时间:2019-01-23 作者:英语课 分类:英文短篇小说


英语课
In the high lands, people spend words as if they were golden coins. But the custom is strong there: strangers who ask for hospitality must be granted it, though you have a blood feud 1 against them and their clan 2 or kind.
The woman—little more than a girl she was, while her husband’s beard was grey and white, so I wondered if she was his daughter for a moment, but no: there was but one bed, scarcely big enough for two—the woman went outside, into the sheep pen that adjoined the house, and returned with oatcakes and a dried ham she must have hidden there, which she sliced thin, and placed on a wooden trencher before the man.
Calum poured the man whisky, and said, “We seek the Misty 3 Isle 4. Do you know if it is there?”
The man looked at us. The winds are bitter in the high lands, and they would whip the words from a man’s lips. He pursed his mouth, then he said, “Aye. I saw it from the peak this morning. It’s there. I cannot say if it will be there tomorrow.”
We slept on the hard-earth floor of that cottage. The fire went out, and there was no warmth from the hearth 5. The man and his woman slept in their bed, behind the curtain. He had his way with her, beneath the sheepskin that covered that bed, and before he did that, he beat her for feeding us and for letting us in. I heard them, and could not stop hearing them, and sleep was hard in the finding that night.
I have slept in the homes of the poor, and I have slept in palaces, and I have slept beneath the stars, and would have told you before that night that all places were one to me. But I woke before first light, convinced we had to be gone from that place, but not knowing why, and I woke Calum by putting a finger to his lips, and silently we left that croft on the mountainside without saying our farewells, and I have never been more pleased to be gone from anywhere.
We were a mile from the place when I said, “The island. You asked if it would be there. Surely, an island is there, or it is not there.”
Calum hesitated. He seemed to be weighing his words, and then he said, “The Misty Isle is not as other places. And the mist that surrounds it is not like other mists.”
We walked down a path worn by hundreds of years of sheep and deer and few enough men.
He said, “They also call it the Winged Isle. Some say it is because the island, if seen from above, would look like butterfly wings. And I do not know the truth of it.” Then, “ ‘And what is truth?’ said jesting Pilate.”
It is harder coming down than it is going up.
I thought about it. “Sometimes I think that truth is a place. In my mind, it is like a city: there can be a hundred roads, a thousand paths, that will all take you, eventually, to the same place. It does not matter where you come from. If you walk toward the truth, you will reach it, whatever path you take.”
Calum MacInnes looked down at me and said nothing. Then, “You are wrong. The truth is a cave in the black mountains. There is one way there, and one only, and that way is treacherous 6 and hard, and if you choose the wrong path you will die alone, on the mountainside.”
We crested 7 the ridge 8, and we looked down to the coast. I could see villages below, beside the water. And I could see high black mountains before me, on the other side of the sea, coming out of the mist.
Calum said, “There’s your cave. In those mountains.”
The bones of the earth I thought, seeing them. And then I became uncomfortable, thinking of bones, and to distract myself, I said, “And how many times is it you have been there?”
“Only once.” He hesitated. “I searched for it all my sixteenth year, for I had heard the legends, and I believed if I sought I should find. I was seventeen when I reached it, and came back with all the gold coins I could carry.”
“And were you not frightened of the curse?”
“When I was young, I was afraid of nothing.”
“What did you do with your gold?”
“A portion I buried and I alone know where. The rest I used as brideprice for the woman I loved, and I built a fine house with it.”
He stopped as if he had already said too much.
There was no ferryman at the jetty. Only a small boat, hardly big enough for three full-sized men, tied to a tree trunk on the shore, twisted and half dead, and a bell beside it.
I sounded the bell, and soon enough a fat man came down the shore. He said to Calum, “It will cost you a shilling for the ferry, and your boy, three pennies.”
I stood tall. I am not as big as other men are, but I have as much pride as any of them. “I am also a man,” I said. “I’ll pay your shilling.”
The ferryman looked me up and down, then he scratched his beard. “I beg your pardon. My eyes are not what they once were. I shall take you to the island.”
I handed him a shilling. He weighed it in his hand, “That’s ninepence you did not cheat me out of. Nine pennies are a lot of money in this dark age.” The water was the colour of slate 9, although the sky was blue, and whitecaps chased one another across the water’s surface. He untied 10 the boat and hauled it, rattling 11, down the shingle 12 to the water. We waded 13 out into the cold water, and clambered inside.
The splash of oars 14 on seawater, and the boat propelled forward in easy movements. I sat closest to the ferryman. I said, “Ninepence. It is good wages. But I have heard of a cave in the mountains on the Misty Isle, filled with gold coins, the treasure of the ancients.”
He shook his head dismissively.
Calum was staring at me, lips pressed together so hard they were white. I ignored him and asked the man again, “A cave filled with golden coins, a gift from the Norsemen or the Southerners or from those who they say were here long before any of us: those who fled into the West as the people came.”
“Heard of it,” said the ferryman. “Heard also of the curse of it. I reckon that the one can take care of the other.” He spat 15 into the sea. Then he said, “You’re an honest man, dwarf 16. I see it in your face. Do not seek this cave. No good can come of it.”
“I am sure you are right,” I told him, without guile 17.
“I am certain I am,” he said. “For not every day is it that I take a reaver and a little dwarfy man to the Misty Isle.” Then he said, “In this part of the world, it is not considered lucky to talk about those who went to the West.”
We rode the rest of the boat journey in silence, though the sea became choppier, and the waves splashed into the side of the boat, such that I held on with both hands for fear of being swept away.
And after what seemed like half a lifetime the boat was tied to a long jetty of black stones. We walked the jetty as the waves crashed around us, the salt spray kissing our faces. There was a humpbacked man at the landing selling oatcakes and plums dried until they were almost stones. I gave him a penny and filled my jerkin pockets with them.
We walked on into the Misty Isle.
I am old now, or at least, I am no longer young, and everything I see reminds me of something else I’ve seen, such that I see nothing for the first time. A bonny girl, her hair fiery 18 red, reminds me only of another hundred such lasses, and their mothers, and what they were as they grew, and what they looked like when they died. It is the curse of age, that all things are reflections of other things.
I say that, but my time on the Misty Isle, that is also called, by the wise, the Winged Isle, reminds me of nothing but itself.
It is a day from that jetty until you reach the black mountains.
Calum MacInnes looked at me, half his size or less, and he set off at a loping stride, as if challenging me to keep up. His legs propelled him across the ground, which was wet, and all ferns and heather.
Above us, low clouds were scudding 19, grey and white and black, hiding each other and revealing and hiding again.
I let him get ahead of me, let him press on into the rain, until he was swallowed by the wet, grey haze 20. Then, and only then, I ran.
This is one of the secret things of me, the things I have not revealed to any person, save to Morag, my wife, and Johnnie and James, my sons, and Flora 21, my daughter (may the Shadows rest her poor soul): I can run, and I can run well, and, if I need to I can run faster and longer and more sure-footedly than any full-sized man; and it was like this that I ran then, through the mist and the rain, taking to the high ground and the blackrock ridges 22, yet keeping below the skyline.
He was ahead of me, but I spied him soon, and I ran on and I ran past him, on the high ground with the brow of the hill between us. Below us was a stream. I can run for days without stopping. That is the first of my three secrets, and one secret I have revealed to no man.
We had discussed already where we would camp that first night on the Misty Isle, and Calum had told me that we would spend the night beneath the rock that is called Man and Dog, for it is said that it looks like an old man with his dog by his side, and I reached it late in the afternoon. There was a shelter beneath the rock, which was protected and dry, and some of those who had been before us had left firewood behind, sticks and twigs 23 and branches. I made a fire and dried myself in front of it and took the chill from my bones. The woodsmoke blew out across the heather.
It was dark when Calum loped into the shelter and looked at me as if he had not expected to see me that side of midnight. I said, “What took you so long, Calum MacInnes?”
He said nothing, only stared at me. I said, “There is trout 24, boiled in mountain water, and a fire to warm your bones.”
He nodded. We ate the trout, drank whisky to warm ourselves. There was a mound 25 of heather and of ferns, dried and brown, piled high in the rear of the shelter, and we slept upon that, wrapped tight in our damp cloaks.
I woke in the night. There was cold steel against my throat—the flat of the blade, not the edge. I said, “And why would you ever kill me in the night, Calum MacInnes? For our way is long, and our journey is not yet over.”
He said, “I do not trust you, dwarf.”
“It is not me you must trust,” I told him, “but those that I serve. And if you left with me but return without me, there are those who will know the name of Calum MacInnes, and cause it to be spoken in the shadows.”
The cold blade remained at my throat. He said, “How did you get ahead of me?”
“And here was I, repaying ill with good, for I made you food and a fire. I am a hard man to lose, Calum MacInnes, and it ill becomes a guide to do as you did today. Now, take your dirk from my throat and let me sleep.”
He said nothing, but after a few moments, the blade was removed. I forced myself neither to sigh nor to breathe, hoping he could not hear my heart pounding in my chest; and I slept no more that night.
For breakfast, I made porridge, and threw in some dried plums to soften 26 them.
The mountains were black and grey against the white of the sky. We saw eagles, huge and ragged 27 of wing, circling above us. Calum set a sober pace and I walked beside him, taking two steps for every one of his.
“How long?” I asked him.
“A day. Perhaps two. It depends upon the weather. If the clouds come down then two days, or even three . . .”
The clouds came down at noon and the world was blanketed by a mist that was worse than rain: droplets 28 of water hung in the air, soaked our clothes and our skin; the rocks we walked upon became treacherous and Calum and I slowed in our ascent 29, stepped carefully. We were walking up the mountain, not climbing, up goat paths and craggy sharp ways. The rocks were black and slippery: we walked, and climbed and clambered and clung, we slipped and slid and stumbled and staggered, and even in the mist, Calum knew where he was going, and I followed him.
He paused at a waterfall that splashed across our path, thick as the trunk of an oak. He took the thin rope from his shoulders, wrapped it about a rock.
“This was not here before,” he told me. “I’ll go first.” He tied one end of the rope about his waist and edged out along the path, into the falling water, pressing his body against the wet rock face, edging slowly, intently through the sheet of water.
I was scared for him, scared for both of us: holding my breath as he passed, only breathing when he was on the other side of the waterfall. He tested the rope, pulled on it, motioned me to follow him, when a rock gave way beneath his foot, and he slipped on the wet rock, and fell into the abyss.

n.长期不和;世仇;v.长期争斗;世代结仇
  • How did he start his feud with his neighbor?他是怎样和邻居开始争吵起来的?
  • The two tribes were long at feud with each other.这两个部族长期不和。
n.氏族,部落,宗族,家族,宗派
  • She ranks as my junior in the clan.她的辈分比我小。
  • The Chinese Christians,therefore,practically excommunicate themselves from their own clan.所以,中国的基督徒简直是被逐出了自己的家族了。
adj.雾蒙蒙的,有雾的
  • He crossed over to the window to see if it was still misty.他走到窗户那儿,看看是不是还有雾霭。
  • The misty scene had a dreamy quality about it.雾景给人以梦幻般的感觉。
n.小岛,岛
  • He is from the Isle of Man in the Irish Sea.他来自爱尔兰海的马恩岛。
  • The boat left for the paradise isle of Bali.小船驶向天堂一般的巴厘岛。
n.壁炉炉床,壁炉地面
  • She came and sat in a chair before the hearth.她走过来,在炉子前面的椅子上坐下。
  • She comes to the hearth,and switches on the electric light there.她走到壁炉那里,打开电灯。
adj.不可靠的,有暗藏的危险的;adj.背叛的,背信弃义的
  • The surface water made the road treacherous for drivers.路面的积水对驾车者构成危险。
  • The frozen snow was treacherous to walk on.在冻雪上行走有潜在危险。
adj.有顶饰的,有纹章的,有冠毛的v.到达山顶(或浪峰)( crest的过去式和过去分词 );到达洪峰,达到顶点
  • a great crested grebe 凤头䴙䴘
  • The stately mansion crested the hill. 庄严的大厦位于山顶。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》
n.山脊;鼻梁;分水岭
  • We clambered up the hillside to the ridge above.我们沿着山坡费力地爬上了山脊。
  • The infantry were advancing to attack the ridge.步兵部队正在向前挺进攻打山脊。
n.板岩,石板,石片,石板色,候选人名单;adj.暗蓝灰色的,含板岩的;vt.用石板覆盖,痛打,提名,预订
  • The nominating committee laid its slate before the board.提名委员会把候选人名单提交全体委员会讨论。
  • What kind of job uses stained wood and slate? 什么工作会接触木头污浊和石板呢?
松开,解开( untie的过去式和过去分词 ); 解除,使自由; 解决
  • Once untied, we common people are able to conquer nature, too. 只要团结起来,我们老百姓也能移山倒海。
  • He untied the ropes. 他解开了绳子。
n.木瓦板;小招牌(尤指医生或律师挂的营业招牌);v.用木瓦板盖(屋顶);把(女子头发)剪短
  • He scraped away the dirt,and exposed a pine shingle.他刨去泥土,下面露出一块松木瓦块。
  • He hung out his grandfather's shingle.他挂出了祖父的行医招牌。
(从水、泥等)蹚,走过,跋( wade的过去式和过去分词 )
  • She tucked up her skirt and waded into the river. 她撩起裙子蹚水走进河里。
  • He waded into the water to push the boat out. 他蹚进水里把船推出来。
n.桨,橹( oar的名词复数 );划手v.划(行)( oar的第三人称单数 )
  • He pulled as hard as he could on the oars. 他拼命地划桨。
  • The sailors are bending to the oars. 水手们在拼命地划桨。 来自《简明英汉词典》
n.口角,掌击;v.发出呼噜呼噜声
  • Her parents always have spats.她的父母经常有些小的口角。
  • There is only a spat between the brother and sister.那只是兄妹间的小吵小闹。
n.矮子,侏儒,矮小的动植物;vt.使…矮小
  • The dwarf's long arms were not proportional to his height.那侏儒的长臂与他的身高不成比例。
  • The dwarf shrugged his shoulders and shook his head. 矮子耸耸肩膀,摇摇头。
n.诈术
  • He is full of guile.他非常狡诈。
  • A swindler uses guile;a robber uses force.骗子用诈术;强盗用武力。
adj.燃烧着的,火红的;暴躁的;激烈的
  • She has fiery red hair.她有一头火红的头发。
  • His fiery speech agitated the crowd.他热情洋溢的讲话激动了群众。
n.刮面v.(尤指船、舰或云彩)笔直、高速而平稳地移动( scud的现在分词 )
  • Clouds were scudding across the sky. 云飞越天空。 来自辞典例句
  • China Advertising Photo Market-Like a Rising Wind and Scudding Clouds. 中国广告图片市场:风起云涌。 来自互联网
n.霾,烟雾;懵懂,迷糊;vi.(over)变模糊
  • I couldn't see her through the haze of smoke.在烟雾弥漫中,我看不见她。
  • He often lives in a haze of whisky.他常常是在威士忌的懵懂醉意中度过的。
n.(某一地区的)植物群
  • The subtropical island has a remarkably rich native flora.这个亚热带岛屿有相当丰富的乡土植物种类。
  • All flora need water and light.一切草木都需要水和阳光。
n.脊( ridge的名词复数 );山脊;脊状突起;大气层的)高压脊
  • The path winds along mountain ridges. 峰回路转。
  • Perhaps that was the deepest truth in Ridges's nature. 在里奇斯的思想上,这大概可以算是天经地义第一条了。
细枝,嫩枝( twig的名词复数 )
  • Some birds build nests of twigs. 一些鸟用树枝筑巢。
  • Willow twigs are pliable. 柳条很软。
n.鳟鱼;鲑鱼(属)
  • Thousands of young salmon and trout have been killed by the pollution.成千上万的鲑鱼和鳟鱼的鱼苗因污染而死亡。
  • We hooked a trout and had it for breakfast.我们钓了一条鳟鱼,早饭时吃了。
n.土墩,堤,小山;v.筑堤,用土堆防卫
  • The explorers climbed a mound to survey the land around them.勘探者爬上土丘去勘测周围的土地。
  • The mound can be used as our screen.这个土丘可做我们的掩蔽物。
v.(使)变柔软;(使)变柔和
  • Plastics will soften when exposed to heat.塑料适当加热就可以软化。
  • This special cream will help to soften up our skin.这种特殊的护肤霜有助于使皮肤变得柔软。
adj.衣衫褴褛的,粗糙的,刺耳的
  • A ragged shout went up from the small crowd.这一小群人发出了刺耳的喊叫。
  • Ragged clothing infers poverty.破衣烂衫意味着贫穷。
n.小滴( droplet的名词复数 )
  • Droplets of sweat were welling up on his forehead. 他额头上冒出了滴滴汗珠。 来自辞典例句
  • In constrast, exhaled smoke contains relatively large water droplets and appears white. 相反,从人嘴里呼出的烟则包含相当大的水滴,所以呈白色。 来自辞典例句
n.(声望或地位)提高;上升,升高;登高
  • His rapid ascent in the social scale was surprising.他的社会地位提高之迅速令人吃惊。
  • Burke pushed the button and the elevator began its slow ascent.伯克按动电钮,电梯开始缓慢上升。
学英语单词
Alib Ike
Angiostoma
asphalt well
Avery Island
ballondessai
Ban Wang Yai
bilaterals
blown saves
Bragg-Pierce law
breaking-off process
bus bar disconnecting switch
butter paddles
cabinet government
calidities
circulating type oil supply
confirmations
Cormelian
depositional phase
diazosalicylic acid
dishlicker
disruption of the chain reaction
dithio-hydroquinone
electrorheology
emilions
Estagel
fade you
family Vireonidae
fluoromide
fugged us
fur dressing
galiantine
galiardi
gastro-hepatic omentum (or gastro-hepatic ligament)
grand-jury
grave responsibility
grid current capacity
haecceitic
head band
high pressure water jet cutting
high vacuum apparatus
histocompatibility test
inclined impact
jack and the beanstalk
kinetic theory of solids
knight of the Jemnay
labyrinth gland
Lepiota clypeolaria
linespaces
low-frequency ringer
majority statutory
masoods
meridional tangential ray
meteorologic
misacknowledge
miss plant
monjitas
Mān Sat
Naurzumskiy Rayon
neck piece
neo-mercantilists
Niobo-tantalo-titanate
non-anticipating
Nonant
oblique gutter
over-hardy
paul newmen
plfa
protect switch
quasi-personal
rassadorn
reverberatory burning
Ricoh tester
rotary mechanical output
rubber covered roller
Rythmodan
semistrong extremum
sergey brin
shell roller
space trajectory
static unstability
steam disengaging surface
strange bedfellows
subconference
swivel-vice
syndactylous foot
take it to the next level
tarsocheiloplasty
terrestrial water
theory of reliability
Todendorf
track while scan program
trade safeguarding act
transforming principle
transverse fornix
ultrasonic sealing
wage rate paid
waste chemical reagent
whole-house
widening conversion
worst-case complexity
writing gun