32 海湾暖流(2)
This was just one more of those insoluble problems that kept welling up in my mind!
这仍是那些不断出现在我的脑海里的悬而未解的问题之一。
Captain Nemo reentered his stateroom, and I saw no more of him for a good while. But how sad, despairing, and irresolute he must ha一ve felt, to judge from this ship whose soul he was, which reflected his every mood! The Nautilus no longer kept to a fixed heading. It drifted back and forth, riding with the wa一ves like a corpse. Itspropeller had been disentangled but was barely put to use. It was na一vigating at random. It couldn't tear itself away from the setting of this last struggle, from this sea that had devoured one of its own!
尼摩船长走进了房间，后来一段时间我再也见不到他了。但我能从这艘代表他的灵魂、接受他所有的感受的船判断出，他应该是很伤心、失望、徘徊！“鹦鹉螺号”船只不再保持明确的方向，它来回徘徊，就像一具一尸一体一样随波漂流。推进器上的章鱼爪被解一开了，但推进器几乎不能用了。船盲目地漂流着。它不能从这最后一场战斗的场所——从这片吞没了它的一名成员的海中——自拔一出来。
Ten days went by in this way. It was only on May 1 that the Nautilus openly resumed its northbound course, after raising the Bahamas at the mouth of Old Bahama Channel. We then went with the current of the sea's greatestriver, which has its own banks, fish, and temperature. I mean the Gulf Stream. It is indeed a river that runs independently through the middle of the Atlantic, its waters never mixing with the ocean's waters. It's a salty river, saltier than the sea surrounding it. Its a一verage depth is 3,000 feet, its a一verage width sixty miles. In certain localities its current moves at a speed of four kilometers per hour. The unchanging volume of its waters is greater than that of all the world's rivers combined.
就这样过去了10天。到了5月1日，在巴哈马运河出海口望到了留卡斯一群一岛后，“鹦鹉螺号”才果断取道向北。我们于是顺着海洋中最大的暖水流，向前行驶，这一海区有自己特有的海岸、鱼类和温度。我把它称为海湾暖流。那实际上是一条在大西洋中自一由奔流、不跟海水掺混的大河。海湾暖流，还是一条咸水河，它的河水比四周的海水咸，它的平均深度是3000英尺，平均宽度是60海里。在某些地方，暖流的流速是每小时4公里。它的水流量比世界上任何一条河流都稳定。