少年派的奇幻漂流 Chapter 92

Chapter 92,I made an exceptional botanical discovery. But there will be many who disbelieve the following episode. Still, I give it to you now because it's part of the story and it happened to me.,I was on my side. It was an hour or two past noon on a day of quiet sunshine and gentle breeze. I had slept a short while, a diluted ¹ sleep that had brought no rest and no dreams. I turned over to my other side, expending ² as little energy as possible in doing so. I opened my eyes.,In the near distance I saw trees. I did not react. I was certain it was an illusion that a few blinks would make disappear.,The trees remained. In fact, they grew to be a forest. They were part of a low-lying island. I pushed myself up. I continued to disbelieve my eyes. But it was a thrill to be deluded ³ in such a high-quality way. The trees were beautiful. They were like none I had ever seen before. They had a pale bark, and equally distributed branches that carried an amazing profusion ⁴ of leaves. These leaves were brilliantly green, a green so bright and emerald that, next to it, vegetation during the monsoons ⁵ was drab olive.,I blinked deliberately ⁶, expecting my eyelids ⁷ to act like lumberjacks. But the trees would not fall.,Since the trees continued to stand, I continued to look. To take in green, after so much blue, was like music to my eyes. Green is a lovely colour. It is the colour of Islam. It is my favourite colour.,The current gently pushed the lifeboat closer to the illusion. Its shore could not be called a beach, there being neither sand nor pebbles ¹², and there was no pounding of surf either, since the waves that fell upon the island simply vanished into its porosity ¹³. From a ridge ¹⁴ some three hundred yards inland, the island sloped to the sea and, forty or so yards into it, fell off precipitously, disappearing from sight into the depths of the Pacific, surely the smallest continental ¹⁵ shelf on record.,I was getting used to the mental delusion ¹⁶. To make it last I refrained from putting a strain on it; when the lifeboat nudged the island, I did not move, only continued to dream. The fabric ¹⁷ of the island seemed to be an intricate, tightly webbed mass of tube-shaped seaweed, in diameter a little thicker than two fingers. What a fanciful island, I thought.,After some minutes I crept up to the side of the boat. "Look for green," said the survival manual. Well, this was green. In fact, it was chlorophyll heaven. A green to outshine food colouring and flashing neon lights. A green to get drunk on. "Ultimately, a foot is the only good judge of land," pursued the manual. The island was within reach of a foot. To judge - and be disappointed - or not to judge, that was the question.,I decided ¹⁹ to judge. I looked about to see if there were sharks. There were none. I turned on my stomach, and holding on to the tarpaulin ²⁰, I slowly brought a leg down. My foot entered the sea. It was pleasingly cool. The island lay just a little further down, shimmering ²¹ in the water. I stretched. I expected the bubble of illusion to burst at any second.,This pesticide is diluted with water and applied directly to the fields. 这种杀虫剂用水稀释后直接施用在田里 。,The heart pumps by expending and contracting of muscle. 心脏通过收缩肌肉抽取和放出（血液）
。 来自互联网