Perhaps I misjudge her. Perhaps it is a case of the man filled with true poetic feeling who can only come out with ye flowery meads again — the channels blocked. Dear me, he is sadly moved. How I hope those tears will not fall. He is the best of creatures — I love him dearly — but he is an Englishman, no more — emotional, lachrymose.
Post Captain – Patrick O’Brian
They were looking after themselves, living with rigid economy; and there was no greater proof of their friendship than the way their harmony withstood their very grave differences in domestic behaviour. In Jack’s opinion Stephen was little better than a slut: his papers, odd bits of dry, garlic’d bread, his razors and small-clothes lay on and about his private table in a miserable squalor; and from the appearance of the grizzled wig that was now acting as a tea-cosy for his milk-saucepan, it was clear that he had breakfasted on marmalade.
Jack took off his coat, covered his waistcoat and breeches with an apron, and carried the dishes to the scullery. ‘My plate and saucer will serve again,’ said Stephen. ‘I have blown upon them. I do wish, Jack,’ he cried, ‘that you would leave that milk-saucepan alone. It is perfectly clean. What more sanitary, what more wholesome, than scalded milk? Will I dry up?’ he called through the open door.
‘No, no,’ cried Jack, who had seen him do so. ‘There is no room — it is nearly done. Just attend to the fire, will you?’
‘We might have some music,’ said Stephen. ‘Your friend’s piano is in tolerable tune, and I have found a German flute. What are you doing now?’
‘Swabbing out the galley. Give me five minutes, and I am your man.’
‘It sounds more like Noah’s flood. This peevish attention to cleanliness, Jack, this busy preoccupation with dirt,’ said Stephen, shaking his head at the fire, ‘has something of the Brahminical superstition about it. It is not very far removed from nastiness, Jack — from cacothymia.’
‘I am concerned to hear it,’ said Jack. ‘Pray, is it catching?’ he added, with a private but sweet-natured leer.
Post Captain – Patrick O’Brian
He was in a high state of nervous excitement — any sailor waiting to see the First Lord must be in a high state of nervous excitement — yet the surface of his mind was taken up less with his coming interview than with getting the utmost possible service from a single handkerchief and with vague darting reflections upon poverty — an old acquaintance, almost a friend — a more natural state for sea-officers than wealth — wealth very charming — should love to be rich again; but there was the loss of all those little satisfactions of contriving — the triumph of a guinea found in an old waistcoat pocket — the breathless tension over the turn of a card.
Post Captain – Patrick O’Brian
‘Did they carry powder?’ cried Jack. ‘Dr Maturin said trousers, or something of that kind, but I — ‘
‘Oh, you horrid two-faced thing!’ cried Miss Susan. ‘You saw her! You shouted out the most dreadful things to Lucy, the most dreadful things I ever heard in my life. You swore at my sister, sir; you know you did. Oh, Captain Aubrey, fie!’
‘Captain Aubrey?’ observed Azéma, adding the head-money for an English officer to his share of the prize — a very handsome sum.
‘She’s blow the gaff — I’m brought by the lee,’ thought Jack.
Post Captain – Patrick O’Brian
‘My dear Miss Lamb,’ he cried, taking her free hand, ‘I hope I see you well. Quite well?’ he said earnestly, meaning ‘not too much raped?’
Post Captain – Patrick O’Brian
Silence. The convoy’s dust settled on the empty road. The inhabitants of Carcassonne all went to sleep; even the small boys who had been dropping mortar and clods of earth from the battlements onto the bear disappeared. Silence at last, and the chink of coins.
‘Two livres four sous,’ said the bear-leader. ‘One maravedi, two Levantine coins of whose exact provenance I am uncertain, a Scotch groat.’
‘When one sea-officer is to be roasted, there is always another hand to turn the spit,’ said the bear. ‘It is an old service proverb. I hope to God I have that fornicating young sod under my command one day. I’ll make him dance a hornpipe — oh, such a hornpipe. Stephen, prop my jaws open a little more, will you? I think I shall die in five minutes if you don’t. Could we not creep into a field and take it off?’
‘No,’ said Stephen. ‘But I shall lead you to an inn as soon as the market has cleared, and lodge you in a cool damp cellar for the afternoon. I will also get you a collar, to enable you to breathe. We must reach Couiza by dawn.’
Post Captain – Patrick O’Brian
‘You speak of loss of weight. But I find that you yourself are thin. Nay, cadaverous, if I may speak as one physician to another. You have a very ill breath; your hair, already meagre two years ago, is now extremely sparse; you belch frequently; your eyes are hollow and dim. This is not merely your ill-considered use of tobacco — a noxious substance that should be prohibited by government — and of laudanum. I should very much like to see your excrement.’
‘You shall, my dear sir, you shall.’
Post Captain – Patrick O’Brian
His horses were fine animals and he sold one for as much as he had given for it; this satisfied the immediate local duns, but it did not re-establish his credit, for although Champflower was willing to believe in any amount of cloudy wealth (and Jack’s fortune had been reckoned very high), it had poverty weighed up to within a pound or two.
Post Captain – Patrick O’Brian
‘Let me look to your pistols,’ said Jack, as the trees came closer to the road. ‘You have no notion of hammering your flints.’
‘They are very well,’ said Stephen, unwilling to open his holsters (a teratoma in one, a bottled Arabian dormouse in the other). ‘Do you apprehend any danger?’
‘This is an ugly stretch of road, with all these disbanded soldiers turned loose. They made an attempt upon the mail not far from Aker’s Cross. Come, let me have your pistols. I thought as much: what is this?’
‘A teratoma,’ said Stephen sulkily.
‘What is a teratoma?’ asked Jack, holding the object in his hand. ‘A kind of grenado?’
‘It is an inward wen, a tumour: we find them, occasionally, in the abdominal cavity. Sometimes they contain long black hair, sometimes a set of teeth: this has both hair and teeth. It belonged to a Mr Elkins of the City, an eminent cheese-monger. I prize it much.’
‘By God,’ cried Jack, thrusting it back into the holster and whiping his hand vehemently upon the horse, ‘I do wish you would leave people’s bellies alone. So you have no pistols at all, I collect?’
‘If you wish to be so absolute, no, I have not.’
‘You will never make old bones, brother,’ said Jack.
Post Captain – Patrick O’Brian
‘Stephen, Stephen, Stephen!’ Jack’s voice came along the corridor, growing louder and ending in a roar as he thrust his head into the room. ‘Oh, there you are. I was afraid you had gone off to your stoats again. The carrier has brought you an ape.’
‘What sort of an ape?’ asked Stephen.
‘A damned ill-conditioned sort of an ape. It had a can of ape at every pot-house on the road, and it is reeling drunk. It had been offering itself to Babbington.’
Post Captain – Patrick O’Brian
The Love Pirate 