16 The Wine-Dark Sea - Libro della tutto

Patrick O'Brian The Wine-Dark Sea
desolate regions south of the Horn.
Yet this eagerness for a prize, so natural in
the crew of a man-of-war, was curiously coloured
and accentuated by Stephen's account
of the Inca's great chain, an account that had
nothing whatsoever to do with Boston merchantmen
launched two hundred and fifty
years later: it nevertheless suffused the whole
ship's collective state of mind.
'How much do you suppose a tolerably stout
Indian could lift?' asked Reade.
'They are natives, you know,' said Wedell,
'and everyone knows that natives can raise
prodigious great burdens, though not much
above five feet tall.'
'Say two hundredweight,' said Norton.
'That makes four hundred hundredweight for
two hundred Indians,' said Reade, writing it on
the slate used for his rough day's work. 'Which