Explore "An Awfully Big Adventure" by Bartimeus on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The Quartermaster of the Watch pushed aside the tarpaulin cover to the Wardroom hatchway and whistled softly through his teeth. "Mail," he said to the Officers' Steward, who stepped out of the diminutive pantry in answer to the summons, and, bending down, thrust a bundle of sodden envelopes into the outstretched hand. It was snowing hard, and the whaler that brought off the Destroyer's Christmas mail had shipped sufficient water to call for a muttered protest from beneath the sou'-wester of the stroke oar.
"I don' mind wettin' my blinking shirt," he muttered, as he tugged at the oar, "not so long as we brings 'ope 'an' comfort. But if them perishin' mail-bags is goin' to sit in a pool o' water -- what the 'ell's the use? No one can't read a letter wot's bin soaked in the Norf Sea for a hour! " The whaler's crew murmured concurrence.