MOBY DICK HERMAN MELVILLE CHAPTER 60 Đây là một tác phẩm anh ngữ nổi tiếng với những từ vựng nâng cao chuyên ngành văn chương. Nhằm giúp các bạn yêu thich tiếng anh luyện tập và củng cố thêm kỹ năng đọc tiếng anh . | MOBY DICK HERMAN MELVILLE CHAPTER 60 The Line With reference to the whaling scene shortly to be described as well as for the better understanding of all similar scenes elsewhere presented I have here to speak of the magical sometimes horrible whale-line. The line originally used in the fishery was of the best hemp slightly vapored with tar not impregnated with it as in the case of ordinary ropes for while tar as ordinarily used makes the hemp more pliable to the rope-maker and also renders the rope itself more convenient to the sailor for common ship use yet not only would the ordinary quantity too much stiffen the whale-line for the close coiling to which it must be subjected but as most seamen are beginning to learn tar in general by no means adds to the rope s durability or strength however much it may give it compactness and gloss. Of late years the Manilla rope has in the American fishery almost entirely superseded hemp as a material for whale-lines for though not so durable as hemp it is stronger and far more soft and elastic and I will add since there is an aesthetics in all things is much more handsome and becoming to the boat than hemp. Hemp is a dusky dark fellow a sort of Indian but Manilla is as a golden-haired Circassian to behold. The whale-line is only two thirds of an inch in thickness. At first sight you would not think it so strong as it really is. By experiment its one and fifty yarns will each suspend a weight of one hundred and twenty pounds so that the whole rope will bear a strain nearly equal to three tons. In length the common sperm whale-line measures something over two hundred fathoms. Towards the stern of the boat it is spirally coiled away in the tub not like the worm-pipe of a still though but so as to form one round cheese-shaped mass of densely bedded sheaves or layers of concentric spiralizations without any hollow but the heart or minute vertical tube formed at the axis of the cheese. As the least tangle or kink in the coiling .
