16 The Wine-Dark Sea - Libro della tutto

Patrick O'Brian The Wine-Dark Sea
'Where away?' asked Jack. His injured eye
was now watering extremely in the icy breeze,
blurring the sight of both.
'Which I've lost them now, sir,' said Bonden.
'The ship seemed a fair size: topsails and I
think forecourse: but they come and go.
Sometimes you would say a ship of the line,
sometimes only a sloop.'
Silence. Blankness: grey trails of mist wafted
through the rigging, leaving ice-crystals on
every strand. Jack whipped a handkerchief
over his poor eye, and he was still knotting the
ends when an eddy tore something of a window
in the fog. The China ships, all three of
them now, could be seen quite plain: they had
cleared the islands and they were well to the
south of them, exactly where reason had foretold.
But illogically the newcomers, though
closer to, indeed between the Surprise and her
quarry, were much vaguer, mere looming