23 Some Dragons Really Are Monsters

23. SOME DRAGONS REALLY ARE MONSTERS If you or I had felt a claw creep around our ankles in such a situation, we would have screamed. But Hiccup had been in so many terrifying and dangerous adventures in his short life that he did not scream, for he knew he did not have time. He took a great breath of air instead, and held his nose, as the unknown creature dragged him downwards through the sand. DOWN, DOWN, DOWN! Just as Hiccup thought he was going to pass out, the creature pulling him below seemed to break through some sort of wall, and Hiccup landed with a bone-crunching jolt on something hard and his hand flew off his nose and he took a great involuntary breath… …not of sand, but of air– rancid, stuffy dank air that caught in the throat like slug breath. And he coughed and gasped, sand pouring out of his ears and from his hair. As he tried to open his eyes, gritty with grains of sand, he could see blurrily through streaming tears, sand still pouring down from a hole.

23. 如果你或我在这种情况下感觉到一只爪子爬上了我们的脚踝，我们会尖叫起来。 但是Hiccup在他短暂的一生中经历了那么多可怕和危险的冒险，所以他没有尖叫，因为他知道他没有时间了。 他深深地吸了一口气，捂着鼻子，这个不知名的家伙把他拖下了沙地。 趴下，趴下，趴下！就在嗝嗝觉得自己快要昏倒的时候，那个把他拉下去的家伙似乎打破了一堵墙，嗝嗝摔在什么硬物上，骨头都被震碎了，他的手从鼻子上飞走了，他不由自主地深深地吸了一口气... ...不是沙子，而是空气——难闻的、闷热的潮湿空气，像鼻涕虫的呼吸一样哽在喉咙里。 他咳嗽着，喘着气，沙子从他的耳朵和头发里流出来。 当他试图睁开眼睛时，他的眼睛沾满了沙粒，透过流着的眼泪，他可以模糊地看到沙子仍然从一个洞里倾泻而下。

But the Monster with the eye-claws was shooting flames upward in continuous bursts of hot, then freezing, flame. This turned the sand pouring through into something that looked like glass, sealing the hole. They seemed to be in some sort of cavern, and the Monster moved its head this way and that, reinforcing the glass walls of the tunnel. The flames stopped. Hiccup could hear the Wodensfang's little quavery voice in his head, 'Now, now, Hiccup, dragons are not Monsters you know…' But the thing is, just as some humans can be evil, some dragons really are Monsters. You should never judge a book by its cover, but on this occasion, Hiccup felt he was on fairly safe ground. This Monster's primitive and ghastly appearance told him there would be no point reasoning with it (however optimistic the Wodensfang might be about the possibility of dragons evolving consciences and complicated things like that). This Monster couldn't evolve a conscience in the next thirty seconds, and it was unlikely to be a sympathetic audience. There is such a huge variety of dragon species, you see.

但是那个长着眼睛爪子的怪物正在不断地向上喷射火焰，喷出炽热的，然后是冰冷的火焰。 这样一来，从洞里涌出来的沙子就变成了一种看起来像玻璃的东西，把洞封住了。 他们似乎是在一个洞穴里，怪物把头左右摆动，加固着隧道的玻璃墙。 火焰熄灭了。小嗝嗝可以听到沃登方在他脑海里颤抖的声音：“好了，好了，小嗝嗝，龙不是怪物，你知道……”但问题是，就像有些人可能是邪恶的一样，有些龙确实是怪物。 你不应该以貌取人，但在这种情况下，小嗝嗝觉得他是相当安全的。 这只怪物的原始和可怕的外表告诉他，与它进行推理是没有意义的（无论瓦登方对龙进化出良心和诸如此类的复杂事物的可能性多么乐观）。 在接下来的三十秒里，这个怪物不可能有良心，也不可能有同情的听众。 你看，龙的种类是如此之多。

Some dragons, Sea Dragons like the Wodensfang, have copied humans to such a large extent that they can use language fluently. They are able to reason, to think. Others that Hiccup had come across like Darkbreathers, and Monstrous Strangulators, are not capable of complicated thinking processes. These are dragons that have spent most of their lives underground or in the depths of the ocean. All that time alone in the dark does not help the development of an appreciation for the finer things in life. Six months of living on his wits had sharpened Hiccup's ability to weigh up deadly situations like this in an instant. He couldn't reason with this dragon. So he would have to fight it. He thought fast– very fast– as he scanned his enemy. Fifteen feet of well-armed muscled dragon.

有些龙，如海龙，在很大程度上模仿了人类，以至于它们可以流利地使用语言。 他们能够推理，能够思考。 小嗝嗝遇到的其他生物，比如黑暗呼吸者和怪异扼杀者，都没有复杂的思维过程。 这些龙一生中大部分时间都在地下或海洋深处度过。 在黑暗中独自生活的时间无助于培养对生活中美好事物的欣赏。 六个月的机智生活磨练了小嗝嗝在瞬间权衡这种致命情况的能力。 他无法和这条龙讲道理。 所以他必须与之抗争。 他扫视着他的敌人，思考得很快——非常快。 15英尺长，装备精良，肌肉发达。

Ten eyes. Huge claws. An interesting snakey aspect that suggested it might be related to a Slitherfang, which also lived under the sand. Quickly glancing the other way, he assessed his chances of escape. The cavern was bare with only one immediate escape route. And judging from the bulging leg muscles, the Monster would reach it first. This was a tricky situation. His only chance was to hope that this creature really was a primitive relation of a Slitherfang, and to use his knowledge of Slitherfangs to fight it. Racking his brain, Hiccup tried to remember everything he could about Slitherfangs. What did he know?

十的眼睛。巨大的爪子。一个有趣的蛇形特征表明，它可能与同样生活在沙子下面的滑牙有关。 他迅速瞥了一眼另一边，评估了一下自己逃跑的机会。 洞穴里空荡荡的，只有一条直接的逃生路线。 从他隆起的腿部肌肉来看，怪物会先到达。 这是一个棘手的情况。 他唯一的机会就是希望这个生物真的是滑动牙的原始亲戚，并用他对滑动牙的了解来对付它。 小嗝嗝绞尽脑汁，试图记住关于滑动毒牙的一切。 他知道什么？

What had he written about them in his notebooks? The Monster had a small weak spot right in the middle of its forehead. There was only one way he could reach that small vulnerable spot, given that the Monster was so heavily armed with talons and teeth. If he could get the creature to believe that he was dead, it would want to swallow him immediately. He would then have to allow the creature to swallow him whole and look for the opportunity to attack the creature's only vulnerable spot. He'd have to be patient. He'd have to let the Monster swallow him at least up to the knees, so that it would be harder for it to react when Hiccup reached down and plunged his sword into the weak spot. Thank Thor he had a sword on him, or rather, thank Camicazi. If she hadn't stowed away in his sand- yacht and given him her spare sword, he wouldn't even be able to carry out this totally desperate and ridiculous plan. The success of Hiccup's plan depended on one crucial point. The creature would have to swallow him from the right end, that is, starting with his feet. There wasn't a lot he could do if it started swallowing his head.

他在笔记本上写了些什么？ 怪物的前额正中有一个小小的弱点。 他只有一种方法可以接近那个脆弱的小地方，因为怪物有那么多的爪子和牙齿。 如果他能让这个生物相信他已经死了，它就会想马上吞下他。 然后他不得不让这个生物把他整个吞下去，然后寻找机会攻击这个生物唯一的弱点。 他必须要有耐心。他至少得让怪物把他吞到膝盖以下，这样，当小嗝嗝伸手把剑刺进他的弱点时，怪物就更难做出反应了。 感谢托尔，他身上带着一把剑，或者更确切地说，感谢卡米卡齐。 如果她没有躲进他的沙游艇里，把她的备用剑给他，他甚至无法实施这个完全绝望和荒谬的计划。 小嗝嗝的计划能否成功取决于一个关键问题。 这种生物必须从他的右端吞下他，也就是说，从他的脚开始。 如果它开始吞噬他的头，他就无能为力了。

This was a fifty-fifty chance, which isn't normally a good proposition when your life depends on it, but sometimes you just have to give yourself up to the fickle hand of Fate, the toss of a coin. It wasn't very hard for Hiccup to pretend to be dead, frankly, for he very nearly WAS dead. He made himself go limp, even though every nerve in his body was screaming at him to run away. He forced his body to go limper and limper, and his head to loll backwards. He kept his eyes open, just the tiniest, smidgiest of cracks so that he could see what was going on. He forced himself to lie still as he felt something yucky slide up over his body. It took all of his powers of concentration to stop himself from moving, from jumping up, from shaking off the sand that was gritting all over his body and that disgusting dragon hand that he could see through the cracks of his eyelids. He had to stop himself from crying out in horror at the sight of the two monstrous claws– five fingers, each with an evil dragon eye perched on the end just above the talons. The dragon's face was blind, with two ghostly hollows where its eyes should have been. But the ten dragon eyes were blinking down at him from the end of the creature's claws.

这是一个一半的机会，当你的生活依赖于它时，这通常不是一个好主意，但有时你不得不把自己交给变幻无常的命运之手，抛硬币。 老实说，小嗝嗝装死并不难，因为他差一点就死了。 他让自己瘫软了，尽管他身体的每根神经都在尖叫着要他逃跑。 他强迫他的身体一瘸一拐地走，他的头向后耷拉着。 他一直睁着眼睛，只看到最微小的裂缝，这样他就能看到发生了什么。 他强迫自己静静地躺着，因为他感到有什么恶心的东西滑过了他的身体。 他集中了全部注意力，才止住自己不动，不跳起来，不抖掉粘满全身的沙子，也不抖掉从眼皮缝里可以看到的那只恶心的龙手。 看到那两只巨大的爪子——五个手指，每个手指的末端都有一只邪恶的龙眼，就在爪子的上方，他不得不抑制住自己，不让自己惊恐地叫出声来。 龙的脸是瞎的，本来应该是眼睛的地方有两个幽灵般的凹陷。 但那只龙的十只眼睛正从它爪子的末端朝他眨着。