But what most puzzled and confounded you was a long, limber, portentous, black mass of something hovering in the centre of the picture over three blue, dim, perpendicular lines floating in a nameless yeast.

但是最使人大惑不解的是:在那张画的中央,有一团又长又黑又软的.其兆不祥的什么东西,翱翔在三根暗蓝色的直线上,而这三根直线又在一种形容不出的气泡似的东西中晃荡着。

A boggy, soggy, squitchy picture truly, enough to drive a nervous man distracted.

这张泥泞.濡湿.又摆动不息的图画,真够教一个胆小鬼精神错乱。

Yet was there a sort of indefinite, half-attained, unimaginable sublimity about it that fairly froze you to it, till you involuntarily took an oath with yourself to find out what that marvellous painting meant.

然而,它可又有一种无限的.半青半黄的,难以想象的崇高性,足以使人对它依依不舍,直教你不由自主地立起誓来:非把这幅不可思议的油画的含义给找出来不可。

Ever and anon a bright, but, alas, deceptive idea would dart you through.

虽然不时会冒出一种似乎豁然开朗,然而可惜是靠不住的想象来

It's the Black Sea in a midnight gale.

是午夜风暴的黑海

It's the unnatural combat of the four primal elements.It's a blasted heath.

是四行的阋墙之争...

It's a Hyperborean winter scene.It's the breaking-up of the icebound stream of Time.

是一种枯萎的石南灌木...是一种北方乐土的冬景....是时代之冰封溪流在解冻。

But at last all these fancies yielded to that one portentous something in the picture's midst.

可是,这种种想象最终都在这张图画中间那种可怖的什么东西上碰了壁。

That once found out, and all the rest were plain.

要是一旦发现那东西,其余就都了如指掌。

But stop; does it not bear a faint resemblance to a gigantic fish? even the great leviathan himself?

不过,且慢,它不是隐约有点象一尾大鱼么?甚至就是那种大海兽么?