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
Jack had always liked the young, and in any case he felt that a guest was entitled to consideration at his table, so having invited Ellis to drink a glass of wine with him, he smiled affably and said, ‘You people were reciting some verses in the foretop this morning. Very capital verses, I dare say — Mr Mowett’s verses? Mr Mowett turns a pretty line.’ So he did. His piece on the bending of the new mainsail was admired throughout the sloop: but most unhappily he had also been inspired to write, as part of a general description:
White as the clouds beneath the blaze of noon
Her bottom through translucent waters shone.For the time being this couplet had quite destroyed his authority with the youngsters; and it was this couplet they had been reciting in the foretop, hoping thereby to provoke him still further.
‘Pray, will you not recite them to us? I am sure the Doctor would like to hear.’
‘Oh, yes, pray do,’ said Stephen.
The unhappy boy thrust a great lump of mutton into his cheek, turned a nasty yellow and gathered to his heart all the fortitude he could call upon. He said, ‘Yes, sir,’ fixed his eyes upon the stern-window and began,
‘White as the clouds beneath the blaze of noon Oh God don’t let me die
‘White as the clouds beneath the blaze of noon
Her b — ‘ His voice quavered, died, revived as a thin desperate ghost and squeaked out ‘Her bottom‘; but could do no more.‘A damned fine verse,’ cried Jack, after a very slight pause. ‘Edifying too.’
Master and Commander – Patrick O’Brian
‘Dinner?’ cried Stephen, as though the meal had just been invented. ‘Dinner? Oh, yes: charmed — delighted,’
Master and Commander – Patrick O’Brian
Minutes passed. The male shifted his hold a little. The female moved her triangular head, pivoting it slightly from left to right. Through his glass Stephen could see her sideways jaws open and close; then there was a blur of movements so rapid that for all his care and extreme attention he could not follow them, and the male’s head was off, clamped there, a detached lemon, under the crook of her green praying arms. She bit into it, the eye’s glow went out; on her back the headless male continued to copulate rather more strongly than before, all his inhibitions having been removed. ‘Ah,’ said Stephen with intense satisfaction, and noted down the time again.
Master and Commander – Patrick O’Brian
The Spanish bowman was about to hook on when Stephen, speaking a Scandinavian but instantly comprehensible Spanish, called out, ‘Have you a surgeon that understands the plague aboard your ship?’
The bowman lowered his hook. The officer said, ‘Why?’
‘Some of our men were taken poorly at Algiers, and we are afraid. We cannot tell what it is.’
‘Back water,’ said the Spanish officer to his men. ‘Where did you say you had touched?’
‘Algiers, Alger, Argel: it was there the men went ashore. Pray what is the plague like? Swellings? Buboes? Will you come and look at them? Pray, sir, take this rope.’
‘Back water,’ said the officer again. ‘And they went ashore at Algiers?’
‘Yes. Will you send your surgeon?’
‘No. Poor people, God and His Mother preserve you.’
‘May we come for medicines? Pray let me come into your boat.’
‘No,’ said the officer, crossing himself. ‘No, no. Keep off, or we shall fire into you. Keep out to sea — the sea will cure them. God be with you, poor people. And a happy voyage to you.’ He could be seen ordering the bowman to throw the boathook into the sea, and the launch pulled back fast to the bright-red xebec.
They were within very easy hailing distance now, and a voice from the frigate called out some words in Danish; Pram replied; and then a tall thin figure on the quarter-deck, obviously the captain, asked, had they seen an English sloop-of-war, a brig?
‘No,’ they said; and as the vessels began to draw away from one another Jack whispered, ‘Ask her name.’
‘Cacafuego,’ came the answer over the widening lane of sea. ‘A happy voyage.’
‘A happy voyage to you.’
Master and Commander – Patrick O’Brian
The Love Pirate 