16 The Wine-Dark Sea - Libro della tutto

Patrick O'Brian The Wine-Dark Sea
warmth. From time to time he groaned or uttered
a disconnected word; twice he opened
his eyes, raised his head and stared about,
uncomprehending; once he took a little water
with inspissated lemon-juice in it; but generally
speaking he was wholly inert, and the habitual
look of anxiety had left his face.
When he sent Padeen to bed Stephen sat on.
In sponging Martin he had looked very attentively
for signs of the veneral disorder that he
had at one time suspected: there were none.
As a naval surgeon he had a great experience
of the matter, and there were no signs at all.
He knew, as any medical man must know, that
mind could do astonishing things to body –
false pregnancies, for example, with evident,
tangible lactation and all the other marks of
gravidity – but the lesions now before him
were of another kind, and more virulent. Martin
might believe himself poxed, and the belief