16 The Wine-Dark Sea - Libro della tutto

Patrick O'Brian The Wine-Dark Sea
that green water at fourteen knots under topsails,
fore-courses and a jib, impelled by an
almighty quartering wind. The change was not
unexpected. Well before this ominous parallel
the frigate's people had been engaged in shifting,
packing and storing her light sails and replacing
them with much heavier cloth, with
storm-canvas trysails and the like for emergency.
Many a watch had been spent in sending
up preventer backstays, braces, shrouds
and stays and in attending to new earings, robands,
reef-points, reef-tackles for the courses
and spilling-lines for the topsails, to say nothing
of new sheets and clewlines fore and aft.
Then again all hands had rounded the Horn
at least once, some many times, and they took
their long woollen drawers, their mittens and
their Magellan jackets very seriously when they
were served out, while most of those who had
had any foresight dug into their chests for