In his youth Daggoo had voluntarily shipped on board of a whaler, lying in a lonely bay on his native coast. And never having been anywhere in the world but in Africa, Nantucket, and the pagan harbors most frequented by the whalemen; and having now led for many years the bold life of the fishery in the ships of owners uncommonly heedful of what manner of men they shipped; Daggoo retained all his barbaric virtues, and erect as a giraffe, moved about the decks in all the pomp of six feet five in his socks.
在他少年的时候,大个儿就自动跑上那只停泊在他故乡的荒凉的港湾上的捕鲸船。于是,他除了到过非洲。南塔开特以及捕鲸者最常到的那些异教的港口外,从来没有到过别的什么地方;现在大个儿虽然已在那些非常注意他们的船员是些什么人的船东的船上,过了多年勇猛的捕鱼生活;他依然保持着他所有的野性的特点,象只长颈鹿般昂着头,足足六英尺五英寸的雄姿,在甲板上走来走去。
There was a corporeal humility in looking up at him; and a white man standing before him seemed a white flag come to beg truce of a fortress. Curious to tell, this imperial negro, Ahasuerus Daggoo, was the Squire of little Flask, who looked like a chess-man beside him. As for the residue of the Pequod's company, be it said, that at the present day not one in two of the many thousand men before the mast employed in the American whale fishery, are Americans born, though pretty nearly all the officers are.
谁一抬头向他一望,都不免感到相形见绌;一个白种人站到他面前去,仿佛就是一面去向要塞求降的白旗。说来也真奇怪,这个合乎帝王身份的黑人,这个亚哈随鲁式的大个儿,竟就是小小的弗拉斯克的随从,而他站在大个儿的旁边,可活象只棋子。至于"裴廓德号"上的其余一些人物,请记住,在现代的美国捕鲸业中,在那些被雇用的水手中,是美国人的还不上一半呢,而且这不上一半的人又差不多都是船上的头目。
Herein it is the same with the American whale fishery as with the American army and military and merchant navies, and the engineering forces employed in the construction of the American Canals and Railroads. The same, I say, because in all these cases the native American literally provides the brains, the rest of the world as generously supplying the muscles. No small number of these whaling seamen belong to the Azores, where the outward bound Nantucket whalers frequently touch to augment their crews from the hardy peasants of those rocky shores.
因此,美国捕鲸业的情形,就跟美国海陆军队和商船,以及受雇于建造美国大运河和铁路的那些工程人员的情况一样。我所以说是一样,是因为在所有这些场合上,美国人只是提供智慧,至于力气呢,则由世界其它各地去慷慨输捐了。在这些捕鲸的水手中,有不少是来自亚速尔群岛的,那里是许多外航的南塔开特捕鲸船经常驶去,把那些生长在岩石的岸边的能吃苦耐劳的农民找来补充他们的水手的地方。