16 The Wine-Dark Sea - Libro della tutto

Patrick O'Brian The Wine-Dark Sea
and far from land with only one mast and no
rudder at all was in a very sad way: furthermore
his knowledge of sailing, though limited,
did tell him that one mast and its sails in the
very front of the ship could impel a rudderless
vessel only directly before the wind, that the
wind in these latitudes was nearly always westerly,
and that there was no land ahead until
they came right round the globe to Cape Horn
again.
He did not like to ask directly, but he put
these points to various shipmates; to his distress
they all, invariably, agreed with him. 'Ah,
Doctor, things is wery bad,' said Joe Plaice. 'I
have never heard anything so dreadful as the
loss of a rudder five thousand miles from
land,' said Mr Adams, 'for in our condition,
South America, dead to windward, cannot be
considered as land at all.' Yet at the same
time he detected much of this same cheerful-