It was not far to the sheds, and after a few minutes’ walk through the wooden palisades they reached a long stone building, two storeys high, from which issued a horrible growling1, pierced with shrilly2 screamed songs. At the sound of the musket3 butts4 clashing on the pine-wood flagging, the noises ceased, and a silence more sinister5 than sound fell on the place.
Passing between two rows of warders, the two officers reached a sort of ante-room to the gaol6, containing a pine-log stretcher, on which a mass of something was lying. On a roughly-made stool, by the side of this stretcher, sat a man, in the grey dress (worn as a contrast to the yellow livery) of “good conduct” prisoners. This man held between his knees a basin containing gruel7, and was apparently8 endeavouring to feed the mass on the pine logs.
“Won’t he eat, Steve?” asked Vickers.
And at the sound of the Commandant’s voice, Steve arose.
“Dunno what’s wrong wi’ ’un, sir,” he said, jerking up a finger to his forehead. “He seems jest muggy-pated. I can’t do nothin’ wi’ ’un.”
“Gabbett!”
The intelligent Troke, considerately alive to the wishes of his superior officers, dragged the mass into a sitting posture9.
Gabbett — for it was he — passed one great hand over his face, and leaning exactly in the position in which Troke placed him, scowled10, bewildered, at his visitors.
“Well, Gabbett,” says Vickers, “you’ve come back again, you see. When will you learn sense, eh? Where are your mates?”
The giant did not reply.
“Do you hear me? Where are your mates?”
“Where are your mates?” repeated Troke.
“Dead,” says Gabbett.
“All three of them?”
“Ay.”
“And how did you get back?”
Gabbett, in eloquent11 silence, held out a bleeding foot.
“We found him on the point, sir,” said Troke, jauntily12 explaining, “and brought him across in the boat. He had a basin of gruel, but he didn’t seem hungry.”
“Are you hungry?”
“Yes.”
“Why don’t you eat your gruel?”
Gabbett curled his great lips.
“I have eaten it. Ain’t yer got nuffin’ better nor that to flog a man on? Ugh! yer a mean lot! Wot’s it to be this time, Major? Fifty?”
And laughing, he rolled down again on the logs.
“A nice specimen13!” said Vickers, with a hopeless smile. “What can one do with such a fellow?”
“I’d flog his soul out of his body,” said Frere, “if he spoke14 to me like that!”
Troke and the others, hearing the statement, conceived an instant respect for the new-comer. He looked as if he would keep his word.
The giant raised his great head and looked at the speaker, but did not recognize him. He saw only a strange face — a visitor perhaps. “You may flog, and welcome, master,” said he, “if you’ll give me a fig15 o’ tibbacky.” Frere laughed. The brutal16 indifference17 of the rejoinder suited his humour, and, with a glance at Vickers, he took a small piece of cavendish from the pocket of his pea-jacket, and gave it to the recaptured convict. Gabbett snatched it as a cur snatches at a bone, and thrust it whole into his mouth.
“How many mates had he?” asked Maurice, watching the champing jaws18 as one looks at a strange animal, and asking the question as though a “mate” was something a convict was born with — like a mole19, for instance.
“Three, sir.”
“Three, eh? Well, give him thirty lashes20, Vickers.”
“And if I ha’ had three more,” growled21 Gabbett, mumbling22 at his tobacco, “you wouldn’t ha’ had the chance.”
“What does he say?”
But Troke had not heard, and the “good-conduct” man, shrinking as it seemed, slightly from the prisoner, said he had not heard either. The wretch23 himself, munching24 hard at his tobacco, relapsed into his restless silence, and was as though he had never spoken.
As he sat there gloomily chewing, he was a spectacle to shudder25 at. Not so much on account of his natural hideousness26, increased a thousand-fold by the tattered27 and filthy28 rags which barely covered him. Not so much on account of his unshaven jaws, his hare-lip, his torn and bleeding feet, his haggard cheeks, and his huge, wasted frame. Not only because, looking at the animal, as he crouched29, with one foot curled round the other, and one hairy arm pendant between his knees, he was so horribly unhuman, that one shuddered30 to think that tender women and fair children must, of necessity, confess to fellowship of kind with such a monster. But also because, in his slavering mouth, his slowly grinding jaws, his restless fingers, and his bloodshot, wandering eyes, there lurked31 a hint of some terror more awful than the terror of starvation — a memory of a tragedy played out in the gloomy depths of that forest which had vomited32 him forth33 again; and the shadow of this unknown horror, clinging to him, repelled34 and disgusted, as though he bore about with him the reek35 of the shambles36.
“Come,” said Vickers, “Let us go back. I shall have to flog him again, I suppose. Oh, this place! No wonder they call it ‘Hell’s Gates’.”
“You are too soft-hearted, my dear sir,” said Frere, half-way up the palisaded path. “We must treat brutes37 like brutes.”
Major Vickers, inured38 as he was to such sentiments, sighed. “It is not for me to find fault with the system,” he said, hesitating, in his reverence39 for “discipline”, to utter all the thought; “but I have sometimes wondered if kindness would not succeed better than the chain and the cat.”
“Your old ideas!” laughed his companion. “Remember, they nearly cost us our lives on the Malabar. No, no. I’ve seen something of convicts — though, to be sure, my fellows were not so bad as yours — and there’s only one way. Keep ’em down, sir. Make ’em feel what they are. They’re there to work, sir. If they won’t work, flog ’em until they will. If they work well — why a taste of the cat now and then keeps ’em in mind of what they may expect if they get lazy.” They had reached the verandah now. The rising moon shone softly on the bay beneath them, and touched with her white light the summit of the Grummet Rock.
“That is the general opinion, I know,” returned Vickers. “But consider the life they lead. Good God!” he added, with sudden vehemence40, as Frere paused to look at the bay. “I’m not a cruel man, and never, I believe, inflicted41 an unmerited punishment, but since I have been here ten prisoners have drowned themselves from yonder rock, rather than live on in their misery42. Only three weeks ago, two men, with a wood-cutting party in the hills, having had some words with the overseer, shook hands with the gang, and then, hand in hand, flung themselves over the cliff. It’s horrible to think of!”
“They shouldn’t get sent here,” said practical Frere. “They knew what they had to expect. Serve ’em right.”
“But imagine an innocent man condemned43 to this place!”
“I can’t,” said Frere, with a laugh. “Innocent man be hanged! They’re all innocent, if you’d believe their own stories. Hallo! what’s that red light there?”
“Dawes’s fire, on Grummet Rock,” says Vickers, going in; “the man I told you about. Come in and have some brandy-and-water, and we’ll shut the door in place.”
收听单词发音 |
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growling
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| n.吠声, 咆哮声 v.怒吠, 咆哮, 吼 | |
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shrilly
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| 尖声的； 光亮的，耀眼的 | |
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musket
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| n.滑膛枪 | |
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butts
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| 笑柄( butt的名词复数 )； （武器或工具的）粗大的一端； 屁股； 烟蒂 | |
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sinister
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| adj.不吉利的，凶恶的，左边的 | |
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gaol
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| n.(jail)监狱；(不加冠词)监禁；vt.使…坐牢 | |
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gruel
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| n.稀饭，粥 | |
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apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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posture
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| n.姿势，姿态，心态，态度；v.作出某种姿势 | |
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scowled
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| 怒视，生气地皱眉( scowl的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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eloquent
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| adj.雄辩的，口才流利的；明白显示出的 | |
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jauntily
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| adv.心满意足地；洋洋得意地；高兴地；活泼地 | |
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specimen
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| n.样本，标本 | |
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spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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fig
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| n.无花果(树) | |
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brutal
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| adj.残忍的，野蛮的，不讲理的 | |
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indifference
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| n.不感兴趣，不关心，冷淡，不在乎 | |
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jaws
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| n.口部；嘴 | |
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mole
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| n.胎块；痣；克分子 | |
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lashes
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| n.鞭挞( lash的名词复数 )；鞭子；突然猛烈的一击；急速挥动v.鞭打( lash的第三人称单数 )；煽动；紧系；怒斥 | |
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growled
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| v.（动物）发狺狺声， （雷）作隆隆声( growl的过去式和过去分词 )；低声咆哮着说 | |
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mumbling
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| 含糊地说某事，叽咕，咕哝( mumble的现在分词 ) | |
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wretch
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| n.可怜的人，不幸的人；卑鄙的人 | |
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munching
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| v.用力咀嚼（某物），大嚼( munch的现在分词 ) | |
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shudder
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| v.战粟，震动，剧烈地摇晃；n.战粟，抖动 | |
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26
hideousness
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tattered
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| adj.破旧的，衣衫破的 | |
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filthy
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| adj.卑劣的；恶劣的，肮脏的 | |
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crouched
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| v.屈膝，蹲伏( crouch的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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shuddered
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| v.战栗( shudder的过去式和过去分词 )；发抖；（机器、车辆等）突然震动；颤动 | |
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lurked
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| vi.潜伏，埋伏（lurk的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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vomited
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forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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repelled
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| v.击退( repel的过去式和过去分词 )；使厌恶；排斥；推开 | |
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reek
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| v.发出臭气；n.恶臭 | |
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shambles
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| n.混乱之处；废墟 | |
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brutes
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| 兽( brute的名词复数 )； 畜生； 残酷无情的人； 兽性 | |
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inured
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| adj.坚强的，习惯的 | |
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reverence
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| n.敬畏，尊敬，尊严；Reverence:对某些基督教神职人员的尊称；v.尊敬，敬畏，崇敬 | |
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40
vehemence
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| n.热切；激烈；愤怒 | |
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41
inflicted
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| 把…强加给，使承受，遭受( inflict的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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42
misery
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| n.痛苦，苦恼，苦难；悲惨的境遇，贫苦 | |
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43
condemned
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| adj. 被责难的, 被宣告有罪的 动词condemn的过去式和过去分词 | |
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