先讀課文﹕
The Sea Wolf
by Jack London
Chapter I
I scarcely know where to begin, though I sometimes facetiously place the
cause of it all to Charley Furuseth's credit. He kept a summer cottage in
Mill Valley, under the shadow of Mount Tamalpais, and never occupied it
except when he loafed through the winter mouths and read "Nietzsche and
Schopenhauer" to rest his brain. When summer came on, he elected to sweat
out a hot and dusty existence in the city and to toil incessantly. Had it
not been my custom to run up to see him every Saturday afternoon and to
stop over till Monday morning, this particular January Monday morning would
not have found me afloat on San Francisco Bay.
Not but that I was afloat in a safe craft, for the Martinez[船名] was a
new ferry-steamer, making her fourth or fifth trip on the run between Sausalito
and San Francisco. The danger lay in the heavy fog which blanketed the bay,
and of which, as a landsman, I had little apprehension. In fact, I remember
the placid exaltation with which I took up my position on the forward upper
deck, directly beneath the pilot-house, and allowed the mystery of the fog
to lay hold of my imagination. A fresh breeze was blowing, and for a time
I was alone in the moist obscurity - yet not alone, for I was dimly conscious
of the presence of the pilot, and of what I took to be the captain, in the
glass house above my head.
I remember thinking how comfortable it was, this division of labour which
made it unnecessary for me to study fogs, winds, tides, and navigation,
in order to visit my friend who lived across an arm of the sea. It was good
that men should be specialists, I mused. The peculiar knowledge of the pilot
and captain sufficed for many thousands of people who knew no more of the
sea and navigation than I knew. On the other hand, instead of having to devote
my energy to the learning of a multitude of things, I concentrated it upon
a few particular things, such as, for instance, the analysis of Poe's [指
Edgar Allan Poe] place in American literature - an essay of mine, by the
way, in the current Atlantic.[雜誌名] Coming aboard, as I passed through
the cabin, I had noticed with greedy eyes a stout gentleman reading the Atlantic,
which was open at my very essay. And there it was again, the division of
labour, the special knowledge of the pilot and captain which permitted the
stout gentleman to read my special knowledge on Poe while they carried him
safely from Sausalito to San Francisco.
A red-faced man, slamming the cabin door behind him and stumping out on
the deck, interrupted my reflections, though I made a mental note of the
topic for use in a projected essay which I had thought of calling "The Necessity
for Freedom: A Plea for the Artist." The red-faced man shot a glance up
at the pilot-house, gazed around at the fog, stumped across the deck and
back (he evidently had artificial legs), and stood still by my side, legs
wide apart, and with an expression of keen enjoyment on his face. I was
not wrong when I decided that his days had been spent on the sea.
"It's nasty weather like this here that turns heads grey before their time,"
he said, with a nod toward the pilot-house.
"I had not thought there was any particular strain," I answered. "It seems
as simple as A, B, C. They know the direction by compass, the distance,
and the speed. I should not call it anything more than mathematical certainty.
"
"Strain!" he snorted. "Simple as A, B, C! Mathematical certainty!"
He seemed to brace himself up and lean backward against the air as he stared
at me. "How about this here tide that's rushin' out through the Golden Gate?"
[指金門大橋] he demanded, or bellowed, rather. "How fast is she ebbin'?
What's the drift, eh? Listen to that, will you? A bell-buoy, and we're a-top
of it! See 'em alterin' the course!"
From out of the fog came the mournful tolling of a bell, and I could see
the pilot turning the wheel with great rapidity. The bell, which had seemed
straight ahead, was now sounding from the side. Our own whistle was blowing
hoarsely, and from time to time the sound of other whistles came to us from
out of the fog.
"That's a ferry-boat of some sort," the new-comer said, indicating a whistle
off to the right. "And there! D'ye [Do you] hear that? Blown by mouth. Some
scow schooner, most likely. Better watch out, Mr. Schooner-man. Ah, I thought
so. Now hell's a poppin' for somebody!"
The unseen ferry-boat was blowing blast after blast, and the mouth-blown
horn was tooting in terror-stricken fashion.
"And now they're payin' their respects to each other and tryin' to get
clear," the red-faced man went on, as the hurried whistling ceased.
His face was shining, his eyes flashing with excitement as he translated
into articulate language the speech of the horns and sirens. "That's a steam-
siren a-goin' it over there to the left. And you hear that fellow with a
frog in his throat - a steam schooner as near as I can judge, crawlin' in
from the Heads [指地角﹐伸出海中的狹長陸地] against the tide."
A shrill little whistle, piping as if gone mad, came from directly ahead
and from very near at hand. Gongs sounded on the Martinez. Our paddle-wheels
stopped, their pulsing beat died away, and then they started again. The
shrill little whistle, like the chirping of a cricket amid the cries of
great beasts, shot through the fog from more to the side and swiftly grew
faint and fainter. I looked to my companion for enlightenment.
"One of them dare-devil launches," he said. "I almost wish we'd sunk him,
the little rip! They're the cause of more trouble. And what good are they?
Any jackass gets aboard one and runs it from hell to breakfast, blowin'
his whistle to beat the band and tellin' the rest of the world to look out
for him, because he's comin' and can't look out for himself! Because he's
comin'! And you've got to look out, too! Right of way! [路權﹐指路上的先
行權] Common decency! They don't know the meanin' of it!"
I felt quite amused at his unwarranted choler, and while he stumped indignantly
up and down I fell to dwelling upon the romance of the fog. And romantic
it certainly was - the fog, like the grey shadow of infinite mystery, brooding
over the whirling speck of earth; and men, mere motes of light and sparkle,
cursed with an insane relish for work, riding their steeds of wood and steel
through the heart of the mystery, groping their way blindly through the Unseen,
and clamouring and clanging in confident speech the while [WHILE] their
hearts are heavy with incertitude and fear.
The voice of my companion brought me back to myself with a laugh. I too
had been groping and floundering, the while I thought I rode clear-eyed
through the mystery.
"Hello! somebody comin' our way," he was saying. "And d'ye hear that? He's
comin' fast. Walking right along. Guess he don't hear us yet. Wind's in
wrong direction."
The fresh breeze was blowing right down upon us, and I could hear the whistle
plainly, off to one side and a little ahead.
"Ferry-boat?" I asked.
He nodded, then added, "Or he wouldn't be keepin' up such a clip." He gave
a short chuckle. "They're gettin' anxious up there."
I glanced up. The captain had thrust his head and shoulders out of the
pilot-house, and was staring intently into the fog as though by sheer force
of will he could penetrate it. His face was anxious, as was the face of
my companion, who had stumped over to the rail and was gazing with a like
intentness in the direction of the invisible danger.
Then everything happened, and with inconceivable rapidity. The fog seemed
to break away as though split by a wedge, and the bow of a steamboat emerged,
trailing fog-wreaths on either side like seaweed on the snout of Leviathan
[a sea monster referred to in the Bible]. I could see the pilot-house and
a white-bearded man leaning partly out of it, on his elbows. He was clad
in a blue uniform, and I remember noting how trim and quiet he was. His quietness,
under the circumstances, was terrible. He accepted Destiny, marched hand
in hand with it, and coolly measured the stroke. As he leaned there, he
ran a calm and speculative eye over us, as though to determine the precise
point of the collision, and took no notice whatever when our pilot, white
with rage, shouted, "Now you've done it!"
On looking back, I realize that the remark was too obvious to make rejoinder
necessary.
"Grab hold of something and hang on," the red-faced man said to me. All
his bluster had gone, and he seemed to have caught the contagion of preternatural
calm. "And listen to the women scream," he said grimly - almost bitterly,
I thought, as though he had been through the experience before.
The vessels came together before I could follow his advice. We must have
been struck squarely amidships, for I saw nothing, the strange steamboat
having passed beyond my line of vision. The Martinez heeled over, sharply,
and there was a crashing and rending of timber. I was thrown flat on the
wet deck, and before I could scramble to my feet I heard the scream of the
women. This it was, I am certain, - the most indescribable of blood-curdling
sounds, - that threw me into a panic. I remembered the life-preservers stored
in the cabin, but was met at the door and swept backward by a wild rush
of men and women. What happened in the next few minutes I do not recollect,
though I have a clear remembrance of pulling down life-preservers from the
overhead racks, while the red-faced man fastened them about the bodies of
an hysterical group of women. This memory is as distinct and sharp as that
of any picture I have seen. It is a picture, and I can see it now, - the
jagged edges of the hole in the side of the cabin, through which the grey
fog swirled and eddied; the empty upholstered seats, littered with all the
evidences of sudden flight, such as packages, hand satchels, umbrellas, and
wraps; the stout gentleman who had been reading my essay, encased in cork
and canvas, the magazine still in his hand, and asking me with monotonous
insistence if I thought there was any danger; the red-faced man, stumping
gallantly around on his artificial legs and buckling life-preservers on
all corners; and finally, the screaming bedlam of women.
This it was, the screaming of the women, that most tried my nerves. It
must have tried, too, the nerves of the red-faced man, for I have another
picture which will never fade from my mind. The stout gentleman is stuffing
the magazine into his overcoat pocket and looking on curiously. A tangled
mass of women, with drawn, white faces and open mouths, is shrieking like
a chorus of lost souls; and the red-faced man, his face now purplish with
wrath, and with arms extended overhead as in the act of hurling thunderbolts,
is shouting, "Shut up! Oh, shut up!"
I remember the scene impelled me to sudden laughter, and in the next instant
I realized I was becoming hysterical myself; for these were women of my
own kind, like my mother and sisters, with the fear of death upon them and
unwilling to die. And I remember that the sounds they made reminded me of
the squealing of pigs under the knife of the butcher, and I was struck with
horror at the vividness of the analogy. These women, capable of the most
sublime emotions, of the tenderest sympathies, were open-mouthed and screaming.
They wanted to live, they were helpless, like rats in a trap, and they
screamed.
The horror of it drove me out on deck. I was feeling sick and squeamish,
and sat down on a bench. In a hazy way I saw and heard men rushing and shouting
as they strove to lower the boats. It was just as I had read descriptions
of such scenes in books. The tackles jammed. Nothing worked. One boat lowered
away with the plugs out, filled with women and children and then with water,
and capsized. Another boat had been lowered by one end, and still hung in
the tackle by the other end, where it had been abandoned. Nothing was to
be seen of the strange steamboat which had caused the disaster, though I
heard men saying that she [指另一艘船] would undoubtedly send boats to our
assistance.
I descended to the lower deck. The Martinez was sinking fast, for the water
was very near. Numbers of the passengers were leaping overboard. Others,
in the water, were clamouring to be taken aboard again. No one heeded them.
A cry arose that we were sinking. I was seized by the consequent panic,
and went over the side in a surge of bodies. How I went over I do not know,
though I did know, and instantly, why those in the water were so desirous
of getting back on the steamer. The water was cold - so cold that it was
painful. The pang, as I plunged into it, was as quick and sharp as that
of fire. It bit to the marrow. It was like the grip of death. I gasped with
the anguish and shock of it, filling my lungs before the life-preserver popped
me to the surface. The taste of the salt was strong in my mouth, and I was
strangling with the acrid stuff in my throat and lungs.
But it was the cold that was most distressing. I felt that I could survive
but a few minutes. People were struggling and floundering in the water about
me. I could hear them crying out to one another. And I heard, also, the
sound of oars. Evidently the strange steamboat had lowered its boats. As
the time went by I marvelled that I was still alive. I had no sensation
whatever in my lower limbs, while a chilling numbness was wrapping about
my heart and creeping into it. Small waves, with spiteful foaming crests,
continually broke over me and into my mouth, sending me off into more strangling
paroxysms.
The noises grew indistinct, though I heard a final and despairing chorus
of screams in the distance, and knew that the Martinez had gone down. Later,
- how much later I have no knowledge, - I came to myself with a start of
fear. I was alone. I could hear no calls or cries - only the sound of the
waves, made weirdly hollow and reverberant by the fog. A panic in a crowd,
which partakes of a sort of community of interest, is not so terrible as
a panic when one is by oneself; and such a panic I now suffered. Whither
was I drifting? The red-faced man had said that the tide was ebbing through
the Golden Gate. Was I, then, being carried out to sea? And the life-preserver
in which I floated? Was it not liable to go to pieces at any moment? I had
heard of such things being made of paper and hollow rushes which quickly
became saturated and lost all buoyancy. And I could not swim a stroke. And
I was alone, floating, apparently, in the midst of a grey primordial vastness.
I confess that a madness seized me, that I shrieked aloud as the women
had shrieked, and beat the water with my numb hands.
How long this lasted I have no conception, for a blankness intervened,
of which I remember no more than one remembers of troubled and painful sleep.
When I aroused, it was as after centuries of time; and I saw, almost above
me and emerging from the fog, the bow of a vessel, and three triangular
sails, each shrewdly lapping the other and filled with wind. Where the bow
cut the water there was a great foaming and gurgling, and I seemed directly
in its path. I tried to cry out, but was too exhausted. The bow plunged
down, just missing me and sending a swash of water clear over my head. Then
the long, black side of the vessel began slipping past, so near that I could
have touched it with my hands. I tried to reach it, in a mad resolve to claw
into the wood with my nails, but my arms were heavy and lifeless. Again I
strove to call out, but made no sound.
The stern of the vessel shot by, dropping, as it did so, into a hollow
between the waves; and I caught a glimpse of a man standing at the wheel,
and of another man who seemed to be doing little else than smoke a cigar.
I saw the smoke issuing from his lips as he slowly turned his head and glanced
out over the water in my direction. It was a careless, unpremeditated glance,
one of those haphazard things men do when they have no immediate call to
do anything in particular, but act because they are alive and must do something.
But life and death were in that glance. I could see the vessel being swallowed
up in the fog; I saw the back of the man at the wheel, and the head of the
other man turning, slowly turning, as his gaze struck the water and casually
lifted along it toward me. His face wore an absent expression, as of deep
thought, and I became afraid that if his eyes did light upon me he would
nevertheless not see me. But his eyes did light upon me, and looked squarely
into mine; and he did see me, for he sprang to the wheel, thrusting the
other man aside, and whirled it round and round, hand over hand, at the
same time shouting orders of some sort. The vessel seemed to go off at a
tangent to its former course and leapt almost instantly from view into the
fog.
I felt myself slipping into unconsciousness, and tried with all the power
of my will to fight above the suffocating blankness and darkness that was
rising around me. A little later I heard the stroke of oars, growing nearer
and nearer, and the calls of a man. When he was very near I heard him crying,
in vexed fashion, "Why in hell don't you sing out?" This meant me, I thought,
and then the blankness and darkness rose over me.
1) 生詞自查。
2) 作者介紹﹕John Griffith "Jack" London (born John Griffith Chaney, January
12, 1876 -- November 22, 1916) was an American author, journalist, and social
activist. He was a pioneer in the then-burgeoning world of commercial magazine
fiction and was one of the first fiction writers to obtain worldwide celebrity
and a large fortune from his fiction alone. He is best remembered as the
author of "Call of the Wild" and "White Fang", both set in the Klondike Gold
Rush, as well as the short stories "To Build a Fire", "An Odyssey of the
North", and "Love of Life". He also wrote of the South Pacific in such stories
as "The Pearls of Parlay" and "The Heathen", and of the San Francisco Bay
area in "The Sea Wolf". London, who was called "Wolf" by his close friends,
also used a picture of a wolf on his bookplate, and named his mansion "Wolf
House".
3) 小說介紹﹕The Sea-Wolf is a 1904 psychological adventure novel by American
novelist Jack London about a literary critic, survivor of an ocean collision
who comes under the dominance of Wolf Larsen, the powerful and amoral sea
captain who rescues him. The personal character of the novel's antagonist
"Wolf Larsen" was attributed to a real sailor London had known, Captain
Alex MacLean.
4) Jack London傑克‧倫敦﹐也是美國一個大作家。從上面的作者介紹裡可以知道﹐
他也寫了許多小說。我們已經介紹了一些男作家﹐及一些女作家﹐搞文學或有興趣
的人﹐可以比較一下男女作家間文筆的不同。
选择“Disable on www.wenxuecity.com”
选择“don't run on pages on this domain”
