16 The Wine-Dark Sea - Libro della tutto

Patrick O'Brian The Wine-Dark Sea
eral well-being. Rats, however, had eaten his
store of leaves somewhere south of Capricorn.
Coca leaves could not be replaced in New
South Wales, where the Surprise had spent
some dismal weeks, and he looked forward
eagerly to a fresh supply: ever since he last
heard from his wife – letters had caught up
with the ship off Norfolk Island – he had felt a
deep indwelling anxiety about her; and the
coca leaves might at least dispel the irrational
part of it. They sharpened the mind wonderfully;
and he welcomed the prospect of that
familiar taste, the deadening of the inside of
his mouth and pharynx, and the calming of his
spirit in what he termed 'a virtuous ataraxy', a
freedom that owed nothing to alcohol, that
contemptible refuge, nor even to his old love
opium, which might be objected to on physical
and even perhaps on moral grounds.
This was scarcely a subject that so discreet,