Tag Archives: Jack Aubrey

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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

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‘Well,’ said Simmons, vexed by their devotion, that deeply irritating quality, ‘he’s lost his boots now, for all his learning.’

This was true. Stephen retraced his footsteps towards the stump of a mast protruding from the sand where he had left his boots and stockings, and to his concern he found that these prints emerged fresh and clear directly from the sea. No boots: only spreading water, and one stocking afloat in a little scum a hundred yards away. He reflected for a while upon the phenomenon of the tide, gradually bringing his mind to the surface, and then he deliberately took off his wig, his coat, his neckcloth, and his waistcoat.

‘Oh dear, oh dear,’ cried Plaice. ‘He’s a-taking off his coat. We should never have let him off alone on those fucking sands. Mr Babbington said “Do not let him go a-wandering on them fucking sands, Plaice, or I’ll have your hide off your fucking back”. Ahoy! The Doctor ahoy, sir! Come on, mates, stretch out, now. Ahoy, there!’

Stephen took off his shirt, his drawers, his catskin comforter, and walked straight into the sea, clenching his mouth and looking fixedly at what he took to be the stump of the mast under the pellucid surface. They were valuable boots, soled with lead, and he was attached to them. In the back of his mind he heard the roaring desperate hails, but he paid no attention: arrived at a given depth, he seized his nose with one hand, and plunged.

A boathook caught his ankle, an oar struck the nape of his neck, partly stunning him and driving his face deep into the sand at the bottom: his foot emerged, and he was seized and hauled into the boat, still grasping his boots. They were furious. ‘Did he not know he might catch cold? ― Why did he not answer their hail? It was no good his telling them he had not heard; they knew better; he had not got flannel ears ― Why had he not waited for them? ― What was a boat for? ― Was this a proper time to go a-swimming? ― Did he think this was midsummer? Or Lammas? ― He was to see how cold he was, blue and trembling like a fucking jelly. ― Would a new-joined ship’s boy have done such a wicked thing? No, sir, he would not. ― What would the skipper, what would Mr Pullings and Mr Babbington say, when they heard of his capers? ― As God loved them, they had never seen anything so foolish: He might strike them blind, else. ― Where had he left his intellectuals? Aboard the sloop?’ They dried him with handkerchiefs, dressed him by force, and rowed him quickly back to the Polychrest. He was to go below directly, turn in between blankets ― no sheets, mind ― with a pint of grog and have a good sweat. He was to go up the side now, like a Christian, and nobody would notice. Plaice and Lakey were perhaps the strongest men in the ship, with arms like gorillas; they thrust him aboard and hurried him to his cabin without so much as by your leave, and left him there in the charge of his servant, with recommendations for his present care.

Post Captain – Patrick O’Brian

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‘Yes. I may preach a sermon to the ship’s company next Sunday.’

‘You? Preach a sermon?’

‘Certainly. Captains often do, when no chaplain is carried. I always made do with the Articles of War in the Sophie, but now I think I shall give them a clear, well-reasoned — come, what’s the matter? What is so very entertaining about my preaching a sermon? Damn your eyes, Stephen.’ Stephen was doubled in his chair, rocking to and fro, uttering harsh spasmodic squeaks: tears ran down his face. ‘What a spectacle you are, to be sure. Now I come to think of it, I do not believe I have ever heard you laugh before. It is a damned illiberal row, I can tell you — it don’t suit you at all. Squeak, squeak. Very well: you shall laugh your bellyful.’ He turned away with something about ‘pragmatical apes — simpering, tittering’ and affected to look into the Bible without the least concern; but there are not many who can find themselves the object of open, whole-hearted, sincere, prostrating laughter without being put out of countenance, and Jack was not one of these few. However, Stephen’s mirth died away in time — a few last crowing whoops and it was over. He got to his feet, and dabbing his face with a handkerchief he took Jack by the hand. ‘I am so sorry,’ he said. ‘I beg your pardon. I would not have vexed you for the world. But there is something so essentially ludicrous, so fundamentally comic . . . that is to say, I had so droll an association of ideas — pray do not take it personally at all. Of course you shall preach to the men; I am persuaded it will have a most striking effect.’

‘Well,’ said Jack, with a suspicious glance, ‘I am glad it afforded you so much innocent merriment at all events. Though what you find . . .’

‘What is your text, pray?’

‘Are you making game of me, Stephen?’

‘Never, upon my word: would scorn it.’

Post Captain – Patrick O’Brian

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‘Come, come, there is not a moment to lose; I make my rounds at seven bells. One, two, three,’ he cried, tapping his foot, and the cabin was filled with the opening movement of Boccherini’s Corelli sonata, a glorious texture of sound, the violin sending up brilliant jets through the ‘cello’s involutions, and they soared up and away from the grind of pumps, the tireless barking, the problems of command, up, the one answering the other, joining, separating, twining, rising into their native air. 

Post Captain – Patrick O’Brian

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‘As for mutinies in general,’ said Stephen, ‘I am all in favour of ’em. You take men from their homes or their chosen occupations, you confine them in insalubrious conditions upon a wholly inadequate diet, you subject them to the tyranny of bosun’s mates, you expose them to unimagined perils; what is more, you defraud them of their meagre food, pay and allowances — everything but this sacred rum of yours. Had I been at Spithead, I should certainly have joined the mutineers. Indeed, I am astonished at their moderation.’

‘Pray, Stephen, do not speak like this, nattering about the service; it makes me so very low.’

Post Captain – Patrick O’Brian

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‘In the name of the law!’ cried the tipstaff again, making a most desperate attempt to break through.

‘Fuck the law,’ cried the seamen, and Bonden, grappling with the bailiff, wrenched the staff from him. He flung it right down the lane, fairly into the water, and said, ‘You’ve lost your commission now, mate. I can hit you now, mate, so you watch out, I say. You watch out, cully, or you’ll come home by Weeping Cross.’

The bailiff uttered a low growl, pulled out his hanger, and hurled himself at Jack. ‘Artful, eh?’ said Bonden, and brought his stretcher down on his head. He fell in the mud, to be trampled upon by Pullings and his friends, pouring out of the inn. At this the gang broke and fled, calling out that they should fetch their friends, the watch, the military, and leaving two of their number stretched upon the ground.

‘Mr Pullings, press those men, if you please,’ cried Jack from the boat. ‘And that fellow in the mud. Two more? Capital. All aboard? Where’s the Doctor? Pass the word for the Doctor. Ah, there you are. Shove off. Altogether, now, give way. Give way cheerly. What a prime hand he will make, to be sure,’ he added in an aside, ‘once he’s used to our ways — a proper bulldog of a man.’

Post Captain – Patrick O’Brian

 

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He filled his lungs and hailed ‘Polychrest’ in a tone that echoed back from Portsmouth and stopped the mild gossip in the launch stone dead. ‘Polychrest!’

‘Sir?’ came back Bonden’s voice out of the dripping gloom.

‘Double up to the inn, d’ye hear me? Up the lane. Bring your stretchers.’

‘Aye-aye, sir.’

In a moment the launch was empty. Stretchers, the boat’s long wooden footrests, meant a row. The captain was no doubt pressing some hands, and they, pressed men themselves, did not mean to miss a second of the fun.

Post Captain – Patrick O’Brian

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‘Your money or your life,’ said a voice very close at hand.

‘What? What? What did you say?’

The man stepped from behind the trees, the rain glinting on his weapon. ‘I said, “Your money or your life,” ‘ he said, and coughed.

Instantly the cloak in his face. Jack had him by the shirt, worrying him, shaking him with terrible vehemence, jerking him high off the ground. The shirt gave way: he stood staggering, his arms out. Jack hit him a great left-handed blow on the ear and kicked his legs from under him as he fell.

He snatched up the cudgel and stood over him, breathing hard and waving his left hand — knuckles split: a damned unhandy blow — it had been like hitting a tree. He was filled with indignation. ‘Dog, dog, dog,’ he said, watching for a movement. But there was no movement, and after a while Jack’s teeth unclenched: he stirred the body with his foot. ‘Come, sir. Up you get. Rise and shine.’ After a few more orders of this sort, delivered pretty loud, he sat the fellow up and shook him. Head dangling, utterly limp; wet and cold; no breath, no heartbeat, very like a corpse. ‘God damn his eyes,’ said Jack, ‘he’s died on me.’

The increasing rain brought his cloak to mind; he found it, put it on, and stood over the body again. Poor wretched little brute — could not be more than seven or eight stone — and as incompetent a footpad as could be imagined — had been within a toucher of adding ‘if you please’ to his demand — no notion of attack. Was he dead? He as not: one hand scrabbled in vague, disordered motion.

Jack shivered: the heat of walking and of the brief struggle had worn off in the waiting pause, and he wrapped his cloak tighter; it was a raw night, with a frost a certainty before dawn. More vain, irritated shaking, rough attempts at revival. ‘Jesus, what a bore,’ he said. At sea there would have been no problem, but here on land it was different — he had a different sense of tidiness ashore — and after a disgusted pause he wrapped the object in his cloak (not from any notion of humanity, but to keep the mud, blood and perhaps worse off his clothes), picked it up and walked off.

Post Captain – Patrick O’Brian