美国小学英语教材6:第65课 洋基快速船(4)(在线收听

 You have her thought out to the last ring, block, and halyard, Humphrey would say, 汉弗莱说到,你把最后一个船环,最后一块,最后一条帆绳都想得细致入微,

and you never even knew if you could build her. What a dreamer you are! 但你不知道是否能够建造完成,你真是个梦想家。
It takes dreaming to keep a man at his work, Jonathan would answer. How do you think I would have had the patience, all these years, 乔纳森回答道是梦想让我工作,要不然这么多年我哪来的耐心,
to drive wooden pins into cross timbers, or to mend the riggings of slow-going coastwise vessels 将木钉变成十字木,或是修补沿海慢船的索具,
if I had not been thinking of just such a ship as this, and seen her, in my mind's eye, putting to sea under full sail, 如果我没有思考过这样的舰船,或者看见它,在我的脑海里,让它满帆而行,
to smash every sailing record that has been known? 让它打破各项远航纪录?
The day of the launching came, then the stepping of the giant masts, the completing of the rigging, and the bending of the new sails. 首发的日子来了,巨型桅杆正在走来,索具将要完成,弯曲船帆。
It began to come to Humphrey's ears that sailors and wharfmen and even some naval officers 汉弗莱的耳朵里出现了这样的话,水手和码头人员,甚至是许多海军军官
were all saying that the new ship, the West Wind, would never stand a storm. 都在说新船“西风”号没法乘风破浪。
They are the kind of men, Humphrey scoffed, who would be sailing vessels like Noah's Ark, 汉弗莱嘲笑到,他们就是这种人,他们乘坐的船就像诺亚方舟,
if such people as Jonathan Adams did not have the courage, sometimes, to build something new. 如果像乔纳森·亚当斯这种人没有勇气建造新式舰船。
No, the West Wind is going to teach all the shipmasters something they never knew before, once she clears the harbor for Gibraltar. 不,“西风”号将教给所有船长一些他们从不知道的东西,一旦它前往了直布罗陀。
It is probably only a short paragraph in your history book that tells you how, a little more than a hundred years ago, 在你的历史书上,它或许只有一小段话,在一百多年前,
the seas swarmed with pirates whose home ports were the North African cities of Algiers, Tripoli, and Tunis. 海盗横行大海,他们的港口是北非城市阿尔及尔,黎波里和突尼斯。
The great nations of Europe and, with them, the young United States, 欧洲各大强国和年轻的美国
used to buy safety from these lawless Barbary States by sending them gifts and tribute. 此前都会给北非国家寄送礼物和贡品,从而换取安全。
But when, finally, the ruler of Tripoli sent word to our President that his last gift was not large enough and that more gold must be sent, 但当黎波里的统治者给我们的总统带话,说他最后的礼物不够大,一定要送更多的金子,
the answer was a fleet of American warships that bombarded the astonished monarch's seaports. 答案就是美国舰船轰炸帝王的港口。
 
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