16 The Wine-Dark Sea - Libro della tutto

Patrick O'Brian The Wine-Dark Sea
with silver ingots to welcome an earlier viceroy;
and that because of the frequent earthquakes
the upper and sometimes the lower
floors of the house were built of wooden
frames filled with stout reeds, plastered over
and painted stone or brick colour, with appropriate
lines to help the illusion – that the
great thing to do, in the event of an earthquake,
was to open the door: otherwise it
might jam and you would be buried under the
ruins.
They grew a little less shy, a little more human,
when they were led indoors and fed.
Sam's servant Hipolito pleased them by wearing
a sash broader than their own but clerical
violet; they were delighted to see that the door
was indeed kept open by a wedge, and even
more so by the discovery of a ludicrous resemblance
between Hipolito and Killick – the
same look of pinched, shrewish discontent,