Chapter 7

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一天天过去，小美人鱼愈发地想念王子，以及渴望人类世界。老祖母告诉她：只有得到人间的挚爱，才能获得一个不朽的灵魂。

Then the little mermaid sighed, and looked sorrowfully at her fish’s tail.

“Let us be happy,” said the old lady, “and dart and spring about during the three hundred years that we have to live, which is really quite long enough; after that we can rest ourselves all the better. This evening we are going to have a court ball.”

It is one of those splendid sights which we can never see on earth. The walls and the ceiling of the large ball-room were of thick, but transparent crystal.

May hundreds of colossal shells（巨型贝壳）, some of a deep red, others of a grass green, stood on each side in rows, with blue fire in them, which lighted up the whole saloon（舞厅）, and shone through the walls, so that the sea was also illuminated.

Innumerable fishes, great and small, swam past the crystal walls; on some of them the scales glowed with a purple brilliancy, and on others they shone like silver and gold.

Through the halls flowed a broad stream, and in it danced the mermen and the mermaids to the music of their own sweet singing.

No one on earth has such a lovely voice as theirs. The little mermaid sang more sweetly than them all.

The whole court applauded her with hands and tails; and for a moment her heart felt quite gay, for she knew she had the loveliest voice of any on earth or in the sea.

But she soon thought again of the world above her, for she could not forget the charming prince, nor her sorrow that she had not an immortal soul like his;

therefore, she crept away silently out of her father’s palace, and while everything within was gladness and song, she sat in her own little garden sorrowful and alone.

Then she heard the bugle sounding（号角声） through the water, and thought—“He is certainly sailing above, he on whom my wishes depend, and in whose hands I should like to place the happiness of my life.

I will venture all for him, and to win an immortal soul, while my sisters are dancing in my father’s palace, I will go to the sea witch, of whom I have always been so much afraid, but she can give me counsel and help.”

And then the little mermaid went out from her garden, and took the road to the foaming whirlpools, behind which the sorceress（女巫） lived.

She had never been that way before: neither flowers nor grass grew there;

nothing but bare, gray, sandy ground stretched out to the whirlpool, where the water, like foaming mill-wheels, whirled round everything that it seized, and cast it into the fathomless（深不可测的） deep.

Through the midst of these crushing whirlpools the little mermaid was obliged to pass, to reach the dominions of the sea witch; and also for a long distance the only road lay right across a quantity of warm, bubbling mire, called by the witch her turf moor（沼泽地）.

Beyond this stood her house, in the centre of a strange forest, in which all the trees and flowers were polyp（珊瑚虫）, half animals and half plants; they looked like serpents with a hundred heads growing out of the ground.

The branches were long slimy arms, with fingers like flexible worms, moving limb after limb from the root to the top.

All that could be reached in the sea they seized upon, and held fast, so that it never escaped from their clutches（控制）.

The little mermaid was so alarmed at what she saw, that she stood still, and her heart beat with fear, and she was very nearly turning back; but she thought of the prince, and of the human soul for which she longed, and her courage returned.

She fastened her long flowing hair round her head, so that the polypi might not seize hold of it.

She laid her hands together across her bosom, and then she darted forward as a fish shoots through the water, between the supple（柔软的） arms and fingers of the ugly polyp, which were stretched out on each side of her.

She saw that each held in its grasp something it had seized with its numerous little arms, as if they were iron bands.

The white skeletons of human beings who had perished at sea, and had sunk down into the deep waters, skeletons of land animals, oars（桨）, rudders（舵）, and chests of ships were lying tightly grasped by their clinging arms;

even a little mermaid, whom they had caught and strangled（勒死）; and this seemed the most shocking of all to the little princess.

She now came to a space of marshy ground in the wood, where large, fat water-snakes were rolling in the mire, and showing their ugly, drab-colored（土褐色的） bodies.

In the midst of this spot stood a house, built with the bones of shipwrecked human beings.

There sat the sea witch, allowing a toad（癞蛤蟆） to eat from her mouth, just as people sometimes feed a canary（金丝雀） with a piece of sugar.

She called the ugly water-snakes her little chickens, and allowed them to crawl(爬) all over her bosom.

“I know what you want,” said the sea witch; “it is very stupid of you, but you shall have your way, and it will bring you to sorrow, my pretty princess.

You want to get rid of your fish’s tail, and to have two supports instead of it, like human beings on earth, so that the young prince may fall in love with you, and that you may have an immortal soul.”

And then the witch laughed so loud and disgustingly, that the toad and the snakes fell to the ground, and lay there wriggling about（爬来爬去）.

“You are but just in time,” said the witch; “for after sunrise tomorrow I should not be able to help you till the end of another year.

I will prepare a draught（药剂） for you, with which you must swim to land tomorrow before sunrise, and sit down on the shore and drink it.

Your tail will then disappear, and shrink up into what mankind calls legs, and you will feel great pain, as if a sword were passing through you.

But all who see you will say that you are the prettiest little human being they ever saw.

You will still have the same floating gracefulness of movement, and no dancer will ever tread so lightly; but at every step you take it will feel as if you were treading upon sharp knives, and that the blood must flow.

If you will bear all this, I will help you.” 

（1104 words）

今日短语

1. spring about跳跃

2. light up点亮，照亮

3. creep away偷偷离开

4. be obliged to必须，不得不

5. turn back往回走

6. sink down 下沉；降低

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