“Who would have thought it, Flask!” cried Stubb; —
“谁能想到呢，弗拉斯克！” 斯塔布大声说道; —

“if I had but one leg you would not catch me in a boat, unless maybe to stop the plug-hole with my timber toe. —
“如果我只有一条腿，你是绝对不可能让我坐船的，除非也许是用我的木脚趾堵住塞子孔。 —

Oh! he’s a wonderful old man!”
哦！他真是一个了不起的老人！”

“I don’t think it so strange, after all, on that account,” said Flask. “If his leg were off at the hip, now, it would be a different thing. —
“但就这个而言，我不觉得有多奇怪，”弗拉斯克说道。“如果他的腿从髋部以下都没有了，那就完全不同了。 —

That would disable him; but he has one knee, and good part of the other left, you know.”
那才会让他残废；但你知道他还有一个膝盖，还有另一条好部分的腿。”

“I don’t know that, my little man; I never yet saw him kneel.”
“我可不知道啊，我的小伙子；我还从未见过他跪下。”

Among whale-wise people it has often been argued whether, considering the paramount importance of his life to the success of the voyage, it is right for a whaling captain to jeopardize that life in the active perils of the chase. —
在了解鲸鱼的人中，经常有人争论，考虑到他的生命对航程成功的至关重要性，捕鲸船长是否应该冒险让他冒猎捕中的生命危险。 —

So Tamerlane’s soldiers often argued with tears in their eyes, whether that invaluable life of his ought to be carried into the thickest of the fight.
所以忽必烈的士兵们也常常含着眼泪争议，是否他那无可估量的生命应该带入最激烈的战斗。

But with Ahab the question assumed a modified aspect. —
但对于艾哈伯来说，这个问题呈现了一种不同的角度。 —

Considering that with two legs man is but a hobbling wight in all times of danger; —
考虑到一个人即使有两条腿，在危险时都只是一个跛行的人; —

considering that the pursuit of whales is always under great and extraordinary difficulties; —
考虑到捕鲸活动总是面临巨大和特殊的困难; —

that every individual moment, indeed, then comprises a peril; —
实际上，每时每刻都包含着危险; —

under these circumstances is it wise for any maimed man to enter a whale-boat in the hunt? —
在这些情况下，负伤的人是否明智地进入捕鲸船？ —

As a general thing, the joint-owners of the Pequod must have plainly thought not.
一般情况下，皮克特号的合伙人们显然认为不是。

Ahab well knew that although his friends at home would think little of his entering a boat in certain comparatively harmless vicissitudes of the chase, for the sake of being near the scene of action and giving his orders in person, yet for Captain Ahab to have a boat actually apportioned to him as a regular headsman in the hunt–above all for Captain Ahab to be supplied with five extra men, as that same boat’s crew, he well knew that such generous conceits never entered the heads of the owners of the Pequod. —
艾哈伯很清楚，尽管他在家中的朋友会认为他在猎捕中遭遇某些相对无害的变故时进入船只，以便亲临现场并亲自下达命令，然而对于艾哈伯来说，让他在猎捕中拥有一艘特定分配给他作为常规行刑官的船只—尤其是让艾哈伯配备五名额外人员，作为那条船的船员，他很清楚这样慷慨的设想从未进入皮克特号的所有者的脑海。 —

Therefore he had not solicited a boat’s crew from them, nor had he in any way hinted his desires on that head. —
因此他并没有向他们征求过一支船员，也没有在这方面透露他的意愿。 —

Nevertheless he had taken private measures of his own touching all that matter. —
然而，他已经采取了自己的私人措施来处理这个问题。 —

Until Cabaco’s published discovery, the sailors had little foreseen it, though to be sure when, after being a little while out of port, all hands had concluded the customary business of fitting the whaleboats for service; —
在卡巴科所公布的发现之前，水手们并没有很好地预见到这一点，尽管当几个人在港口外一段时间后，所有的人都认为为捕鲸船配备传统的工作已完成； —

when some time after this Ahab was now and then found bestirring himself in the matter of making thole-pins with his own hands for what was thought to be one of the spare boats, and even solicitously cutting the small wooden skewers, which when the line is running out are pinned over the groove in the bow: —
此后不久，当人们发现阿哈布时不时在为被认为是备用船之一制作船楦钉，并且还热切地切割出在鲸鱼出钻时用来钉在船头凹槽上的小木制物； —

when all this was observed in him, and particularly his solicitude in having an extra coat of sheathing in the bottom of the boat, as if to make it better withstand the pointed pressure of his ivory limb; —
当所有这些在他身上观察到时，尤其是他在船底额外覆盖一层护板时表现出的关切，就好像是为了让它更能抵抗他的象牙肢体的压力； —

and also the anxiety he evinced in exactly shaping the thigh board, or clumsy cleat, as it is sometimes called, the horizontal piece in the boat’s bow for bracing the knee against in darting or stabbing at the whale; —
还有他在确切塑造船头水平块时所表现出的焦虑，或者有时候被称为手槁的笨重木制楦；这是在捕鲸时抵靠膝盖以出击或刺杀鲸鱼时在船头的水平部件； —

when it was observed how often he stood up in that boat with his solitary knee fixed in the semi-circular depression in the cleat, and with the carpenter’s chisel gouged out a little here and straightened it a little there; —
当被观察到他多么频繁地站在船中，拿着独腿支在水平槁的半圆凹槽里，并用木匠的凿子在这里挖了一点，那里修正了一点； —

all these things, I say, had awakened much interest and curiosity at the time. —
我说，所有这些事情在当时都引起了很多兴趣和好奇。 —

But almost everybody supposed that this particular preparative heedfulness in Ahab must only be with a view to the ultimate chase of Moby Dick; —
但几乎每个人都认为，阿哈布在这种特殊的准备上的关注必须只是为了最终追捕白鲸； —

for he had already revealed his intention to hunt that mortal monster in person. —
因为他已经透露过他打算亲自追捕那只致命怪物。 —

But such a supposition did by no means involve the remotest suspicion as to any boat’s crew being assigned to that boat.
但这样的假设绝不涉及到任何分配给那只船的船员。

Now, with the subordinate phantoms, what wonder remained soon waned away; —
现在，随着次要的幻影，残存下来的惊讶很快消失了； —

for in a whaler wonders soon wane. Besides, now and then such unaccountable odds and ends of strange nations come up from the unknown nooks and ash-holes of the earth to man these floating outlaws of whalers; —
在捕鲸船队中，奇迹很快就会消失。此外，时不时地，一些无法解释的奇怪民族的人物从地球未知的角落和灰渣处出现，以个人身份加入这些捕鲸船的流浪汉； —

and the ships themselves often pick up such queer castaway creatures found tossing about the open sea on planks, bits of wreck, oars, whaleboats, canoes, blown-off Japanese junks, and what not; —
船只本身往往也会拾起那些在海上漂浮的古怪的被遗弃的生物，如漂流在木板、残骸碎片、桨、捕鲸船、独木舟、被吹落的日本木筏等物品； —

that Beelzebub himself might climb up the side and step down into the cabin to chat with the captain, and it would not create any unsubduable excitement in the forecastle.
以至于魔王本人都可以爬上船舷，走进船舱与船长聊天，也不会在船员舱引起不可抑制的兴奋。

But be all this as it may, certain it is that while the subordinate phantoms soon found their place among the crew, though still as it were somehow distinct from them, yet that hair-turbaned Fedallah remained a muffled mystery to the last. —
然而尽管如此，确切的是，虽然那些次要的幻影很快融入了船员中，虽然在某种程度上仍然与他们有所不同，但那位戴着头巾的费达拉仍然是一个神秘的谜团直到最后。 —

Whence he came in a mannerly world like this, by what sort of unaccountable tie he soon evinced himself to be linked with Ahab’s peculiar fortunes; —
他在这样一个有礼貌的世界中是怎么样到来的，他又是如何表现出与艾哈布特殊命运之间莫明其妙的联系的； —

nay, so far as to have some sort of a half-hinted influence; —
甚至到一定程度上具有某种隐约的影响； —

Heaven knows, but it might have been even authority over him; all this none knew. —
天知道，但也许甚至对他有支配权；所有这一切都没有人知道。 —

But one cannot sustain an indifferent air concerning Fedallah. —
但一个人不能对费达拉保持冷漠的态度。 —

He was such a creature as civilized, domestic people in the temperate zone only see in their dreams, and that but dimly; —
他是那样一种在温带地区文明的家庭中只有在梦中才能看到的生物，而且还昏暗隐约； —

but the like of whom now and then glide among the unchanging Asiatic communities, especially the Oriental isles to the east of the continent– those insulated, immemorial, unalterable countries, which even in these modern days still preserve much of the ghostly aboriginalness of earth’s primal generations, when the memory of the first man was a distinct recollection, and all men his descendants, unknowing whence he came, eyed each other as real phantoms, and asked of the sun and the moon why they were created and to what end; —
但这样的人偶尔偷偷溜过那些不变的亚洲社区，尤其是东部大陆的东方岛屿——那些孤立的、古老的、永恒不变的国家，即使在当今现代社会，仍保留着地球原始世代的部分神秘地方，当时第一个人的回忆还清晰可见，所有的人都是他的后裔，不知道他来自何方，彼此看着对方如同真实的魅影，询问太阳和月亮为何被创造以及有何目的； —

when though, according to Genesis, the angels indeed consorted with the daughters of men, the devils also, add the uncanonical Robbins, indulged in mundane amours.
即使根据《创世纪》，天使确实与人的女儿们交合，魔鬼们也，如邪书《罗宾斯》，沉溺于尘世之爱。