'The first clean bite since I come aboard Harrison said to me at the galley1 door, as he returned the dinner pots and pans from the forecastle. 'Somehow, Tommy's grub always tastes of grease,- stale grease,- and I reckon he ain't changed his shirt since he left 'Frisco.'
'I know he hasn't,' I answered.
'And I'll bet he sleeps in it,' Harrison added.
'And you won't lose,' I agreed. 'The same shirt, and he hasn't had it off once in all this time.'
But three days were all Wolf Larsen allowed him in which to recover from the effects of the beating. On the fourth day, lame2 and sore, scarcely able to see, so closed were his eyes, he was haled from his bunk3 by the nape of the neck and set to his duty. He sniffled and wept, but Wolf Larsen was pitiless.
'And see that you serve no more slops,' was his parting injunction. 'No more grease and dirt, mind, and a clean shirt occasionally, or you'll get a tow over the side. Understand?'
Thomas Mugridge crawled weakly across the galley floor, and a short lurch4 of the Ghost sent him staggering. In attempting to recover himself, he reached for the iron railing which surrounded the stove and kept the pots from sliding off; but his missed the railing, and his hand, with his weight behind it, landed squarely on the hot surface.
'Oh, Gawd, Gawd, wot 'ave I done?' he wailed5, sitting down in the coalbox and nursing his new hurt by rocking back and forth6. 'W'y 'as all this come on me? It mykes me fair sick, it does, an' I try so 'ard to go through life harmless an' 'urtin' nobody.'
The tears were running down his puffed7 and discolored cheeks, and his face was drawn8 with pain. A savage9 expression flitted across it.
'Oh, 'ow I 'ate 'im! 'Ow I 'ate 'im!' he gritted10 out.
'Whom?' I asked; but the poor wretch11 was weeping again over his misfortunes. Less difficult it was to guess whom he hated than whom he did not hate; for I had come to see a malignant12 devil in him which impelled13 him to hate all the world. I sometimes thought that he hated even himself, so grotesquely14 had life dealt with him, and so monstrously15. At such moments a great sympathy welled up within me, and I felt shame that I had ever joyed in his discomfiture16 or pain. Life had been unfair to him. It had played him a scurvy17 trick when it fashioned him into the thing he was, and it had played him scurvy tricks ever since. What chance had he to be anything else than what he was? And as though answering my unspoken thought, he wailed:
'I never 'ad no chance, nor 'arf a chance! 'Oo was there to send me to school, or put tommy in my 'ungry bell w'en I was a kiddy? 'Oo ever did anything for me, heh? 'oo, I s'y?'
'Never mind, Tommy,' I said, placing a soothing18 hand on his shoulder. 'Cheer up. It'll all come right in the end. You've long years before you, and you can make anything you please of yourself.'
'It's a lie!' he shouted in my face, flinging off the hand. 'It's a lie, an' you know it. I'm already myde, an' myde out of leavin's an' scraps19. It's all right for you, 'Ump. You was born a gentleman. You never knew wot it was to go 'ungry, to cry yerself asleep with a gnawin' an' gnawin', like a rat, inside yer. It carn't come right. If I was President of the United Stytes to-morrer, low would it fill my belly20 for one time w'en I was a kiddy an' it went empty?
''Ow could it, I s'y? I was born to sufferin' and' sorrer. I've 'ad more cruel sufferin' than any ten men, I 'ave. I've been in 'orspital 'arf my bleedin' life. I've 'ad the fever in Aspinwall, in 'Avana, in New Orleans. I near died of the scurvy, an' rotten with it six months in Barbados. Smallpox21 in 'Onolulu, two broken legs in Shanghai, pneumonia22 in Unalaska, three busted23 ribs24 an' my insides all twisted in 'Frisco. An' 'ere I am now. Look at me! Look at me! My ribs kicked loose from my back again. I'll be coughin' blood before eyght bells. 'Ow can it be myde up to me, I arsk? 'Oo's goin' to do it? Gawd? 'Ow Gawd must 'ave 'ated me w'en 'e signed me on for a voyage in this bloomin' world of 'is!'
This tirade25 against destiny went on for an hour or more, and then he buckled26 to his work, limping and groaning27, and in his eyes a great hatred28 for all created things.
Several days more passed before Johnson crawled on deck and went about his work in a half-hearted way. He was still a sick man, and I more than once observed him creeping painfully aloft to a topsail or drooping29 wearily as he stood at the wheel. But, still worse, it seemed that his spirit was broken. He was abject30 before Wolf Larsen, and almost groveled to Johansen. Not so Leach31. He went about the deck like a tiger-cub, glaring his hatred openly at Wolf Larsen and Johansen.
'I'll do for you yet, you slab-footed Swede.' I heard him say to Johansen one night on deck.
The mate cursed him in the darkness, and the next moment some missile struck the galley a sharp rap. There was more cursing, and a mocking laugh, and when all was quiet I stole outside and found a heavy knife embedded32 over an inch in the solid wood. A few minutes later the mate came fumbling33 about in search of it, but I returned it privily34 to Leach next day. He grinned when I handed it over, yet it was a grin that contained more sincere thanks than a multitude of the verbosities of speech common to the members of my own class.
Unlike any one else in the ship's company, I now found myself with no quarrels on my hands and in the good graces of all. The hunters possibly no more than tolerated me, though none of them disliked me; while Smoke and Henderson, convalescent under a deck awning35 and swinging day and night in their hammocks, assured me that I was better than any hospital nurse, and that they would not forget me at the end of the voyage when they were paid off. As though I stood in need of their money- I, who could have bought them out, bag and baggage, and the schooner36 and its equipment, a hundred times over! But upon me had devolved the task of tending their wounds and pulling them through, and I did my best by them.
Wolf Larsen underwent another bad attack of headache, which lasted two days. He must have suffered severely37, for he called me in and obeyed my commands like a sick child. But nothing I could do seemed to relieve him. At my suggestion, however, he gave up smoking and drinking, though why so magnificent an animal as he should have headaches at all puzzled me.
''T is the hand of God, I'm tellin' you,' was the way Louis saw it. ''T is a visitation for his black-hearted deeds, an' there's more behind an' comin', or else-'
'Or else,' I prompted.
'God is noddin' an' not doin' his duty, though it's me as shouldn't say it.' I was mistaken when I said that I was in the good graces of all. Not only did Thomas Mugridge continue to hate me, but he had discovered a new reason for hating me. It took me no little while to puzzle it out, but I finally discovered that it was because I was more luckily born than he- 'gentleman born,' he put it.
'And still no more dead men,' I twitted Louis, when Smoke and Henderson, side by side, in friendly conversation, took their first exercise on deck.
Louis surveyed me with his shrewd gray eyes and shook his head portentously38.
'She's a-comin', I tell you, an' it'll be sheets an' halyards, stand by all hands, when she begins to howl. I've had the feel iv it this long time, an' I can feel it now as plainly as I feel the riggin' iv a dark night. She's close, she's close.'
'Who goes first?' I queried39.
'Not old fat Louis, I promise you,' he laughed. 'For 't is in the bones iv me I know that come this time next year I'll be gazin' in the old mother's eyes, weary with watchin' iv the sea for the five sons she gave to it.'
'Wot's'e been s'yin' to yer?' Thomas Mugridge demanded a moment later.
'That he's going home some day to see his mother,' I answered diplomatically.
'I never 'ad none,' was the Cockney's comment, as he gazed with lusterless, hopeless eyes into mine.
点击
收听单词发音
收听单词发音 |
1
galley
|
|
| n.（飞机或船上的）厨房单层甲板大帆船；军舰舰长用的大划艇； | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
2
lame
|
|
| adj.跛的，(辩解、论据等)无说服力的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
3
bunk
|
|
| n.(车、船等倚壁而设的)铺位；废话 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
4
lurch
|
|
| n.突然向前或旁边倒；v.蹒跚而行 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
5
wailed
|
|
| v.哭叫，哀号( wail的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
6
forth
|
|
| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
7
puffed
|
|
| adj.疏松的v.使喷出( puff的过去式和过去分词 )；喷着汽（或烟）移动；吹嘘；吹捧 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
8
drawn
|
|
| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
9
savage
|
|
| adj.野蛮的；凶恶的，残暴的；n.未开化的人 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
10
gritted
|
|
| 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 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
11
wretch
|
|
| n.可怜的人，不幸的人；卑鄙的人 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
12
malignant
|
|
| adj.恶性的，致命的；恶意的，恶毒的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
13
impelled
|
|
| v.推动、推进或敦促某人做某事( impel的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
14
grotesquely
|
|
| adv. 奇异地,荒诞地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
15
monstrously
|
|
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
16
discomfiture
|
|
| n.崩溃；大败；挫败；困惑 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
17
scurvy
|
|
| adj.下流的，卑鄙的，无礼的；n.坏血病 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
18
soothing
|
|
| adj.慰藉的；使人宽心的；镇静的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
19
scraps
|
|
| 油渣 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
20
belly
|
|
| n.肚子，腹部；(像肚子一样)鼓起的部分，膛 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
21
smallpox
|
|
| n.天花 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
22
pneumonia
|
|
| n.肺炎 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
23
busted
|
|
| adj. 破产了的，失败了的，被降级的，被逮捕的，被抓到的 动词bust的过去式和过去分词 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
24
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 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
25
tirade
|
|
| n.冗长的攻击性演说 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
26
buckled
|
|
| a. 有带扣的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
27
groaning
|
|
| adj. 呜咽的, 呻吟的 动词groan的现在分词形式 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
28
hatred
|
|
| n.憎恶，憎恨，仇恨 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
29
drooping
|
|
| adj. 下垂的，无力的 动词droop的现在分词 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
30
abject
|
|
| adj.极可怜的，卑屈的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
31
leach
|
|
| v.分离，过滤掉；n.过滤；过滤器 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
32
embedded
|
|
| a.扎牢的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
33
fumbling
|
|
| n. 摸索,漏接 v. 摸索,摸弄,笨拙的处理 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
34
privily
|
|
| adv.暗中，秘密地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
35
awning
|
|
| n.遮阳篷；雨篷 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
36
schooner
|
|
| n.纵帆船 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
37
severely
|
|
| adv.严格地；严厉地；非常恶劣地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
38
portentously
|
|
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
39
queried
|
|
| v.质疑，对…表示疑问( query的过去式和过去分词 )；询问 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
| 欢迎访问英文小说网 |