16 The Wine-Dark Sea - Libro della tutto

Patrick O'Brian The Wine-Dark Sea
mous shriek, a vast jet of steam leapt from the
crater, mingled with ash and volcanic gases.
When Jack first saw the island it was a hundred
and eighty feet high, but the rollers had
already swept away great quantities of the
clinker and by the time the sun was clear of
the murk not fifty feet remained.
The more northern of the ships, the Surprise,
was in fact quite well in hand, lying to under a
storm trysail on her only undamaged lower
mast, while her people did all that very weary
men could do – it had been all hands all night
– to repair her damaged maintop and to cross
at least the lower yard. They had the strongest
motives for doing so, since their quarry, totally
dismasted and wallowing gunwales under on
the swell, lay directly under their lee; but there
was no certainty that helpless though she
seemed she might not send up some kind of a
jury-rig and slip away into the thick weather