葬禮

“Haul in the chains! Let the carcase go astern!”

「收回鐵鍊！把屍體放到船尾去！」

The vast tackles have now done their duty. The peeled white body of the beheaded whale flashes like a marble sepulchre... the water round it torn and splashed by the insatiate sharks, and the air above vexed with rapacious flights of screaming fowls, whose beaks are like so many insulting poniards in the whale. ...that great mass of death floats on and on, till lost in infinite perspectives.

那套巨大的滑車組此刻已盡了它們的職責。剝了皮、砍了頭的白色鯨屍，像一座大理石的墓穴（sepulchre）般閃著光；顏色雖變了，體積卻未見明顯減少，依舊龐大。它緩緩地越漂越遠，四周的水被貪得無厭的（insatiate）鯊魚撕咬翻濺，上方的空氣被尖叫海鳥貪婪的（rapacious）飛掠攪亂——那些鳥喙，像無數插在鯨身上、帶著侮辱意味的短劍（poniards）。這龐大、白色、無頭的幽靈越漂越遠，它每漂一桿（rod），彷彿成方丈（roods）的鯊魚、成立方丈的飛鳥，就加劇那殺戮的喧囂（din）。從那幾乎靜止的船上，那可怖的景象一連被看了好幾個小時。在無雲而溫和的蔚藍天空下，在宜人海面的美麗容顏上，被歡快的微風吹送著，那一大團死亡漂啊、漂啊，直到消失在無盡的遠景裡。

There’s a most doleful and most mocking funeral! The sea-vultures all in pious mourning, the air-sharks all punctiliously in black or speckled. In life but few of them would have helped the whale, I ween, if peradventure he had needed it; but upon the banquet of his funeral they most piously do pounce. Oh, horrible vultureism of earth! from which not the mightiest whale is free.

這真是一場最哀慟（doleful）又最嘲弄的葬禮！海中的禿鷲全都虔誠地服喪，空中的鯊（海鳥）全都一絲不苟地（punctiliously）穿著黑色或斑點的喪服。我想（I ween），牠們生前，倘若（peradventure）鯨萬一有難、需要幫助，沒幾隻會去幫牠；可是一到牠葬禮的宴席上，牠們卻最虔誠地撲（pounce）了上來。哦，大地那可怖的禿鷲習性（vultureism）啊！連最強大的鯨也逃不過它。

Nor is this the end. Desecrated as the body is, a vengeful ghost survives and hovers over it to scare. ...straightway the whale’s unharming corpse, with trembling fingers is set down in the log—shoals, rocks, and breakers hereabouts: beware! And for years afterwards, perhaps, ships shun the place; leaping over it as silly sheep leap over a vacuum, because their leader originally leaped there when a stick was held. There’s your law of precedents; there’s your utility of traditions; there’s the story of your obstinate survival of old beliefs never bottomed on the earth, and now not even hovering in the air! There’s orthodoxy!

而且這還沒完。儘管屍體已被褻瀆（Desecrated），仍有一個復仇的（vengeful）鬼魂存留、盤旋其上、嚇唬人。遠處某艘膽小的軍艦、或迷糊的探險船望見了它——距離雖模糊了那成群的鳥，卻仍顯出那白色團塊在陽光下漂浮、白色浪花高高地拍打著它；於是這具無害的鯨屍，立刻被人用顫抖的手指記進航海日誌：「此處有淺灘（shoals）、礁石、碎浪（breakers）：當心！」此後或許有好幾年，船隻都避開（shun）這地方；像愚蠢的羊跳過一個「空無（vacuum）」一樣跳過它——只因牠們的領頭羊當初在有人舉著棍子時、在那兒跳過。這就是你們的判例法（law of precedents）；這就是你們傳統的用處；這就是你們那毫無大地根基、如今連在空中盤旋都談不上的舊信仰之「頑固存活（obstinate survival）」的故事——這就是正統（orthodoxy）！

Thus, while in life the great whale’s body may have been a real terror to his foes, in his death his ghost becomes a powerless panic to a world.

於是，大鯨的身體活著時或許是牠敵人真實的恐怖，死後，牠的鬼魂卻成了一個「對全世界毫無實質、卻引發恐慌」的東西。

Are you a believer in ghosts, my friend? There are other ghosts than the Cock-Lane one, and far deeper men than Doctor Johnson who believe in them.

我的朋友，你是個信鬼的人嗎？除了那「公雞巷的鬼（Cock-Lane ghost）」之外，還有別的鬼；而且有比約翰生博士（Doctor Johnson）深刻得多的人，是相信它們的。