16 The Wine-Dark Sea - Libro della tutto

Patrick O'Brian The Wine-Dark Sea
Both Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin were
much attached to their wives, and both wrote
to them at quite frequent intervals; but
whereas Jack's letters owed their whole existence
to the hope that they would reach home
by some means or another – merchantman,
man-of-war or packet – or failing that that
they would travel there in his own sea-chest
and be read aloud to Sophie with explanations
of just how the wind lay or the current
set, Stephen's were not always intended to be
sent at all. Sometimes he wrote them in order
to be in some kind of contact with Diana,
however remote and one-sided; sometimes to
clarify things in his own mind; sometimes for
the relief (and pleasure) of saying things that
he could say to no one else, and these of
course had but an ephemeral life.
My dearest soul, he wrote, when the