And if the idea of peril so much enhances the popular conceit of the soldier's profession; let me assure ye that many a veteran who has freely marched up to a battery,

和那些尸臭冲天的战场比起来，捕鲸船上滑溜溜的甲板不知要干净多少倍呢！那些操纵杀人武器的士兵们回到后方时，会受到人们的热烈欢迎，肉林酒池的招待会让他们昏昏然。

would quickly recoil at the apparition of the sperm whale's vast tail, fanning into eddies the air over his head.

不过，如果让他们去面对抹香鲸的尾巴，大概没有几个还能站住脚而不瘫在地上。

For what are the comprehensible terrors of man compared with the interlinked terrors and wonders of God!

人类头脑中的恐怖观念，无论如何也是不能与神秘的上帝奇观相比较的。

But, though the world scouts at us whale hunters, yet does it unwittingly pay us the profoundest homage;

当然，人们在意识到那些照耀我们这个星球的灯烛都是由鲸鱼油制成的时候，还是对我们这样的人心怀敬意的，因为我们的劳动为大家带来了光明。

yea, an all-abounding adoration! for almost all the tapers, lamps, and candles that burn round the globe, burn, as before so many shrines, to our glory!

那么就让我们来看看捕鲸者都是些什么人，他们的所作所为究竟如何吧。

But look at this matter in other lights; weigh it in all sorts of scales; see what we whalemen are, and have been.

不过，以下几个史实也许需要重申一下：

Why did the Dutch in De Witt's time have admirals of their whaling fleets? Why did Louis XVI. of France, at his own personal expense,

在荷兰的德·威特时代，捕鲸船上设有大将军衔的军官；

fit out whaling ships from Dunkirk, and politely invite to that town some score or two of families from our own island of Nantucket?

路易十六自己掏钱雇了许多南塔开特人到敦刻尔克购置了捕鲸船；