Tag Archives: age of sail

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My dear Stephen, he wrote

Oh wish me joy – I am made post! I never thought it would be, though he received me in the kindest way; but then suddenly he popped it out, signed, sealed and delivered, with seniority from May 23rd. It was like a prodigious unexpected vast great broadside from a three-decker, but of happiness: I could not get it all aboard directly, I was so taken aback, but by the time I had smuggled myself back to the Grapes I was swelling like a rose – so happy. How I wish you had been there! I celebrated with a quart of your vile porter and a bolus, and turned in at once, quite fagged out.

This morning I was very much better, however, and in the Savoy chapel I said the finest thing in my life. The parson was playing a Handel fugue, the organ-boy deserted his post, and I said ‘it would be a pity to leave Handel up in the air, for want of wind,’ and blew for him. It was the wittiest thing! I did not smoke it entirely all at once, however, only after I had been pumping for some time; and then I could hardly keep from laughing aloud. It may be that post captains are a very witty set of men, and that I am coming to it.

Post Captain – Patrick O’Brian

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He touched his bell, and a clerk came in with an envelope; at the sight of it Jack’s heart began to beat wildly, his thin space blood to race about his body; yet his face turned extremely pale. ‘This is an interesting occasion, Captain Aubrey: you must allow me the pleasure of being the first to congratulate you on your promotion. I have stretched a point, and you are made post with seniority from May 23rd.’

Post Captain – Patrick O’Brian

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He knew that this approval would grow after the publication of his official letter, with its grim list of casualties ― seventeen dead and twenty-three wounded ― for civilians liked to have sailors’ blood to deplore, and the more a victory cost the more it was esteemed. If only little Parslow could have contrived to get himself knocked on the head it would have been perfect.

Post Captain – Patrick O’Brian

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Killick had spent little of his life ashore, and most of that little in an amphibious village in the Essex mud; but he was fly; he knew a great deal about landsmen, most of whom were crimps, pickpockets, whores, or officials of the Sick and Hurt office, and he could tell a gum a mile off. He saw them everywhere. He was the worst possible companion for a weak, reduced, anxious debtor that could be well found, the more so in his absolute copper-bottomed certainty of being a right deep file, no sort or kind of a flat, and carried a certain conviction. By way of a ruse de guerre he had somehow acquired a clergyman’s hat, and this, combined with his earrings, his yard of pigtail, his watchet-blue jacket with brass buttons, his white trousers and low silver-buckled shoes, succeeded so well that several customers followed him from the tap-room to gaze while he leaned in and said to Jack, ‘It’s no go, sir. I seen some slang coves in the tap. You’ll have to drink it in the shay. What’ll it be, sir? Dog’s nose? Flip? Come, sir,’ he said, with the authority of the well over the sick in their care, or even out of it, ‘What’ll it be? For down it must go, or it will miss the tide.’ Jack thought he would like a little sherry. ‘Oh no, sir. No wine. The doctor said, No wine. Porter is more the mark.’ He brought back sherry — had been obliged to call for wine, it being a shay — and a mug of porter; drank the sherry, gave back change as he saw fit, and watched the bolts go gasping, retching down, helped by the porter. ‘That’s thundering good physic,’ he said. ‘Drive on, mate.’

Post Captain – Patrick O’Brian

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‘What one is bound to do, one usually does with little acknowledged feeling; a vague desperation, no more,’ he said, taking up his stance. Yet as he did so his face assumed a cold, dangerous aspect and his body moved with the easy precision of a machine. The sand spat up from the edge of the handkerchief; the smoke lay hardly stirring; the horse was little affected by the noise, but it watched idly for the first dozen shots or so.

‘I have never known such consistently accurate weapons,’ he said aloud. ‘I wonder, can I still do Dillon’s old trick?’ He took a coin from his pocket, tossed it high, and shot it fair and square on the top of its rise, between climbing and falling.

Post Captain – Patrick O’Brian

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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

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‘I must leave you,’ said Stephen. ‘Thank you for the game.’

‘But you can’t go away just when you have won all that money,’ cried Smithers.

‘On the contrary,’ said Stephen. ‘It is the very best moment to leave.’

Post Captain – Patrick O’Brian

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Turning, he saw Stephen watching him from the companion hatchway. ‘Good morning, good morning!’ he cried, smiling with great affection. ‘Here’s our old friend the Bellone just to leeward.’

‘Ay. So Pullings tells me. Do you mean to fight with her?’

‘I mean to sink, take, burn or destroy her,’ said Jack, a smile flashing across his face.

‘I dare say you do. Please to remember the watch they took from me. A Bréguet repeater, number 365, with a centre seconds hand. And three pair of drawers, I should know them anywhere. I must go below.’

Post Captain – Patrick O’Brian

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‘Bless us all,’ said Jack, ‘I had no notion you were such a man of blood, dear Doctor.’

‘You must be uncommon deadly when you are in practice,’ said Macdonald. ‘A horrid quick murdering lunge. I should not care to go out with you, sir. You may call me pudding, I will bear it meekly. Do you choose to try the pistols?’

Jack, watching from his side of the quarterdeck, was wholly amazed: he had no idea that Stephen could hold a sword, nor yet load a pistol, still less knock the pips out of a playing-card at twenty paces: yet he had known him intimately. He was pleased that his friend was doing so well; he was pleased at the respectful silence; but he was a little sad that he could not join in, that he stood necessarily aloof — the captain could not compete — and he was obscurely heavy. There was something disagreeable, and somehow reptilian, about the cold, contained way Stephen took up his stance, raised his pistol, looked along the barrel with his pale eyes, and shot the head off the king of hearts. Jack’s certainties wavered; he turned to look at his new bentinicks, smoothly filled, drawing to perfection. Finisterre would be under their lee by now, some sixty leagues away; and presently, about midnight, he would alter course eastward — eastward, for Ortegal and the Bay

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‘May I congratulate you upon saving him? The boat would never have come up in time. Such promptitude of mind — such decision! I honour it.’

‘It was pretty good, was it not?’ said Jack. ‘This is capital, upon my word,’ — nodding to the mainmast — ‘and at this rate we shall have the bentincks bent tomorrow. Did you smoke that? I said, the bentincks bent. Ha, ha, ha!’

Was he making light of it out of coxcombery, fanfaronade? From embarassment? No, Stephen decided. It was as genuine as his mirth at his ignoble tiny pun, or adumbration of a pun, the utmost limit of naval wit.

Post Captian – Patrick O’Brian