珊瑚王国(3)

Excellent, sir.

很好，先生。

My reply obviously pleased Captain Nemo. But not knowing what he was driving at, I waited for further questions, ready to reply as circumstances dictated.

我的答复显然使尼摩船长满意。但是，我不知道他为什么说到这事，我等他提出新问题来，自己可以随机应变地答复。

Professor Aronnax, the captain said to me, would you consent to give your medical attentions to one of my men?

阿龙纳斯先生，船长对我说，您愿意来治疗我的一个船员吗？

Someone is sick?Yes.

您这儿有病人吗？是的。

I'm ready to go with you.Come.

我就跟您看去。请跟我来吧。

I admit that my heart was pounding. Lord knows why, but I saw a definite connection between this sick crewman and yesterday's happenings, and the mystery of those events concerned me at least as much as the man's sickness.

我得承认，我这时心很跳动。我不知道为什么，在这个船员的疾病和昨晚的事件之间我觉得有某一种关联，这个秘密至少跟那个病人一样，盘踞在我心中。

Captain Nemo led me to the Nautilus's stern and invited me into a cabin located next to the sailors' quarters.

尼摩船长带我到诺第留斯号的后部，让我走进挨着水手住所的一间舱房。

On a bed there lay a man some forty years old, with strongly molded features, the very image of an Anglo-Saxon.

房中床上，躺着一个四十岁左右的人,外貌坚强有力,是真正盎格鲁一萨克逊人的典型。

I bent over him. Not only was he sick, he was wounded. Swathed in blood-soaked linen, his head was resting on a folded pillow. I undid the linen bandages, while the wounded man gazed with great staring eyes and let me proceed without making a single complaint.

我弯下身去看他。他不仅是有病，而且受了伤。他的头部包裹着血淋淋的纱布，躺在两个枕头上。我把包布解开，病人睁大眼睛看我，让我解开，一声也不说痛。

It was a horrible wound. The cranium had been smashed open by some blunt instrument, leaving the naked brains exposed, and the cerebral matter had suffered deep abrasions. Blood clots had formed in this dissolving mass, taking on the color of wine dregs. Both contusion and concussion of the brain had occurred. The sick man's breathing was labored, and muscle spasms quivered in his face. Cerebral inflammation was complete and had brought on a paralysis of movement and sensation.

伤处看来很是怕人。头盖骨被冲击的器械打碎，脑子露出来，脑上受到了很厉害的摩擦。在有伤的脑子上面凝结着一块一块的血痕，颜色像酒槽。脑子同时被打伤又受震动。伤员的呼吸很缓慢。肌肉痉挛着，使他的脸孔抖动。大脑完全发炎了，因此思想和动作都麻木不灵了。

珊瑚王国(4)

I took the wounded man's pulse. It was intermittent. The body's extremities were already growing cold, and I saw that death was approaching without any possibility of my holding it in check. After dressing the poor man's wound, I redid the linen bandages around his head, and I turned to Captain Nemo.

病人的脉搏，我按了按，已经时有时无。身体各处，手，指脚趾的尖端已经冰冷，我看出死已临头，没法救治了。我包扎好这个不幸的病人，又把他头上的纱布弄好，转过身来对着尼摩船长；我问他：

How did he get this wound? I asked him.

哪来的这伤痕呢？

That's not important, the captain replied evasively. The Nautilus suffered a collision that cracked one of the engine levers, and it struck this man. My chief officer was standing beside him. This man leaped forward to intercept the blow. A brother lays down his life for his brother, a friend for his friend, what could be simpler? That's the law for everyone on board the Nautilus. But what's your diagnosis of his condition?

那没关系！船长掩饰地回答，诺第留斯号受到一次仲撞，弄断了机器上的一条杠杆，打中了这个人。般副正在他旁边。他奋身前去，顶受了这打击……兄弟为自己的兄弟牺牲，朋友为自己的朋友牺牲，再没有更简单的享！这是诺第留斯号船上全体船员共同遵守的规律！您对于他的病精的意见究竟怎样？

I hesitated to speak my mind.

我迟疑不敢说。

You may talk freely, the captain told me. This man doesn't understand French.

您可以说，船长对我说，这人不懂得法语。

I took a last look at the wounded man, then I replied:

我最后看一下伤员，然后回答：

This man will be dead in two hours.

这人在两小时内就要死了。

Nothing can save him?

没有什么办法可以救他吗？

Nothing.

没有。

Captain Nemo clenched his fists, and tears slid from his eyes, which I had thought incapable of weeping.

尼摩船长的手抖起来，几滴眼泪从他的眼中流出来了，从前我以为他的眼睛是不会哭的。

For a few moments more I observed the dying man, whose life was ebbing little by little. He grew still more pale under the electric light that bathed his deathbed. I looked at his intelligent head, furrowed with premature wrinkles that misfortune, perhaps misery, had etched long before. I was hoping to detect the secret of his life in the last words that might escape from his lips!

霎时间，我再看一下这垂死的人，他的生命一点一点消失了。他苍白的面色，由于有明亮的电光照在他临死的床上，更显得惨白。我看他的聪明头额有很多过早的皱纹，那是生活中的不幸或多年的贫苦给他造成的。我要从他嘴里偶然吐出的一些话，明白他生平的秘密！您可以退出了，阿龙纳斯先生。尼摩船长这时对我说。

珊瑚王国(5)

You may go, Professor Aronnax, Captain Nemo told me.

你可以走了，教授，船长对我说。

I left the captain in the dying man's cabin and I repaired to my stateroom, very moved by this scene. All day long I was aquiver with gruesome forebodings. That night I slept poorly, and between my fitful dreams, I thought I heard a distant moaning, like a funeral dirge. Was it a prayer for the dead, murmured in that language I couldn't understand?

我出来，让船长一人留在危急病人的房里，我回到我的房中，为了刚才的场面情绪很激动。那一整天，我心中有种种不祥的预感，十分不安。夜间睡得不好，睡梦中时常惊醒，觉得听到了远远传来的悲叹和好像唱丧歌的声音。这是对死者的祷词，用那种我不能懂得语言说出来的祷词吗？

The next morning I climbed on deck. Captain Nemo was already there. As soon as he saw me, he came over.

第二天早晨，我又到了平台上，尼摩船长已经在那里了。他一看见我，就走到我面前来。

Professor, he said to me, would it be convenient for you to make an underwater excursion today?

教授，他对我说，您愿意今天去作一次海底散步吗？

With my companions? I asked.

我的同伴可以一同去吗？我问。

If they're agreeable.

如果他们愿意，他们可以一同去。

We're yours to command, captain.

我们一定跟您去，船长。

Then kindly put on your ping suits.

请你们就去穿潜水衣。

As for the dead or dying man, he hadn't come into the picture. I rejoined Ned Land and Conseil. I informed them of Captain Nemo's proposition. Conseil was eager to accept, and this time the Canadian proved perfectly amenable to going with us.

关于那个危急病人或死人的消息，他再也不提。我到尼德。兰和康塞尔那儿，把尼摩船长的提议告诉他们。康塞尔立刻就答应去，这一次加拿大人也表示很乐意跟我们一道去。

It was eight o'clock in the morning. By 8:30 we were suited up for this new stroll and equipped with our two devices for lighting and breathing. The double door opened, and accompanied by Captain Nemo with a dozen crewmen following, we set foot on the firm seafloor where the Nautilus was resting, ten meters down.

时间是早上八点。到八点半，我们穿好了这次散步穿的潜水衣，并带上探照灯和呼吸器。那座双重的门打开了，尼摩船长和跟在他后面的十来个船员一齐出来，我们到了水下十米的地方，我们的脚便踩在诺第留斯号停下来的海底地上。

A gentle slope gravitated to an uneven bottom whose depth was about fifteen fathoms. This bottom was completely different from the one I had visited during my first excursion under the waters of the Pacific Ocean. Here I saw no fine-grained sand, no underwater prairies, not one open-sea forest. I immediately recognized the wondrous region in which Captain Nemo did the honors that day. It was the coral realm.

一段轻微的斜坡路通到崎岖不平的地面，深度大约为二十五米左右。这地面跟我第一次在太平洋水底下散步时看见过的完全不一样。这里没有细沙，没有海底草地，没有海底树林，我立即认识这一天尼摩船长请我们来的这个神奇地方；这个地方是珊瑚王国。

珊瑚王国(6)

In the zoophyte branch, class Alcyonaria, one finds the order Gorgonaria, which contains three groups: sea fans, isidian polyps, and coral polyps. It's in this last that precious coral belongs, an unusual substance that, at different times, has been classified in the mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms. Medicine to the ancients, jewelry to the moderns, it wasn't decisively placed in the animal kingdom until 1694, by Peysonnel of Marseilles.

在植虫动物门、翡翠纲中，有矾花这一目，这一目包含矾花、木贼和珊瑚三科。珊瑚属于珊瑚科，是一种奇怪的东西，曾经先后被分人矿物、植物和动物类。在古代它是治病的药方，在近代是装饰的珍宝，一直封1694年：，马赛人皮桑尼尔才明确地把它们作为动物分类。

A coral is a unit of tiny animals assembled over a polypary that's brittle and stony in nature. These polyps have a unique generating mechanism that reproduces them via the budding process, and they have an inpidual existence while also participating in a communal life. Hence they embody a sort of natural socialism. I was familiar with the latest research on this bizarre zoophyte-which turns to stone while taking on a tree form, as some naturalists have very aptly observed--and nothing could have been more fascinating to me than to visit one of these petrified forests that nature has planted on the bottom of the sea.

珊瑚是一群聚集在易碎的和石质伪珊瑚树上的微生物的总体. 这些珊瑚虫有一种独特的繁殖力，像枝芽滋生一样，它们有自己本身的生命，同时又有共同的生命，所以这种情形好像是一种自然的社会主义；我知道最近关于这种奇怪的植虫动物的研究结果，照生物学家的很正确的观察，珊瑚虫在分支繁殖中就起矿化作用，对我来说，去参观大自然种植在海底下的一处石质森林，实在是最有兴趣不过的了。

We turned on our Ruhmkorff devices and went along a coral shoal in the process of forming, which, given time, will someday close off this whole part of the Indian Ocean. Our path was bordered by hopelessly tangled bushes, formed from snarls of shrubs all covered with little star-shaped, white-streaked flowers. Only, contrary to plants on shore, these tree forms become attached to rocks on the seafloor by heading from top to bottom.

兰可夫探照器使用起来，我们沿着正在形戌的珊瑚层走去，这些珊瑚脉经过相当的时间，有一夭将要把印度洋的这一部分海面封闭起来。路旁尽是错杂的小珊瑚树所形成的混乱的珊瑚树丛，枝权上遮满白光闪闪的星状小花。不过，跟陆地上的植物正相反，固定在海底岩石上的珊瑚树的枝权，全是从上到下发展的。

Our lights produced a thousand delightful effects while playing over these brightly colored boughs.

灯光在色彩很鲜艳的枝叶中间照来照去，发生无穷的美丽迷人的景象。

珊瑚王国(7)

I fancied I saw these cylindrical, membrane-filled tubes trembling beneath the water's undulations. I was tempted to gather their fresh petals, which were adorned with delicate tentacles, some newly in bloom, others barely opened, while nimble fish with fluttering fins brushed past them like flocks of birds. But if my hands came near the moving flowers of these sensitive, lively creatures, an alarm would instantly sound throughout the colony. The white petals retracted into their red sheaths, the flowers vanished before my eyes, and the bush changed into a chunk of stony nipples.

我好像是看见薄膜一般的和圆筒形样的细管在海波下颤动。我要去采它们的带有纤维触须的新鲜花瓣（有的刚开，有的刚露头）的时候，有些身子轻快、鳍迅速摆动的鱼走来，像鸟飞过一样触动了它们。但是，一当我的手挨近这些活花朵，这些有生命的含羞草的时候，花丛中立即发出警报来了。于是雪白的花瓣缩人它们的朱红匣中去了，花朵在我眼前消失了，珊瑚丛随即转变为一大团的石圆丘。

Sheer chance had placed me in the presence of the most valuable specimens of this zoophyte. This coral was the equal of those fished up from the Mediterranean off the Barbary Coast or the shores of France and Italy. With its bright colors, it lived up to those poetic names of blood flower and blood foam that the industry confers on its finest exhibits. Coral sells for as much as 500 francs per kilogram, and in this locality the liquid strata hid enough to make the fortunes of a whole host of coral fishermen. This valuable substance often merges with other polyparies, forming compact, hopelessly tangled units known as "macciota," and I noted some wonderful pink samples of this coral.

偶然的机会把这种植虫动物的一些最宝贵的品种摆在我面前。这种珊瑚跟在地中海、在法国、意大利和巴巴利海岸打到的，一样有价值。商业上对于其中最美的几种给了“血花”和“血沫”这样诗意的名字，它们的鲜艳颜色证明这是有道理的。这种珊瑚一直卖到五百法郎一公斤；在这一带的海水里面实在是蕴藏有无数打捞珊瑚人的财富呢。 这种宝贵的物质时常杂有其他种类的珊瑚树， 因此构成名为“马西奥达”的密集和混杂的整块珊瑚，在这些整块珊瑚上面，我看到很美丽的玫瑰珊瑚品种。

But as the bushes shrank, the tree forms magnified. Actual petrified thickets and long alcoves from some fantastic school of architecture kept opening up before our steps. Captain Nemo entered beneath a dark gallery whose gentle slope took us to a depth of 100 meters.

不久，珊瑚树丛就紧密连攀起来，树枝分布增长起来。好像是真正的石质丛林和奇矮建筑的长槽在我们脚步面前摆开了。尼摩船长走人一条长廊般的黑暗过道，从这条倾斜的、过道，我们到了一百米深的地方。

珊瑚王国(8)

The light from our glass coils produced magical effects at times, lingering on the wrinkled roughness of some natural arch, or some overhang suspended like a chandelier, which our lamps flecked with fiery sparks. Amid these shrubs of precious coral, I observed other polyps no less unusual: melita coral, rainbow coral with jointed outgrowths, then a few tufts of genus Corallina, some green and others red, actually a type of seaweed encrusted with limestone salts, which, after long disputes, naturalists have finally placed in the vegetable kingdom. But as one intellectual has remarked, "Here, perhaps, is the actual point where life rises humbly out of slumbering stone, but without breaking away from its crude starting point."

我们的蛇形玻璃管中的光学，照在这些天然的凹凸不平的拱形建筑物上面，照在像水晶烛台一般安排着的、火星点缀起来的下垂花板上，时时。发生魔术般迷人的力量，在珊瑚的丛枝中间，我又看到一样新奇古怪的珊瑚树，海虱形珊瑚，节肢蝶形珊瑚，又有些团聚成堆的珊瑚，有的是青，有的是红，真的像是铺在石灰地上的海藻，这些珊瑚堆，生物学家经过长久的讨论后，才明确地把它们列入植物中。但根据一位思想家所指出，“它：们或者就是生命刚从无知觉的沉睡中挣扎起来，又还没有完全脱离矿物的物性。

Finally, after two hours of walking, we reached a depth of about 300 meters, in other words, the lowermost limit at which coral can begin to form. But here it was no longer some isolated bush or a modest grove of low timber. It was an immense forest, huge mineral vegetation, enormous petrified trees linked by garlands of elegant hydras from the genus Plumularia, those tropical creepers of the sea, all decked out in shades and gleams. We passed freely under their lofty boughs, lost up in the shadows of the waves, while at our feet organ-pipe coral, stony coral, star coral, fungus coral, and sea anemone from the genus Caryophylia formed a carpet of flowers all strewn with dazzling gems.

走了两个钟头，我们到了t9百米深的地方，那地方就是珊瑚在上面开始形成的最后边界。但在这里的，不是孤立隔开的珊瑚丛，不是低树林的丛木，而是，广大的森林，巨大的矿物草木，粗大的石树，由那些海葛藤，漂亮好看的羽毛草花圈坏结合起来，受到各样色彩和反光的点缀，非常好看。它们的高大树枝深入海水陰暗中不见了，我们就在下面自由自在地走过，我们脚下有管状珊瑚，脑形贝，星状贝，菌状贝，石竹形珊瑚，形成一条花卉织成的地毯，现出光辉夺目的各种颜色。

9

What an indescribable sight! Oh, if only we could share our feelings! Why were we imprisoned behind these masks of metal and glass! Why were we forbidden to talk with each other! At least let us lead the lives of the fish that populate this liquid element, or better yet, the lives of amphibians, which can spend long hours either at sea or on shore, traveling through their double domain as their whims dictate!

实在是难以形容，难以描绘的景象！啊！为什么我们不能交换彼此所感到的印象！为什么我们关禁在这金属玻、璃的圆盔中！为什么我们被阻止，彼此不能说话！至少，希望我们生活能跟繁殖在海水中的鱼类一样，或更进一步，能跟那些两栖动物一样，它们可以在长期间内，随它们的意思，往来地上，游泳水中！

Meanwhile Captain Nemo had called a halt. My companions and I stopped walking, and turning around, I saw the crewmen form a semicircle around their leader. Looking with greater care, I observed that four of them were carrying on their shoulders an object that was oblong in shape.

可是尼摩船长站住了。我的同伴和我也停止前进，我回过头来，看见船员们作半圆形围绕着他们伪首领。我更细心地看，看到其中有四人肩上抬着一件长方形的东西。

At this locality we stood in the center of a huge clearing surrounded by the tall tree forms of this underwater forest. Our lamps cast a sort of brilliant twilight over the area, making inordinately long shadows on the seafloor. Past the boundaries of the clearing, the darkness deepened again, relieved only by little sparkles given off by the sharp crests of coral.

我们站的是一块宽大空地的中心地方，围绕四周的是海底森林的高大突出的枝权。我们的照明灯在这广阔的空间中射出模糊的光线，把地上陰影拉得特别长。空地的尽处，更是漆黑，只有珊瑚的尖刺留住了一些稀疏的亮光。

Ned Land and Conseil stood next to me. We stared, and it dawned on me that I was about to witness a strange scene. Observing the seafloor, I saw that it swelled at certain points from low bulges that were encrusted with limestone deposits and arranged with a symmetry that betrayed the hand of man.

尼德·兰和康塞尔站在我身边。我们留心看着，我心里想，我是要参加一个很离奇的场面了。我观察地面，看到好几处，由于石灰质的堆积，由于人手的规律性的安排，有微微隆起的瘤子，地面显得鼓起来的样子。

In the middle of the clearing, on a pedestal of roughly piled rocks, there stood a cross of coral, extending long arms you would have thought were made of petrified blood.

在空地中间，随便堆起来的石头基础上，竖起一副珊瑚的十字架，这十字架两边横出的两条长胳膊，简直使人要认为是石质的血制成的呢。