阶梯和关于它的传说

从上面看，这些台阶已经够吓人了；踏上第一级之后，看起来更糟。它们下坠的角度和靠在墙上的梯子差不多，严格说来根本算不上楼梯，而是在岩石里凿出的一道槽，有些地方约有一扇门宽，有些地方更窄，缝隙底部露出淡绿色的海水。波莉往下跳了几级，发现高低不平，每一级的高度都略有不同。

From the top the steps looked bad. From the first one down, they look worse. They fall away at about the same angle as a ladder leaned against a wall, and they are not really a staircase at all. They are a groove cut into the rock, roughly as wide as a doorway in places and narrower in others, with the sea showing pale green at the bottom of the gap. Polly hops down the first few and finds them uneven. Every step is a slightly different height.

关于这个地方有一个传说，人人都会讲。一四二〇年，阿拉贡的军队围攻这座小城，据说士兵们在一夜之间，悄悄在悬崖上凿出了整道阶梯，好爬上去，出其不意地夺下城堡。

There is a story about this place, and everyone tells it. In the year fourteen twenty, an army from Aragon laid siege to the town, and its soldiers are said to have carved this entire staircase into the cliff in one single night, in secret, in order to climb up and take the citadel by surprise.

这是个精彩的故事，却几乎可以肯定不是真的。一百多年前，一位研究者仔细考察过这个问题，指出了两处说不通的地方。第一，无论是谁，都不可能在一夜之间在坚硬的石灰岩上凿出将近两百级台阶。第二，这一段城墙沿线设有瞭望塔，一群人整夜叮叮当当地敲凿岩石，很难不被发现。

It is a wonderful story. It is also almost certainly not true. A researcher looked at the problem carefully more than a hundred years ago and pointed out two difficulties. First, nearly two hundred steps cannot be cut into solid limestone in one night by anybody. Second, there were guard towers along this stretch of wall, and men hammering at rock all night are not easy to miss.

波莉在往海面去约三分之一处的一级台阶上坐下。下方，一只大海鸟贴着崖壁滑翔而来，飞得那么低，翼尖几乎擦到水面，一路掠过，翅膀一次也没有扇动。到底是谁凿了这些台阶，又是为了什么，真正的答案还在更下面。

Polly sits down on a step about a third of the way toward the sea. Below her a large seabird comes gliding along the cliff, so low that its wingtip nearly touches the water, and it does not flap once the whole way past. The real answer to who cut these steps, and why, is somewhere further down.