18 HERE’S AN INTERESTING QUESTION CAN YOU OUTRUN AN EXPLODING VOLCANO

18. HERE'S AN INTERESTING QUESTION. CAN YOU OUTRUN AN EXPLODING VOLCANO? Here's an interesting question. Can you outrun an exploding Volcano? The answer is, if you survive the initial explosion, you can, depending on the type of lava. Some lava runs extremely slowly. Some lava runs horribly quickly. It depends, in short, on the Volcano in question. And you can't really tell what kind of Volcano it is until the Volcano actually explodes. When this particular Volcano exploded, the whole of the top half of the mountain blew right off. A great mushroom of cloud ballooned up into the air and rolled out across the clear blue sky. The entire

18. 这里有一个有趣的问题。 你能从爆发的火山中逃脱吗？ 这里有一个有趣的问题。 你能从爆发的火山中逃脱吗？ 答案是，如果你在最初的爆炸中幸存下来，你就可以，这取决于熔岩的类型。 有些熔岩流得非常慢。 有些熔岩流得非常快。 简而言之，这取决于所讨论的火山。 直到火山真正爆发，你才知道它是什么样的火山。 当这座火山爆发时，整个山的上半部分都被吹走了。 一朵巨大的蘑菇云腾空而起，在晴朗的蓝天上展开。 整个

island vibrated, churning up the seas roundabout and sending The Peregrine Falcon, The Blue Whale, and The Mighty Momma rocketing up and down the gigantic waves, and sending the hearts of the two parents aboard those ships plunging up and down with it. Great chunks of burning mountain were blasted up into the air and rained down to the ground and into the sea. The Windwalker screeched to a halt as a truly gigantic flaming boulder that could have squashed them flatter than two pieces of paper crashed to earth right in front of them, close enough to graze the Windwalker's quivering nostrils. The Windwalker leaped on, dodging the flaming rocks falling out of the sky, and now running over the Exterminator Eggs that stretched before him in a great carpet all the way down to the sea. Hiccup looked over his shoulder. Burning rivers of hot molten lava were shooting out of the top of the crater and racing down the sides of the mountain. It really wasn't Hiccup's lucky day. Depending, of course, on the way you look at these things, whether you are a "glass half full, or glass half empty" kind of person. You COULD, for instance, say that Hiccup had been really rather lucky to survive the day so far.

小岛震动起来，搅动着周围的海水，把“游隼号”、“蓝鲸号”和“浩浩荡荡的妈妈号”在巨大的波浪中上下颠簸，把船上的两位父母的心也随之上下颠簸。 大块燃烧的山被炸到空中，雨水落在地上和海里。 风行者尖叫着停了下来，一块比两张纸还能把他们压扁的巨大的火石就在他们面前坠落在地上，近得足以擦过风行者颤抖的鼻孔。 风行者跳了起来，躲避着从天上掉下来的火石，现在又跑过在他面前铺成大地毯的灭虫蛋，一直跑到海边。 小嗝嗝扭头看了看。 炽热的熔岩河从火山口的顶部喷涌而出，沿着山的两侧奔流而下。 这真是小嗝嗝的幸运日。 当然，这取决于你看待这些事情的方式，取决于你是“半杯水”还是“半杯水”的那种人。 例如，你可以说小嗝嗝到目前为止还挺幸运的。

It turned out, as bad luck would have it, that the lava on Lava-Lout Island was the extremely fast- running kind that races in a red-hot river of death at speeds of over seventy miles per hour, much, much faster than a man can run—but was it faster than a Windwalker? It already seemed to be catching up with them. "R-R-R-R-R-R-RUNNNNNNN!!!!!!!" screeched Hiccup again, as if the poor Windwalker needed telling, already running as fast as he possibly could, ears back, smoke steaming from his nostrils, taking great gasping breaths as he rocked forward in his extraordinary, limping run. The lava streams shot down the mountain, horrible, steaming bright-red rivers. And it wasn't just the lava that was chasing them. You'd have thought that things couldn't get any worse—but things can always always get worse. The Exterminator Eggs were HATCHING the instant the lava touched them. So that out of the red-hot streams came bursting thousands and thousands and thousands of Exterminator fledglings. You might have thought that these newborn creatures would be still sleepy, still shaky, after lying curled up in those Eggs for nearly two hundred years,

结果，不幸的是，熔岩岛上的熔岩是一种速度极快的熔岩，在炽热的死亡河中以每小时七十多英里的速度奔跑，比人跑得快得多——但它比风行者快吗？ 它似乎已经赶上了他们。 “R-R-R-R-R-R-RUNNNNNNN !”再次尖叫着打嗝,如果穷人疾风步需要告诉,已经就跑,他可能,耳朵背,烟从他的鼻孔里热气腾腾,大力推进喘气呼吸,他在他的与众不同,一瘸一拐的跑了。 熔岩流从山上喷涌而下，形成了可怕的、冒着热气的鲜红色河流。 追赶它们的不只是熔岩。 你可能会认为事情不会变得更糟了——但事情总是会变得更糟。 熔岩一碰到灭虫卵，它们就开始孵化了。 于是，从炽热的小溪中涌出了成千上万的灭虫者雏鸟。 你可能会想，这些新生的生物在蜷缩在那些蛋里将近200年之后，仍然会昏昏欲睡，仍然会颤抖，

but no, it was as if their long gestation had been driving them MAD, so eager were these animals to be off and killing, even in their first few seconds of life. They burst out of the lava streams still curled up like fiery Catherine wheels, and unfurled themselves midair in a shower of sparks, shaking the lava from their unfolding wings. And the first thing they saw as their carnivore eyelids snapped open was ALVIN, hovering at the top of the exploding Volcano, holding the terrifying flame-gold Fire-Stone in his hand. For the previous three months, they had been trapped in their Eggs, looking up at the great statues of Alvin scattered all over the island. Now here was this familiar face in the flesh, aboard one of their own, screaming at the top of his voice "AFTER THEM!!!!!" and pointing with his terrible copper-red sword at the shaking, terrified little figures of Hiccup and the Windwalker, fleeing from the lava streams like a fox from the Hunt. The Exterminators didn't need much encouragement to obey. An ancient memory stirred in their tiny brains. They knew what THIS was. This was PREY. Ten sword-claws leaped from the ends of their fingers like switchblades, and the Exterminator

但事实并非如此，似乎它们的长期妊娠已经把它们逼疯了，这些动物甚至在它们生命的最初几秒钟，就如此渴望去杀戮。 它们从熔岩流中迸发出来，仍然像燃烧的凯瑟琳轮一样卷曲着，在空中展开，像一阵火花，摇晃着翅膀上的熔岩。 当他们的食肉动物的眼皮张开时，他们首先看到的是阿尔文，他正盘旋在爆发的火山顶端，手里拿着那块可怕的火焰金火石。 在这之前的三个月里，他们一直被困在蛋里，仰望着散落在岛上的阿尔文的巨大雕像。 现在，这张熟悉的脸出现在他们自己的一艘船上，用他那可怕的铜红色宝剑指着颤抖的、吓坏了的小嗝嗝和风行者，他们像一只狩猎归来的狐狸一样从熔岩流中逃离。 消灭者不需要太多的鼓励就会服从。 一个古老的记忆在他们小小的脑子里翻腾。 他们知道这是什么。这是猎物。 十个剑爪像弹簧刀一样从他们的指尖跳了出来，还有灭虫者

fledglings took off in hot pursuit of the fleeing Viking and his dragon, shrieking as loudly as the Furies having their hair pulled. Down shot the lava streams, rushing closer and closer, nearer and nearer, catching up with Hiccup. Down, too, flew Alvin and the Exterminators, in their hundreds of thousands, like a gigantic cloud of homicidal bats. Hiccup remembered what Humungous had said about Exterminators. They would attack everything, anything that moved, set fire to every blade of grass, every bush, every tree. There wouldn't be a single living thing for hundreds of miles in every direction. Even if they survived (and at this particular moment, this seemed unlikely), the Quest itself had failed. And they hadn't even saved the Archipelago after all. The Volcano had erupted, and nothing could now put the Exterminators back into their Eggs. The genie was out of the bottle, the plague was unleashed, and the Archipelago would be turned to sooty ruin in a matter of weeks. Great clouds of steam rose hissing up into the air as the pouring rain met the searing heat of the running lava. "Don't fall over... don't fall over," prayed a

雏鸟们迅速起飞，紧追不舍地追赶着逃跑的维京人和他的龙，尖叫得就像愤怒女神被扯头发一样大声。 熔岩流倾泻而下，越来越近，越来越近，追上了小嗝嗝。 成千上万的阿尔文和灭虫者也飞了下来，像一团巨大的杀人蝙蝠云。 小嗝嗝想起了humhumous说过的灭虫者的话。 他们会攻击一切，任何移动的东西，放火烧每一片草叶，每一丛灌木，每一棵树。 方圆数百英里内都不会有任何生物。 即使他们活了下来（在这个特殊的时刻，这似乎不太可能），任务本身也失败了。 他们甚至根本没有拯救群岛。 火山爆发了，现在没有什么能把灭绝者送回蛋里了。 妖怪从瓶子里出来了，瘟疫爆发了，群岛将在几周内变成一片漆黑的废墟。 当倾盆大雨与滚烫的岩浆相遇时，巨大的蒸汽云嘶嘶地升向空中。 “别摔倒……别摔倒了。

soaking wet Hiccup, racing down the mountain on the back of the Windwalker. "D-d-don't panic! D-d-don't panic!" muttered Toothless, panicking like crazy, as he approached Alvin on the Exterminator from above. Alvin was helpfully holding the Fire-Stone high above his head, so that the fledgling Exterminators would have a good view of it. "H-H-Hiccup gave Toothless this j-j-job 'cos he t- t-trusts Toothless... Toothless NOT make mistake again," said Toothless encouragingly to himself, praying that the Exterminator would not smell him through all this rain. "Toothless gotta G-G-GRIP this time... GRIP..." and he practiced gripping with his little talons, as he edged ever downward toward that tempting yellow Ball. Toothless pounced just exactly as if he were catching a nice fat rabbit. His claws closed around the Stone. They gripped... and held. Alvin gave a shriek of horror as his hand closed on nothing. He whirled around, but in the smoke, and rain, and thunder-and-lightning, he could not see what had attacked him. His Treasure was gone. Held firm, if Alvin could but have known it, in

浑身湿透的小嗝嗝，骑在风行者的后面从山上跑下来。 “D-d-don不慌!别——别——别惊慌！”无牙从上面走近坐在灭虫机上的阿尔文，惊慌得像疯了一样。 阿尔文把火石举过头顶，好让那些初出所庐的灭魔人看得清楚。 “嗝嗝给了无牙这个工作，因为他——他相信无牙……” 无牙别再犯错了。”无牙鼓励自己说，祈祷灭虫人不会在大雨中闻到他的气味。 “这次没牙的要抓牢了…… 抓……”他一边练习用小爪子抓，一边朝那个诱人的黄球慢慢靠近。 无牙猛扑过去，就像在抓一只肥美的兔子。 他的爪子抓住了魔法石。 他们抓住……和举行。阿尔文惊恐地尖叫了一声，因为他的手什么也没抓住。 他转过身来，但在烟雾、雨水和电闪雷鸣中，他看不见是什么袭击了他。 他的财宝不见了。坚持住，如果阿尔文知道的话