这幅画同前几幅一样又被回绝了。
My friend smiled gently and indulgenty. "You see yourself," he said, "that this is not a sheep. This is a ram. It has horns."So then I did my drawing over once more.
他渐渐地仿佛在报告一件非常首要的事情普通，对我反复说道：“请……给我画一只绵羊……”
“你本身看看，”他说，“你画的不是绵羊，是头公羊，另有两个角呢。”
他细心地看了下，随后又说：“我不要，这只绵羊已经病得很重了。给我重新画一只。”
Now I stared at this sudden apparition with my eyes fairly starting out of my head in astonishment. Remember, I had crashed in the desert a thousand miles from any inhabited region. And yet my little man seemed neither to be straying uncertainly among the sands, nor to be fainting from fatigue or hunger or thirst or fear. Nothing about him gave any suggestion of a child lost in the middle of the desert, a thousand miles from any human habitation. When at last I was able to speak, I said to him: "But, what are you doing here"And in answer he repeated, very slowly, as if he were speaking of a matter of great consequence: "If you please, draw me a sheep..."When a mystery is too overpowering, one dare not disobey. Absurd as it might seem to me, a thousand miles from any human habitation and in danger of death, I took out of my pocket a sheet of paper and my fountain-pen. But then I remembered how my studies had been concentrated on geography, history, arithmetic, and grammar, and I told the little chap (a little crossly, too) that I did not know how to draw. He answered me:"That doesn’t matter. Draw me a sheep..."But I had never drawn a sheep. So I drew for him one of the two pictures I had drawn so often. It was that of the boa constrictor from the outside. And I was astounded to hear the little fellow greet it with, "No, no, no! I do not want an elephant inside a boa constrictor. A boa constrictor is a very dangerous creature, and an elephant is very cumbersome. Where I live, everything is very small. What I need is a sheep. Draw me a sheep."So then I made a drawing.