名著浅读
梅尔维尔的「白鲸记」
HERMAN MELVILLE'S "MOBY DICK"
Call me Ishmael. Having very little money, I thought I would sail about a little. Like Narcissus, all of us see in the ocean the hard-to-understand image of life. It was the grand idea of the great whale, and my itch for distant things, that gave me the idea of a whaling trip. And so, on a December night, I found myself in the Spouter Inn at New Bedford, waiting for transportation to Nantucket.
I had to share my bed with a big, tattooed South Sea island harpooner named Queequeg, who was quiet but polite. Together we went to a chapel and listened to a sermon. After, we talked and smoked together; he gave me half his money and we worshiped his idol.
Once in Nantucket, we signed onto the rare old ship Pequod, which was equipped to hunt for whale ivory. We did not see the captain, Ahab, but were told that on the last voyage he had lost one leg to a whale called Moby Dick and that ever since he was very moody and angry. Soon we sailed, not listening to a warning from a strange sailor.
The chief mate of the Pequod was a Nantucket native and Quaker named Starbuck. The second mate was a happy-go-lucky Cape-Cod man named Stubb; and the third mate was a young, fearless man named Little Flask. These three were in charge of the small boats on the Pequod. Queequeg was Starbuck's harpooner; Stubb had chosen Tachtego, an Indian; and the third harpooner was Daggoo, a giant, coal-black Negro savage. The rest of the crew were all islanders.
After several days sailing, Captain Ahab finally appeared. He was a lean man and stood on a white leg made from the bone of a whale. He walked about on the deck with moody, silent dignity.
Then, one evening, Ahab ordered everybody to the deck and nailed a bright gold coin to the mainmast and said, "Whoever sees the Moby Dick shall have this coin!" Everyone cheered but Starbuck, who thought it was madness to seek revenge on an animal. But Ahab said that in all things reason is not always supported by reasonable emotions and that his hate would drive him to do what he had chosen to do.
After whaling for some time, we sailed around the Cape of Good Hope and met another whaling ship and stopped to ask if they had seen Moby Dick, the white whale. We continued into the Indian Ocean where Stubb killed our first whale. We sailed into the China seas and the Pacific, seeing huge herds of sperm whales. Finally we met a ship whose captain had lost an arm to a whale.
One day Ahab made a harpoon for the white whale. And then he heard a prophecy from one of his men that said before Abab would die he would see two hearses upon the sea, one not made by man, the other made from wood grown in America. The man, Fedallah, also said he would die before the captain.
The Pequod finally met the ship Rachel in Moby Dick's favorite seas. The captain of this boat had, just lost his son after chasing Moby Dick the day before. Ahab refused to help search for the lost boat but set out on the warm trail of the white whale. Soon another ship was met that had just seen the white whale and had lost a man in the encounter. Star buck again tried to tell Ahab that this chase of revenge was foolish but the captain would not listen.
And then came another day and it was Ahab who cried: "There she blows ! A hump like a snowhill! It is Moby Dick!"
All the boats gave chase and the white whale knocked Ahab from his boat into the sea, but we were able to catch him.
The second day Moby Dick came early and again the small boats chased him. The whale tried to kill the men who kept trying to kill him. And again the whale smashed Captain Ahab's boat. Ahab lost his harpoon trying to kill him and Fedallah was killed.
The afternoon of the third day the whale appeared again; this time with new energy it tried to sink the small boats. We saw the body of Fedallah tied to the whale by the ropes of our harpoons－Ahab had now seen one hearse. All the boats returned to the ship except Ahab's which chased the whale until the captain pushed his harpoon into Moby Dick. The angry whale turned, saw the big ship and crashed into it. Water poured into the Pequod, and Ahab saw his second hearse－the ship itself. As the ship sank, Ahab pushed his harpoon into Moby Dick again and yelled: "For the sake of hate I spit my last breath at you." His own harpoon line pulled Ahab after the whale, and the boat, whale and Ahab all sank into the sea.
The sea rolled on. Two days later I was picked up by the ship Rachel. I was the only one to have survived.
