听力文本

When you sail for London you have to set your watch ahead each night when you go to bed, so that when you reach London your watch will be five hours ahead of the time you started with. You will then be just right with London time when you reach London. When you sail back you must put your watch back too. If you telephoned to London now at 10 o’clock in the morning and asked them what time it was they would say 3 P. M.

The clocks on board ship look the same as our clocks at home, but they strike differently. Our clocks, as you know, strike once for 1 o’clock, twice for 2 o’clock, and so on, but on board ship a clock strikes two bells for each hour from 1 o’clock to 4 o’clock, when it strikes eight times. It strikes one bell more for the in-between halves of the hour. Then it starts all over again—one stroke at 4:30, two at 5, and so on—never more than eight strokes altogether.

“A watch” on board ship doesn’t mean only a watch that you put in your pocket. It means something else too. A ship doesn’t stop going at night. A ship must keep on going, night as well as day, so the men, the officers and crew who run the ship, take turns at running the ship, as they can’t stay awake all the time, and their turns are called “watches,” because they must be wide awake and watching when it is their “watch.” Some men are running the engines, some are steering the ship, and some are just watching out to see that they do not run into other ships while the others are sleeping.

How can the captain, when he leaves New York, know the way to go to London, when all the ocean in front of him as far as he can see on every side is just broad flat water or rolling waves or thick fog, with no sign-posts to guide him?

Right in front of the steering-wheel is a box in which is a little pointer that, no matter how much the ship rises and falls, or twists and turns, or rears and plunges, always points one way. The box with its pointer is called a compass. You know what a magnet is—a little thing like a small horseshoe that pulls needles and nails to it. Well, near the North Pole there is a spot on the World like a magnet and this spot pulls all the compasses on the World toward it. So that spot on the World that pulls all the compasses toward it is called the Magnet-ic pole, though there is no pole. This Magnetic pole is where the stem would be if the World were an orange or an apple, though there is no stem.

参考译文

如果你乘船去伦敦，每天晚上睡觉前你必须把手表调快一点，这样当你到达伦敦时，你的手表就会比出发时的时间快了五个小时，这就正好和伦敦的时间一致了。当你坐船返航时，你也必须把手表调回来。如果你在上午10点打电话到伦敦去问他们那里是几点，他们会说是下午3点。

船上的时钟和我们家里的时钟看起来是一样的，但敲钟报时的方式却不一样。你知道，我们家里的钟1点钟敲一次，2点钟敲两次，以此类推，最多敲十二次，但船上的钟从1点到4点每个小时的时间敲两次，也就是1点敲两次，2点敲四次，以此类推，到了4点敲八次。介于中间的半点还要敲一次。过了4点又从头开始—4点半敲一次，5点敲两次，6点敲四次，以此类推，每次报时永远不会超过八次。

船上的“表”并不只表示可以放进口袋里的手表。它还有其他的意思。轮船在夜晚并不停航。轮船必须不分昼夜地持续航行，因此船上的人，全船工作人员轮流开船，因为他们不可能始终保持清醒，他们轮流上岗，就叫“值班”，因为值班时，他们不能有丝毫睡意，必须时刻留意。有人操纵发动机，有人掌舵，还有人就是在别人睡觉时专门密切观察四周以确保不会撞到其他船只。

从纽约前往伦敦的航海途中，前方是一望无际的大海，有时风平浪静，有时波涛滚滚，有时大雾弥漫，没有任何路标指引，船长是如何确定方向（way）的呢？

就在舵轮的前面有一个盒子，里面有一根小指针，无论轮船如何起伏震荡，盘旋摇晃，还是前后颠簸，指针始终指着一个方向。这个有着小指针的盒子叫做罗盘。你知道磁铁是什么—一个像马蹄铁的小东西，可以把针和钉子吸在上面。那么，在北极附近世界上有一个地点就像磁铁一样，它使得世界上所有的罗盘都指向它的方向。因此世界上那个使所有罗盘都指向它的方向的地点叫做磁极，尽管那里并没有一个马蹄形的磁铁。如果世界是个橙子或者苹果的话，这个磁极就是在橙子柄或者苹果柄的位置，尽管上面没有任何柄。