16 The Wine-Dark Sea - Libro della tutto

Patrick O'Brian The Wine-Dark Sea
FOUR
The next morning Jack Aubrey came up from
a conference, a pursers' conference with Mr
Adams: Jack, like Cook and many a farranging
captain before him, was nominally his
own purser, just as Adams was nominally the
captain's clerk; but by dividing the work between
them they accomplished both it and
their own specific duties quite well, particularly
as the anomalous status of the Surprise meant
that her accounts would never have to pass
the slow, circumspect eyes of the Victualling
Office, for whom all persons in charge of His
Majesty's stores were guilty of embezzlement
until with countersigned dockets of every con-