21天读英文《海鸥乔纳森》-Day 19

弗莱契飞行遇到困难 差点死去

Day 19

① Jonathan sighed. The price of being misunderstood, he thought. Theycall you devil or they call you god. “What do you think, Fletch? Are we aheadof our time?”

乔纳森叹了口气。他想。这就是被误解的代价。他们要么叫你魔鬼，要么称你上帝。“你是怎么想的，弗莱契？我们是跑在时代前面吗？”

 ②A long silence.“Well, this kind of flying has always been here to be learned by anybody whowanted to discover it; that’s got nothing to do with time. We’re ahead of the fashion,maybe, Ahead of the way that most gulls fly.”

沉默了半晌。“呃，这一类飞行不是什么稀奇事儿，谁想学都可以学会。它跟时间没有关系。也许我们的式样先进一些。比大多数海鸥飞行的方式先进一些。”

 ③“That’ssomething,” Jonathan said rolling to glide inverted for a while. “That’s nothalf as bad as being ahead of our time.”

“说得有点道理，”乔纳森说着，打了个滚地，倒着身子滑翔了一会儿，“这比说跑在时代前面好一些。”

·       ④ It happened just a week later. Fletcher was demonstrating /'dɛmən'stret/ the elements of high-speed flying to a class of new students. Hehad just pulled out of his dive from seven thousand feet, a long gray streakfiring a few inches above the beach, when a young bird on its first flightglided directly into his path, calling for its mother. With a tenth of a secondto avoid the youngster, Fletcher Lynd Seagull snapped hard to the left, atsomething over two hundred miles per hour, into a cliff of solid granite.

一周以后，弗莱契对一班新学员讲授高速飞行的原理时在作示范动作。他从七千英尺高空俯冲下来，立即改变飞行姿势，像白光一闪，贴着海滩离地几英寸掠过。这时，有一只初次学飞的小鸟飞着叫妈妈，正好挡住他的去路。要在十分之一秒内避开这只小鸟。弗莱契只好以每小时二百多英里的高速使劲儿向左急转，一下子接到一个花岗岩峭壁上。

⑤ It was, for him, as though the rock were a giant hard door intoanother world. A burst of fear and shock and black as he hit, and then he was adriftin a strange sky, forgetting, remembering, forgetting; afraid and sad andsorry, terribly sorry.

他觉得那岩石像是通往另外世界的一扇坚实大门。他撞上去的时候，心中爆发出一阵恐惧和惊慌，眼前一阵发黑，跟着他好像在一个十分奇怪的太空中飘浮，失去了记忆，恢复了记忆，恢复了又失去；他又是害怕，又是发愁，心里很难过，非常难过。

 ⑥The voice came tohim as it had in the first day that he had met Jonathan LivingstonSeagull,  “The trick Fletcher is that we are trying to overcome ourlimitations in order, patiently, We don’t tackle flying through rock until alittle later in the program.”

和他第一天遇到乔纳森·利文斯顿时一样，那个声音又对他说了。“弗莱契，诀窍是，我们要一步步克服我们的局限，要有次序，有耐心。在我们的课程表里，穿岩飞行这一课还要稍稍靠后一些哩。”

 “Jonathan!”.

“乔纳森！”。

⑦ “Also known as the Son of the Great Gull “ his instructor saiddryly,

“也叫作鸥神之子。”他的导师干巴巴地说。

⑧ “What are you doing here? The cliff! Haven’t I didn’t I.., die?”

“你在这儿干什么？这个悬崖！我是不是…已经……死了？”

⑨ “Oh, Fletch, come on. Think. If you are talking to me now, thenobviously you didn’t die, did you? What you did manage to do was to change yourlevel of consciousness rather abruptly. It’s your choice now. You can stay hereand learn on this level - which is quite a bit higher than the one you left, bythe way - or you can go back and keep working with the Flock. The Elders werehoping for some kind of disaster, but they’re startled that you obliged them sowell.”

“啊，弗莱契，来吧。想一想。你这会儿正跟我说着话，那你显然没有死，对不对！你刚才干的事儿，只不过把你的意识水平改变得太快了点儿。现在你选择吧。你可以留下来，在这一水平上学习，——附带说一声，比起你原来的水平要高得多了——要不，你也可以回去，继续做鸥群的工作。长者们一直希望发生什么祸事，但他们万万没想到你会帮他们这么个大忙。”

⑩ “I want to go back to the Flock, of course. I’ve barely begun withthe new group!”

“我当然要回到鸥群里去。那群新生，我才刚开始教他们呢！”