16 The Wine-Dark Sea - Libro della tutto

Patrick O'Brian The Wine-Dark Sea
he would turn them ashore: farewell for ever
to any hope of reinstatement.
Davidge had been killed in the recent action
that made the Polynesian island of Moahu at
least a nominal part of the British Empire and
Oakes had gone off for Batavia with his
Clarissa in a recaptured prize; but so far Captain
Aubrey had said nothing. West did not
know whether his zeal in the approaches to
Moahu and in getting the carronades up
through rough country and his modest part in
the battle itself had earned him forgiveness or
whether he should be dismissed when the ship
reached Peru: an agonizing thought. What he
did know, here and in the immediate present,
was that a valuable prize, in which he would
share even if he were later dismissed, had almost
certainly escaped. They would never
catch her before nightfall and in this hazy,
moonless darkness, she could run a hundred