"Why, he's only a great cat after all!" cried one.
"Is that what we were afraid of?" said another.
And they surged (蜂拥而来) round Aslan, jeering (嘲笑) at him, saying things like "Puss (猫咪), Puss! Poor Pussy," and "How many mice have you caught today, Cat?" and "Would you like a saucer of milk, Pussums?"
"Oh, how can they?" said Lucy, tears streaming down her cheeks.
"The brutes (畜生), the brutes!" for now that the first shock was over the shorn (剪了毛的,shear的过去分词) face of Aslan looked to her braver, and more beautiful, and more patient than ever.{1}
"Muzzle (封住…的嘴) him!" said the Witch. And even now, as they worked about his face putting on the muzzle, one bite from his jaws (下巴) would have cost two or three of them their hands.
But he never moved. And this seemed to enrage (激怒) all that rabble (乌合之众). Everyone was at him now.
Those who had been afraid to come near him even after he was bound began to find their courage, and for a few minutes the two girls could not even see him - so thickly (厚厚地) was he surrounded by the whole crowd of creatures kicking him, hitting him, spitting on him, jeering at him.{2}
At last the rabble had had enough of this. They began to drag the bound and muzzled Lion to the Stone Table, some pulling and some pushing.
He was so huge that even when they got him there it took all their efforts to hoist (使升起) him on to the surface (表面) of it. Then there was more tying and tightening of cords (绳索).
"The cowards (胆小鬼)! The cowards!" sobbed Susan. "Are they still afraid of him, even now?"
When once Aslan had been tied (and tied so that he was really a mass of cords) on the flat stone, a hush fell on the crowd.
Four Hags, holding four torches, stood at the corners of the Table. The Witch bared her arms as she had bared them the previous (以前的) night when it had been Edmund instead of Aslan.
Then she began to whet (磨) her knife. It looked to the children, when the gleam of the torchlight (火炬之光) fell on it, as if the knife were made of stone, not of steel (钢铁), and it was of a strange and evil shape.
As last she drew near. She stood by Aslan's head. Her face was working and twitching (抽搐) with passion, but his looked up at the sky, still quiet, neither angry nor afraid, but a little sad.
Then, just before she gave the blow, she stooped down and said in a quivering voice,
"And now, who has won? Fool, did you think that by all this you would save the human traitor (叛徒)?
Now I will kill you instead of him as our pact was and so the Deep Magic will be appeased (满足).
But when you are dead what will prevent me from killing him as well? And who will take him out of my hand then?
Understand that you have given me Narnia forever, you have lost your own life and you have not saved his. In that knowledge, despair (绝望) and die."
The children did not see the actual moment of the killing. They couldn't bear to look and had covered their eyes.
WHILE the two girls still crouched in the bushes with their hands over their faces, they heard the voice of the Witch calling out,
"Now! Follow me all and we will set about what remains of this war! It will not take us long to crush (压碎) the human vermin (歹徒) and the traitors now that the great fool, the great Cat, lies dead."
At this moment the children were for a few seconds in very great danger.
For with wild cries and a noise of skirling (风笛声) pipes (尖叫) and shrill horns blowing, the whole of that vile rabble came sweeping off the hill-top and down the slope right past their hiding-place.
They felt the Spectres (幽灵) go by them like a cold wind and they felt the ground shake beneath them under the galloping (飞驰的) feet of the Minotaurs; and overhead there went a flurry of foul wings and a blackness of vultures and giant bats. {3}
At any other time they would have trembled with fear; but now the sadness and shame and horror of Aslan's death so filled their minds that they hardly thought of it.
As soon as the wood was silent again Susan and Lucy crept (creep的过去式) out onto the open hill-top.
The moon was getting low and thin clouds were passing across her, but still they could see the shape of the Lion lying dead in his bonds.
And down they both knelt in the wet grass and kissed his cold face and stroked his beautiful fur - what was left of it - and cried till they could cry no more.
And then they looked at each other and held each other's hands for mere loneliness and cried again; and then again were silent. At last Lucy said,
"I can't bear (忍受) to look at that horrible muzzle. I wonder could we take it off?"
So they tried. And after a lot of working at it (for their fingers were cold and it was now the darkest part of the night) they succeeded.
And when they saw his face without it they burst out crying again and kissed it and fondled (抚摸) it and wiped away the blood and the foam as well as they could.
And it was all more lonely and hopeless and horrid than I know how to describe.
"I wonder could we untie (解开) him as well?" said Susan presently.
But the enemies, out of pure spitefulness (怀恨在心), had drawn the cords so tight that the girls could make nothing of the knots.
I hope no one who reads this book has been quite as miserable (痛苦的) as Susan and Lucy were that night; but if you have been - if you've been up all night and cried till you have no more tears left in you - you will know that there comes in the end a sort of quietness.{4}
You feel as if nothing was ever going to happen again. At any rate that was how it felt to these two.
Hours and hours seemed to go by in this dead calm, and they hardly noticed that they were getting colder and colder.
But at last Lucy noticed two other things. One was that the sky on the east side of the hill was a little less dark than it had been an hour ago.
The other was some tiny (微小的) movement going on in the grass at her feet. At first she took no interest in this.
What did it matter? Nothing mattered now!
But at last she saw that whatever-it-was had begun to move up the upright stones of the Stone Table.
And now whatever-they-were were moving about on Aslan's body. She peered (细看) closer. They were little grey things.