetrate | |
v.透(渗)入;刺入,刺穿;洞察,了解 | |
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9 ponderous | |
adj.沉重的,笨重的,(文章)冗长的 | |
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10 bracing | |
adj.令人振奋的 | |
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11 remarkably | |
ad.不同寻常地,相当地 | |
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12 cynical | |
adj.(对人性或动机)怀疑的,不信世道向善的 | |
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13 confidential | |
adj.秘(机)密的,表示信任的,担任机密工作的 | |
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14 meditation | |
n.熟虑,(尤指宗教的)默想,沉思,(pl.)冥想录 | |
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15 diligently | |
ad.industriously;carefully | |
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16 indirectly | |
adv.间接地,不直接了当地 | |
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17 remarkable | |
adj.显著的,异常的,非凡的,值得注意的 | |
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18 gliding | |
v. 滑翔 adj. 滑动的 | |
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19 descend | |
vt./vi.传下来,下来,下降 | |
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20 precisely | |
adv.恰好,正好,精确地,细致地 | |
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21 penetrated | |
adj. 击穿的,鞭辟入里的 动词penetrate的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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22 underneath | |
adj.在...下面,在...底下;adv.在下面 | |
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23 replenished | |
补充( replenish的过去式和过去分词 ); 重新装满 | |
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24 oversee | |
vt.监督,管理 | |
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25 staple | |
n.主要产物,常用品,主要要素,原料,订书钉,钩环;adj.主要的,重要的;vt.分类 | |
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26 scraps | |
油渣 | |
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27 unctuous | |
adj.油腔滑调的,大胆的 | |
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28 plethoric | |
adj.过多的,多血症的 | |
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29 martyr | |
n.烈士,殉难者;vt.杀害,折磨,牺牲 | |
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30 misanthrope | |
n.恨人类的人;厌世者 | |
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31 inhale | |
v.吸入(气体等),吸(烟) | |
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32 lurk | |
n.潜伏,潜行;v.潜藏,潜伏,埋伏 | |
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33 funereal | |
adj.悲哀的;送葬的 | |
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34 judgment | |
n.审判;判断力,识别力,看法,意见 | |
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35 intervals | |
n.[军事]间隔( interval的名词复数 );间隔时间;[数学]区间;(戏剧、电影或音乐会的)幕间休息 | |
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36 interval | |
n.间隔,间距;幕间休息,中场休息 | |
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37 forth | |
adv.向前;向外,往外 | |
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38 illuminated | |
adj.被照明的;受启迪的 | |
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39 frigates | |
n.快速军舰( frigate的名词复数 ) | |
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40 conflagrations | |
n.大火(灾)( conflagration的名词复数 ) | |
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41 hearth | |
n.壁炉炉床,壁炉地面 | |
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42 standing | |
n.持续,地位;adj.永久的,不动的,直立的,不流动的 | |
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43 hissing | |
n. 发嘶嘶声, 蔑视 动词hiss的现在分词形式 | |
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44 darted | |
v.投掷,投射( dart的过去式和过去分词 );向前冲,飞奔 | |
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45 sullen | |
adj.愠怒的,闷闷不乐的,(天气等)阴沉的 | |
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46 scorched | |
烧焦,烤焦( scorch的过去式和过去分词 ); 使(植物)枯萎,把…晒枯; 高速行驶; 枯焦 | |
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47 tawny | |
adj.茶色的,黄褐色的;n.黄褐色 | |
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48 narrated | |
v.故事( narrate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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49 upwards | |
adv.向上,在更高处...以上 | |
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50 groaned | |
v.呻吟( groan的过去式和过去分词 );发牢骚;抱怨;受苦 | |
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51 steadfastly | |
adv.踏实地,不变地;岿然;坚定不渝 | |
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52 spat | |
n.口角,掌击;v.发出呼噜呼噜声 | |
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53 savages | |
未开化的人,野蛮人( savage的名词复数 ) | |
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54 laden | |
adj.装满了的;充满了的;负了重担的;苦恼的 | |
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55 corpse | |
n.尸体,死尸 | |
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56 plunging | |
adj.跳进的,突进的v.颠簸( plunge的现在分词 );暴跌;骤降;突降 | |
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57 capering | |
v.跳跃,雀跃( caper的现在分词 );蹦蹦跳跳 | |
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58 drowsiness | |
n.睡意;嗜睡 | |
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59 smote | |
v.猛打,重击,打击( smite的过去式 ) | |
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60 steer | |
vt.驾驶,为…操舵;引导;vi.驾驶 | |
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61 illuminating | |
a.富于启发性的,有助阐明的 | |
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62 haven | |
n.安全的地方,避难所,庇护所 | |
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63 havens | |
n.港口,安全地方( haven的名词复数 )v.港口,安全地方( haven的第三人称单数 ) | |
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64 stark | |
adj.荒凉的;严酷的;完全的;adv.完全地 | |
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65 conceit | |
n.自负,自高自大 | |
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66 enchanted | |
adj. 被施魔法的,陶醉的,入迷的 动词enchant的过去式和过去分词 | |
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67 inverted | |
adj.反向的,倒转的v.使倒置,使反转( invert的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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68 invert | |
vt.使反转,使颠倒,使转化 | |
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69 prow | |
n.(飞机)机头,船头 | |
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70 vessel | |
n.船舶;容器,器皿;管,导管,血管 | |
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71 unnatural | |
adj.不自然的;反常的 | |
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72 contingency | |
n.意外事件,可能性 | |
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73 hitching | |
搭乘; (免费)搭乘他人之车( hitch的现在分词 ); 搭便车; 攀上; 跃上 | |
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74 liars | |
说谎者( liar的名词复数 ) | |
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75 dismal | |
adj.阴沉的,凄凉的,令人忧郁的,差劲的 | |
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76 woe | |
n.悲哀,苦痛,不幸,困难;int.用来表达悲伤或惊慌 | |
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77 wilful | |
adj.任性的,故意的 | |
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78 dodges | |
n.闪躲( dodge的名词复数 );躲避;伎俩;妙计v.闪躲( dodge的第三人称单数 );回避 | |
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79 graveyards | |
墓地( graveyard的名词复数 ); 垃圾场; 废物堆积处; 收容所 | |
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80 wondrous | |
adj.令人惊奇的,奇妙的;adv.惊人地;异乎寻常地;令人惊叹地 | |
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81 gorge | |
n.咽喉,胃,暴食,山峡;v.塞饱,狼吞虎咽地吃 | |
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82 gorges | |
n.山峡,峡谷( gorge的名词复数 );咽喉v.(用食物把自己)塞饱,填饱( gorge的第三人称单数 );作呕 | |
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83 swoop | |
n.俯冲,攫取;v.抓取,突然袭击 | |
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