介绍:
Walden [ˈwɔldən] (Issue 163)
13. House-Warming (10)
[11continued] I sometimes used to cast on stones to try the strength of the ice, and those which broke through carried in air with them, which formed very large and conspicuous[kənˈspɪkjʊəs] white bubbles beneath. One day when I came to the same place forty-eight hours afterward, I found that those large bubbles were still perfect, though an inch more of ice had formed, as I could see distinctly by the seam in the edge of a cake. But as the last two days had been very warm, like an Indian summer, the ice was not now transparent, showing the dark green color of the water, and the bottom, but opaque[əʊˈpeɪk]阴暗的and whitish or gray, and though twice as thick was hardly stronger than before, for the air bubbles had greatly expanded under this heat and run together, and lost their regularity; they were no longer one directly over another, but often like silvery coins poured from a bag, one overlapping another, or in thin flakes, as if occupying slight cleavages. The beauty of the ice was gone, and it was too late to study the bottom. Being curious to know what position my great bubbles occupied with regard to the new ice, I broke out a cake containing a middling sized one, and turned it bottom upward. The new ice had formed around and under the bubble, so that it was included between the two ices. It was wholly in the lower ice, but close against the upper, and was flattish, or perhaps slightly lenticular, with a rounded edge, a quarter of an inch deep by four inches in diameter; and I was surprised to find that directly under the bubble the ice was melted with great regularity in the form of a saucer reversed, to the height of five eighths of an inch in the middle, leaving a thin partition there between the water and the bubble, hardly an eighth of an inch thick; and in many places the small bubbles in this partition had burst out downward, and probably there was no ice at all under the largest bubbles, which were a foot in diameter. I inferred that the infinite number of minute bubbles which I had first seen against the under surface of the ice were now frozen in likewise, and that each, in its degree, had operated like a burning-glass on the ice beneath to melt and rot it. These are the little air-guns which contribute to make the ice crack and whoop.
有时候我投掷石头去测试冰的力量，那些破冰了的石头会带进去空气，会形成很大而明显的白色气泡在冰底。一天，在我四十八小时后来到同样的地方，发现这些大型的气泡仍[réng]很完美，虽然又结上了一英寸的厚冰，就像我能看到一张饼子边缘明显的接缝儿。但是由于最后的两天非常地暖和，类似于印第安小阳春，那冰现在就不再透明，显示那水的深绿和水底，而是不透明和泛白或发灰，虽然厚了两倍，但难得像先前一样强健了，因为在这热度里空气泡儿已经极大扩展而且跑到一起，也失去了匀称的规律；它们不再是一个摞一个，而经常是像从一只口袋中倾倒的银币，杂乱地重叠，或在一些薄[báo]片里，仿佛在占领轻微的裂隙。冰的美丽去了，研究它底部也太晚了。由于好奇，想知道我那些巨大泡泡在新冰中所占位置，我凿下来一坨，其中含着一个中型泡泡，把底部翻转上来。新冰又在周围和那泡泡的下方形成了，于是它就介于两层冰之间。置身于下层冰，紧挨着上层冰，成了扁平的，也许微微呈两面凸的透镜状，裹着一个圆边，四分之一英寸深，四英寸直径；我吃惊地发现就在那个泡泡的正下方那冰已十分规则的融化出一个翻转的茶托的形状，中央高约八分之五英寸，分割出一个薄薄的空旷在那泡泡和水间，几乎有八分之一英寸厚；在很多地方这一空旷中的很多小气泡儿是突兀向下爆开去，而且有可能在那些最大的泡泡里压根儿没有冰，那直径有一英尺。我推测那些我在冰面下看到的数不清的小细泡儿现在也同样被冰封了，而每一个都不同程度地起到凹凸镜作用，用来折射太阳、融化和弄糟这些冰。这些都是使得冰破裂和咆哮的小小的气枪。
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