16 The Wine-Dark Sea - Libro della tutto

Patrick O'Brian The Wine-Dark Sea
great while now: they liked what they were
used to; and they knew what was due to a
shipmate.
If there had been any danger of Stephen's
forgetting, then the appearance of the deck
when he came up into the sparkling open air
and the brilliant light after his long morning
round would have brought it all to mind.
Quite apart from the fact that the waist of the
ship, the part between the quarterdeck and the
forecastle, where ordinarily he saw a mass of
spare masts, yards and spars in general covered
with tarpaulins on the booms, the boats
nestling among them, was now quite clear,
the spars nearly all used and the boats either
busy or towing astern, which gave her a singular
clean-run austerity – quite apart from this
there had been an extraordinary change from
the apparent confusion and real filth of yesterday
to a Sunday neatness, falls flemished,