From the chocks it hangs in a slight festoon over the bows, and is then passed inside the boat again; and some ten or twenty fathoms (called box-line) being coiled upon the box in the bows, it continues its way to the gunwale still a little further aft, and is then attached to the short-warp-- the rope which is immediately connected with the harpoon; but previous to that connexion, the short-warp goes through sundry mystifications too tedious to detail.
接着，又从木楔那里，把它兜在艇头的小花饰上，然后又拉回艇里来；在艇头的索桶上绕它六十或者一百二十英尺，再把它继续绕过艇舷，直拉到艇尾后头，这才接在那根短绞船索上——也就是同标枪的绳子紧接在一起；不过，把它接上去之先，还得在那根短绞船索上做完各式各样叫人看得眼花缭乱的动作，这些动作细叙起来，未免过于噜苏。
Thus the whale-line folds the whole boat in its complicated coils, twisting and writhing around it in almost every direction. All the oarsmen are involved in its perilous contortions; so that to the timid eye of the landsman, they seem as Indian jugglers, with the deadliest snakes sportively festooning their limbs. Nor can any son of mortal woman, for the first time, seat himself amid those hempen intricacies, and while straining his utmost at the oar, bethink him that at any unknown instant the harpoon may be darted, and all these horrible contortions be put in play like ringed lightnings; he cannot be thus circumstanced without a shudder that makes the very marrow in his bones to quiver in him like a shaken jelly.
捕鲸索就这样错综复杂地把整只小艇都绕住了，几乎打四面八方把这只小艇给纠缠住。所有的桨手都被卷在它这种危险的迷阵里，所以，在胆怯的陆地人看来，这些桨手就象是一群印第安的耍戏法者，让那些最可怕的毒蛇巨蟒兴致勃勃地绕着他们的四肢。任何一个是爹娘养出来的人，初次置身在这种大麻绳的天罗地网里，总是一边在死劲扳桨，一边在担心那支不知何时就要抛出去的标枪，在担心所有这些可怖的罗网，不知什么时候会象雷霹一般发作起来。他在这种情况下，当然免不了要抖得骨子里也象冻肉一般在打颤。