The Flying Stages of London were collected together in an irregular crescent on the southern side of the river. They formed three groups of two each and retained the names of ancient suburban1 hills or villages. They were named in order, Roehampton, Wimbledon Park, Streatham, Norwood, Blackheath, and Shooter's Hill. They were uniform structures rising high above the general roof surfaces. Each was about four thousand yards long and a thousand broad, and constructed of the compound of aluminum2 and iron that had replaced iron in architecture. Their higher tiers formed an openwork of girders through which lifts and staircases ascended3. The upper surface was a uniform expanse, with portions--the starting carriers--that could be raised and were then able to run on very slightly inclined rails to the end of the fabric4.
Graham went to the flying stages by the public ways. He was accompanied by Asano, his Japanese attendant. Lincoln was called away by Ostrog, who was busy with his administrative5 concerns. A strong guard of the Wind-Vane police awaited the Master outside the Wind-Vane offices, and they cleared a space for him on the upper moving platform. His passage to the flying stages was unexpected, nevertheless a considerable crowd gathered and followed him to his destination. As he went along, he could hear the people shouting his name, and saw numberless men and women and children in blue come swarming6 up the staircases in the central path, gesticulating and shouting. He could not hear what they shouted. He was struck again by the evident existence of a vulgar dialect among the poor of the city. When at last he descended7, his guards were immediately surrounded by a dense8 excited crowd. Afterwards it occurred to him that some had attempted to reach him with petitions. His guards cleared a passage for him with difficulty.
He found a monoplane in charge of an aeronaut awaiting him on the westward9 stage. Seen close this mechanism10 was no longer small. As it lay on its launching carrier upon the wide expanse of the flying stage, its aluminum body skeleton was as big as the hull11 of a twenty-ton yacht. Its lateral12 supporting sails braced13 and stayed with metal nerves almost like the nerves of a bee's wing, and made of some sort of glassy artificial membrane14, cast their shadow over many hundreds of square yards. The chairs for the engineer and his passenger hung free to swing by a complex tackle, within the protecting ribs15 of the frame and well abaft16 the middle. The passenger's chair was protected by a wind-guard and guarded about with metallic17 rods carrying air cushions. It could, if desired, be completely closed in, but Graham was anxious for novel experiences, and desired that it should be left open. The aeronaut sat behind a glass that sheltered his face. The passenger could secure himself firmly in his seat, and this was almost unavoidable on landing, or he could move along by means of a little rail and rod to a locker18 at the stem of the machine, where his personal luggage, his wraps and restoratives were placed, and which also with the seats, served as a makeweight to the parts of the central engine that projected to the propeller19 at the stern.
The flying stage about him was empty save for Asano and their suite20 of attendants. Directed by the aeronaut he placed himself in his seat. Asano stepped through the bars of the hull, and stood below on the stage waving his hand. He seemed to slide along the stage to the right and vanish.
The engine was humming loudly, the propeller spinning, and for a second the stage and the buildings beyond were gliding21 swiftly and horizontally past Graham's eye; then these things seemed to tilt22 up abruptly23. He gripped the little rods on either side of him instinctively24. He felt himself moving upward, heard the air whistle over the top of the wind screen. The propeller screw moved round with powerful rhythmic25 impulses--one, two, three, pause; one, two, three--which the engineer controlled very delicately. The machine began a quivering vibration26 that continued throughout the flight, and the roof areas seemed running away to starboard very quickly and growing rapidly smaller. He looked from the face of the engineer through the ribs of the machine. Looking sideways, there was nothing very startling in what he saw--a rapid funicular railway might have given the same sensations. He recognised the Council House and the Highgate Ridge27. And then he looked straight down between his feet.
For a moment physical terror possessed28 him, a passionate29 sense of insecurity. He held tight. For a second or so he could not lift his eyes. Some hundred feet or more sheer below him was one of the big wind-vanes of south-west London, and beyond it the southernmost flying stage crowded with little black dots. These things seemed to be falling away from him. For a second he had an impulse to pursue the earth. He set his teeth, he lifted his eyes by a muscular effort, and the moment of panic passed.
He remained for a space with his teeth set hard, his eyes staring into the sky. Throb30, throb, throb--beat, went the engine; throb, throb, throb--beat. He gripped his bars tightly, glanced at the aeronaut, and saw a smile upon his sun-tanned face. He smiled in return--perhaps a little artificially. "A little strange at first," he shouted before he recalled his dignity. But he dared not look down again for some time. He stared over the aeronaut's head to where a rim31 of vague blue horizon crept up the sky. For a little while he could not banish32 the thought of possible accidents from his mind. Throb, throb, throb--beat; suppose some trivial screw went wrong in that supporting engine! Suppose--! He made a grim effort to dismiss all such suppositions. After a while they did at least abandon the foreground of his thoughts. And up he went steadily33, higher and higher into the clear air.
Once the mental shock of moving unsupported through the air was over, his sensations ceased to be unpleasant, became very speedily pleasurable. He had been warned of air sickness. But he found the pulsating34 movement of the monoplane as it drove up the faint south-west breeze was very little in excess of the pitching of a boat head on to broad rollers in a moderate gale35, and he was constitutionally a good sailor. And the keenness of the more rarefied air into which they ascended produced a sense of lightness and exhilaration. He looked up and saw the blue sky above fretted36 with cirrus clouds. His eye came cautiously down through the ribs and bars to a shining flight of white birds that hung in the lower sky. For a space he watched these. Then going lower and less apprehensively37, he saw the slender figure of the Wind-Vane keeper's crow's nest shining golden in the sunlight and growing smaller every moment. As his eye fell with more confidence now, there came a blue line of hills, and then London, already to leeward38, an intricate space of roofing. Its near edge came sharp and clear, and banished39 his last apprehensions40 in a shock of surprise. For the boundary of London was like a wall, like a cliff, a steep fall of three or four hundred feet, a frontage broken only by terraces here and there, a complex decorative41 facade42.
That gradual passage of town into country through an extensive sponge of suburbs, which was so characteristic a feature of the great cities of the nineteenth century, existed no longer. Nothing remained of it here but a waste of ruins, variegated43 and dense with thickets44 of the heterogeneous45 growths that had once adorned46 the gardens of the belt, interspersed47 among levelled brown patches of sown ground, and verdant48 stretches of winter greens. The latter even spread among the vestiges49 of houses. But for the most part the reefs and skerries of ruins, the wreckage50 of suburban villas51, stood among their streets and roads, queer islands amidst the levelled expanses of green and brown, abandoned indeed by the inhabitants years since, but too substantial, it seemed, to be cleared out of the way of the wholesale52 horticultural mechanisms53 of the time.
The vegetation of this waste undulated and frothed amidst the countless54 cells of crumbling55 house walls, and broke along the foot of the city wall in a surf of bramble and holly56 and ivy57 and teazle and tall grasses. Here and there gaudy58 pleasure palaces towered amidst the puny59 remains60 of Victorian times, and cable ways slanted61 to them from the city. That winter day they seemed deserted62. Deserted, too, were the artificial gardens among the ruins. The city limits were indeed as sharply defined as in the ancient days when the gates were shut at nightfall and the robber foeman prowled to the very walls. A huge semi-circular throat poured out a vigorous traffic upon the Eadhamite Bath Road. So the first prospect63 of the world beyond the city flashed on Graham, and dwindled65. And when at last he could look vertically66 downward again, he saw below him the vegetable fields of the Thames valley--innumerable minute oblongs of ruddy brown, intersected by shining threads, the sewage ditches.
His exhilaration increased rapidly, became a sort of intoxication67. He found himself drawing deep breaths of air, laughing aloud, desiring to shout. After a time that desire became too strong for him, and he shouted. They curved about towards the south. They drove with a slight list to leeward, and with a slow alternation of movement, first a short, sharp ascent68 and then a long downward glide69 that was very swift and pleasing. During these downward glides70 the propeller was inactive altogether. These ascents71 gave Graham a glorious sense of successful effort; the descents through the rarefied air were beyond all experience. He wanted never to leave the upper air again.
For a time he was intent upon the landscape that ran swiftly northward72 beneath him. Its minute, clear detail pleased him exceedingly. He was impressed by the ruin of the houses that had once dotted the country, by the vast treeless expanse of country from which all farms and villages had gone, save for crumbling ruins. He had known the thing was so, but seeing it so was an altogether different matter. He tried to make out familiar places within the hollow basin of the world below, but at first he could distinguish no data now that the Thames valley was left behind. Soon, however, they were driving over a sharp chalk hill that he recognised as the Guildford Hog's Back, because of the familiar outline of the gorge73 at its eastward74 end, and because of the ruins of the town that rose steeply on either lip of this gorge. And from that he made out other points, Leith Hill, the sandy wastes of Aldershot, and so forth75. Save where the broad Eadhamite Portsmouth Road, thickly dotted with rushing shapes, followed the course of the old railway, the gorge of the wey was choked with thickets.
The whole expanse of the Downs escarpment, so far as the grey haze76 permitted him to see, was set with wind-wheels to which the largest of the city was but a younger brother. They stirred with a stately motion before the south-west wind. And here and there were patches dotted with the sheep of the British Food Trust, and here and there a mounted shepherd made a spot of black. Then rushing under the stern of the monoplane came the Wealden Heights, the line of Hindhead, Pitch Hill, and Leith Hill, with a second row of wind-wheels that seemed striving to rob the downland whirlers of their share of breeze. The purple heather was speckled with yellow gorse, and on the further side a drove of black oxen stampeded before a couple of mounted men. Swiftly these swept behind, and dwindled and lost colour, and became scarce moving specks78 that were swallowed up in haze.
And when these had vanished in the distance Graham heard a peewit wailing79 close at hand. He perceived he was now above the South Downs, and staring over his shoulder saw the battlements of Portsmouth Landing Stage towering over the ridge of Portsdown Hill. In another moment there came into sight a spread of shipping80 like floating cities, the little white cliffs of the Needles dwarfed81 and sunlit, and the grey and glittering waters of the narrow sea. They seemed to leap the Solent in a moment, and in a few seconds the Isle82 of Wight was running past, and then beneath him spread a wider and wider extent of sea, here purple with the shadow of a cloud, here grey, here a burnished83 mirror, and here a spread of cloudy greenish blue. The Isle of Wight grew smaller and smaller. In a few more minutes a strip of grey haze detached itself from other strips that were clouds, descended out of the sky and became a coast-line--sunlit and pleasant--the coast of northern France. It rose, it took colour, became definite and detailed84, and the counterpart of the Downland of England was speeding by below.
In a little time, as it seemed, Paris came above the horizon, and hung there for a space, and sank out of sight again as the monoplane circled about to the north. But he perceived the Eiffel Tower still standing85, and beside it a huge dome86 surmounted87 by a pin-point Colossus. And he perceived, too, though he did not understand it at the time, a slanting88 drift of smoke. The aeronaut said something about "trouble in the under-ways," that Graham did not heed89. But he marked the minarets90 and towers and slender masses that streamed skyward above the city wind-vanes, and knew that in the matter of grace at least Paris still kept in front of her larger rival. And even as he looked a pale blue shape ascended very swiftly from the city like a dead leaf driving up before a gale. It curved round and soared towards them, growing rapidly larger and larger. The aeronaut was saying something. "What?" said Graham, loth to take his eyes from this. "London aeroplane, Sire," bawled91 the aeronaut, pointing.
They rose and curved about northward as it drew nearer. Nearer it came and nearer, larger and larger. The throb, throb, throb--beat, of the monoplane's flight, that had seemed so potent92, and so swift, suddenly appeared slow by comparison with this tremendous rush. How great the monster seemed, how swift and steady! It passed quite closely beneath them, driving along silently, a vast spread of wire-netted translucent93 wings, a thing alive. Graham had a momentary94 glimpse of the rows and rows of wrapped-up passengers, slung95 in their little cradles behind wind-screens, of a white-clothed engineer crawling against the gale along a ladder way, of spouting96 engines beating together, of the whirling wind screw, and of a wide waste of wing. He exulted97 in the sight. And in an instant the thing had passed.
It rose slightly and their own little wings swayed in the rush of its flight. It fell and grew smaller. Scarcely had they moved, as it seemed, before it was again only a flat blue thing that dwindled in the sky. This was the aeroplane that went to and fro between London and Paris. In fair weather and in peaceful times it came and went four times a day.
They beat across the Channel, slowly as it seemed now to Graham's enlarged ideas, and Beachy Head rose greyly to the left of them.
"Land," called the aeronaut, his voice small against the whistling of the air over the wind-screen.
"Not yet," bawled Graham, laughing. "Not land yet. I want to learn more of this machine."
"I meant--" said the aeronaut.
"I want to learn more of this machine," repeated Graham.
"I'm coming to you," he said, and had flung himself free of his chair and taken a step along the guarded rail between them. He stopped for a moment, and his colour changed and his hands tightened98. Another step and he was clinging close to the aeronaut. He felt a weight on his shoulder, the pressure of the air. His hat was a whirling speck77 behind. The wind came in gusts99 over his wind-screen and blew his hair in streamers past his cheek. The aeronaut made some hasty adjustments for the shifting of the centres of gravity and pressure.
"I want to have these things explained," said Graham. "What do you do when you move that engine forward?"
The aeronaut hesitated. Then he answered, "They are complex, Sire."
"I don't mind," shouted Graham. "I don't mind."
There was a moment's pause. "Aeronautics100 is the secret--the privilege--"
"I know. But I'm the Master, and I mean to know." He laughed, full of this novel realisation of power that was his gift from the upper air.
The monoplane curved about, and the keen fresh wind cut across Graham's face and his garment lugged101 at his body as the stem pointed102 round to the west. The two men looked into each other's eyes.
"Sire, there are rules--"
"Not where I am concerned," said Graham, "You seem to forget."
The aeronaut scrutinised his face "No," he said. "I do not forget, Sire. But in all the earth--no man who is not a sworn aeronaut--has ever a chance. They come as passengers--"
"I have heard something of the sort. But I'm not going to argue these points. Do you know why I have slept two hundred years? To fly!"
"Sire," said the aeronaut, "the rules--if I break the rules--"
Graham waved the penalties aside.
"Then if you will watch me--"
"No," said Graham, swaying and gripping tight as the machine lifted its nose again for an ascent. "That's not my game. I want to do it myself. Do it myself if I smash for it! No! I will. See I am going to clamber by this--to come and share your seat. Steady! I mean to fly of my own accord if I smash at the end of it. I will have something to pay for my sleep. Of all other things--. In my past it was my dream to fly. Now--keep your balance."
"A dozen spies are watching me, Sire!"
Graham's temper was at end. Perhaps he chose it should be. He swore. He swung himself round the intervening mass of levers and the monoplane swayed.
"Am I Master of the earth?" he said. "Or is your Society? Now. Take your hands off those levers, and hold my wrists. Yes--so. And now, how do we turn her nose down to the glide?"
"Sire," said the aeronaut.
"What is it?"
"You will protect me?"
"Lord! Yes! If I have to burn London. Now!"
And with that promise Graham bought his first lesson in aerial navigation. "It's clearly to your advantage, this journey," he said with a loud laugh--for the air was like strong wine--"to teach me quickly and well. Do I pull this? Ah! So! Hullo!"
"Back, Sire! Back!"
"Back--right. One--two--three--good God! Ah! Up she goes! But this is living!"
And now the machine began to dance the strangest figures in the air. Now it would sweep round a spiral of scarcely a hundred yards diameter, now rush up into the air and swoop103 down again, steeply, swiftly, falling like a hawk104, to recover in a rushing loop that swept it high again. In one of these descents it seemed driving straight at the drifting park of balloons in the southeast, and only curved about and cleared them by a sudden recovery of dexterity105. The extraordinary swiftness and smoothness of the motion, the extraordinary effect of the rarefied air upon his constitution, threw Graham into a careless fury.
But at last a queer incident came to sober him, to send him flying down once more to the crowded life below with all its dark insoluble riddles106. As he swooped107, came a tap and something flying past, and a drop like a drop of rain. Then as he went on down he saw something like a white rag whirling down in his wake. "What was that?" he asked. "I did not see."
The aeronaut glanced, and then clutched at the lever to recover, for they were sweeping108 down. When the monoplane was rising again he drew a deep breath and replied, "That," and he indicated the white thing still fluttering down, "was a swan."
"I never saw it," said Graham.
The aeronaut made no answer, and Graham saw little drops upon his forehead.
They drove horizontally while Graham clambered back to the passenger's place out of the lash64 of the wind. And then came a swift rush down, with the wind-screw whirling to check their fall, and the flying stage growing broad and dark before them. The sun, sinking over the chalk hills in the west, fell with them, and left the sky a blaze of gold.
Soon men could be seen as little specks. He heard a noise coming up to meet him, a noise like the sound of waves upon a pebbly109 beach, and saw that the roofs about the flying stage were dense with his people rejoicing over his safe return. A black mass was crushed together under the stage, a darkness stippled110 with innumerable faces, and quivering with the minute oscillation of waved white handkerchiefs and waving hands.
1 suburban | |
adj.城郊的,在郊区的 | |
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2 aluminum | |
n.(aluminium)铝 | |
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3 ascended | |
v.上升,攀登( ascend的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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4 fabric | |
n.织物,织品,布;构造,结构,组织 | |
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5 administrative | |
adj.行政的,管理的 | |
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6 swarming | |
密集( swarm的现在分词 ); 云集; 成群地移动; 蜜蜂或其他飞行昆虫成群地飞来飞去 | |
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7 descended | |
a.为...后裔的,出身于...的 | |
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8 dense | |
a.密集的,稠密的,浓密的;密度大的 | |
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9 westward | |
n.西方,西部;adj.西方的,向西的;adv.向西 | |
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10 mechanism | |
n.机械装置;机构,结构 | |
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11 hull | |
n.船身;(果、实等的)外壳;vt.去(谷物等)壳 | |
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12 lateral | |
adj.侧面的,旁边的 | |
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13 braced | |
adj.拉牢的v.支住( brace的过去式和过去分词 );撑牢;使自己站稳;振作起来 | |
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14 membrane | |
n.薄膜,膜皮,羊皮纸 | |
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15 ribs | |
n.肋骨( rib的名词复数 );(船或屋顶等的)肋拱;肋骨状的东西;(织物的)凸条花纹 | |
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16 abaft | |
prep.在…之后;adv.在船尾,向船尾 | |
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17 metallic | |
adj.金属的;金属制的;含金属的;产金属的;像金属的 | |
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18 locker | |
n.更衣箱,储物柜,冷藏室,上锁的人 | |
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19 propeller | |
n.螺旋桨,推进器 | |
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20 suite | |
n.一套(家具);套房;随从人员 | |
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21 gliding | |
v. 滑翔 adj. 滑动的 | |
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22 tilt | |
v.(使)倾侧;(使)倾斜;n.倾侧;倾斜 | |
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23 abruptly | |
adv.突然地,出其不意地 | |
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24 instinctively | |
adv.本能地 | |
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25 rhythmic | |
adj.有节奏的,有韵律的 | |
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26 vibration | |
n.颤动,振动;摆动 | |
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27 ridge | |
n.山脊;鼻梁;分水岭 | |
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28 possessed | |
adj.疯狂的;拥有的,占有的 | |
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29 passionate | |
adj.热情的,热烈的,激昂的,易动情的,易怒的,性情暴躁的 | |
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30 throb | |
v.震颤,颤动;(急速强烈地)跳动,搏动 | |
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31 rim | |
n.(圆物的)边,轮缘;边界 | |
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32 banish | |
vt.放逐,驱逐;消除,排除 | |
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33 steadily | |
adv.稳定地;不变地;持续地 | |
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34 pulsating | |
adj.搏动的,脉冲的v.有节奏地舒张及收缩( pulsate的现在分词 );跳动;脉动;受(激情)震动 | |
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35 gale | |
n.大风,强风,一阵闹声(尤指笑声等) | |
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36 fretted | |
焦躁的,附有弦马的,腐蚀的 | |
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37 apprehensively | |
adv.担心地 | |
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38 leeward | |
adj.背风的;下风的 | |
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39 banished | |
v.放逐,驱逐( banish的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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40 apprehensions | |
疑惧 | |
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41 decorative | |
adj.装饰的,可作装饰的 | |
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42 facade | |
n.(建筑物的)正面,临街正面;外表 | |
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43 variegated | |
adj.斑驳的,杂色的 | |
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44 thickets | |
n.灌木丛( thicket的名词复数 );丛状物 | |
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45 heterogeneous | |
adj.庞杂的;异类的 | |
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46 adorned | |
[计]被修饰的 | |
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47 interspersed | |
adj.[医]散开的;点缀的v.intersperse的过去式和过去分词 | |
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48 verdant | |
adj.翠绿的,青翠的,生疏的,不老练的 | |
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49 vestiges | |
残余部分( vestige的名词复数 ); 遗迹; 痕迹; 毫不 | |
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50 wreckage | |
n.(失事飞机等的)残骸,破坏,毁坏 | |
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51 villas | |
别墅,公馆( villa的名词复数 ); (城郊)住宅 | |
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52 wholesale | |
n.批发;adv.以批发方式;vt.批发,成批出售 | |
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53 mechanisms | |
n.机械( mechanism的名词复数 );机械装置;[生物学] 机制;机械作用 | |
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54 countless | |
adj.无数的,多得不计其数的 | |
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55 crumbling | |
adj.摇摇欲坠的 | |
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56 holly | |
n.[植]冬青属灌木 | |
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57 ivy | |
n.常青藤,常春藤 | |
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58 gaudy | |
adj.华而不实的;俗丽的 | |
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59 puny | |
adj.微不足道的,弱小的 | |
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60 remains | |
n.剩余物,残留物;遗体,遗迹 | |
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61 slanted | |
有偏见的; 倾斜的 | |
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62 deserted | |
adj.荒芜的,荒废的,无人的,被遗弃的 | |
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63 prospect | |
n.前景,前途;景色,视野 | |
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64 lash | |
v.系牢;鞭打;猛烈抨击;n.鞭打;眼睫毛 | |
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65 dwindled | |
v.逐渐变少或变小( dwindle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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66 vertically | |
adv.垂直地 | |
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67 intoxication | |
n.wild excitement;drunkenness;poisoning | |
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68 ascent | |
n.(声望或地位)提高;上升,升高;登高 | |
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69 glide | |
n./v.溜,滑行;(时间)消逝 | |
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70 glides | |
n.滑行( glide的名词复数 );滑音;音渡;过渡音v.滑动( glide的第三人称单数 );掠过;(鸟或飞机 ) 滑翔 | |
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71 ascents | |
n.上升( ascent的名词复数 );(身份、地位等的)提高;上坡路;攀登 | |
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72 northward | |
adv.向北;n.北方的地区 | |
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73 gorge | |
n.咽喉,胃,暴食,山峡;v.塞饱,狼吞虎咽地吃 | |
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74 eastward | |
adv.向东;adj.向东的;n.东方,东部 | |
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75 forth | |
adv.向前;向外,往外 | |
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76 haze | |
n.霾,烟雾;懵懂,迷糊;vi.(over)变模糊 | |
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77 speck | |
n.微粒,小污点,小斑点 | |
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78 specks | |
n.眼镜;斑点,微粒,污点( speck的名词复数 ) | |
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79 wailing | |
v.哭叫,哀号( wail的现在分词 );沱 | |
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80 shipping | |
n.船运(发货,运输,乘船) | |
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81 dwarfed | |
vt.(使)显得矮小(dwarf的过去式与过去分词形式) | |
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82 isle | |
n.小岛,岛 | |
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83 burnished | |
adj.抛光的,光亮的v.擦亮(金属等),磨光( burnish的过去式和过去分词 );被擦亮,磨光 | |
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84 detailed | |
adj.详细的,详尽的,极注意细节的,完全的 | |
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85 standing | |
n.持续,地位;adj.永久的,不动的,直立的,不流动的 | |
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86 dome | |
n.圆屋顶,拱顶 | |
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87 surmounted | |
战胜( surmount的过去式和过去分词 ); 克服(困难); 居于…之上; 在…顶上 | |
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88 slanting | |
倾斜的,歪斜的 | |
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89 heed | |
v.注意,留意;n.注意,留心 | |
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90 minarets | |
n.(清真寺旁由报告祈祷时刻的人使用的)光塔( minaret的名词复数 ) | |
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91 bawled | |
v.大叫,大喊( bawl的过去式和过去分词 );放声大哭;大声叫出;叫卖(货物) | |
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92 potent | |
adj.强有力的,有权势的;有效力的 | |
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93 translucent | |
adj.半透明的;透明的 | |
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94 momentary | |
adj.片刻的,瞬息的;短暂的 | |
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95 slung | |
抛( sling的过去式和过去分词 ); 吊挂; 遣送; 押往 | |
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96 spouting | |
n.水落管系统v.(指液体)喷出( spout的现在分词 );滔滔不绝地讲;喋喋不休地说;喷水 | |
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97 exulted | |
狂喜,欢跃( exult的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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98 tightened | |
收紧( tighten的过去式和过去分词 ); (使)变紧; (使)绷紧; 加紧 | |
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99 gusts | |
一阵强风( gust的名词复数 ); (怒、笑等的)爆发; (感情的)迸发; 发作 | |
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100 aeronautics | |
n.航空术,航空学 | |
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101 lugged | |
vt.用力拖拉(lug的过去式与过去分词形式) | |
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102 pointed | |
adj.尖的,直截了当的 | |
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103 swoop | |
n.俯冲,攫取;v.抓取,突然袭击 | |
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104 hawk | |
n.鹰,骗子;鹰派成员 | |
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105 dexterity | |
n.(手的)灵巧,灵活 | |
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106 riddles | |
n.谜(语)( riddle的名词复数 );猜不透的难题,难解之谜 | |
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107 swooped | |
俯冲,猛冲( swoop的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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108 sweeping | |
adj.范围广大的,一扫无遗的 | |
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109 pebbly | |
多卵石的,有卵石花纹的 | |
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110 stippled | |
v.加点、绘斑,加粒( stipple的过去式和过去分词 );(把油漆、水泥等的表面)弄粗糙 | |
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