首頁 黎明踏浪號(彩插雙語版)

CHAPTER THREE THE LONE ISLANDS

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“LAND in sight, ” shouted the man in the bows.

Lucy, who had been talking to Rhince on the poop, came pattering down the ladder and raced forward. As she went she was joined by Edmund, and they found Caspian, Drinian and Reepicheep already on the forecastle. It was a coldish morning, the sky very pale and the sea very dark blue with little white caps of foam, and there, a little way off on the starboard bow, was the nearest of the Lone Islands, Felimath, like a low green hill in the sea, and behind it, further off, the gray slopes of its sister Doorn.

“Same old Felimath! Same old Doorn, ” said Lucy, clapping her hands. “Oh—Edmund, how long it is since you and I saw them last! ”

“I've never understood why they belong to Narnia, ” said Caspian.“Did Peter the High King conquer them? ”

“Oh no, ” said Edmund. “They were Narnian before our time—in the days of the White Witch.”

(By the way, I have never yet heard how these remote islands became attached to the crown of Narnia; if I ever do, and if the story is at all interesting, I may put it in some other book.)

“Are we to put in here, Sire? ” asked Drinian.

“I shouldn't think it would be much good landing on Felimath, ”said Edmund. “It was almost uninhabited in our days and it looks as if it was the same still. The people lived mostly on Doorn and a little on Avra—that's the third one; you can't see it yet. They only kept sheep on Felimath.”

“Then we'll have to double that cape, I suppose, ” said Drinian, “and land on Doorn. That'll mean rowing.”

“I'm sorry we're not landing on Felimath, ” said Lucy. “I'd like to walk there again. It was so lonely—a nice kind of loneliness, and all grass and clover and soft sea air.”

“I'd love to stretch my legs now too, ” said Caspian. “I tell you what. Why shouldn't we go ashore in the boat and send it back, and then we could walk across Felimath and let the Dawn Treader pick us up on the other side? ”