16 The Wine-Dark Sea - Libro della tutto

Patrick O'Brian The Wine-Dark Sea
The only apparently idle hands in either ship
were the medical men. They had returned to
the frigate some time before; they had made
the rounds of the sick-berth and its extensions
and now they were waiting for a pause in the
general activity, when someone would have
time to pull Martin, who was to spend the
night in the Franklin, across the lane of
choppy water that separated the ships. Although
both medicoes could row, after a fashion,
neither could afford to have inept, clumsy
fingers with so strong a likelihood of further
surgery.
They were watching the extraction of the
Franklin's broken lower masts and their replacement
by a jury-rig, and from time to time
Stephen explained the various operations.
'There, do you see,' he said, 'those two very
long legs joining at the top with a pair of stout
pulleys at the juncture and their feet resting on