英语听书《白鲸记》第33期

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 ' I'm travel weary;I need sleep.' ' Thou lookest like it,' says the Captain,' there's thy room.' Jonah enters,and would lock the door, 

 but the lock contains no key.Hearing him foolishly fumbling¹ there,the Captain laughs lowly to himself,and mutters something about the doors of convicts ' cells being never allowed to be locked within. 

 All dressed and dusty as he is,Jonah throws himself into his berth²,and finds the little state room ceiling almost resting on his forehead.The air is close,and Jonah gasps³. 

 Then,in that contracted hole,sunk,too,beneath the ship's water line,Jonah feels the heralding⁴ presentiment⁵ of that stifling⁶ hour,when the whale shall hold him in the smallest of his bowels⁷ ' wards⁸. 

 Screwed at its axis⁹ against the side,a swinging lamp slightly oscillates in Jonah's room;and the ship,heeling over towards the wharf¹⁰ with the weight of the last bales received,the lamp, 

 flame and all,though in slight motion,still maintains a permanent obliquity¹¹ with reference to the room;though,in truth,infallibly straight itself,it but made obvious the false, 

 lying levels among which it hung. The lamp alarms and frightens Jonah;as lying in his berth his tormented¹² eyes roll round the place, 

 and this thus far successful fugitive¹³ finds no refuge for his restless glance.But that contradiction in the lamp more and more appals¹⁴ him. 

 The floor,the ceiling,and the side,are all awry¹⁵.' Oh!so my conscience hangs in me!' he groans,' straight upwards,so it burns; 

 but the chambers¹⁶ of my soul are all in crookedness¹⁷!' 

 Like one who after a night of drunken revelry hies to his bed,still reeling,but with conscience yet pricking¹⁸ him, 

 as the plungings of the Roman race horse but so much the more strike his steel tags into him;as one who in that miserable¹⁹ plight²⁰ still turns and turns in giddy anguish, 

 praying God for annihilation until the fit be passed;and at last amid the whirl of woe²¹ he feels, 

 a deep stupor²² steals over him,as over the man who bleeds to death,for conscience is the wound,and there's naught²³ to staunch it;so,after sore wrestlings in his berth, 

 Jonah's prodigy²⁴ of ponderous²⁵ misery²⁶ drags him drowning down to sleep. 

 And now the time of tide has come;the ship casts off her cables;and from the deserted²⁷ wharf the uncheered ship for Tarshish, 

 all careening,glides to sea.That ship,my friends,was the first of recorded smugglers!the contraband²⁸ was Jonah. 

 But the sea rebels;he will not bear the wicked burden.A dreadful storm comes on,the ship is like to break. 

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