"Aye, aye, I thought as much," soliloquized Stubb, when the boats diverged, "as soon as I clapt eye on 'em, I thought so. Aye, and that's what he went into the after hold for, so often, as Dough-Boy long suspected. They were hidden down there. The White Whale's at the bottom of it. Well, well, so be it! Can't be helped! All right! Give way men! It ain't the White Whale to-day! Give way!"
“是呀，是呀，我也是这么个想法，”斯塔布在两只小艇分开的时候，这样独白道，“我眼睛一瞟到他们，心里就这么想。是呀，所以他才老要跑到舱里去呀，汤团老早就怀疑了。他们就躲在那下面。白鲸也就在那底下。唔，唔，很好，很好！没法啦！不错，用劲划呀，大家，今天碰到的可不是白鲸呀，用劲划呀！”
Now the advent of these outlandish strangers at such a critical instant as the lowering of the boats from the deck, this had not unreasonably awakened a sort of superstitious amazement in some of the ship's company; but Archy's fancied discovery having some time previous got abroad among them, though indeed not credited then, this had in some small measure prepared them for the event. It took off the extreme edge of their wonder; and so what with all this and Stubb's confident way of accounting for their appearance, they were for the time freed from superstitious surmisings; though the affair still left abundant room for all manner of wild conjectures as to dark Ahab's precise agency in the matter from the beginning. For me, I silently recalled the mysterious shadows I had seen creeping on board the Pequod during the dim Nantucket dawn, as well as the enigmatical hintings of the unaccountable Elijah.
且说正当大家在这样紧要关头，把小艇从甲板上放下去的时候，却教大家先看到这些奇怪的陌生人，这就不免在一些船员中引起一种迷信和惊愕；不过，好在阿基那种出自想象的发现，已是早在他们中间传播开了，当时虽然大家都不很相信，可是至少却使他们对这事情有所准备了。这就使他们的惊奇大打了折扣；因此，再加上斯塔布在说到他们的出现时那副沉着的态度，就使大家暂时不去做迷信的揣测了，虽然大家对于隐晦的亚哈这种真正的意图，还是打一开始就大有胡猜乱测的余地。至于我呢，却不禁悄悄地想起我在南塔开特天蒙蒙亮时分，看到一些偷偷地爬上“裴廓德号”的神秘的影子，想起那个不可理解的以利亚那番谜一般的话语来了。
Meantime, Ahab, out of hearing of his officers, having sided the furthest to windward, was still ranging ahead of the other boats; a circumstance bespeaking how potent a crew was pulling him. Those tiger yellow creatures of his seemed all steel and whalebone; like five trip-hammers they rose and fell with regular strokes of strength, which periodically started the boat along the water like a horizontal burst boiler out of a Mississippi steamer.
这时，亚哈听不到他几个头目的谈话，正朝上风驶得很远，依然划在其它几只小艇前头。这就说明划他的那些水手多有劲道。他那些褐色的奴才似乎全都是铜筋铁骨；他们随着有规律的划桨而一俯一仰的姿势，就象五把快锤子似的，每一扳桨而使得小艇在水面一冲，就象一只平式大锅炉打密西西比河汽轮中跳出来那样。
