对于这个俄然呈现的小家伙,我感到万分诧异。我记得,当时我坠机的处所是一个阔别火食、千里以外的处所。但是,这个小家伙看起来既不像迷了路,也没有半点疲惫、饥渴、惊骇的神情。各种迹象显现,他是一个丢失在空旷无火食的大戈壁中的孩子。当我终究静下心能够说出话来时,我对他说道:“我说,你在这儿干甚么呢?”
他细心地看了下,随后又说:“我不要,这只绵羊已经病得很重了。给我重新画一只。”
But it was rejected too, just like the others. "This one is too old. I want a sheep that will live a long time."By this time my patience was exhausted, because I was in a hurry to start taking my engine apart. So I tossed off this drawing.
That, however, is not my fault. The grown-ups discouraged me in my painter’s career when I was six years old, and I never learned to draw anything, except boas from the outside and boas from the inside.
我又别的画了一只。
因为我向来没有画过羊,我就给他画我常常画的那幅闭着肚皮的巨蟒,然后我非常震惊地听到这个小家伙说:“不!不!我不要一个在蟒蛇肚子里的大象。”
“甚么!”
He looked at it carefully, then he said: "No. This sheep is already very sickly. Make me another."So I made another drawing.
Now I stared at this sudden apparition with my eyes fairly starting out of my head in astonishment. Remember, I had crashed in the desert a thousand miles from any inhabited region. And yet my little man seemed neither to be straying uncertainly among the sands, nor to be fainting from fatigue or hunger or thirst or fear. Nothing about him gave any suggestion of a child lost in the middle of the desert, a thousand miles from any human habitation. When at last I was able to speak, I said to him: "But, what are you doing here"And in answer he repeated, very slowly, as if he were speaking of a matter of great consequence: "If you please, draw me a sheep..."When a mystery is too overpowering, one dare not disobey. Absurd as it might seem to me, a thousand miles from any human habitation and in danger of death, I took out of my pocket a sheet of paper and my fountain-pen. But then I remembered how my studies had been concentrated on geography, history, arithmetic, and grammar, and I told the little chap (a little crossly, too) that I did not know how to draw. He answered me:"That doesn’t matter. Draw me a sheep..."But I had never drawn a sheep. So I drew for him one of the two pictures I had drawn so often. It was that of the boa constrictor from the outside. And I was astounded to hear the little fellow greet it with, "No, no, no! I do not want an elephant inside a boa constrictor. A boa constrictor is a very dangerous creature, and an elephant is very cumbersome. Where I live, everything is very small. What I need is a sheep. Draw me a sheep."So then I made a drawing.