16 The Wine-Dark Sea - Libro della tutto

Patrick O'Brian The Wine-Dark Sea
but its amount is to be written down.' Dutourd's
wits had returned to him by now. Jack
Aubrey's massive confidence told him that any
sort of protest would be worse than useless:
indeed, this treatment compared most favourably
with the Franklin's, whose prisoners
were stripped bare; but the long pause between
capture and destitution, so very unlike
the instant looting he had seen before, had
bred illogical hopes. He managed a look of
unconcern, however, and said, 'Vae victis' and
produced two keys from an inner pocket. 'I
hope you may not find that my former shipmates
have been there before you,' he added.
'There were some grasping fellows among
them.'
There were some grasping fellows aboard the
Surprise too, if men who dearly loved to get
their hands upon immediate ringing gold and
silver rather than amiable but mute, remote,