Part 3 Chapter 11

    It was like that then, the island, thought Cam, once more drawing herfingers through the waves. She had never seen it from out at sea before.

　　It lay like that on the sea, did it, with a dent¹ in the middle and two sharpcrags, and the sea swept in there, and spread away for miles and mileson either side of the island. It was very small; shaped something like aleaf stood on end. So we took a little boat, she thought, beginning to tellherself a story of adventure about escaping from a sinking ship. But withthe sea streaming through her fingers, a spray of seaweed vanishing behindthem, she did not want to tell herself seriously a story; it was thesense of adventure and escape that she wanted, for she was thinking, asthe boat sailed on, how her father's anger about the points of the compass,James's obstinacy² about the compact, and her own anguish³, all hadslipped, all had passed, all had streamed away. What then came next?

　　Where were they going? From her hand, ice cold, held deep in the sea,there spurted⁴ up a fountain of joy at the change, at the escape, at the adventure(that she should be alive, that she should be there). And thedrops falling from this sudden and unthinking fountain of joy fell hereand there on the dark, the slumbrous shapes in her mind; shapes of aworld not realised but turning in their darkness, catching⁵ here and there,a spark of light; Greece, Rome, Constantinople. Small as it was, andshaped something like a leaf stood on its end with the gold-sprinkledwaters flowing in and about it, it had, she supposed, a place in the universe—even that little island? The old gentlemen in the study shethought could have told her. Sometimes she strayed in from the gardenpurposely to catch them at it. There they were (it might be Mr Carmichaelor Mr Bankes who was sitting with her father) sitting opposite eachother in their low arm-chairs. They were crackling in front of them thepages of THE TIMES, when she came in from the garden, all in amuddle, about something some one had said about Christ, or hearingthat a mammoth⁶ had been dug up in a London street, or wonderingwhat Napoleon was like. Then they took all this with their clean hands(they wore grey-coloured clothes; they smelt⁷ of heather) and theybrushed the scraps⁸ together, turning the paper, crossing their knees, andsaid something now and then very brief. Just to please herself she wouldtake a book from the shelf and stand there, watching her father write, soequally, so neatly⁹ from one side of the page to another, with a littlecough now and then, or something said briefly¹⁰ to the other old gentlemanopposite. And she thought, standing¹¹ there with her book open, onecould let whatever one thought expand here like a leaf in water; and if itdid well here, among the old gentlemen smoking and THE TIMES cracklingthen it was right. And watching her father as he wrote in his study,she thought (now sitting in the boat) he was not vain, nor a tyrant¹² anddid not wish to make you pity him. Indeed, if he saw she was there,reading a book, he would ask her, as gently as any one could, Was therenothing he could give her?

　　Lest this should be wrong, she looked at him reading the little bookwith the shiny cover mottled like a plover's egg. No; it was right. Look athim now, she wanted to say aloud to James. (But James had his eye onthe sail.) He is a sarcastic¹³ brute¹⁴, James would say. He brings the talkround to himself and his books, James would say. He is intolerably egotistical.

　　Worst of all, he is a tyrant. But look! she said, looking at him.

　　Look at him now. She looked at him reading the little book with his legscurled; the little book whose yellowish pages she knew, without knowingwhat was written on them. It was small; it was closely printed; on thefly-leaf, she knew, he had written that he had spent fifteen francs on dinner;the wine had been so much; he had given so much to the waiter; allwas added up neatly at the bottom of the page. But what might be writtenin the book which had rounded its edges off in his pocket, she didnot know. What he thought they none of them knew. But he was absorbedin it, so that when he looked up, as he did now for an instant, itwas not to see anything; it was to pin down some thought more exactly.

　　That done, his mind flew back again and he plunged¹⁵ into his reading. Heread, she thought, as if he were guiding something, or wheedling¹⁶ a largeflock of sheep, or pushing his way up and up a single narrow path; andsometimes he went fast and straight, and broke his way through thebramble, and sometimes it seemed a branch struck at him, a brambleblinded him, but he was not going to let himself be beaten by that; on hewent, tossing over page after page. And she went on telling herself astory about escaping from a sinking ship, for she was safe, while he satthere; safe, as she felt herself when she crept in from the garden, andtook a book down, and the old gentleman, lowering the paper suddenly,said something very brief over the top of it about the character ofNapoleon.

　　She gazed back over the sea, at the island. But the leaf was losing itssharpness. It was very small; it was very distant. The sea was more importantnow than the shore. Waves were all round them, tossing andsinking, with a log wallowing down one wave; a gull¹⁷ riding on another.

　　About here, she thought, dabbling¹⁸ her fingers in the water, a ship hadsunk, and she murmured, dreamily half asleep, how we perished, eachalone.

1 dent   

n.凹痕，凹坑；初步进展

参考例句：

• I don't know how it came about but I've got a dent in the rear of my car.我不知道是怎么回事，但我的汽车后部有了一个凹痕。
• That dent is not big enough to be worth hammering out.那个凹陷不大，用不着把它锤平。

2 obstinacy   

n.顽固；（病痛等）难治

参考例句：

• It is a very accountable obstinacy.这是一种完全可以理解的固执态度。
• Cindy's anger usually made him stand firm to the point of obstinacy.辛迪一发怒，常常使他坚持自见，并达到执拗的地步。

3 anguish   

n.(尤指心灵上的)极度痛苦，烦恼

参考例句：

• She cried out for anguish at parting.分手时，她由于痛苦而失声大哭。
• The unspeakable anguish wrung his heart.难言的痛苦折磨着他的心。

4 spurted   

（液体，火焰等）喷出，（使）涌出( spurt的过去式和过去分词 )； （短暂地）加速前进，冲刺

参考例句：

• Water spurted out of the hole. 水从小孔中喷出来。
• Their guns spurted fire. 他们的枪喷射出火焰。

5 catching   

adj.易传染的，有魅力的，迷人的，接住

参考例句：

• There are those who think eczema is catching.有人就是认为湿疹会传染。
• Enthusiasm is very catching.热情非常富有感染力。

6 mammoth   

n.长毛象；adj.长毛象似的，巨大的

参考例句：

• You can only undertake mammoth changes if the finances are there.资金到位的情况下方可进行重大变革。
• Building the new railroad will be a mammoth job.修建那条新铁路将是一项巨大工程。

7 smelt   

v.熔解，熔炼；n.银白鱼，胡瓜鱼

参考例句：

• Tin is a comparatively easy metal to smelt.锡是比较容易熔化的金属。
• Darby was looking for a way to improve iron when he hit upon the idea of smelting it with coke instead of charcoal.达比一直在寻找改善铁质的方法，他猛然想到可以不用木炭熔炼，而改用焦炭。

8 scraps   

油渣

参考例句：

• Don't litter up the floor with scraps of paper. 不要在地板上乱扔纸屑。
• A patchwork quilt is a good way of using up scraps of material. 做杂拼花布棉被是利用零碎布料的好办法。

9 neatly   

adv.整洁地，干净地，灵巧地，熟练地

参考例句：

• Sailors know how to wind up a long rope neatly.水手们知道怎样把一条大绳利落地缠好。
• The child's dress is neatly gathered at the neck.那孩子的衣服在领口处打着整齐的皱褶。

10 briefly   

adv.简单地，简短地

参考例句：

• I want to touch briefly on another aspect of the problem.我想简单地谈一下这个问题的另一方面。
• He was kidnapped and briefly detained by a terrorist group.他被一个恐怖组织绑架并短暂拘禁。

11 standing   

n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的

参考例句：

• After the earthquake only a few houses were left standing.地震过后只有几幢房屋还立着。
• They're standing out against any change in the law.他们坚决反对对法律做任何修改。

12 tyrant   

n.暴君，专制的君主，残暴的人

参考例句：

• The country was ruled by a despotic tyrant.该国处在一个专制暴君的统治之下。
• The tyrant was deaf to the entreaties of the slaves.暴君听不到奴隶们的哀鸣。

13 sarcastic   

adj.讥讽的，讽刺的，嘲弄的

参考例句：

• I squashed him with a sarcastic remark.我说了一句讽刺的话把他给镇住了。
• She poked fun at people's shortcomings with sarcastic remarks.她冷嘲热讽地拿别人的缺点开玩笑。

14 brute   

n.野兽，兽性

参考例句：

• The aggressor troops are not many degrees removed from the brute.侵略军简直象一群野兽。
• That dog is a dangerous brute.It bites people.那条狗是危险的畜牲，它咬人。

15 plunged   

v.颠簸( plunge的过去式和过去分词 )；暴跌；骤降；突降

参考例句：

• The train derailed and plunged into the river. 火车脱轨栽进了河里。
• She lost her balance and plunged 100 feet to her death. 她没有站稳，从100英尺的高处跌下摔死了。

16 wheedling   

v.骗取（某物），哄骗（某人干某事）( wheedle的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• He wheedled his way into the building, ie got into it by wheedling. 他靠花言巧语混进了那所楼房。 来自辞典例句
• An honorable32 weepie uses none of these33) wheedling34) devices. 一部体面的伤感电影用不着这些花招。 来自互联网

17 gull   

n.鸥；受骗的人；v.欺诈

参考例句：

• The ivory gull often follows polar bears to feed on the remains of seal kills.象牙海鸥经常跟在北极熊的后面吃剩下的海豹尸体。
• You are not supposed to gull your friends.你不应该欺骗你的朋友。

18 dabbling   

v.涉猎( dabble的现在分词 )；涉足；浅尝；少量投资

参考例句：

• She swims twice a week and has been dabbling in weight training. 她一周游两次泳，偶尔还练习一下举重。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The boy is dabbling his hand in the water. 这孩子正用手玩水。 来自辞典例句