And how I did cram3! I had two years' new work to do in a third of a year. For five weeks I crammed6, until simultaneous quadratic equations and chemical formulas fairly oozed7 from my ears. And then the master of the academy took me aside. He was very sorry, but he was compelled to give me back my tuition fee and to ask me to leave the school. It wasn't a matter of scholarship. I stood well in my classes, and did he graduate me into the university he was confident that in that institution I would continue to stand well. The trouble was that tongues were gossiping about my case. What! In four months accomplished8 two years' work! It would be a scandal, and the universities were becoming severer in their treatment of accredited9 prep schools. He couldn't afford such a scandal, therefore I must gracefully10 depart.
I did. And I paid back the borrowed money, and gritted11 my teeth, and started to cram by myself. There were three months yet before the university entrance examinations. Without laboratories, without coaching, sitting in my bedroom, I proceeded to compress that two years' work into three months and to keep reviewed on the previous year's work.
Nineteen hours a day I studied. For three months I kept this pace, only breaking it on several occasions. My body grew weary, my mind grew weary, but I stayed with it. My eyes grew weary and began to twitch12, but they did not break down. Perhaps, toward the last, I got a bit dotty. I know that at the time I was confident, I had discovered the formula for squaring the circle; but I resolutely13 deferred14 the working of it out until after the examinations. Then I would show them.
Came the several days of the examinations, during which time I scarcely closed my eyes in sleep, devoting every moment to cramming and reviewing. And when I turned in my last examination paper I was in full possession of a splendid case of brain-fag. I didn't want to see a book. I didn't want to think or to lay eyes on anybody who was liable to think.
There was but one prescription15 for such a condition, and I gave it to myself—the adventure-path. I didn't wait to learn the result of my examinations. I stowed a roll of blankets and some cold food into a borrowed whitehall boat and set sail. Out of the Oakland Estuary16 I drifted on the last of an early morning ebb17, caught the first of the flood up bay, and raced along with a spanking18 breeze. San Pablo Bay was smoking, and the Carquinez Straits off the Selby Smelter were smoking, as I picked up ahead and left astern the old landmarks19 I had first learned with Nelson in the unreefer Reindeer20.
Benicia showed before me. I opened the bight of Turner's Shipyard, rounded the Solano wharf21, and surged along abreast22 of the patch of tules and the clustering fishermen's arks where in the old days I had lived and drunk deep.
And right here something happened to me, the gravity of which I never dreamed for many a long year to come. I had had no intention of stopping at Benicia. The tide favoured, the wind was fair and howling—glorious sailing for a sailor. Bull Head and Army Points showed ahead, marking the entrance to Suisun Bay which I knew was smoking. And yet, when I laid eyes on those fishing arks lying in the water-front tules, without debate, on the instant, I put down my tiller, came in on the sheet, and headed for the shore. On the instant, out of the profound of my brain-fag, I knew what I wanted. I wanted to drink. I wanted to get drunk.
The call was imperative23. There was no uncertainty24 about it. More than anything else in the world, my frayed25 and frazzled mind wanted surcease from weariness in the way it knew surcease would come. And right here is the point. For the first time in my life I consciously, deliberately26, desired to get drunk. It was a new, a totally different manifestation27 of John Barleycorn's power. It was not a body need for alcohol. It was a mental desire. My over-worked and jaded28 mind wanted to forget.
And here the point is drawn29 to its sharpest. Granted my prodigious30 brain-fag, nevertheless, had I never drunk in the past, the thought would never have entered my mind to get drunk now. Beginning with physical intolerance for alcohol, for years drinking only for the sake of comradeship and because alcohol was everywhere on the adventure-path, I had now reached the stage where my brain cried out, not merely for a drink, but for a drunk. And had I not been so long used to alcohol, my brain would not have so cried out. I should have sailed on past Bull Head, and in the smoking white of Suisun Bay, and in the wine of wind that filled my sail and poured through me, I should have forgotten my weary brain and rested and refreshed it.
So I sailed in to shore, made all fast, and hurried up among the arks. Charley Le Grant fell on my neck. His wife, Lizzie, folded me to her capacious breast. Billy Murphy, and Joe Lloyd, and all the survivors31 of the old guard, got around me and their arms around me. Charley seized the can and started for Jorgensen's saloon across the railroad tracks. That meant beer. I wanted whisky, so I called after him to bring a flask32.
Many times that flask journeyed across the railroad tracks and back. More old friends of the old free and easy times dropped in, fishermen, Greeks, and Russians, and French. They took turns in treating, and treated all around in turn again. They came and went, but I stayed on and drank with all. I guzzled33. I swilled34. I ran the liquor down and joyed as the maggots mounted in my brain.
And Clam35 came in, Nelson's partner before me, handsome as ever, but more reckless, half insane, burning himself out with whisky. He had just had a quarrel with his partner on the sloop36 Gazelle, and knives had been drawn, and blows struck, and he was bent37 on maddening the fever of the memory with more whisky. And while we downed it, we remembered Nelson and that he had stretched out his great shoulders for the last long sleep in this very town of Benicia; and we wept over the memory of him, and remembered only the good things of him, and sent out the flask to be filled and drank again.
They wanted me to stay over, but through the open door I could see the brave wind on the water, and my ears were filled with the roar of it. And while I forgot that I had plunged38 into the books nineteen hours a day for three solid months, Charley Le Grant shifted my outfit39 into a big Columbia River salmon40 boat. He added charcoal41 and a fisherman's brazier, a coffee pot and frying pan, and the coffee and the meat, and a black bass42 fresh from the water that day.
They had to help me down the rickety wharf and into the salmon boat. Likewise they stretched my boom and sprit until the sail set like a board. Some feared to set the sprit; but I insisted, and Charley had no doubts. He knew me of old, and knew that I could sail as long as I could see. They cast off my painter. I put the tiller up, filled away before it, and with dizzy eyes checked and steadied the boat on her course and waved farewell.
The tide had turned, and the fierce ebb, running in the teeth of a fiercer wind, kicked up a stiff, upstanding sea. Suisun Bay was white with wrath43 and sea-lump. But a salmon boat can sail, and I knew how to sail a salmon boat. So I drove her into it, and through it, and across, and maundered aloud and chanted my disdain44 for all the books and schools. Cresting45 seas filled me a foot or so with water, but I laughed at it sloshing about my feet, and chanted my disdain for the wind and the water. I hailed myself a master of life, riding on the back of the unleashed46 elements, and John Barleycorn rode with me. Amid dissertations47 on mathematics and philosophy and spoutings and quotations48, I sang all the old songs learned in the days when I went from the cannery to the oyster49 boats to be a pirate—such songs as: "Black Lulu," "Flying Cloud," "Treat my Daughter Kind-i-ly," "The Boston Burglar," "Come all you Rambling50, Gambling51 Men," "I Wisht I was a Little Bird," "Shenandoah," and "Ranzo, Boys, Ranzo."
Hours afterward52, in the fires of sunset, where the Sacramento and the San Joaquin tumble their muddy floods together, I took the New York Cut-Off, skimmed across the smooth land-locked water past Black Diamond, on into the San Joaquin, and on to Antioch, where, somewhat sobered and magnificently hungry, I laid alongside a big potato sloop that had a familiar rig. Here were old friends aboard, who fried my black bass in olive oil. Then, too, there was a meaty fisherman's stew53, delicious with garlic, and crusty Italian bread without butter, and all washed down with pint54 mugs of thick and heady claret.
My salmon boat was a-soak, but in the snug55 cabin of the sloop dry blankets and a dry bunk56 were mine; and we lay and smoked and yarned57 of old days, while overhead the wind screamed through the rigging and taut58 halyards drummed against the mast.
野性的呼唤 The Call of the Wild
The Iron Heel 铁蹄
野性的呼唤 The Call of the Wild
The Iron Heel 铁蹄
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1
schooling
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| n.教育；正规学校教育 | |
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decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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cram
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| v.填塞，塞满，临时抱佛脚，为考试而学习 | |
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cramming
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| n.塞满，填鸭式的用功v.塞入( cram的现在分词 )；填塞；塞满；（为考试而）死记硬背功课 | |
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joint
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| adj.联合的，共同的；n.关节，接合处；v.连接，贴合 | |
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crammed
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| adj.塞满的，挤满的；大口地吃；快速贪婪地吃v.把…塞满；填入；临时抱佛脚( cram的过去式) | |
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7
oozed
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| v.（浓液等）慢慢地冒出，渗出( ooze的过去式和过去分词 )；使（液体）缓缓流出；（浓液）渗出，慢慢流出 | |
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accomplished
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| adj.有才艺的；有造诣的；达到了的 | |
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accredited
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| adj.可接受的；可信任的；公认的；质量合格的v.相信( accredit的过去式和过去分词 )；委托；委任；把…归结于 | |
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gracefully
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| ad.大大方方地；优美地 | |
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gritted
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| v.以沙砾覆盖（某物），撒沙砾于( grit的过去式和过去分词 )；咬紧牙关 | |
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twitch
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| v.急拉，抽动，痉挛，抽搐；n.扯，阵痛，痉挛 | |
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resolutely
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| adj.坚决地，果断地 | |
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deferred
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| adj.延期的，缓召的v.拖延，延缓，推迟( defer的过去式和过去分词 )；服从某人的意愿，遵从 | |
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prescription
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| n.处方，开药；指示，规定 | |
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estuary
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| n.河口，江口 | |
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ebb
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| vi.衰退，减退；n.处于低潮，处于衰退状态 | |
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spanking
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| adj.强烈的，疾行的；n.打屁股 | |
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landmarks
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| n.陆标( landmark的名词复数 )；目标；（标志重要阶段的）里程碑 ~ (in sth)；有历史意义的建筑物（或遗址） | |
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reindeer
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| n.驯鹿 | |
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wharf
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| n.码头，停泊处 | |
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abreast
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| adv.并排地；跟上(时代)的步伐，与…并进地 | |
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imperative
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| n.命令，需要；规则；祈使语气；adj.强制的；紧急的 | |
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uncertainty
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| n.易变，靠不住，不确知，不确定的事物 | |
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frayed
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| adj.磨损的v.（使布、绳等）磨损，磨破( fray的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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deliberately
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| adv.审慎地；蓄意地；故意地 | |
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manifestation
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| n.表现形式；表明；现象 | |
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jaded
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| adj.精疲力竭的；厌倦的；（因过饱或过多而）腻烦的；迟钝的 | |
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drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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prodigious
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| adj.惊人的，奇妙的；异常的；巨大的；庞大的 | |
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survivors
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| 幸存者，残存者，生还者( survivor的名词复数 ) | |
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flask
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| n.瓶，火药筒，砂箱 | |
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guzzled
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| v.狂吃暴饮，大吃大喝( guzzle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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swilled
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| v.冲洗( swill的过去式和过去分词 )；猛喝；大口喝；（使）液体流动 | |
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clam
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| n.蛤，蛤肉 | |
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sloop
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| n.单桅帆船 | |
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bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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plunged
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| v.颠簸( plunge的过去式和过去分词 )；暴跌；骤降；突降 | |
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39
outfit
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| n.（为特殊用途的）全套装备，全套服装 | |
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40
salmon
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| n.鲑，大马哈鱼，橙红色的 | |
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charcoal
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| n.炭，木炭，生物炭 | |
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42
bass
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| n.男低音(歌手)；低音乐器；低音大提琴 | |
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43
wrath
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| n.愤怒，愤慨，暴怒 | |
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44
disdain
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| n.鄙视，轻视；v.轻视，鄙视，不屑 | |
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45
cresting
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| n.顶饰v.到达山顶（或浪峰）( crest的现在分词 )；到达洪峰，达到顶点 | |
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46
unleashed
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| v.把（感情、力量等）释放出来，发泄( unleash的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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47
dissertations
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| 专题论文，学位论文( dissertation的名词复数 ) | |
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48
quotations
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| n.引用( quotation的名词复数 )；[商业]行情（报告）；（货物或股票的）市价；时价 | |
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49
oyster
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| n.牡蛎；沉默寡言的人 | |
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50
rambling
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| adj.[建]凌乱的，杂乱的 | |
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gambling
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| n.赌博；投机 | |
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52
afterward
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| adv.后来；以后 | |
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53
stew
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| n.炖汤，焖，烦恼；v.炖汤，焖，忧虑 | |
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pint
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| n.品脱 | |
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55
snug
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| adj.温暖舒适的，合身的，安全的；v.使整洁干净，舒适地依靠，紧贴；n.（英）酒吧里的私房 | |
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56
bunk
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| n.(车、船等倚壁而设的)铺位；废话 | |
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57
yarned
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| vi.讲故事（yarn的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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taut
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| adj.拉紧的，绷紧的，紧张的 | |
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