31 Thirty-one

Thirty-one 'How fast we are going all of a sudden,' the Ladybird said. 'I wonder why?' 'I don't think the seagulls like this place any better than we do,' James answered. 'I imagine they want to get out of it as soon as they can. They got a bad fright in that storm we've just been through.' Faster and faster flew the seagulls, skimming across the sky at a tremendous pace, with the peach trailing out behind them. Cloud after cloud went by on either side, all of them ghostly white in the moonlight, and several more times during the night the travellers caught glimpses of Cloud-Men moving around on the tops of these clouds, working their sinister magic upon the world below. Once they passed a snow machine in operation, with the Cloud-Men turning the handle and a

“我们突然跑得多快啊!”瓢虫说。 “我不知道为什么?”“我认为海鸥并不比我们更喜欢这个地方，”詹姆斯回答。 “我想他们是想尽快摆脱困境。 他们在我们刚刚经历的那场暴风雨中吓坏了。”海鸥飞得越来越快，以惊人的速度掠过天空，桃子拖在它们后面。 云彩从两边一云接一云地飘过，在月光下，所有的云彩都是幽灵般的白色。夜里，旅行者又几次瞥见云人在云顶上走来走去，对下面的世界施着邪恶的魔法。 有一次，他们经过一台正在运转的造雪机，“云人”在转动手柄和一个

blizzard of snowflakes blowing out of the great funnel above. They saw the huge drums that were used for making thunder, and the Cloud-Men beating them furiously with long hammers. They saw the frost factories and the wind producers and the places where cyclones and tornadoes were manufactured and sent spinning down towards the Earth, and once, deep in the hollow of a large billowy cloud, they spotted something that could only have been a Cloud-Men's city. There were caves everywhere running into the cloud, and at the entrances to the caves the Cloud-Men's wives were crouching over little stoves with frying-pans in their hands, frying snowballs for their husbands' suppers. And hundreds of Cloud-Men's children were frisking about all over the place and shrieking with laughter and sliding down the billows of the cloud on toboggans. An hour later, just before dawn, the travellers heard a soft whooshing noise above their heads and they glanced up and saw an immense grey batlike creature swooping down towards them out of the dark. It circled round and round the peach,

暴风雪般的雪花从上面的大烟囱里吹出来。 他们看到了用来打雷的大鼓，云人用长锤猛烈地敲打着鼓。 他们看到了造霜工厂、造风工厂，看到了制造旋风和龙卷风的地方，看到了龙卷风和龙卷风旋转着降落到地球上。有一次，在一片巨大的巨浪云的深处，他们发现了一些东西，那只可能是云人的城市。 到处都是洞窟，洞窟的入口处，云人的妻子们正蹲在小火炉旁，手里拿着煎锅，煎着雪球给丈夫们做晚饭。 数以百计的云人的孩子们在到处蹦蹦跳跳，尖叫着，坐着雪橇从滚滚的云中滑下。 一小时后，天快亮的时候，旅客们听到头顶上一阵柔和的嗖嗖声，他们抬头一看，只见一个巨大的灰色蝙蝠似的生物从黑暗中向他们俯冲而来。 它绕着桃子转了一圈又一圈，

flapping its great wings slowly in the moonlight and staring at the travellers. Then it uttered a series of long deep melancholy cries and flew off again into the night. 'Oh, I do wish the morning would come!' Miss Spider said, shivering all over. 'It won't be long now,' James answered. 'Look, it's getting lighter over there already.' They all sat in silence watching the sun as it came up slowly over the rim of the horizon for a new day.

它在月光下慢慢地拍打着巨大的翅膀，凝视着旅行者。 然后，它发出一连串长长的、深沉的哀鸣，又飞进了黑夜。 “啊，我真希望早晨快点到来!”蜘蛛小姐说，浑身发抖。 “不会太久了。”詹姆斯回答。 “看，那边已经开始变轻了。”他们都静静地坐着，看着太阳缓缓从地平线上升起，迎接新的一天。