16 The Wine-Dark Sea - Libro della tutto

Patrick O'Brian The Wine-Dark Sea
deck under a 'cello: a great deal to be said for
a cheerful heart behind a fiddle: and they
would have brought it to an unusually handsome
close if Killick had not blundered in,
tripping over a little stool, unseen because of
his tray, and saving their supper only by a
miracle of juggling.
At one time this supper had consisted of
toasted cheese held in a remarkably elegant
piece of Irish silver, a covered outer dish that
held six within it, the whole kept warm over a
spirit-stove: the dish was still present, gleaming
with a noble brilliance, but it held only a
pap made of pounded biscuit, a little goat's
milk, and even less of rock-hard cheese-rind
rasped over the top and browned with a loggerhead,
so that some faint odour of cheddar
could still just be made out.
Jack Aubrey weighed sixteen or seventeen
stone, Stephen barely nine, and to avoid the