16 The Wine-Dark Sea - Libro della tutto

Patrick O'Brian The Wine-Dark Sea
and shrouds and preparing what number one
canvas they possessed. A little before dinnertime,
when a tall white rock, a sea-lions' island
much haunted by birds, the sea-mark for Callao
Head, showed plain on the starboard
bow, nicking the horizon ten miles away, with
the remote almost cloud-like snow-topped
Andes far beyond, the wind began blowing
out of a clear high pale-blue sky. It could be
seen coming, a dun-coloured haze from the
east, right off shore; it did not come with any
sudden violence, but it increased steadily to a
shrieking blast that flattened the sea, bringing
with it great quantities of very fine sand and
dust that gritted between their teeth and
blurred their sight.
In the interval between the first pleasant hum
in the rigging that woke the launch to life and
the scream that overcame everything but a
shout they came abreast of the tall white rock,