出走的岩石

再往下，波莉下到够低的地方，遇见了一位邻居。就在水中，近得让她觉得自己可以滑翔过去，立着一座孤零零的浅色岩塔，海浪在它脚下碎成白沫。它名叫“沙粒”，这是个玩笑，因为它差不多有一座小教堂那么大。

Further down still, Polly comes down far enough to meet a neighbor. Standing out in the water, close enough that she feels she could glide to it, is a single tower of pale rock with the sea breaking white around its foot. It is called the Grain of Sand, which is a joke, because it is roughly the size of a small church.

它并非一直在那里。大约八百年前，它还是这道悬崖的一部分，和崖壁连在一起，毫不起眼。后来，海浪终于完成了它们在底下经营已久的工程，相连的岩石塌落了，岩塔便独自留在了海中。波莉看了它好一会儿。它底部比顶部还细。大海仍在干活。

It has not always been out there. About eight hundred years ago it was part of this cliff, joined on, ordinary. Then the waves finished the job they had been working at underneath it, and the connecting rock went, and the tower was left standing alone in the sea. Polly looks at it for a while. It is thinner at the bottom than at the top. The sea is still working.

一只鸥从与她视线齐平的地方飞过，这一只值得多看几眼。它不是那种跟着船跑、在港口堤岸上偷薯条的吵闹海鸥。这是一只奥氏鸥，它从不捡食残羹剩饭。它靠出海捕鱼为生，对一只鸥来说，这几乎算得上一种原则。

A gull comes past at eye level, and this one is worth watching. It is not one of the loud ones that follow boats and steal chips from the harbor wall. This is an Audouin's gull, and it does not scavenge at all. It makes its living out at sea, hunting fish, which for a gull is almost a matter of principle.

它背着光，飞向海峡上空，直到波莉再也看不见它。她回头望向那座孤立的岩石，望着它和悬崖之间的空隙，心想这道空隙从前曾是实心的石头，有人本可以从上面走过去。

It goes out over the strait with the light behind it until Polly loses it. She looks back at the standing rock, and at the gap between it and the cliff, and thinks about how that gap was once solid stone that somebody could have walked across.