第一百零七章 木匠
Seat thyself sultanically among the moons of Saturn, and take high abstracted man alone; and he seems a wonder, a grandeur, and a woe. But from the same point, take mankind in mass, and for the most part, they seem a mob of unnecessary duplicates, both contemporary and hereditary. But most humble though he was, and far from furnishing an example of the high, humane abstraction; the Pequod's carpenter was no duplicate; hence, he now comes in person on this stage.
如果你象個蘇丹那樣坐在土星的衛(wèi)星群中,單獨挑出一個非常入神的人來,那個人似乎是個神明,是個偉大的人物,是個苦惱人。但是,如果從同一個角度上,你抓起成群的人來,那些人,不論古今人物,就大多是一群多余的復(fù)制品了。"裴廓德號"這個木匠,雖然是個最卑微的人,也遠不是個非常高雅、出類拔萃的典范,可是,他并不是個復(fù)制品。他現(xiàn)在親自登場了。
Like all sea-going ship carpenters, and more especially those belonging to whaling vessels, he was, to a certain off-hand, practical extent, alike experienced in numerous trades and callings collateral to his own; the carpenter's pursuit being the ancient and outbranching trunk of all those numerous handicrafts which more or less have to do with wood as an auxiliary material. But, besides the application to him of the generic remark above, this carpenter of the Pequod was singularly efficient in those thousand nameless mechanical emergencies continually recurring in a large ship, upon a three or four years' voyage, in uncivilized and far-distant seas.
如同一切海船的木匠,尤其是如同一般捕鯨船的木匠一樣,在迅速與有實際經(jīng)驗的程度上,他除了自己的本行,還兼具各行各業(yè)的經(jīng)驗。木匠這個行當(dāng)就是集古往今來、各式有關(guān)手藝的大成,而且多少都同作為輔助品的木材發(fā)生關(guān)系。"裴廓德號"這位木匠除了做上面提到的一般事情以外,還格外善于應(yīng)付一艘航程三四年,歷遍許多蠻荒、遼遠的海洋的大船不斷發(fā)生的。