英语听书《白鲸记》第22期

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 these savages² have an innate³ sense of delicacy,say what you will;it is marvellous how essentially⁴ polite they are. 

 I pay this particular compliment to Queequeg,because he treated me with so much civility and consideration, 

 while I was guilty of great rudeness;staring at him from the bed, 

 and watching all his toilette motions;for the time my curiosity getting the better of my breeding. 

 Nevertheless,a man like Queequeg you do not see every day,he and his ways were well worth unusual regarding. 

 He commenced dressing⁵ at top by donning his beaver⁶ hat,a very tall one,by the by,and then still minus his trowsers he hunted up his boots. 

 What under the heavens he did it for,I can not tell,but his next movement was to crush himself boots in hand, 

 and hat on under the bed;when,from sundry⁷ violent gaspings and strainings,I inferred he was hard at work booting himself; 

 though by no law of propriety⁸ that I ever heard of,is any man required to be private when putting on his boots. 

 But Queequeg,do you see,was a creature in the transition stage neither caterpillar⁹ nor butterfly. 

 He was just enough civilized to show off his outlandishness in the strangest possible manners. 

 His education was not yet completed.He was an undergraduate.If he had not been a small degree civilized, 

 he very probably would not have troubled himself with boots at all;but then,if he had not been still a savage, 

 he never would have dreamt of getting under the bed to put them on. 

 At last,he emerged with his hat very much dented¹⁰ and crushed down over his eyes, 

 and began creaking and limping about the room,as if,not being much accustomed to boots, 

 his pair of damp,wrinkled cowhide ones probably not made to order either rather pinched and tormented¹¹ him at the first go off of a bitter cold morning. 

 Seeing,now,that there were no curtains to the window,and that the street being very narrow, 

 the house opposite commanded a plain view into the room, 

 and observing more and more the indecorous figure that Queequeg made,staving about with little else but his hat and boots on; 

 I begged him as well as I could,to accelerate his toilet somewhat,and particularly to get into his pantaloons as soon as possible. 

 He complied,and then proceeded to wash himself.At that time in the morning any Christian¹² would have washed his face; 

 but Queequeg,to my amazement,contented himself with restricting his ablutions to his chest,arms,and hands. 

 He then donned his waistcoat,and taking up a piece of hard soap on the wash stand centre table, 

 dipped it into water and commenced lathering¹³ his face.I was watching to see where he kept his razor, 

 when lo and behold,he takes the harpoon¹⁴ from the bed corner,slips out the long wooden stock,unsheathes the head, 

 whets it a little on his boot,and striding up to the bit of mirror against the wall,begins a vigorous scraping,or rather harpooning¹⁵ of his cheeks. 

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