Stephen’s eyes gleamed as he took it and turned it slowly round and round in his hands. ‘Oh thank you, thank you, Jack,’ he cried. ‘It is perfect — the very apotheosis of a tooth.’

‘There were some longer ones, well over a fathom, but they had lost their tips, and I thought you would like to get the point, ha, ha, ha.’ It was a flash of his old idiot self, and he wheezed and chuckled for some time, his blue eyes as clear and delighted as they had been long ago: wild glee over an infinitesimal grain of merriment.

Post Captain – Patrick O’Brian