Captain Harte saluted the quarter-deck with a sketchy motion towards his hat and stared with elaborate disgust at the grubby sideboys, the marines with their crossbelts awry, the heap of water-butts and Mr Dalziel’s little fat meek cream-coloured bitch, that had come forward into the only open space, and that there, apologizing to one and all, her ears, and whole person drooping, was in the act of making an immeasurable pool.
Master and Commander – Patrick O’Brian
Ever since Stephen Maturin had grown rich with their first prize he had constantly laid in great quantities of asafetida, castoreum and other substances, to make his medicines more revolting in taste, smell and texture than any others in the fleet; and he found it answered — his hardy patients knew with their entire beings that they were being physicked.
Master and Commander – Patrick O’Brian
Stephen looked at him attentively, took his pulse, gazed at his tongue, asked squalid questions, examined him. ‘Is it a wound going bad?’ asked Jack, alarmed by his gravity.
‘It is a wound, if you wish,’ said Stephen. ‘But not from our battle with the Cacafuego. Some lady of your acquaintance has been too liberal with her favours, too universally kind.’
‘Oh, Lord,’ cried Jack, to whom this had never happened before.
Master and Commander – Patrick O’Brian
‘Do you follow me, Dr Maturin?’
‘I do indeed, sir, and am much obliged to you for your candor in telling me this: it confirms what was in my mind and I shall do all I can to make him conscious of the delicacy of his position. Though upon my word,’ he added with a sigh, ‘there are times when it seems to me that nothing short of a radical ablation of the membrum virile would answer, in this case.’
‘That is very generally the peccant part,’ said Mr Florey.
Master and Commander – Patrick O’Brian
‘Dear Doctor, you know what to do?’ Stephen nodded, taking over the spokes and feeling the life of the wheel. The quartermaster stepped away, picked up a cutlass with a grim look of delight. ‘Doctor, what’s the Spanish for fifty more men?’
‘Otros cincuenta.’
‘Otros cincuenta,’ said Jack, looking into his face with a most affectionate smile. ‘Now lay us alongside, I beg.’
Master and Commander – Patrick O’Brian
He darted below. Stephen had four quiet wounded men, two corpses. ‘We’re boarding her,’ said Jack. ‘I must have your man — every man-jack aboard. Will you come?’
‘I will not,’ said Stephen. ‘I will steer, if you choose.’
‘Do — yes, do. Come on,’ cried Jack.
Master and Commander – Patrick O’Brian
‘I am coming to believe that laws are the prime cause of unhappiness. It is not merely a case of born under one law, required another to obey — you know the lines: I have no memory for verse. No, sir: it is born under half a dozen, required another fifty to obey. There are parallel sets of laws in different keys that have nothing to do with one another and that are even downright contradictory. You, now — you wish to do something that the Articles of War and (as you explained to me) the rules of generosity forbid, but that your present notion of the moral law and your present notion of the point of honour require. This is but one instance of what is as common as breathing. Buridan’s ass died of misery between equidistant mangers, drawn first by one and then by the other. Then again, with a slight difference, there are these double loyalties — another great source of torment.’
‘Upon my word, I cannot see what you mean by double loyalty. You can only have one King. And a mean’s heart can only be in one place at a time, unless he is a scrub.’
‘What nonsense you do talk, to be sure,’ said Stephen. ‘What “balls”, as you sea-officers say: it is a matter of common observation that a man may be sincerely attached to two women at once — to three, to four, to a surprising number of women. However,’ he said, ‘no doubt you know more of these things than I. No: what I had in mind were those wider loyalties, those more general conflicts — the candid American, for example, before the issue became envenomed; the unimpassioned Jacobite in ’45; Catholic priests in France today — Frenchmen of many complexions, in and out of France. So much pain; and the more honest the man the worse the pain. but there at least the conflict is direct: it seems to me that the greater mass of confusion and distress must arise from these less evident divergencies — the moral law, the civil, military, common laws, the code of honour, custom, the rules of practical life, of civility, of amorous conversation, gallantry, to say nothing of Christianity for those that practise it. All sometimes, indeed generally, at variance; none ever in an entirely harmonious relation to the rest; and a man is perpetually required to choose one rather than another, perhaps (in his particular case) its contrary. It is as though our strings were each tuned according to a completely separate system — it is as though the poor ass were surrounded by four and twenty mangers.’
‘You are an antinomian,’ said Jack.
‘I am a pragmatist,’ said Stephen.
Master and Commander – Patrick O’Brian
Stephen rose six inches from his perch at the masthead, and with his hands folded to prevent their involuntary clutching at passing ropes, yards, blocks, and with the ape-nimble Babbington keeping pace, heaving him in towards the weather backstay, he descended through the dizzy void to the deck, where they let him out of the cocoon in which they had hoisted him aloft; for no one on board had the least opinion of his abilities as a seaman.
Master and Commander – Patrick O’Brian
‘A bearded vulture! It is a bearded vulture!’ he cried. ‘A young bearded vulture.’
‘Well,’ said Jack instantly — not a second’s hesitation — ‘I dare say he forgot to shave this morning.’ His red face crinkled up, his eyes diminished to a bright blue slit and he slapped his thigh, bending in such a paroxysm of silent mirth, enjoyment and relish that for all the Sophie‘s strict discipline the man at the wheel could not withstand the infection and burst out in a strangled ‘Hoo, hoo, hoo,’ instantly suppressed by the quartermaster at the con.
Master and Commander – Patrick O’Brian
‘James Dillon and I walked out beyond Ulla to view the ancient stone monuments — druidical, no doubt — and two peasants called out to one another from a distance, alluding to us. I will relate the conversation. First peasant: Do you see those heretics walking along so pleased with themselves? The red-haired one is descended from Judas Iscariot, no doubt. Second peasant: Wherever the English walk the ewes miscarry and abort; they are all the same; I wish their bowels may gush out. Where are they going? Where do they come from? First peasant: They are going to see the navetta and the taule d’en Xatart: they come from the disguised two-masted vessel opposite Bep Ventura’s warehouse. They are sailing at dawn on Tuesday to cruise on the coast from Castellon up to Cape Creus, for six weeks. They have been paying four dollars a score for hogs. I, too, wish their bowels may gush out.’
‘He had no great fund of originality, your second peasant,’ said Jack, adding in a pensive, wondering tone, ‘They do not seem to love the English.’
Master and Commander – Patrick O’Brian
The Love Pirate 