16 The Wine-Dark Sea - Libro della tutto

Patrick O'Brian The Wine-Dark Sea
poor West. You knew what was afoot, I am
sure?'
'Not until we began knotting and splicing at
first light,' said Jack, 'and when they brought
me some of your bombs – there is one there
by the capstan must weigh fifty pound – and
showed me the cinders the rain had not
washed away. Then I saw the whole thing
plain. I think I should have smoked it earlier if
the island had blazed away good and steady,
like Stromboli; but it kept shooting out jets,
quite like a battery of mortars. But at least I
was not so foolishly mistaken about the Franklin.
There she lies, right under our lee. You will
have to stand on the caronnade-slide to see
her: take my glass.'
The Franklin was of infinitely less interest to
Dr Maturin than the encyclopaedia of marine
life heaving on the swell below, but he
climbed up, gazed, and said, 'She is in the sad