16 The Wine-Dark Sea - Libro della tutto

Patrick O'Brian The Wine-Dark Sea
too tentative and crablike for that – but no
landsman would have accomplished it, paying
so little attention to the motion in that pitching
ship as she raced with a full-topsail gale three
points on her quarter, her stern rising up and
up on the following swell; nor would a landsman
have stood there, barely conscious of the
heave, as he considered his messmates' dwelling-place.
It was a long dim corridor-like room, some
eighteen feet wide and twenty-eight in length,
with an almost equally long table running
down the middle and the officers' cabin doors
opening on to the narrow space on either side
– opening outwards, since if they opened the
other way they must necessarily crush the man
within. There was no one in the gunroom at
present apart from a seaman who was polishing
the table and the foot of the mizenmast,
which rose nobly through it half-way along,