鸭巢围之夜
A Night at Mallard-Nest Village
天快黄昏时落了一阵雪子，不久就停了。天气真冷，在寒气中一切都仿佛结了冰。便是空气，也像快要冻结的样子。我包定的那一只小船，在天空大把撒着雪子时已泊了岸，从桃源县沿河而上这已是第五个夜晚。看情形晚上还会有风有雪，故船泊岸边时便从各处挑选好地方。沿岸除了某一处有片沙嘴宜于泊船以外，其余地方全是黛色如屋的大岩石。石头既然那么大，船又那么小，我们都希望寻觅得到一个能作小船风雪屏障，同时要上岸又还方便的处所。凡是可以泊船的地方早已被当地渔船占去了。小船上的水手，把船上下各处撑去，钢钻头敲打着沿岸大石头，发出好听的声音，结果这只小船，还是不能不同许多大小船只一样，在正当泊船处插了篙子，把当作锚头用的石碇抛到沙上去，尽那行将来到的风雪，摊派到这只船上。
Towards dusk it started snowing, but soon the snow stopped. It was bitterly cold. In that glacial atmosphere everything seemed turned to ice, the air itself as if on the point of freezing. The small boat I had hired moored after the first flurries of snow fell. This was the fifth night of my trip upstream from Taoyuan. Because it looked as if we were in for a blizzard, the boatmen had searched for a good anchorage. But apart from a suitable beach, the bank was a mass of black boulders the size of houses. Since they were so big and our boat was so small, we wanted to find some shelter from the wind in a place where we could easily go ashore. However, all the best moorings wore occupicd by local fishing-boats. The crew punted our little craft up and down, the steel tips of the punting-poles clinking melodiously on the rocks; but in the end we had to draw alongside the other vessels large and small in the regular anchorage, dropping the rock which served us as an anchor on to the sand and leaving our little craft exposed to the coming blizzard.
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这地方是个长潭的转折处，两岸是高大壁立千丈的山，山头上长着小小竹子，长年翠色逼人。这时节两山只剩余一抹深黑，赖天空微明为画出一个轮廓。但在黄昏里看来如一种奇迹的，却是两岸高处去水已三十丈上下的吊脚楼。这些房子莫不俨然悬挂在半空中，借着黄昏的金光，还可以把这些希奇的楼房形体，看得出个大略。这些房子同沿河一切房子有个共通相似处，便是从结构上说来，处处显出对于木材的浪费。房屋既在半山上，不用那么多木料，便不能成为房子吗?半山上也用吊脚楼形式，这形式是必须的吗?然而这条河水的大宗出口是木料，木材比石块还不值价。因此，即或是河水永远长不到处，吊脚楼房子依然存在，似乎也不应当有何惹眼惊奇了。但沿河因为有了这些楼房，长年与流水斗争的水手，寄身船中枯闷成疾的旅行者，以及其他过路人，却有了落脚处了。这些人的疲劳与寂寞是从这些房子中可以一律解除的。地方既好看，也好玩。
This place, at a bend in a long lake, was flanked by high cliffs on the peaks of which grew small bamboos, an enchanting emerald the whole year round. Now that darkness was falling, only their silhouettes were outlined against the faintly glimmering sky. What we could make out in the dusk, though, was amazing—about three hundred feet up the cliff, high above the water, was a cluster of houses on stilts. There they hung majestically in mid air, and in the fading light we could still see the outline of these extraordinary buildings. In common with all the houses along the river, their construction was characterized by a wasteful use of timber. Why was so much timber needed for houses halfway up a hill? Yet they were built on stilts, quite needlessly. Well, timber was the main product shipped out from this river, costing less than stone; and so, though there was no danger at all of flooding, it was really not astonishing that these houses were still built on stilts. And because they were there, the boatmen who grappled year in year out with the current, their passengers nearly bored to death, and other travellers too had somewhere to rest. They could shake off their weariness and loneliness in these houses. So the place, besides being attractive, provided distractions.
河面大小船只泊定后，莫不点了小小的油灯，拉了篷。各个船上皆在后舱烧了火，用铁鼎罐煮红米饭。饭焖熟后，又换锅子熬油，哗的把菜蔬倒进热锅里去。一切齐全了，各人蹲在舱板上三碗五碗把腹中填满后，天已夜了。水手们怕冷怕动的。收拾碗盏后，就莫不在舱板上摊开了被盖，把身体钻进那个预先卷成一筒又冷又湿的硬棉被里去休息。至于那些想喝一杯的，发了烟瘾得靠靠灯，船上烟灰又翻尽了的，或一无所为，只是不甘寂寞，好事好玩想到岸上去烤烤火谈谈天的，便莫不提了桅灯，或燃一段废缆子，摇晃着从船头跳上了岸，从一堆石头间的小路径，爬到半山上吊脚楼房子那边去，找寻自己的熟人，找寻自己的熟地。陌生人自然也有来到这条河中来到这种吊脚楼房子里的时节，但一到地，在火堆旁小板凳上一坐，便是陌生人，即刻也就可以称为熟人乡亲了。
After the boats large and small had moored, all lit tiny oil lamps and fixed up mat canopies. Rice was boiled in iron cauldrons over fires in the stem, and once this was cooked the vegetables were fried in another pan of sizzling oil. When the meal was ready, everyone aboard could wolf down three or five bowls. By then it was dark. When the bowls had been cleared away, the boatmen who felt cold or tired out spread their bedding on the deck and burrowed into their stiff, clammy quilts which they had laid out like tubing. Those who wanted to drank or smoked by the lamp, and when the fire on the boat had burned to ashes or there was nothing to do, if lonely or eager for a bit of fun they would go ashore to sit by a fire and chat, taking the lantern from the mast or lighting a strip of old hawser with which they jumped unsteadily ashore to take the path through rocks to the stilt-houses halfway up the cliff, in search of an old friend or familiar house. Strangers naturally travelled along the river too, but once inside these stilt-houses, sitting on low stools by the fire, in no time they would feel not strangers but friends.
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