It was an arduous climb over sharp lava and pumice stones in the midst of air often reeking with sulfurous fumes from the smoke holes.
我們是在充滿噴火口所發(fā)出的流磺氣體的大氣中,沿著尖利的火石和浮石的石層,作艱苦的攀登。
For a man out of practice at treading land, the captain scaled the steepest slopes with a supple agility I couldn't equal, and which would have been envied by hunters of Pyrenees mountain goats.
船長是一個已經(jīng)不慣踩踏陸地的人,走上這些最陡峭的斜坡,輕便靈活,不單我不能比,就是追趕羚羊的獵人心中也要欣羨。
It took us two hours to reach the summit of this half-crystal, half-basalt peak.
我們費了兩個鐘頭,才到達這座云斑巖、玄武巖摻雜的尖峰上面。
From there our eyes scanned a vast sea, which scrawled its boundary line firmly against the background of the northern sky.
從上面看,我們的眼光望見一片廣闊的海,海在北面天空中清楚現(xiàn)出它的最后界線來。
At our feet: dazzling tracts of white. Over our heads: a pale azure, clear of mists.
我們腳下,是眩眼的光輝的白冰常我們頭上,是從云霧中現(xiàn)出來的淡白的蔚藍色。
North of us: the sun's disk, like a ball of fire already cut into by the edge of the horizon.
在北方,太陽的輪盤像一只火球一樣,已經(jīng)被水平線的鋒刃削開一角了。
From the heart of the waters: jets of liquid rising like hundreds of magnificent bouquets.
海水中間,有美麗好看的噴水花束成千成百地放出來。
Far off, like a sleeping cetacean: the Nautilus. Behind us to the south and east: an immense shore, a chaotic heap of rocks and ice whose limits we couldn't see.
遠遠的所在,是那諾第留斯號,像酣睡著的鯨科動物一樣。在我們后面,東方和南方,有一片廣闊的陸地,是望不見邊際的巖石和冰群的凌亂層臺。
Arriving at the summit of this peak, Captain Nemo carefully determined its elevation by means of his barometer, since he had to take this factor into account in his noon sights.
尼摩船長走到峰頂上,拿晴雨表小心測量尖峰的高度,因為在他的觀察中,峰高也要估計在內(nèi)。
At 11:45 the sun, by then seen only by refraction, looked like a golden disk, dispersing its last rays over this deserted continent and down to these seas not yet plowed by the ships of man.
正午差一刻,單從折光作用看,太陽像金盤一樣現(xiàn)出,它對這從沒有人跡來過的海面,把它的最后光芒散在荒涼無人的大陸上。
Captain Nemo had brought a spyglass with a reticular eyepiece, which corrected the sun's refraction by means of a mirror, and he used it to observe the orb sinking little by little along a very extended diagonal that reached below the horizon.
尼摩船長戴上網(wǎng)形線望遠鏡,這鏡利用一個鏡面,可以改正折光作用,他觀察那沿著一條拖拉得很長的對角線,漸漸沉入水平線下的太陽。