评论
打印
Seated on the transom was what seemed to me a most uncommon and surprising figure. It turned out to be Captain Bildad who along with Captain Peleg was one of the largest owners of the vessel; the other shares, as is sometimes the case in these ports, being held by a crowd of old annuitants; widows, fatherless children, and chancery wards; each owning about the value of a timber head, or a foot of plank, or a nail or two in the ship. People in Nantucket invest their money in whaling vessels, the same way that you do yours in approved state stocks bringing in good interest.
据我看来,坐在船尾横木上的是一个极其非凡而奇异的人物。原来他就是跟法勒船长同属这只船的最大股东老板之一的比勒达船长。至于其余的股份,按照这些商港的情形,往往是属于一群领年金的老年人的;其中也有一些寡妇。孤儿和受保护的未成年人;每个人大概是拥有一根船骨,一英尺船板或者是船里一两枚钉子的价值。南塔开特人都把他们的钱投资到捕鲸船中,就跟人们把钱投资到有好出息的。信用良好的股票生意上一样。
Now, Bildad, like Peleg, and indeed many other Nantucketers, was a Quaker, the island having been originally settled by that sect; and to this day its inhabitants in general retain in an uncommon measure the peculiarities of the Quaker, only variously and anomalously modified by things altogether alien and heterogeneous. For some of these same Quakers are the most sanguinary of all sailors and whale-hunters. They are fighting Quakers; they are Quakers with a vengeance.
且说比勒达,象法勒,实在也象许多南塔开特人一样,也是一个桂克,这海岛本来就是这种教派的人定居的地方;直到如今,这里的居民一般都还多多少少保存有桂克的特征,只不过受了许多化外与异类的事物所冲淡而有所悬殊罢了。在这些桂克中,有一些就是残忍无比的水手和捕鲸手。他们都是好战的桂克;他们都是复仇心切的桂克。
