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● dropped behind：落在后面。crouched：佝偻。
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● faintly and stiffly：声音模糊而僵硬。
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● Back to the wind：背对着风。watery eyes：眼睛流泪，不能睁开，仅成细缝（slit）。fine spindrift：很细的浪花。雪为风所吹，如浪花似的凌空飞溅，雪质很细，望之乃如烟雾。fell away：人在高处下望，原驻足之山头，渐渐消失。
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“We better get back down there,” I yelled.
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John had not turned. We saw him dimly in the smoke, a hundred yards above us.
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“Can’t feel my feet any more,” Tommy said—still shouting.
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The truth broke suddenly. We are in deadly danger. The illusion of “October” vanished forever and I faced the facts of arctic winter and the ice-created hurricane.
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● the smoke：烟状的雪风。
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● The truth broke suddenly：我这才恍然大悟。
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● The illusion of “October”：假如还拿平地的眼光，认为天气应该是十月天气，这便成了痴想了，现在这种痴想已经消除净尽；我所面对的事实，乃是北极的酷寒，和冰雪所造成的暴风。
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But there was still John Somes—we ought to stick together. Tommy, I thought, could start back, and I could still keep on and get hold of John. I leaned to yell in his ear, glancing up once more to see if John had turned yet. What happened from that point on is so mingled with my fear and increasing desperation that I can re-create it only as a terrible dream.
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● John一个人走在前头，我们现在要掉头回去，应该把他叫来，三人团结一起（stick together）。我认为Tommy可以径自回去，我再往上爬，把John追回来。
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● I leaned to yell in his ear…：我俯身过去把我的意思高声地对准Tommy的耳朵里嚷，一面往高处望，看看John是否已经转身回来了。
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● 从那时候起，我就记不清楚了。我心中恐惧、惶急之情，与时俱增（increasing desperation），以后的事情，就和我这种情绪混淆在一起，真幻难分，于今思之（re-create：把当时情形重演或叙述一遍），犹如恶梦一场。
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The mountain slope had glistened remotely above us in the cold sun—not clear to our half-blinded eyes, but palpably there, a visible part of earth’s substance. The smoke of snow revealed gray rock and even the cairns set by human hands to mark the trail; and beyond those outposts of earth the blue of sky had given us comfort. But now white and gray masses of cloud came like a cataract, solid, vast, silent in the gale. The sun flashed against it with cold and terrible brightness, but in the hollows and rifts it deepened to dark gray and black. Tatters of it came first like flying arrows, and I saw them flash past the dim, hunched figure of John Somes; then the mass came down like a solid avalanche of death itself, silver above and black in its caverns, riding the wind. A few seconds of terrifying beauty, and I saw John Somes fade, go under, vanish; and then before I could draw breath or warn Tommy it happened to us too.
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● 以后发生些什么可怕的事，当事人自己都说不清楚呢。这事在第三句方才说明，现在先看第一二句。
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● 他们到了山区高处，见到冰雪之后，只是觉得奇寒难忍，狂风难当，此外景色还和下面差不多：高处山坡在毫无暖气的日光底下，隐隐约约地晶晶发光，他们的眼睛睁不大开，看不清楚，可是前面的确有这么一块地方，似乎伸了手就摸得到的（palpably there），有形有体（substance），宛然可睹，分明是大地的一部分。一阵轻烟似的雪风过处，灰色的岩石便露了出来，还有前人以手堆植用以山行标路的石堆（cairns），也看得见了。这些都是大地尽处的前哨（outposts），前哨外面，便是一片碧空，看了心中也曾觉得安慰。
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● 注意这两句的动词时态：had glistened和had given（过去完成式）是表示“过去”的事，接着第三句从But now起，就是叙述眼前的事了。
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● cataract：瀑布。gale：大风（gust是突然发作随时可停的疾风，故常用复数gusts。gale则是劲吹不已的大风）。
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● 现在忽然大块雪团袭来，风势既猛，水气又多结成冰雪，故竟予人以坚硬（solid）的感觉。日光照处，冷光耀目，特别可怕；然云团低洼罅隙（hollows and rifts）之处，则又深暗作浓灰乌黑之色。
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● 云团的碎片（Tatters）先到，John在前，首当其冲，只见前面丝丝碎云，像飞箭似的，射过他拱首隆背（hunched）模糊的身形，然后大块云团，表面银光闪闪，其凹处黝暗，复如岩洞，挟生杀之威，如雪崖崩落（avalanche），御风而至，当头落下。
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● 这种惊心动魄的奇丽景色，不过是几秒钟的事，John即为当头罩住，先是身形不清，继则全身掩没（go under），消失不见。我要换口气的工夫都没有，招呼Tommy也来不及了，我们两人立刻都被罩住。
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No beauty then. Nothing but wind and our hunched selves. The very rock we stood on lost substance. Air, earth, all reality, was turned into this gray force. I had felt fear like a blade when the cloud charged against us; now in the gray my feelings like my body grew numb.
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● No beauty then呼应上段的terrifying beauty。
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● lost substance：化为虚无（脚头站不住了）。
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