"The best historical novels ever written." -- Richard Snow, The New York Times "[O'Brian] is better than anyone at historical fiction....[He] is as able and graceful with the English language as a writer can be." -- Neil Paulson, Denver Post Skip Introduction, Go to Passages Patrick O'Brian is my favorite author, and his The Golden Ocean is the best book I have ever read. However, I would not call myself particularly well-read, but I feel well-read enough to have a favorite author! Doesn't make POB the best author in the world, it just means that he gets my vote. I hope that the passages that I have included below will give you a little taste of his style, and particularly his humor. The vast majority of POB's novels take place in the 1780-1810 era and are related to ships at sea and sailing. Ostensibly, the main character is Jack Aubrey, a British naval officer, whom we learn, within a few pages of his introduction, may be carrying on an intrigue with his commandant's wife. At sea, Jack is a fighting man's man; ashore he bungles matters in general, even with women, whom he likes a lot. Jack occasionally, often accidentally, makes a slightly clever comment or a weak joke; and that for him is an unforgettable event which delights him no end. In my opinion, even more prominent in POB's novels than Jack is his best friend and comrade Stephen Maturin. Stephen is your typical nerd/geek who is a brilliant physician (which, by the way, was much more prestigious than being a mere surgeon, who was considered a glorified barber,) and naturalist. Although an intellect to the nth degree, after 20 books of naval life he has learned nothing about ships or sailing; however when among landlubbers he loves to impress his listeners with naval jargon, which neither he nor anyone else understands (as Jack delights in saying something he perceives to be funny, Stephen delights in talking nautical before the unknowing) - that and opium are his only vices that readily come to mind. He is also a brilliant spy for the British in their war against France and Bonaparte. The leading female character is Diana, a young, drop-dead-beautiful, willful and fiery but penniless widowed wildcat of good breeding. She smokes cigars and drinks whisky. Just think Liz Taylor at age 27. O'Brians books should be read in order, starting with The Golden Ocean, The Unknown Shore, and then Master and Commander, etc. (The Aubrey-Maturin series starts with Master and Commander.) Besides being packed with riveting plot, every book contains a lot of humor; here is some of it. If you like it, start reading the books! You might want to increase your screen size by hitting F11. Passages 0 - 4 Passages 5 - 9 Passages 10 - 14 Passages 15 - 19 Passages 20 - 24 Passages 25 - 29 Passages 30 - 34 Passages 35 - 40 Passages 40 - 44 Passages 45 - 49 Passages 50 - 54 Passages 55 - 59 Passages 60 - 64 Passages 65 - 69 Passage 70 POB/Tom Clancy Parody (not written by me) Read Introduction Return to Chuck's Home Page #0 - From The Ionian Mission, page 58: [Jack has purchased some gunpowder that was to be used for fireworks and had antimony mixed in to provide for colorful explosions. He is wondering how this will affect his guns and asks advice from his doctor/scientist friend, Stephen Maturin.] 'Pray, Dr. Maturin,' he said on the quarterdeck, 'what is the effect of antimony?' 'It is a diaphoretic, an expectorant and a moderate cholegogue; but we use it chiefly as an emetic. You have heard of the everlasting antimony pill, sure?' 'Not I.' 'It is one of the most economical forms of physic known to man, since a single pill of the metal will serve a numerous household, being ingested, rejected and so recovered. I have known one handed down for generations, perhaps from the time of Paracelsus himself. Yet it must be exhibited with discretion: Zwingerius likens it to the sword of Scanderberg, which is either good or bad, strong or weak, as is the party that prescribes or uses it, a worthy medicine if it be rightly applied to a strong man, otherwise it may prove but a froward vomit. Indeed the name is said to signify a monk's bane. 'So I have always understood,' said Jack. 'But what I really meant was its effect on guns, was a little mixed with the powder.' 'Alas, I am wholly ignorant of these things, Bit if we may go by analogy, it should cause the piece to vomit forth the ball with more than common force.' #1 - From The Surgeon's Mate, page 176: [Sir Joseph Blaine, an elderly man, is asking his good friend and doctor, Stephen Maturin, for some medicine (a “physic”) to increase his sexual potency and libido for his upcoming marriage to a regrettably virtuous Miss Blankensop. Before doling out any physic, Stephen tries to talk Blaine out of marriage and thinks a liaison would work just as well.] 'Yes,' said Blaine at last. 'Marriage. Liaisons are very well; indeed, agreeable at times; but there is a certain shall I say restless sterility about them and in any case the lady in question is strictly virtuous. Yet perhaps I may have left it too late. Of recent months I have become most painfully aware of a certain - how shall I put it? Of a certain want of vigor, a certain debility, as though I too should sing vixi puellis nuper idoneus. Is there nothing that physic can do in such a case, or is it inevitable at my age? I have passed Horace's lustra decem; yet I have heard tell of elixirs and drops.' 'It is not inevitable at all,' said Stephen. 'Consider Old Parr, the old, old, very old man. He married again, fruitfully, I believe, at a hundred and twenty-two; and if I do not mistake he was prosecuted for rape at an even later date. My colleague Beauprin, whom I had the pleasure of knowing in France, was only eighty when he married again, but his wife brought him sixteen children. Yet before I speak as a physician, may I ask you as a friend whether you have fully considered the wisdom of reviving these fires? When a man looks about him, surely he sees that in general the pain outweighs the pleasure? Your own Horace begged Venus to spare him - parce, precor, precor. Is peace not the greatest good? Calm rather than storms? I once sailed with a young man well versed in Chinese, and I remember his quoting a passage from the Analects of Confucius in which the sage congratulated himself on having reached the time of obedient ears, the time at which he could do whatever his heart moved him to do without the least transgression of the moral law. And Origen, as you recall, struck off the offending member, and returned to purer contemplations, undisturbed.' 'I quite take your point, and a very cogent point it is; but you forget that I am speaking not of a loose, irregular connexion - it is marriage that I have in mind. Yet even if that were not the case, I should still ask for your help. I do not think that I am a man of an unusually warm temperament, a particularly amorous man; when I take off my shoes and stockings I do not see a satyr's leg. But since this weakness came upon me I find that I must always have looked at the more personable members of the sex with a certain eye, an appreciative, even a remotely concupiscent, a faintly hopeful eye; and with that eye extinguished, it is as though the spring of life were gone. I had no conception of its importance. You are younger than I am, Maturin, and it may be that you do not know from experience that the absence of a torment may be a worse torment still: you may wish to throw a hair-shirt aside, not realizing that it is the hair-shirt alone that keeps you warm.' 'A Nessus' shirt might be more apt,' said Stephen, quite unheard. 'And I must remind you that Origen's rash gesture was condemned by the second Council of Constantinople together with many of his pernicious doctrines; that although St. Agustine prayed for the gift of chastity he added the rider but not yet, O Lord, doubtless feeling that where there was no temptation there was no corresponding virtue; and that the peace of which you speak has a close resemblance to death. We are all Stoics in the grave.' 'It shall be as you wish,' said Stephen. 'Yet before the consultation proper begins, I beg leave to observe, that the spectacle of a swimmer who has reached the edge of the Maelstrom, who can leave the vexed waters, the whirling turbulence, and who voluntarily plunges back again, is one that would have made my philosopher cry out in wonder.' 'Even if we grant that your sage knew the Maelstrom, which is extremely unlikely, we cannot push credulity so far as to suppose he ever met anyone like Miss Blenkinsop; otherwise we should never have heard so much about those ears of his.' #2 - From The Surgeon's Mate, page 168: A few minutes later they were at the Grapes, where they had stayed together years ago, when Jack was evading his creditors; for the Grapes lay within the liberties of the Savoy, a refuge for flying debtors. Stephen was a poor man; that is to say, he usually lived like a poor man, and an abstemious poor man at that; but he did allow himself some indulgences, and one of these was the keeping of a room in this small quiet comfortable inn all the year round. The people were used to his ways, and he was welcome whenever he came; he had cured Mrs. Broad, the landlady and an excellent plain cook, of the marthambles, and the boots of a less creditable disease; he could do much as he pleased at the Grapes and more than once he had brought back an orphan child - a dead orphan child - for dissection, keeping it in a cupboard without adverse comment. #3 - From The Mauritius Command, page 346: [At a the Governor's dinner celebrating yesterday's triumph.] Something, reflected Jack, something came over officers who reached flag-rank or the equivalent, something that made them love to get up on their hind legs and produce long measured periods with even longer pauses between them. Several gentlemen had already risen to utter slow compliments to themselves, their fellows, and their nation, and now General Abercrombie was struggling to his feet, with a sheaf of notes in his hand. 'Your Excellency, my lords, Admiral Bertie, and gentlemen. We are met here together,' two bars of silence, 'on this happy, eh, occasion,' two more bars, 'to celebrate what I may perhaps be permitted to call, an unparalleled feat, of combined operations, of combination, valour, organization, and I may say, of indomitable will.' Pause. 'I take no credit to myself.' Cries of No, no; and cheers. 'No. It is all due,' pause, 'to a young lady in Madras.' 'Sir, sir,' hissed his aide-de-camp, 'you have turned over two pages. You have come to the joke.' More ****** Return to Top ****** Return to Chuck's Home Page #4 - From Master and Commander, page 187: [This book is the start of the (Jack) Aubrey-(Stephen) Maturin series. Jack is a young lieutenant in the Royal Navy, and has been given command of Sophie, a small, slow, old sloop. He has made acquaintance with Stephen and persuaded him to join him as the Sophie's surgeon. He has just returned from one of his first cruises during which he has captured three prizes; in the action his gunner's head was fractured and then repaired by Stephen in a prodigious operation. They are now ashore, flush with prize money, and relaxing at a large rout being given by the commandant's wife.] 'It is all very well, Aubrey,' said a post-captain, almost immediately afterward. 'But your Sophies used to be a quiet, decent set of men ashore, And now they have two pennies to rub together they kick up bob's a-dying like - well, I don't know. Like a set of mad baboons. They beat the crew of my cousin Oaks's barge cruelly, upon the pretence of having a physician aboard, and so having the right to tie up ahead of a barge belonging to a ship of the line which carries no more than a surgeon - a very absurd pretense. Their two pennies have sent them out of their wits.' 'I am sorry Captain Oaks's men were beat, sir,' said Jack, with a decent look of concern. 'But the fact is true. We do have a physician aboard - an amazing hand with a saw or a clyster.' Jack gazed about him in a very benevolent fashion. 'He was with me not a pint or so ago. Opened our gunner's skull, roused out his brains, set them to rights, stuffed them back in again - I could not bear to look, I assure you gentlemen - bade the armourer take a crown piece, hammer it out thin into a little dome, do your see, or basin, and so clapped it on, screwed it down and sewed up his scalp as neatly as a sailmaker. Now that's what I call real physic - none of your damned pills and delay. Why, there he is.' They greeted him kindly, urged him to drink a glass of punch - another glass of punch - they had all taken a great deal; it was quite wholesome - excellent punch, the very thing for so hot a day. The talk flowed on, with only Stephen and a Captain Nevin remaining a little silent. Stephen noticed a pondering, absorbed look in Captain Nevin's eye - a look very familiar to him - and he was not surprised to be led away behind the orange-tree to be told in a low confidential fluent earnest voice of Captain Nevin's difficulty in digesting even the simplest dishes. Captain Nevin's dyspepsy had puzzled the faculty for years, for years, sir; but he was sure it would yield to Stephen's superior powers; he had better give Dr Maturin all the details he could remember, for it was a very singular, interesting case, as Sir John Able had told him - Stephen knew Sir John? - but to be quite frank (lowering his voice and glancing furtively round) he had to admit there were certain difficulties in - in evacuation, too . . . His voice ran on, low and urgent, and Stephen stood with his hands behind his back, his head bowed, his face gravely inclined in a listening attitude. He was not, indeed, inattentive; but his attention was not so wholly taken up that he did not hear Jack cry, 'Oh, yes, yes! The rest of them are certainly coming ashore - they are lining the rail in their shore-going rig, with money in their pockets, their eyes staring out of their heads and their pricks a yard long.' He could scarcely have avoiding hearing it, for Jack had a fine carrying voice, and his remark happened to drop into one of those curious silences that occur even in very numerous assemblies. Stephen regretted the remark; he regretted its effect upon the ladies the other side of the orange-tree, who were standing up and mincing away with many an indignant glance; but how much more did he regret Jack's crimson face, the look of maniac glee in his blazing eyes and his triumphant, 'You needn't hurry, ladies - they won't be allowed off the sloop till the evening gun.' #5 - From The Golden Ocean, page 227: [The Golden Ocean was POB's first nautical book and came prior to the Aubry/Maturin series. The main character, Peter Palafox, is a boy who has gone to sea for the first time as a midshipman. He went together with his boyhood friend, Sean O'Mera, who is an un-rated crew member. Both have done remarkably well, and Peter is now recovering from scurvy. The Commodore has just visited Peter in sick bay and given him a book, for his amusement. Ransome, who enters, is also a midshipman, but one of many years experience who was promoted from the ranks and is quite quiet and self-conscious. Peter has started to read the book.] 'Listen to this, Sean,' he [Peter] said, five minutes later.' "What said the fellow to the chandler that had a gross of candles stolen from him? Take not your loss to heart, friend; no question but they will be brought to Light," ' 'Ha, ha,' said Sean. 'What kind of a book may it be?' 'It is called,' said Peter, turning to the title-page, 'The New Help to Discourse, or, Wit and Mirth, intermix'd with more serious Matters, consisting of Pleasant, Philosophical, Physical, Historical, Moral and Political Questions and Answers: with Proverbs, Epitaphs, Epigrams, Riddles, Poesies, Rules for Behaviour, etc., with several Wonders, and Varieties: particularly, A concise History of the Kings of England. Together with Directions for the true Knowledge of several Matters concerning Astronomy, Holy-Days, and Husbandry, in a plain method. By W. W., gent.' 'Sure it's a great deal to be in such a little small book,' said Sean. 'What a learned man MrW, W., gent. must have been, your honour, dear. And does it tell you how to behave, so?' 'It does. Listen to this-"Cast not your eyes upon others trenchers, nor fix them wishfully upon the meat on the table. Put not your meat to your mouth with your knife in your hand, which is clownish- Cleanse not your teeth with the table-cloth or napkin, or with your fingers; but if others do it, let it be done with a toothpick- Gnaw not your nails--" ' He broke off, and looking out through the door, he hailed, 'Ransome, ahoy.' 'Ahoy,' answered Ransome, 'Can't stop a minute, cully,' he said hoarsely, pausing on the threshold, 'I got to get the casks run up. How are you, cock?' 'Famous,' said Peter. 'But just lie-to for a second and read this.' Frowning heavily over the book, Ransome slowly wheezed out,' "One being much abused by a miller, the fellow at last told him, that he thought there was nothing more valiant than the collar of a miller's shirt; and being asked the reason, answered, Because every morning it had a thief by the neck." ' A profound silence followed. Then Ransome's frown could be seen to dissolve; his face became more and more suffused, and a slow grin spread broad and delighted. A strangled gasping began. 'Oh, hor hor hor,' he went. The thief, hor, hor, is the miller, the cove he's a-talking to. Do you smoke it? I didn't hardly get there all at once. The collar, do you see, goes round the miller's throat, hor, hor. Ain't it deep? Did you understand it, O'Mara?' 'No, your honour,' said Sean, very obligingly. 'It was too deep for me.' 'Oh, it is plaguey deep,' said Ransome; 'but stand by, and I will make it plain. There is this fellow, you see, what the miller is blackguarding and calling out of his name; so he says, "Which I always heard tell a miller's shirt was the bravest thing in the world," says he. "Why so?" asks the miller, suspicious. "Because why?" says this first cove, the one the miller was blackguarding so. "Because why?" says he; "for because it has a thief (meaning the miller, you understand me-he means the miller is a thief; because in his trade the miller steals the flour. Which is true), because it has a thief by the neck every morning. Do you smoke it now? When the miller puts on his shirt, he means, the collar gets a thief (that is, the miller) by the throat. Or put it this way . . ."' 'What about those casks, Ransome?' asked Peter, seven labourous jokes later. 'Damn 'em,' said Ransome, with his bright blue eyes starting out of his head, 'Hark to this one. "A fellow going in the dark, held out his arms to defend his face; coming to the door-oh Lord, I can't go on, hor, hor, hor-coming to the door, he ran his nose against the edge of it, whereupon he cried out-oh, I'll never get it out, hor, hor-cried out, Hey, day, what's the matter, my nose was short enough just now, and is it in so short a time grown longer than my arms?" ' 'Mr Ransome, sir,' said a ship's boy, darting in. First Lieutenant's compliments and would like to see you at once.' 'Oh,' said Ransome, his enormous grin fading, "Oh. Thankee, Well, it was worth it." 'Ransome, Hey, Ransome,' shrieked Peter after his flying back, 'The book. You've taken the book-you've taken . . . The devil lie in your plate, you false dog. Did you ever see such a thing. Sean? To rob a palsied comrade. Sean? Is is not the black shame of the world ?' 'Though slow in appearance, your honour, dear, Mr Ransome has a wonderful presence of mind,' said Sean, in some admiration. #6 - From The Surgeon's Mate, page 335: [Jack, Stephen and Jagiello have just been put in a French prison] ...She [an attractive girl outside the prison who is cooking and sending them their meals] was very willing to do her best and she sent little beautifully-written, badly-spelt notes with suggestions according to the state of the market; and to these Stephen replied with comments on the last dish and recommendations, even receipts, for the next. 'It is only a woman's cookery, to be sure,' he said, toying with a chocolate mousse, 'and I do not know that I should trust her with game, but within these wide limits, how very good it is! She must be a knowing old soul, with great experience, no doubt in excellent service before the Revolution. Perhaps something of a slut: your amiable slut makes the best of cooks.' Their daily life, though confined and dull, might have been very much more disagreeable. It quickly assumed an ordered shape: Jack did not exactly organize them into watches, but he showed them how the place could be brought to something like naval cleanliness with nothing but the most primitive means and a mere three sweepings in the course of the day. His pupils were sluggish, inept, reluctant, even sullen at times, and they particularly disliked hanging their blankets and their pallet-beds from Jagiello's window, piling all the sparse furniture into a pyramid, and swilling the floor before breakfast; but his moral force, his conviction that this alone was right, overcame them, and the rooms grew inoffensive at least, so much so that the former prisoner's tame mouse became uneasy and disappeared for three days. It lived behind the locked door in Jack's room and it came out of its hole in time for their first breakfast: though hesitant and confused at finding its friend gone and strangers sitting at the familiar table, it had accepted a piece of croissant and a little coffee held out at arm's length in a spoon; it sat with them while they discussed the methods of dealing with the surrounding filth, and all seemed well until the unfortunate orgy of scrubbing. The mouse did come back in time, however, and Stephen noticed with concern that it was gravid: he ordered cream - cream was eminently medicinal in pregnancy. More ****** Return to Top ****** Return to Chuck's Home Page #7 - From The Mauritius Command, page 178: [Jack and Stephen have recently emancipated Killick, whose first name is Preserved, from a desperate situation, so he is temporarily being uncommonly civil.] 'Good morning, Killick,' said Stephen. 'Where's himself?' 'Good morning, sir,' said Killick. 'Which he's still on deck.' 'Killick,' said Stephen, 'what's amiss? Have you seen the ghost in the bread-room? Are you sick? Show me your tongue.' When Killick had withdrawn his tongue, a flannely object of inordinate length, he said paler still, 'Is there a ghost in the bread-room, sir? Oh, no, and I was there in the middle watch. Oh, sir, I might a seen it.' 'There is always a ghost in the bread-room. Light along that pot, will you now?' 'I durs'nt, sir, begging your pardon. There's worse news than the ghost, even. Them wicked old rats got at the coffee, sir, and I doubt there's another pot in the barky.' 'Preserved Killick, pass me that pot, or you will join the ghost in the bread-room, and howl forevermore.' With extreme unwillingness Killick put the pot on the very edge of the table, muttering, 'Oh, I'll cop it: oh, I'll cop it.' Jack walked in, pouring himself a cup as he bade Stephen good morning, and said, 'I am afraid they are all in.' 'All in what?' 'All the Frenchmen are in harbour, with their two Indiamen and the Victor. Have not you been on deck? We are lying off Port-Louis. The coffee has a damned odd taste.' 'This I attribute to the excrement of rats. Rats have eaten our entire stock; and I take the present brew to be a mixture of the scrapings at the bottom of the sack.' 'I thought it had a familiar tang,' said Jack. 'Killick, you may tell Mr Seymour, with my compliments, that you are to have a boat. And if you don't find at least a stone of beans among the squadron, you need not come back. It is no use trying the Néréide; she don't drink any.' When the pot had been jealously divided down to its ultimate dregs, dregs that might have been called dubious, had there been any doubt of their nature, they went on deck. #8 - From Post Captain, page 18: [Jack is fox hunting.] Now and then Jack’s big hunter brought his ears up to bear; this was a recent purchase, a strongly-built bay, quite up to Jack’s sixteen stone. But it did not much care for hunting, and then like so many geldings it spent much of its time mourning for its lost stones: a discontented horse. If the moods that succeeded one another in its head had taken the form of words they would have run, ‘Too heavy - sits too far forward when we go over a fence - have carried him far enough for one day - shall have him off presently, see if I don’t. I smell a mare! A mare! Oh!' #9 - From Post Captain, page 46: [Diana is in a horse-pulled "dogcart" being very, very recklessly driven by the very, very young, and very, very inebriated midshipman Babbington.] The lane ran straight up hill, rising higher and higher, with God knows what breakneck descent on the other side. The horse slowed to a walk - the bean-fed horse, as it proved by a thunderous, long, long fart. ‘I beg your pardon,’ said the midshipman in silence. ‘Oh, that’s all right,’ said Diana coldly. ‘I thought it was the horse.’ A sideways glance showed that this had settled Babbington’s hash for the moment. ‘Let me show you how we do it in India,’ she said, gathering the reins and taking his whip away from him. More ****** Return to Top ****** Return to Chuck's Home Page #10 - From The Surgeon's Mate, page 313: [Jack is being warned by the French admiral not to attempt escape.] '...I warn you that at the least attempt you will find yourself incarcerated at Bitche. At Bitche, sir, and incarcerated.' Jack felt that he was on the verge of a flashing piece of repartee, one of the best things he had ever said in his life: 'then indeed I should be bitched', or 'that would bitch my chances, I am sure', or something more brilliant still; but the want of a true colloquial link between the English bitch and the French chienne baffled him; the anticipatory smile faded, and he only said, 'Oh, as for that sir, I dare say I shall be your guest until the end of the war. Let us hope that it will not be so long delayed that I wear out my welcome.' #11 - From H.M.S. Surprise, page 37: [At the start of a dinner in Jack's cabin during a rough sea.] 'You are very welcome, gentlemen,' said Jack, turning in the direction of the chin. 'Mr Simmons, please to take the end of the table; Mr Carew, if you will sit - easy, easy.' The chaplain, caught off his balance by a lee-lurch, shot into his seat with such force as almost to drive it through the deck. 'Lord Garron here; Mr Fielding and Mr Dashwood, pray be so good,' - waving to their places. 'Now even before we begin,' he went on, as the soup made its perilous way across the cabin, 'I apologise for this dinner. With the best will in the world - allow me, sir' - extracting the parson's wig from the tureen and helping him to a ladle - 'Killick, a nightcap for Mr Carew, swab this, and pass the word for the midshipman of the watch. . . . With the best will in the world, I say, it can be but a Barmecide fiest.' That was pretty good, and he looked modestly down but it occurred to him that the Barmecides were not remarkable for serving fresh meat to their guests, and there, swimming in the chaplain's bowl, was the unmistakable form of a bargeman, the larger of the reptiles that crawled from old biscuit, the smooth one with the black head and the oddly cold taste - the soup, of course, had been thickened with biscuit-crumbs to counteract the roll. The chaplain had not been long at sea; he might not know that there was no harm in the bargeman, nothing of the common weevil's bitterness; and it might put him off his food. 'Killick, another plate for Mr Carew; there is a hair in his soup...' #12 - From H.M.S. Surprise, page 231: '... Mr. Norton, the ornithologist?' he asked aloud. 'No,' said Diana, "he is interested in birds." More ****** Return to Top ****** Return to Chuck's Home Page #13 - From H.M.S. Surprise, page 278: [At sea, between India and the Far East, Jack encounters the British merchant fleet and he and Stephen have just returned to their ship Surprise from a large dinner in their honor given by the commodore of the merchant fleet. Jack is speaking.] '. . . A most capital dinner, upon my word. The duck was the best I have ever tasted.' 'I was sorry to see you help yourself to him the fourth time; duck is a melancholy meat. In any case the rich sauce in which it bathed was not at all the thing for a subject of your corpulence. Apoplexy lurks in dishes of that kind. I signalled to you, but you did not attend.' 'Is that why you were looking so mumchance?' 'I was displeased with my neighbors, too.' 'The nymphs in green? Delightful girls.' 'It is clear you have been a great while at sea, to call those sandy-haired coarse-featured pimply short-necked thick-fingered vulgar-minded lubricious blockheads by such a name. Nymphs, forsooth. If they were nymphs, they must have had their being in a tolerably rank and stagnant pool; the wench on my left had an ill breath, and turning for relief I found her sister had a worse; and the upper garment of neither was free from reproach. Worse lay below, I make no doubt. "La, sister," cries the one to the other, breathing across me --- vile teeth; and "La, sister," cries the other. I have no notion of two sisters wearing the same clothes, the same flaunting meretricious gawds, the same tortured Gorgon curls low over their brutish criminal foreheads; it bespeaks a superfetation of vulgarity, both innate and studiously acquired. And when I think that their teeming loins will people the East. . . . Pray pour me another cup of coffee. Confident brutes.' #14 - From The Mauritius Command, page 164: '. . . they discussed the poetry of the law, or rather poetry in the law, a subject to which they had been led by considerations on the inheritance of landed property in Mr Farquhar's future kingdom. 'The French system, their new French code, is very well on paper,' observed Farquhar, 'very well for a parcel of logical automata; but it quite overlooks the illogical, I might say almost supra-logical and poetic side of human nature. Our law, in its wisdom, has preserved much of this, and it is particularly remarkable in the customary tenure of land, and in petty serjeanty. Allow me to give you an example: in the manors of East and West Enbourne, in Berkshire, a widow shall have her free-bench - her sedes libera, or in barbarous law-Latin her francus bancus - in all her late husband's copyhold lands dum sola et casta fuerit; but if she be detected in amorous conversation with a person of the opposite sex - if she grant the last favors - she loses all, unless she appears in the next manor-court, riding backward on a black ram, and reciting the following words: 'Here I am'My uncle owns one of these manors, and I have attended the court. I cannot adequately describe the merriment, the amiable confusion of the personable young widow, the flood of rustic wit, and - which is my real point - the universal, contented acceptance of her reinstatement, which I attribute largely to the power of poetry.' 'There may be a significant statistical relationship between the number of black ram-lambs suffered to reach maturity,' said Prote, 'and that of personable young widows.' 'And 'tis no isolated case,' continued Farquhar. 'For in the manor of Kilmersdon in Somerset, for example, we find what is essentially the same purgation, though in an abbreviated form, since no more than this distich is required: 'For mine arse's fault I take this pain.'Now is it not gratifying, gentlemen, to find our black rams - unprofitable creatures but for this interesting ceremony - so far apart as Berkshire and Somerset, with no record of a white ram's ever having been admitted? For your black ram, gentleman, is, I am persuaded, intimately connected with the worship of the Druids . . . .' Mr Farquhar was a man with a good understanding and a great deal of information, but at first mention of Druids, oak-groves or mistletoe a wild gleam came into his eye, a gleam so wild on this occasion that Stephen looked at his watch, rose to his feet, said that he must regretfully leave them, and gathered up his book. #15 - From The Mauritius Command, page 235: 'Far be it from me to decry patient laborious staff-work,' said the Governor. 'We have seen its gratifying results on this island; but, gentlemen, time and tide wait for no man, and I must remind you that Fortune is bald behind.' Walking away from the Residence through streets placarded with the Governor's proclamation, Jack said to Stephen, 'What is this that Farquhar tells about Fortune? Is she supposed to have the mange?' 'I conceive he was referring to the old tag - his meaning was, that she must be seized by the forelock, since once she is passed there is no clapping on to her hair, at all. In the figure she ships none abaft the ears, if you follow me.' 'Oh, I see. Rather well put: though I doubt those heavy-sided lobsters will smoke the simile.' He paused, considering, and said, 'It don't sound very eligible, bald behind; but, however, it is all figurative, all figurative . . .' More ****** Return to Top ****** Return to Chuck's Home Page #16 - From The Mauritius Command, page 244: [McAdam is an alcoholic ship's surgeon whose specialty is the brain and he knows very little of ordinary medicine - in today's world he would be called a psychiatrist.] . . . Stephen awoke from a long comfortable dozing state, a wholly relaxed well-being, aware that his fever was gone and that he was being looked at through the crack of the partly open door. 'Hola,' he cried, and a nervous midshipman, opening wider, said, 'The Captain's compliments to Dr. Maturin, and should he be awake and well enough, there is a mermaid on the starboard bow.' She was abaft the beam before Stephen reached the rail, a vast greyish creature with a round snout and thick lips, upright in the sea, staring at the ship with her minute beady eyes. If she was indeed a maid, then she must have had a friend who was none, for in her left flipper she held a huge grey baby. She was going fast astern, staring steadily, but he had time to see her opulent bosom, her absence of neck, hair and external ears, and to estimate her weight at forty stone, before she dived, showing her broad tail above the wave. . . McAdam looked singularly unappetizing in the morning light, ill-conditioned and surly: apprehensive too, for he had some confused recollection of harsh words having passed the night before. But, having beheld the mermaid, Stephen was in charity with all men, and he called out, 'You missed the mermaid, my dear colleague; but perhaps, if we sit quietly here, we may see another.' 'I did not,' said McAdam, 'I saw the brute out of the quarter-gallery scuttle; and it was only a manatee.' Stephen mused for awhile, and then he said, 'A dugong, surely. The dentition of the dugong is quite distinct from that of the manatee: the manatee, as I recall, has no incisors. Furthermore, the whole breadth of Africa separates their respective realms.' 'Manatee or dugong, 'tis all one,' said McAdam. 'As far as my studies are concerned, the brute is of consequence only in that it is the perfect illustration of the strength, the incredible strength, of suggestion. Have you been listening to their gab, down there in the waist?' 'Not I,' said Stephen. There had been much talk among the men working just out of sight forward of the quarter-deck rail, cross contentious talk; but the Néréide was always a surprisingly chatty ship, and apart from putting this outburst down to vexation at their late arrival, he had not attended to it. 'They seem displeased, however,' he added. 'Of course they are displeased: everyone knows the ill-luck a mermaid brings. But that is not the point. Listen now, will you? That is John Matthews, a truthful, sober, well-judging man; and the other is old Lemon, was bred a lawyer's clerk, and understands evidence.' Stephen listened, sorted out the voices, caught the thread of the argument: the dispute between Matthews and Lemon, the spokesmen of two rival factions, turned upon the question of whether the mermaid had held a comb in her hand or a glass. 'They saw the flash of that wet flipper,' said McAdam, and have translated it, with total Gospel-oath conviction, into one or other of these objects. Matthews offers to fight Lemon and any two of his followers over a chest in support of his belief.' 'Men have gone to the stake for less,' said Stephen: and walking forward to the rail he called down, 'You are both of you out entirely; it was a hairbrush.' Dead silence in the waist. The seamen looked at one another doubtfully, and moved quietly away among the boats on the booms with many a backward glance, thoroughly disturbed by this new element. #17 - From The Mauritius Command, page 293: . . . and above all she [the ship] rolled, a dead lurching drunken gunwale-roll that made the surgeon's work even more hazardous and delicate than usual. Stephen was there, helping poor Mr Cotton, an elderly cripple who had scarcely recovered from a bout of dysentery and who had been overcome with work from the first few minutes of the action. Even now, after a shocking number of deaths below, sixty or seventy cases remained, lying all along the berth-deck: there was plenty of room, at least, since the French had killed forty-nine men outright and had taken fifty prisoners away. The Africaines [crewmembers of the Africaine] who remained, helped by a party from the Boadicea, were busily lashing what spars they possessed to the stumps of the masts, and toward nightfall they were able to set three staysails, which at once gave the frigate back her life, so that she moved like a sentient being once more, with no more roll than a reasonable ship. 'What a relief,' said Mr Cotton, plying his saw. 'At one time I feared I was about to be seasick again - seasick after all these years afloat! A ligature, if you please. Are you subject to the seasickness, Dr Maturin?' 'I have known it in the Bay.' 'Ah, the Bay,' said Cotton, tossing the detached foot into a bucket held by the loblolly boy, 'that dismal tract. You may let him go,' he said the patient's messmates, who had been holding him; and into the grey, sweating face he said, 'John Bates, it is all over now. You will do very well, and that foot will earn you a Greenwich pension or a cook's warrant.' The grey, sweating face murmured in a tiny voice, thanking Mr Cotton, and might he keep the foot, for luck? #18 - From The Surgeon's Mate, page 136: 'I am so sorry for the infernal din just now,' said Captian Fortescue, 'but such things are inseparable from family life; and since it is our duty to increase and multiply I suppose we must put up with it. You are admiring my lilies, I see. Ain't they splendid? This one will interest you, Doctor, a great rarity brought me from Canton by my nephew in the Company's service. Oh God, they are at it again,' he cried, narrowing his eyes and leaning toward the lily, where several red beetles were copulating in his sight, increasing and multiplying. 'The dogs, the vile French vermin! And this is inseparable from gardening, too. Forgive me while I fetch my little spray.' More ****** Return to Top ****** Return to Chuck's Home Page #19 - From The Surgeon's Mate, page 201: 'I put them there myself,' said the Commandant with pride, 'I put them there with my own hands, choosing each one. Fine plump birds, though I should not say it.' 'Did you shoot them sir?' 'Oh no.' said the Commandant, quite shocked. 'You must never shoot a honey-buzzard: it ruins the flavor. No: we strangle them.' 'Do they not resent this?' 'I think not,' said the Commandant. 'It happens at night. I have a small house at Falsterbo, a peninsula at the far end of the Sound with a few trees upon it; here the birds come in the autumn, myriads of birds flying south, and great numbers roost in the wood, so many you may scarcely see the trees. We choose the best, pluck them down, and so strangle them. It has been done for ever; all the best salted buzzards come from Falsterbo; and no doubt they are used to it.' #20 - From H.M.S. Surprise, page 255: [The crew is determining how fast the ship is sailing.] Six bells. Braithwaite, the mate of the watch, came to the rail with the log. 'Is the glass clear?' he cried. 'All clear sir,' said the quartermaster. Braithwaite heaved the log. It shot astern. 'Turn,' he said, as the mark tore through his fingers, the reel screeching aloud. 'Stop!' shouted the quartermaster, twenty-eight seconds later. 'Eleven knots and six fathoms, sir, if you please,' reported Braithwaite to Pullings, official gravity fighting a losing battle with delight. All hands were listening nakedly, a murmur of intense satisfaction ran through the ship. 'Give it her,' said Pullings, and stepped closer to Jack's path. 'How do we come along, Mr. Pullings?' said he. 'Eleven knots and six fathoms, sir, if you please,' said Pullings with a grin. 'Hey, hey,' cried Jack. 'I scarcely believed it could be so much.' He looked lovingly along her deck and up to where her pendant flew out in a curving flame fifty foot long, almost straight ahead. She was indeed a noble ship; she always had been, but she had never run eleven knots six fathoms off the reel when he was a boy. . . . Stephen was sitting on the capstan, eating a mangosteen and staring at the mongoose as it played with his handkerchief, tossing it up, catching it, worrying it to death. 'We are running eleven knots six,' said Jack. 'Oh,' said Stephen, 'I am sorry to hear it - most concerned. Is there no remedy?' #21 - From The Mauritius Command, page 296: 'What indeed?' replied Mr Cotton [the surgeon of the Africaine ]. His weariness was too great for speculation, though not for civility, and when Stephen took his leave he said, 'You were a God-send, Dr Maturin: may I in turn be of any use to you?' 'Since you are so good,' said Stephen, 'it does so happen that I have a singularly delicate depressed fracture waiting for me tomorrow, and if by then you feel sufficiently recovered, I should be most grateful for your support. My young man has no experience of the trephine [used for cutting open the skull], and my hands are not so steady as they were - they do not possess your admirable firmness of grip.' 'I shall be with you, sir, at any hour you chose to name,' said Mr Cotton; and Mr Cotton, long accustomed to the ways of the Navy, was true to his word and exact to his time. At the first stroke of six bells in the forenoon watch he came swarming up the Boadicea's side, using his powerful arms alone and trailing his withered leg. Once aboard he shipped his half-crutch, saluted the quarterdeck, brushed an officious bosun's mate aside, and stumped aft. Everything was ready: under an awning that spread the brilliant light stood an upright chair, made fast to cleats, and in it sat Colley the patient, lead-colored, snoring still, and so tightly lashed by his friends that he was as incapable of independent movement as the ship's figurehead. The deck and tops were strangely crowded with men, many of them feigning busyness, for the old Sophies [crew members of the Sophie] had told their present shipmates of that memorable day in the year two, when, in much the same light, Dr Maturin had sawed off the top of the gunner's head, had roused out his brains, had set them to rights, and had clapped a silver dome over all, so that the gunner, on coming back to life, was better than new: this they had been told, and they were not going to miss a moment of the instructive and even edifying spectacle. From under the forecastle came the sound of the armourer at his forage, beating a three-shilling piece into a flat gleaming pancake. 'I have desired him to await our instructions for the final shape,' said Stephen, 'but he has already sharpened and retempered my largest trephine.' He held up the circular saw, still gleaming from its bath, and suggested that Mr Cotton might like to make the first incision. The medical civilities that followed, the polite insistence and refusal, made the audience impatient; but presently their most morbid hopes were gratified. The patient's shaved scalp, neatly divided from ear to ear and flensed away, hung over his unshaved livid snorting face, and now the doctors, poised above the flayed, shattered skull, were talking in Latin. 'Whenever they start talking foreign,' observed John Harris, forecastleman, starboard watch, 'you know they are at a stand, and that all is, as you might say, in a matter of speaking, up.' 'You ain't seen nothing, John Harris,' said Davis, the old Sophie. 'Our doctor is only tipping the civil to the one-legged cove: just you wait until he starts dashing away with his boring-iron.' 'Such a remarkable thickness of bone, and yet the metopic structure has not united,' said Mr Cotton. 'I have never seen the like, and am deeply gratified. But, as you say, it confronts us with a perplexing situation: a dilemma, as one might say.' 'The answer, as I conceive it, lies in a double perforation,' said Stephen. 'And here the strength and steadiness of your left forearm will prove invaluable. If you would have the goodness to support the parietal here, while I begin my first cut at this point, and if then we change hands, why, there is a real likelihood that we may lift out the whole in one triumphant piece.' Had it not been for the need to preserve the appearance of professional infallibility and god-like calm, Mr Cotton would have pursed his lips and shaken his head: as it was he muttered, 'The Lord be with us,' and slid in his flattened probe. Stephen turned back his cuffs, spat on his hands, waited for the roll, placed his point and began his determined cut, the white bone skipping from the eager teeth and Carol swabbing the sawdust away. In the silence the ship's company grew still more intent: the midshipmen's birth, ghouls to a man, craned forward, unchid by their officers. But as the steel bit down into the living head, more than one grew pale, more than one looked away into the rigging; and even Jack, who had seen this grisly performance before, turned his eyes to the horizon where the distant Astrée and Iphigenia flashed white in the sun. He heard Stephen call out the measurements to the armourer as the second cut began; he heard a renewed hammering on the anvil forward; but as he listened a movement far over there to windward seized upon the whole of his attention. Both the Frenchmen were filling: did they mean to edge down at last? He clapped his glass to his eye, and saw them come right before the wind., and shut his telescope with a smile . . . He laughed aloud, and at the same moment he heard Mr. Cotton cry, 'Oh pretty. Oh, very prettily done, sir.' Stephen raised the piece of skull entire and held it up to peer at its underside with a look of sober triumph - a moment during which the audience might gaze with fascinated horror at the awful gulf, where Mr. Cotton was now fishing for splinters with a pair of whalebone tongs. As he fished, and as a long transverse splinter stirred the depths, an awful voice, deep, slow, thick-tongued and as if it were drunk, but recognizable as Colley's, spoke from behind the hanging skin and said, 'Jo. Pass me that fucking gasket, Jo.' By this time the audience had dwindled, and many of the remaining ghouls were as wan as Colley himself; they revived, however, when the surgeons placed the silver cover on the hole, fastened it down, restored the patient's scalp to its usual place, sewed it up, washed their hands in the scuttle-butt, and dismissed him below. A pleased murmur ran round the ship, and Jack, stepping forward, said, 'I believe I may congratulate you, gentlemen, upon a very difficult manoeuvre?' They bridled and said it was nothing so extraordinary - any competent surgeon could have done as much - and in any case, they added, with a sincerity that would have caused Mrs Colley a dreadful pang, there was no call for congratulations until the inevitable crisis had declared itself: after all it could not be said that any operation was wholly successful unless the patient at least outlived the crisis. After that the cause of death might reasonably be assigned to a host of other factors. More ****** Return to Top ****** Return to Chuck's Home Page #22 - From Master and Commander, page 116: 'Sir,' said the poor clerk, 'you said I might bring you the remaining papers before tea, and your tea is just coming up.' 'Well, well: so I did,' said Jack. 'God, what an infernal heap. Leave them here, Mr Richards. I will see to them before we reach Cagliari.' 'The top ones are those which Captain Allen left to be written fair - they only need to be signed, sir,' said the clerk, backing out. Jack glanced at the top of the pile, paused, then cried, 'There! There you are. Just so. There's the service for you from clew to earing - the Royal Navy, stock and fluke. You get into a fine flow of patriotic fervor - you are ready to plunge into the thick of battle - and you are asked to sign this sort of thing.' He passed Stephen the carefully-written sheet. His Majesty's Sloop Sophie At sea The Rt. Hon. Lord Keith, K.B., etc., ctc. Admiral of the Blue. My Lord, I am to beg you will be pleased to order a Court Martial to be held on Isaac Wilson (seaman) belonging to the Sloop I have the honour to Command for having committed the unnatural Crime of Sodomy on a Goat, in the Goathouse, on the evening of March 16th. I have the Honour to remain, my Lord, Your Lordship's most obedient very humble servant 'It is odd how the law always harps upon the unnaturalness of sodomy,' observed Stephen. 'Though I know at least two judges who are paederasts; and of course barristers . . . What will happen to him?' 'Oh, he'll be hanged. Run up at the yard-arm, and boats attending from every ship in the fleet.' 'That seems a little extreme.' 'Of course it is. Oh, what an infernal bore - witnesses going over to the flagship by the dozen, days lost . . . The Sophie a laughing-stock. Why will they report these things? The goat must be slaughtered - that's but fair - and it shall be served out to the mess that informed on him.' 'Could you not set them both ashore - on separate shores, if you have strong feelings on the moral issue - and sail quietly away?' 'Well,' said Jack, whose anger had died down. 'Perhaps there is something in what you propose. A dish of tea? You take milk, sir?' 'Goat's milk, sir?' 'Why, I suppose it is.' 'Perhaps without milk, then, if you please. . . ' #23 - From Master and Commander, page 379: [Stephen and Jack have been captured by a French ship and are in custody aboard it. Stephen is being "guarded" by the French ship's surgeon, Dr. Ramis.] Breakfast with Dr Ramis was a very different matter - austere, if not penitential: a bowl of milkless cocoa, a piece of bread with a very little oil. 'A very little oil cannot do us much harm,' said Dr Ramis, who was a martyr to his liver. He was a severe and meager, dusty man, with a harsh grayish-yellow face and deep violet rings under his eyes; he did not look capable of any pleasant emotion, yet he had both blushed and simpered when Stephen, upon being confided to his care as a prisoner-guest, had cried, 'Not the illustrious Dr Jaun Ramis, the author of the Specimen Animalium?' Now they had come back from visiting the Desaix's sick-bay, . . . and [Stephen] said, 'I have been contemplating on emotion.' 'Emotion,' said Dr Ramis. 'Yes,' said Stephen. 'Emotion, and the expression of emotion. Now in your fifth book, and in part of the sixth, you treat of emotion as it is shown by the cat, for example, the bull, the spider - I, too, have remarked the singular intermittent brilliance in the eyes of lycosida: have you ever detected a glow in those of the mantis?' 'Never, my dear colleague: though Busbequius speaks of it,' replied Dr Ramis with great complacency. 'But it seems to me that emotion and its expression are almost the same thing. Let us take your cat: now suppose we shave her tail, so that it cannot shall I say perscopate or bristle; suppose we attach a board to her back, so that it cannot arch; suppose we then exhibit a displeasing sight - a sportive dog, for instance. Now, she cannot express her emotions fully: Quaere: will she feel them fully? Is not the arch, the bottle-brush, an integral part and not merely a potent reinforcement - though it is that too?' Dr Ramis inclined his head to one side, narrowed his eyes and lips, and said, 'How can it be measured? It cannot be measured. It is a notion; a most valuable notion, I am sure; but, my dear sir, where is your measurement? It cannot be measured. Science is measurement - no knowledge without measurement.' 'Indeed it can,' cried Stephen eagerly. 'Come, let us take our pulses.' Dr Ramis pulled out his watch, a beautiful Bréguet with a center seconds hand, and they both sat gravely counting. 'Now, dear colleague, pray be so good as to imagine - to imagine vehemently - that I have taken up your watch and wantonly flung it down; and I for my part will imagine that you are a very wicked fellow. Come, let us simulate the gestures, the expressions of extreme and violent rage.' Dr Ramis' face took on a tetanic look; his eyes almost vanished; his head reached forward, quivering. Stephen's lips writhed back; he shook his fist and gibbered a little. A servant came in with a jug of hot water (no second bowls of cocoa were allowed.) 'Now,' said Stephen Maturin, 'let us take our pulses again.' 'That pilgrim from the English sloop is mad,' the surgeon's servant told the second cook. 'Mad, twisted, tormented. And ours is not much better.' 'I will not say it is conclusive,' said Dr Ramis. 'But it is wonderfully interesting. We must try the addition of harsh reproachful words, cruel flings and bitter taunts, but without any physical motion, which could account for part of the increase. You intend it as a proof per contra of what you advance, I take it? Reversed, inverted, or arsy-versy, as you say in English. Most interesting.' 'Is it not?' said Stephen. 'My mind was led into this train of thought by the spectacle of our surrender, and of some others that I have seen. With your far greater experience of naval life, sir, no doubt you have been present at many more of these interesting occasions than I.' 'I imagine so,' said Dr Ramis. 'For example, I myself have had the honor of being your prisoner no less than four times. That,' he said with a smile, 'is one of the reasons we are so very happy to have you with us. It does not happen quite as often as we could wish. Allow me to help you to another piece of bread -- half a piece, with a very little garlic? Just a scrape of this wholesome antiphlogistical garlic?' #24 - From Desolation Island, page 8 [Jack is at home with his family, where all the servants are sailors or ex-sailors.] . . . Amos Dray, formerly bosun's mate in HMS Surprise and, in the line of duty, the most conscientious, impartial flogger in the fleet before he lost his leg, shaded his mouth with his hand and in a deep rumble whispered, 'Toe the line, my dears.' The two little pudding-faced twin girls in clean pinafores stepped forward to a particular mark on the carpet, and together, piping high and shrill, they cried, 'Good morning, sir.' 'Good morning, Charlotte. Good morning, Fanny,' said their father, bending down until his breeches creaked to kiss them. 'Why, Fanny, you have a lump on your forehead.' 'I'm not Fanny,' said Charlotte, scowling. 'I'm Charlotte.' 'But you are wearing a blue pinafore,' said Jack. 'Because Fanny put on mine; and she fetched me a swipe with her slipper, the ---- swab,' said Charlotte, with barely contained passion. Jack cast an apprehensive look at Mrs Williams [mother-in-law] and Sophie [wife], but they were still cooing over the baby, and almost at the same moment Bonden brought in the post. He put it down, a leather bag with Ashgrove Cottage engraved on its brass plate; and the children, their grandmother and their attendants leaving the room at this point, he begged pardon for being late: the fact of the matter was, it was market-day down there. Horses and cattle. 'Crowded, I dare say?' 'Uncommon sir. But I found Mr Meiklejohn and told him you was not attending at the office till Saturday.' Bonden hesitated: Jack gave him a questioning look, and he went on, 'The fact of the matter is, Killick made a purchase, a legal purchase. Which he asked me to tell you first, your honour.' 'Aye?' said Jack, unlocking the bag. 'A nag, I suppose: well, I wish him joy of it. He may put it in the old byre.' 'Not exactly a nag sir, though it was in a halter: two legs and a skirt, if I may say so. A wife, sir.' 'What in God's name does he want with a wife?' cried Jack, staring. 'Why, sir,' said Bonden, blushing and looking away from Sophie, 'I can't rightly say. But he bought one, legal. It seems her husband and she did not agree, so he brought her to market in a halter; and Killick, he bought her, legal - laid down the pewter in sight of one and all, and shook hands on it. There was three to choose on.' 'But you cannot possibly sell your wife - treat women like cattle,' cried Sophie. 'Oh fie, Jack; it is perfectly barbarous.' 'It does seem a little strange, but it is the custom, you know, a very old custom.' 'Surely you will never countenance such a wicked thing, Captain Aubry?' 'Why, as to that, I should not like to go against custom: common law too, for all I know. Not unless there was any constraint - undue influence, as they say. Where would the Navy be without we followed our customs? Let him come in.' 'Well, Killick,' he said, when the pair stood before him, his steward an ugly slab-sided middle-aged man rendered more awkward than usual by his present bashfulness, the young woman a snapping black-eyed piece, a perfect sailor's delight. 'Well, Killick, I trust you are not rushing into matrimony without due consideration? Matrimony is a very serious thing.' 'Oh no, sir. I considered of it: I considered of it, why, the best part of twenty minutes. There was three to choose on, and this here -' looking fondly at his purchase - ' was the pick of the bunch.' 'But, Killick, now I come to think of it, you had a wife in Mahon. She washed my shirts. You must not commit bigamy you know: it is against the law. You certainly had a wife in Mahon.' 'Which I had two, your honour, t'other in Wapping Dock; but they was more in the roving, uncertificated line, if you follow me, sir, not bought legal, the halter put into my hand.' 'Well,' said Jack, 'so I suppose you want to add her to the establishment. You will have to go in front of the parson first, however: cut along to the Rectory.' 'Aye aye, sir,' said Killick. 'Rectory it is.' More ****** Return to Top ****** Return to Chuck's Home Page #25 - From H.M.S. Surprise, page 76: [Stephen has been terribly tortured by the French as a suspected spy and is now just arrived at the Grapes, where he is recuperating. The head of Naval Intelligence has just arrived at his room.] . . .'It was benevolent of you co come; I wish I could receive you better.' 'No, no, no,' cried Sir Joseph. 'I like your quarters excessively - another age - most picturesque - Rembrandt. What a splendid fire! I trust they make you comfortable?' 'Yes, I thank you. They are used to my ways here. Perfect if only the woman of the house did not take it upon herself to play the physician, merely because I keep my bed some hours every day. "No, ma'am," I say to her, "I will not drink Godfrey's Cordial, nor try Ward's drop. I do not tell you how to dress this salmagundy, for you are a cook; pray do not tell me how to order my regimen, for as you know, I am a medical man." "No sir," says she, "but our Sarah, which she was in just the same case as you, having been overset at the bear-baiting when six months gone, took great advantage from Godfrey; so pray, sir, do try this spoonful." Jack Aubrey was just the same. "I do not pretend to teach you how to sail your sloop or poop or whatever you call the damned machine; do not therefore pretend -" But it is all one. Nostrums from the fairground quack, old wives' remedies - bah! If rage could reunite my sinews, I should be as compact as a lithosperm.' Sir Joseph had intended to suggest the waters of Bath, but now he said, ' I hope your friend is well? . . .' . . .'Should you like a window open, Sir Joseph?' 'If it would not incommode you. Do you not find it a trifle warm yourself?' 'I do not. The tropic sun is what I require, and a bushel of sea-coals is its nearest equivalent. But it would scarcely answer for a normally-constituted frame, I agree. Pray take off your coat-loosen your neckcloth. I do not stand on ceremony, as you see, with my nightcap and catskin comforter.' He began to heave on a system of cords and purchases connected with the window, but sank back, muttering, 'Jesus, Mary and Joseph. No grip, no grip at all. Bonden!' 'Sir?' said Bonden, instantly appearing at the door. 'Just clap on to that slab-line, and tally and belay right aft, will you now?' said Stephen, glancing at Sir Joseph with covert pride. Bonden gasped, caught the Doctor's intention, and moved forward. But with his hand on the rope, he paused and said, 'But I don't hardly know, sir, that draught would be the thing. We ain't so spry this morning.' 'You see how it is, Sir Joseph. Discipline all to pieces; never an order carried out without endless wrangling. Damn you, sir.' Bonden sulkily opened the window and inch or two, poked the fire and left the room, shaking his head. 'I believe I shall take off my coat,' said Sir Joseph. 'So a warm climate would suit, you tell me?' 'The hotter the better. As soon as I can, I mean to go down to Bath, to wallow in the warm and sulphurous-' 'Just what I was about to observe!' cried Sir Joseph. 'I am delighted to hear it. It was the very thing I should have recommended if' - if you had not looked so very savage, explosive, obstinate and cantankerous, he thought; but said 'if it had been my place to advise you. The very thing to brace the fibers; my sister Clarges knew of a case, not perhaps quite identical . . . ' He felt he was on dangerous ground, coughed, and without a transition said: 'But to return to your friend; will not his marriage set him up? I saw the announcement in The Times, and surely I understand the young lady to be a very considerable heiress? Lady Keith told me that the estate is very handsome; some of the best farm-land in the county.' 'That is so, sure. But it is in her mother's hands entirely; and this mother is the most unromantic beast that ever urged its squat thick bulk across the face of the protesting earth; whereas Jack is not. He has the strangest notions of what constitutes a scrub, and the greatest contempt for a fortune-hunter. A romantic creature. And the most pitiful liar you can imagine; . . .' #26 - From Post Captain, page 428: ‘Dogs,’ said the chaplain, who was not one to leave his corner of the table silent long. ‘That reminds me of a question I had meant to put to you gentlemen. This short watch that is about to come, or rather these two short watches - why are they called dog watches? Where, heu, heu, is the canine connection?’ ‘Why,’ said Stephen, ‘ it is because they are curtailed, of course.’ A total blank. Stephen gave a faint inward sigh; but he was used to this, ‘Mr. Butler, the bottle stands by you,’ said Jack. ‘Mr Lydgate, allow me to help you to a little of the undercut.’ It was the midshipman who first reacted. He whispered to his neighbor Dashwood, ‘He said, cur-tailed: the dog-watch is cur-tailed. Do you twig?’ It was the sort of wretched clench perfectly suited to the company. The spreading merriment, the relish, the thunderous mirth, reached the forecastle, causing amazement and conjecture: Jack leaned back in his chair, wiping tears from his scarlet face, and cried, ‘Oh, it is the best thing - the best thing. Bless you, Stephen - a glass of wine with you. Mr Simmons, if we dine with the admiral, you must ask me, and I will say, “Why, it is because they have been docked, of course.” No, no. I am out. Cur-tailed -- cur-tailed, But I doubt I should ever be able to get it out gravely enough.' #27 - From The Yellow Admiral, page 210: Preserved Killick walked in with a look of surly triumph on his disagreeable shrewish face and said, jerking his head in Stephen's direction, `Which I only wanted to ask his honour where this little green parcel was to go. In the dispensary? Down the head?' 'Jesus, M . . .' Stephen checked himself and went on, 'It had flown out of my head entirely, with the anxieties of the journey and the tumult of the waves. It is a Troy pound of Jackson's best mocha. He sells it by Troy weight as a precious substance, which indeed it is. Good Killick, honest Killick, pray grind it as fast as human power allows and make up a noble great pot.' Killick had never been called honest before and he was not at all sure how he liked it now. He sidled out, with suspicious glances back into the cabin. More ****** Return to Top ****** Return to Chuck's Home Page #28 - From H.M.S. Surprise, page 49: [Yesterday afternoon, in fierce, very bloody hand-to-hand fighting, Jack led a boarding party that captured an enemy ship. Killick is Jack's long-time, irascible steward. The parenthetical comments at the end of this passage are Killick's, not mine.] ...Jack was about to utter some softening remark when Killick appeared again. 'Coffee's up, sir,' he said crossly; and as Jack hurried into his cabin he heard the words 'stone cold now - on the table since six bells - told 'im again and again - enough trouble to get it, and now it's left to go cold.' They seemed to be addressed to the Marine sentry, whose look of shocked horror, of refusal to hear or participate in any way, was in exact proportion to the respect, even the awe, in which Jack was held on the ship. In point of fact the coffee was still so hot that it almost burnt his mouth. 'Prime coffee, Killick,' he said, after the first pot. A surly grunt, and without turning around Killick said, 'I suppose you'll be wanting another 'ole pot sir.' Hot and strong, how well it went down! A pleasurable activity began to creep into his dull torpid mind. He hummed a piece of Figaro, breaking off to butter a fresh piece of toast. Killick was a cross-grained bastard, who supposed that if he sprinkled his discourse with a good many sirs, the words in between did not signify: but still he had procured this coffee, these eggs, this butter, this soft tack, on shore and had put them on the table the morning after a hot engagement - ship still cleared for action and the galley knocked sideways by the fire from Cape Béar. Jack had known Killick ever since his first command, and as he had risen in rank so Killick's sullen independence had increased; he was angrier than usual now because Jack had wrecked his number three uniform and lost one of his gloves: 'Coat torn in five places - cutlass slash in the forearm which how can I ever darn that? Bullet 'ole all singed, never get the powder-marks out. Breeches all a-hoo, and all this nasty blood everywhere, like you'd been a-wallowing in a lay-stall, sir. What Miss would say, I don't know, sir. God strike me blind. Epaulette 'acked, fair 'acked to pieces. (Jesus, what a life.)' #29 - From The Golden Ocean, page 257: On the bank of the Pearl River, with its back to the teeming city of Canton, a Chinese sage contemplated the innumerable sampans and junks. By his side his grandson, a sharp child of six winters, tended a caged cricket and gambolled in the mud -- a child destined, it may be added, for a public death by boiling just forty years on. 'Grandpapa,' said the fledgling gallows-bird, 'I see two sumptuous palanquins approaching in the distance. 'Are they officials?' asked the sage, turning quickly and peering through his spectacles. 'I cannot tell, being so young in years,' piped the child. 'They are not very sumptuous palanquins, for although they are ornate to a high degree, the hangings are somewhat tawdry.' 'They are not sumptuous at all,' said the sage, as the palanquins drew near. 'They are crude, vulgar, essentially modern palanquins; metricious palanquins: yet I have been put to the trouble of presenting a benignant aspect, in case they might be mandarins, by your unconsidered remarks.' 'There is a foreign devil marching by the nearest palanquin, grandpapa.' 'A barbarian, my child. The educated man does not say "foreign devil".' 'A barbarian, grandpapa. Pray, grandpapa, tell me about the barbarians?' 'They are engendered by the apes of the farther western deserted regions, and by certain unclean spirits of those parts, my child: they are covered with hair, but they are capable of a rude speech for their simple communications among themselves: and they have, from the supernatural side of their ancestry, a curious ability to travel in very large sea-going machines, which waft them up and down. They first had the happiness of finding the Celestial Empire in the reign of Sun Chi, when it was reported that they were capable of domestication and responsive to kindness; and it was ordered that they should be regarded as neutral monsters of the third class, neither benign nor malignant, to be officially preserved as curiosities and allowed suitable nourishment, but to be shunned by unauthorised persons.' 'What is suitable nourishment for a monster of the third class, if you please, grandpapa?' 'A small brick of a very hard farinaceous substance will sustain one for a week,' replied the sage. 'They are not costly to maintain: but neither are they pleasant, having the hairiness of the one parent joined to the intractability of the other, together with the unbelievable lack of polish of both, doubled.' 'The monster in the second palanquin has no hair at all.' reported the child, returning through the crowd. 'Then it is one of the Smooth Southern Monsters,' said the sage sharply, 'and so much the worse.' 'And pray, grandpapa, why does the monster perpetually chant "Palanquin ho, palanquin hee"?' 'It is an abortive attempt at speaking the human language,' said the sage. 'Does it want its brick of farinaceous substance, or is the monster in pain, grandpapa?' 'Not in half as much pain as you will be in a minute if you do not stop asking damn-fool questions,' cried the exasperated sage. 'Leave the foreign devils alone, can't you? And mind your own business. You will certainly come to a bad end if you go on like this, you very disagreeable little beast.' With those ominous words the sage turned his face to the river, and took no further interest in the proceedings whatever. And this, in its way, was typical of the Centurion's dealings with the Chinese. The root of the trouble lay, perhaps, in that polished nation's disregard for the military character: in a land where the fighting man was officially rated as "equal, but perceptibly inferior, to the remover of impurities from the public thoroughfares, fifth class", and popularly as almost indistinguishable from a hired assassin; in a land, moreover, to which no ship of the Royal Navy had hitherto penetrated, the Commodore found it extraordinarily difficult to have due respect paid to his master's flag, and even (in spite of the good offices of the Portuguese and the well-meant but inept intervention of the East India Company's men) to provide his ship with her daily necessities, let alone the refit that she needed so badly. Obstruction from the lower officials, continual delays, false promises and misunderstandings kept the Centurion in Macao for a time that seemed never-ending and perfectly intolerable to her officers; and even when the Commodore, overriding the pusillanimous merchant's advice, cut the red-tape by a direct and forceful approach to the Viceroy himself in Canton, the work carried on with maddening deliberation. Maddening, that is, for the commander and the senior officers: the crew, the midshipmen's berth, and the younger lieutenants, were charmed with their long run ashore. Now that the ship was in her berth, refitting at last, with a horde of very able, if dilatory, Chinese caulkers thumping away at her bottom and sides, while smiths hammered and blew, and shipwrights wrought, the more volatile part of her company scattered abroad to add to the gaiety of Macao, Kowloon and Canton, where, for all the official Chinese reserve, and despite their status as monsters, neutral, third class, they found congenial places of entertainment and convivial souls. #30 - From The Unknown Shore, page 111: [The Unknown Shore is POB's second seafaring book and its plot is coeval with his first, The Golden Ocean, however it takes place on a different ship. His next novel is Master and Commander, in which we first meet Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin. The two principal characters of The Unknown Shore are the two boys Jack Byron and Tobias Barrow, who are clearly to grow up, change names, and become Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin in POB's following books. Here young surgeon's mate Toby is getting a lesson.] Mr Eliot took a harmless delight in conjuring, and by a happy coincidence his pastime and his profession could be practised together, the one helping the other; hitherto he had been shy of opening himself up on this subject to Tobias, because the practice was not only far from orthodox but it also had a certain remote hint of -- his mind would not, even silently, pronounce the word quackery, but that was the expression that an enemy might have used. "Let it be supposed, Mr Barrow," he said, "that Martha Smith comes to me, complaining of a headache, and I find that this headache is of the immaterial, or imaginary class. I can bleed her, of course, and cup her, and apply Spanish fly; but unless I can play upon her imagination (the soul of the trouble) her head will ache still. Do you follow me, Mr Barrow? Tobias Barrow, do you pursue my line of reasoning? Yes. Now it may very well be that this young lady supposes that an earwig has gained an entry to her brain, and is feasting upon it: a very usual idea, Mr Barrow. We may tell her that she is mistaken, that physically speaking she has no earwig and no headache at all; but will this make her feel any better? No, my dear sir, it will not. But if we syringe the young lady's meatus auditorius (always use a warm lixivium, Mr Barrow), and if in the bowl we find a fine brisk earwig? Eh?" Tobias began to understand the reason for the existence of an old, worn, partially bald, very familiar white mouse, and of a grass-snake, a small eel whose water was surreptitiously changed from time to time, and a toad, all of whom led a very private and secluded life in a recess of the surgeon's cabin, together with the more ligitmate leeches. More ****** Return to Top ****** Return to Chuck's Home Page #31 - From The Ionian Mission, page 228: [Dr. Stephen Maturin is responding to the learned and staid Professor Graham's question as to the health of the midshipmen - who are to perform Hamlet for the ship's entertainment.] '… Yet it is Mr. Williamson that gives me more immediate anxiety. As you may have heard, mumps is got intro the ship, brought by a Maltese lad in a victualler; and Mr. Williamson was the first and most through-going case.' Mr. Graham could never have been described as a merry companion: few things amused him at all and fewer still to the pitch of open mirth; but mumps was one of these rarities and now he uttered an explosive barking sound. 'It is no laughing matter,' said Stephen, privily wiping Graham's saliva from his neckcloth. 'Not only is our Hamlet brought to halt for want of an Ophelia - for Mr. Williamson was the only young gentleman with a tolerable voice - but the poor boy is in a fair way to becoming an alto, a counter-tenor for life.' 'Hoot,' said Mr. Graham, grinning still. 'Does the swelling effect the vocal cords?' 'The back of my hand to the vocal cords,' said Stephen. 'Have you not heard of orchitis? Of the swelling of the cods that may follow mumps?' 'Not I,' said Graham, his smile fading. 'Nor had my messmates,' said Stephen, 'though the Dear knows it is one of the not unusual sequelae of cynanche parotidaea, and one of real consequence to men. Yet to be sure there is something to be said in its favor, as a more human way of providing castrati for our choirs and operas.' 'Does it indeed emasculate?' cried Graham. 'Certainly. But be reassured: that is the utmost limit of its malignance. I do not believe that medical history records any fatal issue - a benign distemper, compared with many I could name. Yet Lord, how concerned my shipmates were, when I told them, for surprisingly few seem to have had the disease in youth -' 'I did not.' Said Graham, unheard. 'Such anxiety!' said Stephen, smiling at the recollection. 'Such uneasiness of mind! One might have supposed it was a question of the bubonic plague. I urged them to consider how very little time was really spent in coition, but it had no effect. I spoke of the eunuch's tranquility and peace of mind, his unimpaired intellectual powers - I cited Narses and Hermias. I urged them to reflect that a marriage of minds was far more significant than mere carnal copulation. I might have saved my breath: one could almost have supposed that seamen lived for the act of love.' 'The mumps is a contagious disease, I believe?' said Graham. 'Oh eminently so,' said Stephen absently, remembering Jack's grave concerned expression in the wardroom, and upon the faces of a delegation from the gunroom that waited on him to learn what they could do to be saved; and smiling again he said, 'If eating were an act as secret as the deed of darkness, or fugging, as they say in their sea-jargon, would it be so obsessive, so omnipresent, the subject of almost all with and mirth?' Professor Graham, however, had moved almost to the vary end of the Ocean's empty wardroom, where he stood with his face by an open scuttle; and as Stephen approached he limped swiftly towards the door, pausing there to say, 'Upon reflection, I find I am compelled to decline the Worcester's wardroom's most polite and obliging invitation, because of a previous engagement. You will present my best compliments and tell the gentlemen how much I regret not seeing them tomorrow.' 'They will be disappointed, I am sure,' said Stephen. 'But there is always the oratorio. You will see them all at the oratorio, on Sunday evening.' 'On Sunday evening?' cried Graham. 'Heuch: how unfortunate. I fear I cannot reconcile it with my conscience to be present at a public exhibition of display on the Sabbath, not even a performance that is far from profane; and must beg to be excused.' #32 - From Treason's Harbour, page 67: [Jack and Stephen are in Malta, being ferried out to their ship.] ….. said Stephen as the long lean dghaisa shoved off and began to skim across the Grand Harbour towards the Dromedary, urged by the promise of double fare. 'How briskly these worthy creatures do propel the bark, to be sure; and have you noticed that they stand up to do so, that they face the direction they are going, like the gondoliers of Venice? Surely this is a laudable practice that should be introduced into the Navy.' Stephen often put forward ideas for the improvement of the service, In his time he had advocated the serving out of a modest allowance of soup, the cutting of the monstrous rum-ration, the provision of free, warm, serviceable uniform clothes for the lower deck, particularly for the ship's boys and new hands, and the abolition of such punishments as flogging round the fleet: these proposals had met with little more success than his present suggestion that in defiance of all tradition the Navy should look where it was going - #33 - From Treason's Harbour, page 40: [Jack is in conversation with the beautiful Mrs. Laura Fielding.] 'He is so grateful. And so am I,' she added, with such an affectionate look that Jack wondered if it were not perhaps one of these signals. He was the more inclined to think so since he had breakfasted on a pound or two of fresh sardines, which act as an aphrodisiac upon those of a sanguine complexion. More ****** Return to Top ****** Return to Chuck's Home Page #34 - From Treason's Harbour, page 79: [Ponto, Laura Fielding's pet, is an Illyrian mastiff, the size of a moderate calf, who earlier had been exiled in disgrace for killing an ass, but is now back in good graces.] [Stephen is at a small gathering listening to Laura Fielding at the pianoforte, Jack with violin, and Count Muratori with flute.] The music was of no great importance but once he [Stephen] had slipped off his shoes it was pleasant sitting there with the sound weaving decorative patterns in the warm, gently stirring air: the lemon-tree was giving out its well-remembered scent- strong, but not excessive - and on the side farthest from the lanterns, the darkest corner of the court, there was a troop of fireflies. They too weaved decorative patterns and with a certain effort of the imagination, a little elimination of unnecessary notes and unnecessary flies, the two could be made to coincide. Ponto came pacing across, smelt Stephen in an offensively censorious way, avoided his caress, and walked off again, flinging himself down among the fireflies with a disgusted sigh. Presently he began to lick his private parts with so strong a lushing sound that it quite overlaid a pianissimo passage for the flute and Stephen lost the thread of the argument, such as it was. His mind drifted away to fireflies he had known, to American fireflies and to an account of a Boston entomologist had given him of their ways. According to this gentleman the different species emitted different signals to show their willingness for sexual congress: this was natural enough - indeed, a laudable practice - but what seemed less so was the fact that certain females of say species A, moved not by any amorous warmth but by mere voracity, would imitate the signals of species B, whose males, all unsuspecting, would descend, not to a glowing nuptial couch but to a dismal butcher's block. #35 - From The Far Side of The World, page 76: [Stephen and Martin are sitting on the "very chine or ridge of Gibraltar" watching birds.] At much the same time Stephen said to Martin, 'that makes eight more black storks; seventeen in all, I believe.' 'Seventeen it is,' said Martin, checking the list upon his knee. 'What was that smaller bird low down on the left?' 'It was only a bar-tailed godwit,' said Stephen. 'Only a bar-tailed godwit,' repeated Martin, laughing with delight. 'Paradise must be very like this.' Perhaps a little less harsh and angular,' said Stephen, whose meager hams rested on a sharp limestone edge. 'Mandeville reports that is has mossy walls. But let it not be supposed that I complain,' he added . . . #36 - From The Far Side of The World, page 144: Stephen's thoughts moved on from James Nicolls to marriage in general, that difficult state. He had heard of a race of lizards in the Caucasus that reproduced themselves parthenogenetically, with no sexual congress of any kind, no sexual complications: Lacerta saxicola was their name. Marriage, its sorrow and woe, its fragile joys, filled his mind and he was not altogether surprised when Martin, speaking in a low, confidential tone, told him that he had long been attached to the daughter of a parson, a young lady whose brother he used to botanize with when they were at the university together. She was considerably above him in the worldly consequence and her friends looked upon him with disapproval; nevertheless, in view of this now very much greater affluence, his income of £211. 8. 0 a year, he thought of asking her to be his wife. Yet there were many things that troubled him: one was that her friends might not regard even £211. 8. 0 as wealth; another was his appearance – Maturin had no doubt noticed that he had only one eye – which must necessarily tell against him; and still another was the difficulty of setting out his mind in a letter. Martin was not unaccustomed to composition, but he had been able to do no better than this: he hoped Maturin would be so good as to glance over it and give him his candid opinion. The sun beat down upon the foretop; the paper curled in Stephen's hand; his heart sank steadily. Martin was a thoroughly amiable man, a man of wide reading, but when he came to write he mounted upon a pair of stilts, unusually lofty stilts, and staggered along at a most ungracious pace, with an occasional awkward lurch into colloquialism, giving a strikingly false impression of himself. Stephen handed the letter back and said, ‘It is very elegantly put indeed, with some uncommon pretty figures; and I am sure it would touch any lady's heart; but my dear Martin, you must allow me to say that I believe your whole approach to be mistaken. You apologize from beginning to end; from start to finish you are exceedingly humble. There is a quotation that hovers just beyond the reach of my recollection together with the name of its author, to the effect that even the most virtuous woman despises an impotent man, and surely all self-depreciation runs along the same unhappy road? I am convinced that the best way of making an offer of marriage is the shortest: a plain, perfectly legible letter reading My Dear Madam, I beg you will do me the honour of marring me: I remain, dear Madam, with the utmost respect, your humble obedient servant. That goes straight to the heart of the matter. On a separate half-sheet one could perhaps add a statement of one's income, for the consideration of the lady's friends, together with an expression of willingness to make any settlements they may think fit.' ‘Perhaps so,' said Martin, folding his paper away. ‘Perhaps so. I am very much obliged to you for the suggestion.' But it required no very great penetration to see that he was not convinced, that he still clung to his carefully balanced periods, his similes, his metaphors and his peroration, He had shown his letter to Maturin partly as a mark of confidence and esteem, being sincerely attached to him, and partly so that Maturin might praise it, possibly adding a few well-turned phrases; for like most normally constituted writers Martin had no use for any candid opinion that was not wholly favourable. More ****** Return to Top ****** Return to Chuck's Home Page #37 - From The Far Side of The World, page 159: . . . a broad veranda with a number of domesticated creatures on it, marmosets of three different kinds, and old bald toucan, a row of sleepy parrots, something hairy in the background that might have been a sloth or an anteater or even a doormat but that it farted from time to time, looking round censoriously on each occasion, and a strikingly elegant small blue heron that walked in and out. #38 - From The Far Side of The World, page 171: [laudanum – any preparation in which opium was the chief ingredient] [Stephen is writing to Diana.] ‘But the great wealth of every day is of course botanical, and that reminds me of the cuca or coca leaves that a Peruvian traveller gave me; when they are chewed with a little lime they sharpen the mind to a wonderful degree, they induce a sense of well-being and they abolish both hunger and fatigue. I have laid in a considerable stock, because I think it will help me to throw off a somewhat troublesome habit: you may have noticed that for insomnia and a variety of other ills I take a tincture of laudanum; and this does tend to become a little too usual. I do not think there is any question of abuse, still less of addiction, yet it creates a certain need, not unlike that for tobacco; I should be glad to be set free from it, and I am confident that these valuable leaves will prove efficacious. Their powers really do surprise me, and I shall enclose a few with my letter, so that you may try them. During this period of extremely wearing toil and anxiety I have proposed them to Jack, but he said that if they did away with sleep and hunger they were not for him – in this crisis he needed his sleep and he must have his meals – in short, he would not take physic til the ship was afloat, no, not for a king's ransom.' #39 - From The Far Side of The World, page 193: ‘It astonishes me that our seamen can move straight from one ship to another and sail if off with no practice,' said Martin as they the stood watching the Danaë part company, turning in a long pure curve until her head was pointing north-north-east while the Surprise carried on to the west of south. ‘The complexity of rigging is much the same in all, I am told,' said Stephen. ‘Just as we see a clear analogy between the skeletons of vertebrates, so the mariner with his boats. In a brig I believe some ropes run forward while those on a three-masted ship they run backwards, yet this is no more a source of confusion for the seaman than the ruminant's multiplicity of stomachs for the anatomist, or the howler's anomalous hyoid. Yet what I wished to say was this: I know it was your kindly intention to visit the gunner's wife, but in her present state of mental agitation and extreme physical distress I really think I should beg you not to do so until there is some improvement; I have already banished her husband. On the other hand, I should be glad of your assistance in a tolerably delicate operation as soon as there is light enough: a depressed fracture. I must trepan poor Plaice and I should like to do so today; they tell me there is dirty weather ahead, and clearly one needs a steady deck underfoot and an immobile patient. I have an improved Lavoisier's trephine, a magnificent instrument with extraordinary biting power; and if you choose, you shall turn the handle!' The Surprise's crew, like most seamen, were a hypochondriacal set of ghouls upon the whole, and they loved a surgical operation almost as much as they loved a prize. But whereas the amputation of a shipmate's arm or leg had disadvantages of which they were fully sensible, a trepanning had none: the patient had but to survive to have all his former powers restored – to be as good as new, with the glory of a silver plate and an anecdote that would last him and his friends to the grave. It was an operation that Dr Maturin had carried out at sea before, always in the fullest possible light and therefore on deck, and many of them had seen him do so. Now they and all their mates saw him do it again: they saw Joe Plaice's scalp taken off, his skull bared, a disc of bone audibly sawn out, the handle turning solemnly; a three-shilling piece, hammered into a flattened dome by the armourer, screwed on over the hole; and the scalp replaced, neatly sewn up by the parson. It was extremely gratifying – the Captain had been seen to go pale, and Barret Bonden too, the patient's cousin – blood running down Joe's neck regardless – brains clearly to be seen – something not to be missed for a mint of money – instructive, too – and they made the most of it. This was just as well, because it was the last gratification they had for a very long while; in some cases the last they ever had. The dirty weather, foretold by the long heavy swell from the south and west, the dropping glass and the most forbidding sky, struck them even sooner and even harder than they had expected. More ****** Return to Top ****** Return to Chuck's Home Page #40 - From The Far Side of The World, page 235: Gill was a reading man, nearer akin to Martin and Stephen than to most of the other sailors. His interests however had more to do with men, primitive men, and less with botany or brute-beasts than theirs; he was fascinated by the idea of the noble savage and had travelled far among the native Americans, learning all he could of their social order in peace and war, their laws, customs and history; and one afternoon, when the Surprise was still stripping the Acapuico of everything that could possibly be crammed between decks and Mr Lawrence was dining with Jack, the three of them lingered in the gunroom over a bottle of madeira. 'I was of course exceedingly mortified at being taken prisoner,' he observed, 'yet in a purely personal and private way I had been perhaps even more deeply mortified by being ordered to take command of that unfortunate Acapuico, since from the very beginning of the voyage my whole heart had been bent on beholding the Marquesas: your upas-tree, sir, your two-toed sloth, dodo, sohtary-bird, were hardly more for you than the Marquesas were for me, particularly the island Huahiva, which my uncle has always represented as a Paradise.' 'As a Paradise, indeed?' asked Stephen, remembering a letter found in the Danaë's packet, which used that very phrase. 'Yes, sir. Not perhaps quite an orthodox Presbyterian Paradise, but one so agreeable that he means to set up a colony upon it. Indeed he even has some colonists with him. I have heard differing and often muddle-headed accounts of the islanders' polity, but all agree that it pays great attention to various prohibitions or taboos and to relationship; and all agree that the people are most uncommonly amiable and good-looking, their only faults being cannibalism and unlimited fornication. But neither of these is erected into a religious system, oh no: the divine offerings are invariably swine, the cannibalism being simply a matter of taste or inclination; while the fornication has nothing ceremonial or compulsory about it.' #41 - From The Far Side of The World, page 303: [In lieu of a sermon, Jack is reading the Articles of War to the crew at Sunday's church service, while Stephen and Martin discuss birds a short distance away.]. .... in the pause that followed the singing of the Old Hundredth, Ward, who on these occasions acted as parish clerk as well as captain's clerk, stepped forward, took the slim folio of the Articles from beneath the Bible and passed it to Jack, who began in a strong, minatory voice (though not without a certain relish), 'For the regulating and better government of his Majesty's navies, ships of war, and forces by sea, whereon, under the good providence of God, the wealth, safety, and strength of this kingdom chiefly depend, be it enacted by the King's most excellent Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the lords spiritual and temporal, and commons, in this present parliament assembled . . .' His words came down the wind-sail in snatches as the breeze strengthened on the top of the swell and diminished when the Surprise sank into the trough, and fragments of the Articles mingled with Stephen's and Martin's conversation, which now moved off, by way of the phalarope, to the less dangerous ground of birds. 'Did you ever see a phalarope, at all?' asked Stephen. 'Never a live one, alas; only in the pages of a book, and that a most indifferent cut.' 'Will I describe him to you?' 'If you please.' 'All flag officers, and all persons in or belonging to his Majesty's ships or vessels of war, being guilty of profane oaths, cursings, execrations, drunkenness, uncleanness, or other scandalous actions in derogation of God's honour, and corruption of good manners . . .' 'But the hen bird is much larger and much brighter; and she is a creature that does not believe that a hen's duty is merely to tend her nest, brood her eggs, and nourish her chicks. I once had the happiness of watching a pair from a fisherman's cabin on the far far tip of the County Mayo; there was a group of them in the neighbourhood, but it was this particular pair I watched, so close to the cabin they were.' 'If any ship or vessel shall be taken as prize, none of the officers, mariners, or other persons on board her, shall be stripped of their clothes, or in any sort pillaged, beaten, or evil-intreated . . .' 'The evening she had laid the last of her clutch - ' 'Forgive me,' said Martin, laying his hand upon Stephen's knee, 'but how many?' 'Four: snipe-shaped and much the same colours. That same evening, then, she was away and the poor cock had to look after them himself. I was afraid some harm had come to her, but not at all, there she was - and I knew her well from her face and the odd white streak on the side of her bosom — swimming about on the sea and the little lough this side of it and playing with the other hens and the unattached cocks. And all the while the poor fellow brooded the eggs there not fifteen yards from me under a turf-stack, covering them as well as he could from the rain and never eating but five minutes or so in the day. It was worse when they hatched, because clearly they had to be fed single-handed, the four of them bawling and screeching all the day long; and he was not very handy at cleaning up after them either. He grew anxious and thin and partially bald, and there she was on the lough, chasing the other phalaropes and being chased by them, crying pleep, pleep, pleep and never doing a beak's turn by way of labour or toil. There was a fowl that knew how to live a life of her own, I believe.' 'But surely, Maturin, as a married man you cannot approve the phalarope hen?' 'Why, as to that,' said Stephen, with a sudden vivid image of Diana dancing a quadrille, 'perhaps she may carry things a little far; but it does go some way towards redressing a balance that is so shamefully down on the one side alone.' More ****** Return to Top ****** Return to Chuck's Home Page #42 - From The Reverse of The Medal, page 224: [Traitors and thieves in high government have framed Jack of a conspiracy to manipulate the Stock Exchange. He is completely innocent and even more naive.] . . . Stephen said 'Did I tell you of Lord Sheffield, Jack?' 'I believe you have mentioned him. In connexion with Gibbon, if I don't mistake.' 'The very man. He was Gibbon's particular friend. He inherited many of his papers, and he has passed me a very curious sheet expressing Gibbon's considered opinion of lawyers. It was intended to form part of the Decline and Fall, but it was withdrawn at a late stage of page-proof for fear of giving offence to his friends at the bar and on the bench. Will I read them to you?' 'If you please,' said Jack, and Sophie folded her hands in her lap, looking attentive. Stephen drew a sheaf from his bosom: he unfolded it; his expression, formed for reading the grave, noble, rolling periods, changed to one of ordinary vexation, quite intense and human vexation. 'I have brought Huber on Bees,' he said. 'In my hurry I seized upon Huber. Yet I could have sworn that what lay there on the right of the pamphlets was Gibbon. How sorry I shall be if I have thrown Gibbon away, the rarity of the world and a jewel of balanced prose, taking him for a foolish little piece on Tar Water. And I did not commit much of it to memory. However, the gist of it was that the decline of the Empire —' 'There is the bell,' cried Sophie as a remote but insistent clangour reached them. 'Killick, Killick! We must go. Forgive me, Stephen dear.' She kissed them both, a rapid though most affectionate peck, and darted from the room, still calling 'Killick, Killick, there.' 'She and Killick are going down by the evening coach, so they must not be locked in,' said Jack. 'She wants to fetch some things from Ashgrove.' 'As for Gibbon, now,' said Stephen when they were settled by the fire again, 'I do remember the first lines. They ran "It is dangerous to entrust the conduct of nations to men who have learned from their profession to consider reason as the instrument of dispute, and to interpret the laws according to the dictates of private interest; and the mischief has been felt, even in countries where the practice of the bar may deserve to be considered as a liberal occupation." He thought — and he was a very intelligent man, of prodigious reading - that the fall of the Empire was caused at least in part by the prevalence of lawyers. Men who are accustomed over a long series of years to supposing that whatever can somehow be squared with the law is right - or if not right then allowable - are not useful members of society; and when they reach positions of power in the state they are noxious. They are people for whom ethics can be summed up by the collected statutes. Tully, for example, thought himself a good man, though he openly boasted of having deceived the jury in the case of Cluentius; and he was quite as willing to defend Catiline in the first place as he was to attack him in the second. It is all of a piece throughout: they are men who tend to resign their own conscience to another's keeping, or to disregard it entirely. To the question "What are your sentiments when you are asked to defend a man you know to be guilty?" many will reply "I do not know him to be guilty until the judge, who has heard both sides, states that he is guilty." This miserable sophistry, which disregards not only epistemology but also the intuitive perception that informs all daily intercourse, is sometimes merely formular, yet I have known men who have so prostituted their intelligence that they believe it.' 'Oh come, Stephen. Surely saying that all lawyers are bad is about as wise as saying that all sailors are good, ain't it?' 'I do not say that all lawyers are bad, but I do maintain that the general tendency is bad: standing up in a court for whichever side has paid you, affecting warmth and conviction, and doing everything you can to win the case, whatever your private opinion may be, will soon dull any fine sense of honour. The mercenary soldier is not a valued creature, but at least he risks his life, whereas these men merely risk their next fee.' 'Certainly there are low attorneys and the like, that give the law a bad name, but I have met some very agreeable barristers, perfectly honourable men — several of the members of our club are at the bar. I do not know how it may be in Ireland or upon the Continent, but I think that upon the whole English lawyers are a perfectly honourable set of men. After all, everyone agrees that English justice is the best in the world.' 'The temptation is the same whatever the country: it is often to the lawyer's interest to make wrong seem right, and the more skilful he is the more often he succeeds. Judges are even more exposed to temptation, since they sit every day; though indeed it is a temptation of a different sort: they have enormous powers, and if they choose they may be cruel, oppressive, froward and perverse virtually without control - they may interrupt and bully, further their political views, and pervert the course of justice. I remember in India we met a Mr Law at the dinner the Company gave us, and the gentleman who made the introductions whispered me in a reverential tone that he was known as "the just judge". What an indictment of the bench, that one, one alone, among so many, should be so distinguished.' 'The judges are thought of as quite great men.' 'By those who do not know them. And not all judges, either. Think of Coke, who so cowardly attacked the defenceless Raleigh at his trial and who was dismissed when he was chief-justice; think of all the Lord Chancellors who have been turned away in contempt for corruption; think of the vile Judge Jeffries.' 'God's my life, Stephen, you are uncommon hard on lawyers. Surely there must be some good ones?' 'I dare say there are: I dare say there are some men who are immune to the debasing influence, just as there are some men who may walk about among those afflicted with the plague or indeed the present influenza without taking it; but I am not concerned with them. I am concerned with shaking your confidence in the perfect impartial justice of an English court of law, and to tell you that your judge and prosecutor are of the kind I have described. Lord Quinborough is a notoriously violent, overbearing, rude, ill-tempered man: he is also a member of the Cabinet, while your father and his friends are the most violent members of the opposition. Mr Pearce, who leads for the prosecution, is shrewd and clever, brilliant at cross-examination, much given to insulting witnesses so that they may lose their temper, conversant with every legal quirk and turn, a very quick-witted plausible scrub. I say all this so that you should not be quite certain that truth will prevail or that innocence is a certain shield, so that you should attend to Lawrence's advice, and so that you should at least allow him to hint that your father was something less than discreet.' 'Yes,' said Jack in a strong decided voice, 'you speak very much as a friend and I am most deeply beholden to you; but there is one thing you forget, and that is the jury. I do not know how it may be in Ireland or in foreign parts, but in England we have a jury: that is what makes our justice the best in the world. The lawyers may be as bad as you say, but it seems to me that if twelve ordinary men hear a plain truthful account they will believe it. And if by any wild chance they come down hard on me, why, I hope I can bear it. Tell me, Stephen, did you remember my fiddle-strings?' 'Oh, by my soul, Jack,' cried Stephen, clutching his pocket, 'I am afraid I forgot them entirely.' #43 - From The Letter of Marque, page 55: The Doctor dealt with the pain, the very severe pain, by an heroic dose of laudanum, the alcoholic tincture of opium, one of his most valued medicines. 'Here,' he said in Latin to his mate, holding up a bottle of the amber liquid, 'you have the nearest approach to a panacea that has ever been found out. I occasionally use it myself, and find it answers admirably in cases of insomnia, morbid anxiety, the pain of wounds, toothache, and head-ache, even hemicrania.' He might well have added heart-ache too, but he went on, 'I have, as you perceive, matched the dose to the weight of the sufferer and the intensity of the suffering. Presently, with the blessing, you will see Padeen's face return to its usual benevolent mansuetude; and a few minutes later you will see him glide insensibly to the verge of an opiate coma. It is the most valuable member of the whole pharmacopoeia.' 'I am sure it is,' said Martin. 'Yet are there not objections to opium-eating? Is not it likely to become habitual?' 'The objections come only from a few unhappy beings, Jansenists for the most part, who also condemn wine, agreeable food, music, and the company of women: they even call out against coffee, for all love! Their objections are valid solely in the case of a few poor souls with feeble will-power, who would just as easily become the victims of intoxicating liquors, and who are practically moral imbeciles, often addicted to other forms of depravity; otherwise it is no more injurious than smoking tobacco.' He corked his valuable flask, observed that he had a couple of carboys of it in the store from which it must be refilled, and went on 'It is now some time since they stopped their hellish banging, so perhaps we might go and take a cigar on the quarterdeck. They can hardly object to a little more smoke up there, I believe. Padeen, now, how do you come along?' #44 - From The Letter of Marque, page 108: Dr Maturin and his assistant stood in a druggist's warehouse, checking their purchases for the Surprise's medicine-chest. 'Apart from the portable soup, the double retractors and a couple of spare crowbills for musket-bullets, which we will find at Ramsden's, I believe that is everything,' said Stephen. 'You have not forgotten the laudanum?' asked Martin. 'I have not. There is still a reasonable quantity aboard: but I thank you for putting me in mind of it.' The reasonable quantity was in wicker-covered eleven-gallon carboys, each representing more than fifteen thousand ordinary hospital doses, and Stephen reflected upon them with some complacency. 'The alcoholic tincture of opium, properly exhibited, is one of the most valuable drugs we possess,' he observed, 'and I take particular care not to be without it. Sometimes, indeed, I use it myself, as a gentle sedative. And yet,' he added, having looked through his list again, holding it up to the light, 'and yet, you know, Martin, I find its effects diminish. Mr Cooper, how do you do?' 'And how do you do, sir?' replied the druggist, with unusual pleasure in his voice and on his yellow, toothless face. 'Surprisingly well, I trust, ha, ha, ha! When they told me the surgeon of the Surprise was in the shop, I said to Mrs C. "I shall just step down and wish Dr Maturin joy of his surprising prosperous voyage." "Oh, Cooper," she says to me, "you will never take the liberty of being witty with the Doctor?" "My dear," says I, "we have known each other this many a year; he will not mind my little joke." So give you joy, sir, give you joy with all my heart.' 'Thank you, Mr Cooper,' said Stephen, shaking his hand. 'I am obliged to you for your amiable congratulations.' And when they were in the street again he went on, 'Its effects diminish remarkably: I cannot account for it. Mr Cooper is reliability in person, so he is, and I have used his tincture voyage after voyage - always the same, always equal to itself, always extracted with decent brandy rather than raw alcohol. The answer must lie elsewhere, but where I cannot tell; so as I am resolved never to exceed a moderate dose, except in case of great emergency, I must resign myself to a sleepless night from time to time.' 'What would you consider a moderate dose, Maturin?' asked Martin, in a spirit of pure enquiry. He knew that the usual amount was twenty-five drops and he had seen Stephen give Padeen sixty to do away with extreme pain; but he also knew that habitual use might lead to a considerable degree of tolerance and he wished to learn how high that degree might be. 'Oh, nothing prodigious at all, for one accustomed to the substance. Not above . . . not above say a thousand drops or so.' More ****** Return to Top ****** Return to Chuck's Home Page #45 - From The Letter of Marque, page 182: Then again those who were not going on the cutting-out expedition were strongly aware that in a few hours time the others would be setting off - even more strongly aware than those directly concerned - and they felt that gaiety was out of place. There was tension among those who were going, too, and in Jack Aubrey's case it was a tension he had never known before, although he had seen more action than most sailors of his age. He observed, to his astonishment, that the piece of lobster that he held poised on his fork while he waited for Davidge to finish his period was trembling. He ate it rapidly and continued listening, with inclined head and civil smile, to the wandering tale that was very slowly drawing to its disastrous want of an end: Davidge had travelled in France during the peace; he had wished to dine at a famous eating-house between Lyons and Avignon, but the place was full and he had been told of another just as good, by the cathedral. There he was the only guest, and he entered into conversation with the master of the house; they spoke of this cathedral and other cathedrals and Davidge observed that at Bourges he had been much struck by the extraordinary beauty of one of the choirboys. The inn-keeper, a paederast, had misunderstood him and had made a scarcely veiled proposal; Davidge however had managed to decline without offence and the man had taken it so well that they parted on the best of terms, all payment for the splendid meal being resolutely declined. But Davidge, having at last reached the Rhône by way of innumerable parentheses, suddenly felt that sodomy, as a thing amusing in itself and the justification for any anecdote however long, would not do for his grave, attentive captain, and he tried to give his tale some other turn that would not sound too foolish - a vain attempt from which he was only rescued by the next course, which consisted of soused pig's face (one of Jack's favourite dishes) and a saddle of mutton, the joint being put down for Martin to carve. Martin, a chop-house bachelor until his recent marriage, had never carved a saddle of mutton. He did not carve one now, but with a powerful thrust of his fork flung it straight into Davidge's lap. It saved Davidge from his predicament at the cost of his breeches - cheap at the price, he thought - and it was silently passed on to Stephen, who cut it up in the approved surgical manner, #46 - From The Letter of Marque, page 205: [Stephen is speaking to Sir Joseph about the recent escape of a French agent whom he was unable to question, but whose papers he retained. Nevertheless he is worried that money may be hidden in the captured ship.] '… Even under very great pressure, he could not have told us more than is set out in these papers; for unless I am very much mistaken they lay out the whole of his department's reflexion on the matter, together with the agents' instructions.' 'We could perhaps have induced him to tell us where they had concealed the sums intended to convince the officials in South America, the equivalent of that monstrous amount I recovered last voyage. The whole must certainly represent a first-rate ship of the line at the very lowest estimate; and I should like to think that I had added such a vessel to the service. After all, Jack Aubrey sank one of theirs when he had the horrible old Leopard, which is much the same thing in .reverse.' 'There you may set your mind at rest. The Diane will certainly be bought into the service, and the shipwrights will go through her with a fine tooth comb. We have in fact two men who are particularly skilled in these matters and it will be strange if their minds do not work along the same lines as the Frenchmen's.' 'You are a present comfort, Sir Joseph dear: it was stupid of me not to have thought of that.' He smiled, nodding to himself and sipping his madeira; then he said, 'This tooth-comb, now, this fine tooth-comb that the worthy shipwrights will be using - we often hear of it; it appears in daily speech. And yet who has ever combed his teeth, in this or any other day?' 'May it not be that the fine qualifies the tooth rather than the comb? That what is intended is a comb with fine teeth, that is to say with thin teeth set close together?' 'Of course, of course,' said Stephen, clapping his hand to his forehead. 'This is not my most brilliant hour, I find.' #47 - From The Letter of Marque, page 215: [Jack is the honored guest at an exclusive dinner party.] 'Mr Aubrey,' murmured Blaine, interrupting the flow [of Jack's story] just where the Surprise was sinking a Turk in the Ionian, 'I believe the Bishop means to drink to you.' Jack looked down the table and there indeed was the Bishop smiling at him and holding up his glass. 'A glass of wine with you, Mr Aubrey,' he called. 'With the utmost pleasure, my lord,' replied Jack, bowing. 'I drink to your very great happiness.' This was followed by several more glasses with other gentlemen, and Stephen, half way down the table on the other side, observed that the colour was coming back into Jack's face: perhaps rather more colour than he could have wished. A little later he also observed that his friend had launched into anecdote. Jack Aubrey's anecdotes were rarely successful - his talent did not lie that way - but he knew his role as a guest and now with a candid look of pleasure at his immediate neighbours he began, 'There was a bishop in our part of the country when I was a boy, the bishop before Dr Taylor; and when he was first appointed he made a tour of his command - of his diocese. He went everywhere, and when he came to Trotton he could hardly make out that such a scattered place - just a few fishermen's huts along the shore, you know - could be a parish. He said to Parson West, an excellent fisherman himself, by the way; he taught me to sniggle for eels. He asked Parson West . . .' Jack frowned slightly and Stephen clasped his hands. This was the point where the anecdote might so easily break down again, an unhappy echo of the word place appearing as plaice in the bishop's question. 'He asked Parson West, "Have you many souls here?"' Stephen relaxed. 'And Parson West replied, "No, my lord; only flounders, I am afraid."' #48 - From The Thirteen Gun Salute, page 38: [Unknown to Stephen, Padeen, his servant, has become addicted to Stephen's tincture of laudanum (opium;) and to prevent discovery Padeen replaces the purloined laudanum with an equal volume of water. This of course dilutes it, giving Stephen less and less of a dose. Stephen can't figure it out, but feels that he is becoming resistant to its effects, one of which is to dull the libido.] As the frigate's surgeon, Maturin also had a cabin below, a stuffy little hole which, like those of the other officers, opened on to the gunroom: he used it on occasion, when Jack, the other side of the frail partition, snored beyond all bearing; but at present, in spite of a steady volume of sound, he was sitting there with his papers, chewing a few coca-leaves. He had woken not long since from a most unusually explicit and vivid erotic dream; they had become increasingly frequent of late, with the laudanum dying even in its remotest lingering effects, and the vehemence of his desire quite distressed him. 'I am becoming a mere satyr,' he said. 'Where should I be without my coca-leaves? Where indeed?' #49 - From The Thirteen Gun Salute, page 72: 'Do you know when the post office will open in the morning? We spent so long in the Irish Sea that the packet is sure to have come before us: perhaps two packets. I long to hear from home.' 'It opens at eight o'clock. I shall be there as the bell strikes.' 'So shall I.' So they were, and little good did it do them. There was nothing whatsoever for Martin and only two letters for Dr Maturin. Jack had a couple from Hampshire, and according to their usual habit they read them at breakfast, exchanging pieces of family news. Stephen had scarcely broken the seal of his first before he cried, with a passion rare in him, 'Upon my word, Jack, that woman is as headstrong as an allegory on the banks of Nile.' Jack was not always quick, but this time he instantly grasped that Stephen was talking about his wife and he said, 'Has she taken Barham Down?' 'She has not only taken it, she has bought it.' And in an undertone 'The animal.' 'Sophie always said she was very much set upon the place.' Stephen read on, and then said, 'But she means to live with Sophie until we come home, however. She is only sending Hitchcock and a few horses.' 'So much the better. Stephen, did she tell you the kitchen boiler at Ashgrove blew up on Tuesday?' 'She is doing so at this minute - the words are before me. Brother, there is much to be said for living in a monastery.' #50 - From The Thirteen Gun Salute, page 76: [Stephen is in conversation with Sir Joseph (Blaine), who is speaking.] 'Come, walk in, walk in out of the sun and drink some lemonade or East India ale or barley-water -anything you can think of. Tea, perhaps?' 'If it is agreeable to you, I had as soon sit on the grass in the shade by a brook. I am not at all thirsty.' 'What a beautiful idea.' And as they walked along, 'Maturin, why do you carry your hat in that curious way? If I were to walk bare-headed in the sun, or even with a small bob-wig, I should be struck down dead.' 'There is an insect in it that I shall show you when we sit down. Here is a perfect place - green leaves overhead, sweet-smelling grass, a murmuring brook.' He opened his folded hat, took out a pocket-handkerchief and spread it on the ground. The creature, quite unharmed, stood there gently swaying on its long legs. It was a very large insect indeed, greenish, with immense antennae and a disproportionately small, meek, and indeed rather stupid face. 'Bless me,' said Blaine. 'It is not a mantis. And yet -' 'It is Saga pedo.' 'Of course, of course. I have seen him figured, but never preserved nor even dried, far less alive and swaying at me. What a glorious animal! But look at those wicked serrated limbs! Two pairs of them! Where did you find him?' 'On the side of the road just outside Cintra. She, if I may be pedantic. In these parts the females alone are seen: they reproduce parthenogenetically, which must surely ease some of the tensions of family life.' More ****** Return to Top ****** Return to Chuck's Home Page #51 - From The Thirteen Gun Salute, page 110: 'Alas, brother, I am taken up this morning. I have an interesting, delicate operation with my friend Aston at Guy's; and you will be at the House in the afternoon. But let us meet in the evening and go to the opera if Sir Joseph will lend us his box. They are playing La Clemenza di Tito.' 'I shall look forward to it,' said Jack. 'And perhaps tomorrow we will take a boat down to Greenwich.' Stephen's operation went well, although throughout its not inconsiderable length the patient cried 'Oh God, oh Jesus, oh no no no, no more for God's sake. Oh God, oh God, I can't bear it,' the rapid flow of words broken by screams, for the frailty of his teeth and the state of his nose forbade the efficient use of a gag; and this Stephen found unusually tiring, so instead of calling on Sir Joseph Banks at Spring Grove as he had intended he sat in an easy chair by the window in his room at the Grapes and looked first for van Buren's essay on the spleen in primates (the zoological primates) in the Journal des Sfavans and found that it was indeed dated from Pulo Prabang. #52 - From The Thirteen Gun Salute, page 147: Stephen came up from time to time when neither rain nor flying spray was very severe to gaze upon the albatrosses that accompanied the ship, sometimes staying for days together. Most were the Diomedea exulans of Linnaeus, the bird he loved best of all that lived at sea, the great wandering albatross, an immense creature, twelve feet across or even more, the old cock-birds a pure snowy white with black, black edgings; but there were others that he could not identify with any certainty, birds to which the sailors gave the general name of molly-mawks. 'Not nearly enough serious attention has been paid to the albatrosses,' he said to Fox, who had come to consult him about pains or rather general discomfort in his lower belly, difficulties with defecation, disturbed nights. 'Nor to the digestive system,' said Fox. 'If man is a thinking reed he is also a reed that absorbs and excretes, and if these functions are disturbed so is the first, and humanity recedes, leaving the mere brute.' 'These pills will recall your colon to its duty, with the blessing, and the diet I have prescribed,' said Stephen. 'But you will admit that it is whimsical to make distinctions between the lesser pettichaps and her kin, counting their wing feathers, measuring their bills, and to neglect the albatrosses, the great soaring birds of the world.' 'They are not the same pills as before?' asked Fox. 'They are not,' said Stephen with an easy conscience, for this time to the powdered chalk he had added the harmless pink of cochineal. #53 - From The Thirteen Gun Salute, page 161: Yet this mild, apparently eternal sameness did leave time for things that had been laid aside or neglected. Jack and Stephen returned to their music, sometimes playing into the middle watch; Stephen's Malay increased upon him until he dreamt in the language; and as his duty required Jack resumed the improvement of his midshipmen in navigation, the finer aspects of astronomy and mathematics, seamanship of course, and in these both he and they were tolerably successful. Less so in their weakest points, general knowledge and literacy. Speaking to young Fleming about his journal he said, 'Well, it is wrote quite pretty, but I am afraid your father would scarcely be pleased with the style.' Mr Fleming was an eminent natural philosopher, a fellow member of the Royal Society, renowned for the elegance of his prose. 'For example, I am not sure that me and my messmates overhauled the burton-tackle is grammar. However, we will leave that . . . What do you know about the last American war?' 'Not very much, sir, except that the French and Spaniards joined in and were finely served out for doing so.' 'Very true. Do you know how it began?' 'Yes, sir. It was about tea, which they did not choose to pay duty on. They called out No reproduction without copulation and tossed it into Boston harbour.' Jack frowned, considered, and said, 'Well, in any event they accomplished little or nothing at sea, that bout.' He passed on to the necessary allowance for dip and refraction to be made in working lunars, matters with which he was deeply familiar; but as he tuned his fiddle that evening he said, 'Stephen, what was the Americans' cry in 1775?' 'No representation, no taxation.' 'Nothing about copulation?' 'Nothing at all. At that period the mass of Americans were in favour of copulation.' 'So it could not have been No reproduction without copulation' 'Why, my dear, that is the old natural philosopher's watchword, as old as Aristotle, and quite erroneous. Do but consider how the hydra and her kind multiply without any sexual commerce of any sort. Leeuenhoek proved it long ago, but still the more obstinate repeat the cry, like so many parrots.' 'Well, be damned to taxation, in any case. Shall we attack the andante?' #54 - From The Nutmeg of Consolation, page 99: Yet even with a perfect trim she could not fly in the face of nature and sail against both wind and tide; and at breakfast on Sunday Jack said, 'I have very rarely acted on principle, and on the few occasions when I have done so, it has always ended unhappy. There was a girl that said "Upon your word of honour now, Mr Aubrey, do you think Caroline handsomer than me?" and on the principle that honour was sacred I said well yes, perhaps, a little; which angered her amazingly and quite broke off our commerce, do you see. And now, out of mere principle again, I stayed until Thursday for the Governor's dinner - I am not blaming you, Stephen, not for a moment: though it is true that you can never be brought to understand that time and tide wait for no man - but when I think of all that double-reef topsail south-wester wasted, a wind that might have carried us as far as 112°East, why then I say be damned to principle.' 'Is there any more marmalade?' asked Stephen. Jack passed it and went on, 'But religion is another thing, if you understand me. I mean to rig church this morning, and I wonder whether it would be improper to pray for a fair wind.' 'It is certainly allowable to pray for rain, and I know that it is quite often done. But as to wind . . . might not that have a most offensive resemblance to your present heathen practices? Might it not look like a mere reinforcement of your scratching backstays and whistling till you are black in the face? Or even, God forbid, to Popery? Martin would tell us the Anglican usage. We Papists would of course beg for the intercession of our patron or some perhaps more appropriate saint: I certainly do so in my private devotions. Yet even without Martin, I believe you would be safe in forming, if not in uttering, a vehement wish.' 'How I wish Martin were here: or rather that we were there, east of the Passage. How are they doing? How have they done? Will they be true to their time? Lord, how I wonder.' 'Who is this Martin they are talking about in the cabin?'asked Killick's new mate, a man-of-war's man from Wapping, left behind with six others from the Thunderer to recover from Batavia fever. He alone had survived; and as he had not only his proper discharge, smart-ticket and a commendation from his captain but had also sailed with Jack and Killick at various times in the last twenty years he had been taken on board at once. It was not that he was a particularly well-trained genteel servant - indeed he was if anything even rougher Killick - nor that he was an uncommonly expert seaman, rated able only by courtesy; but he was a cheerful obliging fellow; and above all he was an old shipmate. 'You ain't heard of Mr Martin?' asked Killick, stopping in his polishing of a silver plate. 'No, mate: never a word,' said the mate, whose name William Grimshaw. 'Never heard of the Reverend Mr Martin?' 'Not even of the Reverend Mr Martin.' 'Which he had only one eye,' said Killick; and then, reflecting, 'No. Of course it was after your time. He was chaplin of the Surprise in the South Sea, being a great friend of the Doctor's. They went collecting wild beasts and butterflies on the Spanish Main - serpents, shrunken heads, dried babies - curiosities, you might say - which they put up in spirits of wine.' 'I saw a lamb with five legs, once,' said William Grimshaw. 'Then when the Captain had his misfortune and took to privateering, Reverend Martin came along too, having misfortune likewise. Something to do with his bishop's wife they said.' 'Bishops don't have wives, mate,' said Grimshaw. 'Well, his miss, his sweetheart, then. But he came along as surgeon's mate, not as parson, no parsons being wanted in a letter of marque.' 'Nor in a man-of-war neither.' 'And there he is as surgeon of Surprise at this wery moment, cutting up his shipmates - a fearless hand with a knife by now, having stuffed so many crocodiles and baboons and the like -and waiting for us, God willing, off of some islands beyond this Passage, a quiet, good-natured gent, not too proud to write a letter for a man or a petition for the ship's company: and your petitioners will always pray. They went west about and we went east about, to meet on the far side of the world, do you see; and the skipper wishes the Reverend was here this minute to ask whether it is lawful to pray for a wind, or would it be Popery.' 'Poor unfortunate buggers,' said Grimshaw, dismissing the questions of prayer. 'How do you make that out?' asked Killick, narrowing his eyes. 'Because why, if you sail steady westwards and you come to the line where the date changes, say if you cross it of a Monday, why, tomorrow is Monday too - and you have lost a day's pay.' Killick pondered, looking shrewish, discontented, suspicious: then his face lightened and he cried 'But we been sailing steady eastwards, so if we cross it of a Monday, tomorrow is Wednesday and we have Tuesday's pay for nothing, ha, ha, ha! Ain't that right, mate?' 'Right as dried peas, mate.' 'God love you, William Grimshaw.' This charming news spread round the ship, bringing about an effervescence of cheerfulness that lasted until the next day, so that when church was rigged Jack noticed a lack of the usual placid steady, even bovine attention, and after a few hymns and a psalm he closed his book, made a significant dismissive pause, and said 'And those that see fit may form an humble, earnest wish, though not a presumptuous request, for a fair wind.' He was answered by a surprising volume of sound: the humming and buzzing usual in chapels (many of the West Country hands were Nonconformists), a general 'Aye', something not unlike 'Hear him' - a confused surge of agreement, but so loud that he was displeased. So loud that many of the Nutmeg's people were even more displeased, and they freely blamed their shipmates' want discretion for the truly shocking weather she had to endure a period that seemed to go on and on, past all reason, with both watches on deck much of the night and the warm, phosphorescent, tumultuous seas swirling deep in the waist the ship and life-lines stretched fore and aft. More ****** Return to Top ****** Return to Chuck's Home Page #55 - From The Nutmeg of Consolation, page 116: Stephen left them discussing the details of this horrid change and went to make his rounds. Macmillan greeted him with an anxious face and said 'I am very sorry to tell you, sir, that two dental cases have reported; and I must confess that I am at a loss, wholly at a loss.' Macmillan uttered these words in Latin, as well he might, the patients being just at hand, their anguished eyes fixed upon the surgeons. In any case the Latin comforted them, being the tongue of the learned, not of some cow-leach who had taken the bounty and who topped it the physician on the forecastle. 'So am I,' said Stephen, having examined the teeth, awkwardly-placed, deeply carious molars in both cases. 'So indeed am I. However, we must do our best. Let me see what instruments we possess . . .' Looking them over he shook his head and said 'Well, at least let us apply oil of cloves and then stuff the hollows with lead in the hope they will not crumble under our forceps.' A vain hope; and when at last he left the seamen to the care of their messmates and the ship's butcher, who had held their heads, he was paler than they. 'It is an odd thing,' he said, returning to the cabin, where Jack was settled on the rudder-casing, plucking the strings of his fiddle and watching the broad wake tear away, 'It is an odd thing, yet although I can take off a shattered limb, open a man's skull, cut him for the stone, or if he is a woman deliver him of an uneasy breech-presentation in a seamanlike manner and without a qualm - not indeed with indifference to the suffering and the danger but with what may perhaps be called a professional constancy of mind - I cannot extract a tooth without real agitation. It is the same with Macmillan, though he is an excellent young man in every other respect. I shall never go to sea again without an experienced tooth-drawer, however illiterate he may be.' 'I am sorry you had such a disagreeable time,' said Jack. 'Let us both take a cup of coffee.' Coffee was as much his universal remedy as the alcoholic tincture of opium had once been for Stephen, and he now called for it loud and clear. Killick looked sourer than usual: coffee was not customary at this time of day. 'It will have to be black, then,' he said. 'I can't go on milking Nanny watch and watch. Do, and she will go dry. A goat ain't a cistern, sir.' 'Strong black coffee,' said Stephen some minutes later. 'How well it goes down: and how glad I am that I did not indulge myself in my coca-leaves on finishing with the sick-berth as I had intended. They calm the mind, sure, but they do away with one's sense of taste. I shall chew three when the pot is out, however.' These leaves, which he had first encountered in South America, were his present, purely personal, catholicon, and although he travelled with enough, packed in soft leather bags, to last him twice round the world, he was remarkably abstemious: these three leaves, now to be chewed so late in the afternoon, were an unusual treat. #56 - From The Nutmeg of Consolation, page 118: 'Yes. The haze vanished in the night, and we had an excellent observation of Rasalhague and the moon which confirmed not only our position by chronometer but even by our dead reckoning almost to the very minute of longitude, which was tolerably gratifying, I believe.' Then, seeing that this splendid news aroused no particular emotion nor indeed anything but a civil inclination of the head, he said 'What do you say to taking up our game where we left off? I was winning, you will recall.' 'Winning, for all love: how your ageing memory does betray you, my poor friend,' said Stephen, fetching his 'cello. They tuned, and at no great distance Killick said to his mate, 'There they are, at it again. Squeak, squeak; boom, boom. And when they do start a-playing, it's no better. You can't tell t'other from one. Never nothing a man could sing to, even as drunk as Davy's sow.' 'I remember them in the Lively: but it is not as chronic as a wardroom full of gents with German flutes, bellyaching night and day, like we had in Thunderer. No. Live and let live, I say.' 'Fuck you, William Grimshaw.' The game they played was that one should improvise in the manner of some eminent composer (or as nearly as indifferent skill and a want of inspiration allowed), that the other, having detected the composer, should then join in, accompanying him with a suitable continue until some given point understood by both, when the second should take over, either with the same composer or with another. They, at least, took great pleasure in this exercise, and now they played on into the darkness with only a pause at the end of the first dog-watch, when Jack went on deck to take his readings of temperature and salinity with Adams and to reduce sail for the night. They were still playing when the watch was set, and Killick, laying the table in the dining-cabin said 'This will stop their gob for a while, thank God. Keep your great greasy thumbs off of the plates, Bill, do: put your white gloves on. Snuff the candles close, and don't get any wax or soot on the goddam snuffers - no, no, give it here.' Killick loved to see his silver set out, gleaming and splendid; but he hated seeing it used, except in so far as use allowed him to polish it again: moderate, very moderate use. He opened the door into the moonlit, music-filled great cabin and stood there severely until the very first pause, when he said 'Supper's on table, sir, if you please.' #57 - From The Nutmeg of Consolation, page 151: As Jack was going below the gunfire died away, the Nutmeg having the last word; and as he turned in he saw that he was not to sleep in the dead man's cot. His own, an unusually long one, had been brought down and slung fore and aft. Killick was in many ways a wretched servant, fractious, mean, overbearing to guests of inferior rank, hopelessly coarse; but in others he was a pearl without a thorn. For a moment Jack passed some other expressions in review, and having reached bricks without price he went to sleep. #58 - From The Truelove, page 14: [Jack, who has been exceedingly chaste, has been recently manipulated and left unfulfilled in the tree-ferns by Salina Wesley, a fine plump young woman with a prominent bosom, an indifferent reputation and a roving eye. Worse, she ditched him for another man.] Causes for discontent, vexations, of course he had them; and none rankled like that caper in the tree-ferns nor came more insistently into his humiliated mind, so full of unsatisfied desire. Yet all these put together, he thought, could not account for this growing crossness, this waking up ready to be displeased, this incipient ill-humour - anything likely to set it off. He had never felt like this when he was young - had never been made game of by a young woman either. 'Perhaps I shall ask Stephen for a blue pill,' he said. 'For a couple of blue pills. I have not been to the head this age.' He walked forward, the windward side of the quarterdeck emptying at his approach; and as he passed the wheel both the quartermaster at the con and the helmsman turned their heads to look at him. The Surprise instantly came up half a point, the windward leaches of the topsails gave a warning nutter and Jack roared 'Mind your helm, you infernal lubbers. What in Hell's name do you mean by leering at me like a couple of moonsick cowherds? Mind your helm, d'ye hear me there? Mr Davidge, no grog for Krantz or Webber today.' The quarterdeck looked suitably shocked and grave, but as Jack went down the companion-ladder towards the cabin he heard a gale of laughter from the forecastle. Stephen was still playing and Jack walked in on tiptoe, with a finger to his lips, making those gestures that people use to show that they are immaterial beings, silent, invisible. Stephen nodded to him in an absent way, brought his phrase to a full close and said 'You have come below, I find.' 'Yes,' said Jack. 'Not to put too fine a point on it, I have. I know this is not your time for such things, but I should like to consult you if I may.' 'By all means. I was only working out a few foolish variations on a worthless theme. If what you have to say is of an intimate nature at all let us close the skylight and sit upon the locker at the back.' Most consultations shortly after a ship had left port were for venereal diseases: some seamen were ashamed of their malady, some were not: in general the officers preferred their state not to be known. 'It is not really of an intimate nature,' said Jack, closing the companion nevertheless and sitting on the stern-window locker. 'But I am most damnably hipped . . . cross even in the morning and much ill-used. Is there a medicine for good temper and general benevolence? A delight in one's blessings? I had thought of a blue pill, with perhaps a touch of rhubarb.' 'Show me your tongue,' said Stephen; and then, shaking his head, 'Lie flat on your back.' After a while he said 'As I thought, it is your liver that is the peccant part; or at least the most peccant of your parts. It is turgid, readily palpable. I have disliked your liver for some time now. Dr Redfern disliked your liver. You have the bilious facies to a marked degree: the whites of the eyes a dirty yellow, greyish-purple half-moons below them, a look of settled discontent. Of course, as I have told you these many years, you eat too much, you drink too much, and you do not take enough exercise. And this bout I have noticed that although the water has been charmingly smooth ever since we left New South Wales, although the boat has rarely exceeded a walking pace, and although we have been attended by no sharks, no sharks at all, in spite of Martin's sedulous watch and mine, you have abandoned your sea-bathing.' 'Mr Harris said it was bad in my particular case: he said it closed the pores, and would throw the yellow bile upon the black.' 'Who is Mr Harris?' 'He is a man with singular powers, recommended to me by Colonel Graham when you were away on your tour of the bush. He gives you nothing but what grows in his own garden or in the countryside, and he rubs your spine with a certain oil; he has performed some wonderful cures, and he is very much cried up in Sydney.' Stephen made no comment. He had seen too many quite well educated people run after men with singular powers to cry out, to argue or even to feel anything but a faint despair. "I shall bleed you,' he said, 'and mix a gentle cholagogue. And since we are now quite clear of New South Wales and of your thaumaturge's territory, I advise you to resume both your sea-bathing and your practice of climbing briskly to the topmost pinnacle.' "Very well. But you do not mean me to take medicine today, Stephen? Tomorrow is divisions, you remember.' Stephen knew that for Jack Aubrey, as for so many other captains and admirals of his acquaintance, taking medicine meant swallowing improbable quantities of calomel, sulphur, Turkey rhubarb (often added to their own surgeon's prescription) and spending the whole of the next day on the seat of ease, gasping, straining, sweating, ruining their lower alimentary tract. 'I do not,' he said. 'It is only a mixture, to be followed by a series of comfortable enemata.' Jack watched the steady flow of his blood into the bowl: he cleared his throat and said 'I suppose you have patients with, well, desires?' 'It would be strange if I had not.' 'I mean, if you will forgive a gross expression, with importunate pricks?' 'Sure, I understand you. There is little in the pharmacopoeia to help them. Sometimes' - waving his lancet - 'I propose a simple little operation - a moment's pang, perhaps a sigh, then freedom for life, a mild sailing on an even keel, tossed by no storms of passion, untempted, untroubled, sinless - but when they decline, which they invariably do, though they may have protested that they would give anything to be free of their torments, why then unless there is some evident physical anomaly, all I can suggest is that they should learn to control their emotions. Few succeed; and some, I am afraid, are driven to strange wild extremes. But were the case to apply to you, brother, where there is a distinct physical anomaly, I should point out that Plato and the ancients in general made the liver the seat of love: Cogit amare jecur, said the Romans. And so I should reiterate my plea for more sea-bathing, more going aloft, more pumping of an early morning, to say nothing of a fitting sobriety at table, to preserve the organ from ill-considered freaks.' He closed the vein, and having washed his bowl in the quarter-gallery he went on, 'As for the blue devils of which you complain, my dear, do not expect too much from my remedies: youth and unthinking happiness are not to be had in a bottle, alas. You are to consider that a certain melancholy and often a certain irascibility accompany advancing age: indeed, it might be said that advancing age equals ill-temper. On reaching the middle years a man perceives that he is no longer able to do certain things, that what looks he may have had are deserting him, that he has a ponderous great belly, and that however he may yet burn he is no longer attractive to women; and he rebels. Fortitude, resignation and philosophy are of more value than any pills, red, white or blue.' 'Stephen, surely you would never consider me middle-aged, would you?' 'Navigators are notoriously short-lived, and for them middle-age comes sooner than for quiet abstemious country gentlemen. Jack, you have led as unhealthy a life as can well be imagined, perpetually exposed to the falling damps, often wet to the skin, called up at all hours of the night by that infernal bell. You have been wounded the Dear knows how many times, and you have been cruelly overworked. No wonder your hair is grey.' 'My hair is not grey. It is a very becoming buttercup-yellow.' Jack wore his hair long, clubbed and tied with a broad black bow. Stephen plucked the bow loose and brought the far end of plait round before his eyes. 'Well I'm damned,' said Jack, looking at it in the sunlight. 'Well I'm damned; you are quite right. There are several grey hairs . . . scores of grey hairs. It is positively grizzled, like a badger-pie. I had never noticed.' #59 - From The Truelove, page 22: 'How did the Easter Islanders use you?' asked Stephen. 'Oh, pretty well, sir, on the whole; they are not an ill-natured crew, though much given to thieving: and I must admit they ate one another more than was quite right. I am not over-particular, but it makes you uneasy to be passed a man's hand. A slice of what might be anything, I don't say no, when sharp-set; but a hand fair turns your stomach. Howmsoever, we got along well enough. I spoke their language, after a fashion . . .' More ****** Return to Top ****** Return to Chuck's Home Page #60 - From The Truelove, page 237: [Jack is preparing to visit a Polynesian queen.] 'When do you propose to land?' 'Not until after dinner. I am letting the canoes come alongside and gossip, so that Queen Puolani will know everything about us and what is afoot. She will not be caught unprepared - it is a dreadful thing to have a whole carriageful of people draw up at your door and leap out grinning, the house all ahoo, carpets taken up, a great washing going on, the children bawling, yourself confined to the head, having taken physic, and your wife gone to Pompey in hopes of a new cook.' #61 - From The Wine-Dark Sea, page 257: 'The Doctor has been choked off for being a satyr,' said Killick to Grimble. 'What's a satyr?' 'What an ignorant cove you are to be sure, Art Grimble: just ignorant, is all. A satyr is a party that talks sarcastic. Choked off something cruel, he was; and his duff taken away and eaten before his eyes.' #62 - From The Commodore, page 13: These were the two invalids in the starboard sick-berth, whom Padeen had been sitting with. They had been sparring, in a spirit of fun, with loggerheads, those massy iron balls with long handles to be carried red-hot from the fire and plunged into buckets of tar or pitch so that the substance might be melted with no risk of flame. 'They are sober now, sir; and penitent, the creatures.' 'I shall look at them, when we have everything ready,' said Stephen, beginning to range saws, scalpels, ligatures and tourniquets. Stephen walked into the other berth, looked at his patients and asked them how they did. 'Prime, sir,' they answered, and thanked him kindly. 'Well, I am glad of that,' he said. 'Yet although they were good clean breaks, immobilized at once, it will be long before you can go aloft, or dance upon the green, if ever we get home, which God send.' 'Amen, amen, sir,' they answered together. 'But how did you ever come to be so indiscreet and thoughtless as to beat one another with those vile great loggerheads?' 'It was only in fun, sir, like we sometimes do, meaning no harm. One has a swipe and the other dodges, turn and turn about.' 'In all my experience of the sea I have never heard of such a dreadful practice.' The patients looked meek, avoiding one another's eyes; and presently Ellis said 'It all depends on the ship, sir. We often used to play in the Agamemnon; and my father, which he was carpenter's crew in the old George, had a real set-to, real serious, with a forecastleman that called him a ...' 'Called him what?' 'I hardly like to say it.' 'Murmur it in my ear,' said Stephen, bending low. 'A nymph,' whispered Ellis. 'Did he indeed, the wicked dog? How did it end, so?' 'Well, sir, they were at right loggerheads, like I said - the whole forecastle agreed it was right - and my dad fetched him such a crack they had to take his leg off that very evening, much mangled. But it was a blessing to the poor bugger in the end. Having but one leg left, Captain the Honourable Byron, who was always very good to his men, got him a cook's warrant, and he lived till he was drowned on the Coromandel coast.' #63 - From The Commodore , page 26: [The Surprise has just returned to its home port of Shemerston from a long voyage to find the town virtually deserted, the inhabitants having gone to a neighboring town for a hanging.] The rain cleared well before sunset, and with the return of the ordinary people and the Shelmerston whores from the hanging - seven men and a child on one gibbet, a sight that had drawn the whole county - the little town grew more cheerful by far, in spite of the news of more deaths, of some quite unlooked-for births and some frank desertions, more cheerful, with fiddles in most of the inns and ale-houses and visiting from cottage to cottage with presents in a truly wonderful abundance. #64 - From The Commodore , page 93: 'Sir,' murmured a familiar voice in Stephen's ear, 'you've got your sleeve in your dinner.' It was Plaice, forecastleman, wearing white gloves and a mess-servant's jacket. 'Thank you, Joe,' said Stephen, taking it out and mopping it busily, with an anxious look at Killick. 'Capital soup, sir,' said Duff, smiling at him. 'The true ambrosia, sir, in the right place,' said Stephen, 'but perhaps a little unctuous on black broadcloth. May I trouble you for a piece of bread? It may do better than my napkin.' More ****** Return to Top ****** Return to Chuck's Home Page #65 - From The Commodore , page 97: 'Gentlemen,' said Stephen to his assistants in their splendid new sick-berth, full of light and air, furnished with capacious dispensaries, port and starboard, 'I believe we may now cross off the antimonials, jalap and camphire, the eight yards of Welsh linen bandage, and the twelve yards of finer linen, which sets us up for the first month, barring the tourniquets, the mercury, and the small list of alexipharmics that Beale is sending over tomorrow. So much for our official supplies. But I have added a certain number of comforts - they are in the cases on the left, together with a chest of portable soup infinitely superior to the Victualling Board's second-hand carpenter's glue - and a parcel of my own particular asafetida. It is imported for me by a Turkey merchant; and as you perhaps have noticed in spite of the sturgeon's bladder in which it is enclosed it is by far the most pungent, the most truly fetid, variety known to man. For you must know, gentlemen, that when the mariner is dosed, he likes to know that he has been dosed: with fifteen grains or even less of this valuable substance scenting him and the very air about him there can be no doubt of the matter; and such is the nature of the human mind that he experiences a far greater real benefit than the drug itself would provide, were it deprived of its stench.' 'May I ask, sir, where we are to stow it?' 'Why, Mr Smith,' said Stephen, 'I had thought it would scarcely be noticed in the midshipmen's berth.' 'But we live there, too,' cried Macaulay. 'We live and sleep there, sir.' 'You will be astonished to find how quickly it becomes indifferent, how quickly you grow used to what weak minds call the offensive odour, just as you grow accustomed to the motion of the billows. Now this second parcel, colleagues, is a substance more valuable by far than the most nauseous asafetida, or even perhaps than bark, quicksilver or opium. It does not yet figure in the London or even in the Dublin pharmacopeia; but presently it will be written in both, and in that of Edinburgh, in letters of gold.' He opened the small, close-woven rush basket, lifted the tissue-paper and then the two layers of pale-green silk. The assistants looked attentively at the dried brown leaves within. 'These dried brown leaves, gentlemen,' said Stephen, 'come from the Peruvian bush Erythroxylon coca. I do not present them as a panacea, but I do assert that they possess very great virtues in cases of melancholia, morbid depression of spirits whether rational or irrational, and the restless uneasiness of mind that so very often accompanies fever: it brings about an euphory, a sense of well-being far more lucid, far superior in every way to that produced by opium; and it does so without causing that unhappy addiction we are all so well acquainted with. Admittedly, it does not procure sleep as opium does - a most unhealthy sleep, I may add - but on the other hand, the patient does not require sleep: his mind rests of itself in a remarkable calm clarity.' 'Is it in no way dangerous?' asked Smith. 'I heard of no untoward effects in my inquiries among medical men,' said Stephen, 'though it is known, esteemed, and very generally used throughout Peru. So long as man is man, there is always the possibility of abuse, sure, just as there is with tea, coffee, tobacco, wine and of course ardent spirits among us: but I never heard of an instance in some weeks' or indeed months' residence among the Peruvians.' 'Is it prescribed as a specific for some Peruvian disorder, as a tonic, or as an alterative?' asked Macaulay. 'It is certainly used as a febrifuge and as a remedy for most ills,' said Stephen, 'but it is primarily taken as an enhancer of daily life, particularly by the labouring classes of men; for as well as the euphory I have spoken of, the coca also provides or perhaps I should say liberates great stores of energy, at the same time doing away with hunger for days on end. I have known thin spare men, no larger than myself, walk across mountainy country in piercing weather at a great altitude from sunrise to sunset, carrying burdens without fatigue, and with-out food. Yet although the uses of the coca-leaf are most evident among the poor, the field-labourers, the miners and the porters, they are even more striking among those who work with their heads. I have written all night, covering forty-three octavo pages, without mental exhaustion or even weariness, after a very hard day's journey; and I have heard well-authenticated reports of surgeons operating for twenty-four hours on end after a very shocking battle - operating with their abilities undiminished. But from the purely medical point of view, it seems to me that the most evident and immediate application is in everyday mental disturbance. I had great hopes of proving its value in my most recent voyage, but unhappily - I should not say unhappily, of course - all our people, officers, petty officers and seamen, were resolutely cheerful. Some frostbites off the Horn, the first hints of scurvy north of the Island, but no real depression, no moping, no sadness, no peevish quarrelling, rarely a cross word. It is true that they were buoyed up with thoughts of home, and we had been very fortunate in the matter of prizes; but their merriment among the ice-floes of the south, their merriment in the heaving, sticky sea of the doldrums with the sails hanging loose day after day, would have vexed a saint. Have we anv case even approaching melancholia at present?' 'Well, sir,' said Smith doubtfully, 'a good many of the pressed men are low in their spirits, of course; but as for downright, clinical melancholia . . . I am sorry to disappoint you, sir.' The young men, who had been bent over the leaves, sprung upright, and Stephen, turning, saw Captain Aubrey walk into the berth. 'Here's glory, upon my word,' cried he. 'Light and air in God's plenty. It would be a pleasure to be sick in such a place. But come,'- sniffing right and left - 'has something died here?' 'It has not,' said Stephen. 'The odour is that of the Smyrna asafetida, the most fetid of them all. In former times it was carried hung from the loftiest mast. Perhaps I might be indulged in some oiled silk, and a box lapped with lead, in which the bulk may be struck into the poorloop, while I keep just a little small jar on this floor for our daily use.' #66 - From The Commodore , page 107: 'Why am I so nervous?' asked Stephen as he rode back towards Portsmouth. 'My mind is in a silly flutter - pursues no clear line - flies off. Why, oh why did I leave my pouch of leaves behind?' This was the perfect opportunity for them to show their powers, so very much superior to those of the poppy, which provided little more than a stupid tranquillity. `Though there is something to be said for a stupid tranquillity at times,' he reflected, remembering that Petersfield possessed an apothecary's shop where, before now, he had purchased laudanum. 'Vade retro, Satanas,' he cried, dismissing the thought. . . . Since mood is so freely conveyed not only from person to person but from person to dog, cat, horse and the other way about, some part of his present state of mind derived from Lalla, though her unusual and nervous volatility arose from a cause that could not possibly have been more remote. The season of the year, her temperament, and a variety of other factors had inspired her with a notion that it would be delightful to meet with a fine upstanding stallion. She skipped as she went, sometimes dancing sideways, sometimes tossing her head: her views were evident to other members of her race, and poor rueful geldings rolled their eyes, while the only stone-horse they passed raced madly round and round his paddock, neighing; while a pretentious jack-ass uttered a huge sobbing #67 - From The Yellow Admiral , page 89: 'Could you not call Padeen back?' 'I could not. As you know very well, he became addicted to one of my tinctures - it is worse than the drink, so it is, far worse - and I dare not leave him a daily temptation. And then again I promised him a few acres in the County Clare, enough for a small but decent living, if he would look after Brigid and Clarissa in Spain. But will he go there? Sure he is with child to go there. He knows just how the few fields lie, and the little small house - but a slate-roofed house, Jack, which is a very near approach to glory with us. Yet will he go there? He will not. What if there should be owls? Or good people under the hill where he has the right to cut turf? Or if he should find himself alone and frightened? I tell him the priest would find him a decent wife or any of the countless go-betweens, so busy in Gort or Kilmacduagh. Indeed, the whole thing is very like marriage: he would and he would not. Two men have I known that conducted a proper, regular courtship, urging their suit: both killed themselves the day they were to go to church. And no doubt there are and have been many like them.' 'Do you know of any young women who have done the the same?' 'I do not. But I do know of three and have heard of more that ran away on their wedding night.' 'So have I.' 'There is a great deal to be said for a country education, where a girl may see a cow led to the bull as a matter of course, the filly to the stallion, and where a phallus is an acknowledged object - a matter of some curiosity perhaps but certainly nothing wholly unexpected, possibly wholly unexpected and even apprehended as a horrid malformation, an unnatural growth.' #68 - From The Yellow Admiral , page 214: 'This was the only dry coat I could lay my hands on without being later still,' he said, looking at the broad expanse of gold lace on the sleeve with some complacency. 'I quite like to wear it, now and then, though the Dear knows whether I shall ever appear in it publicly again.' Killick muttered something and set a blaze of silver down before him. 'This liquid is technically known as soup,' Jack went on, having taken off the cover. 'May I ladle you out a measure?' 'It is pleasant enough to see the remnants of peas so aged and worn that even the weevils scorned them and died at their side, so that now we have both predator and prey to nourish us: and what is pleasanter still, is to see the infamous brew spooned from that gleaming great tureen, the gift of the grateful West India merchants.' #69 - From The Hundred Days , page 39: 'Not in the least,' said Jack. 'And Stephen, I believe I have solved your problem. I believe I have found you a loblolly-boy you will thoroughly approve of.' Stephen, concerned though he was with his music - only two bars yet to write, but the magical sound already fading from his inner ear - and filled though he was with a conviction that Jack's mild 'not in the least' concealed an intense irritation, made no reply other than a questioning look. He owed his survival as an intelligence-agent to an acute ear for falsity, and Jack's last words were certainly quite untrue. 'Yes,' Jack went on, 'together with a draft of hands turned over to the squadron out of Leviathan, refitting, Maggie Cheal and Poll Skeeping have come aboard; and Poll was trained at Haslar. She is up to anything in the way of blood and horrors.' 'You are speaking of women, brother? You who have always abominated so much as the smell of a skirt aboard ship? The invariable cause of trouble, quarrelling, ill-luck. Wholly out of place in any ship, above all in a man-of-war. I have never seen a woman aboard a man-of-war.' 'Have you not, my poor Stephen? Did you never see them helping with the guns and passing shot in Bellona?' 'Never in life. Am I not always shut up in the cockpit during an action?' 'Very true. But if Jill Travers, for example, the sailmaker's wife who helped serve number eight, had been wounded, you would have seen her.' 'But seriously, Jack, are you obliged to take these women aboard? You who have always inveighed against the creatures.' 'These are not creatures, in the sense of whore-ladies . Portsmouth trollops: oh no. They are usually middle-aged or more, often the wife or widow of a petty or even of a warrant-officer. One or two may have run away like the girl in the ballad, wearing trousers, to be with her Jack when sailed; but most have used the sea these ten or twenty years and they look like seamen, only for the skirt and maybe shawl.' 'And yet I have never seen one, apart from the odd gunner's wife who looks after the very little fellows: and apart, of course, from that poor unhappy Mrs Horner on Juan Fernandez.' 'To be sure, they do keep out of the way. They don't belong to any watch, of course, and they don't appear at quarters, no, nor anywhere else, except when we rig church.' At any other time he would have added that for all his botanizing and stuffing curious birds, Stephen was a singularly unobservant cove: he had not even noticed the brilliant flint-locks that now, by grace of Lord Keith, adorned Surprise's guns, doing away with those potential misfires when the linstock wavered over the touch-hole or was doused by flying spray - misfires that might make those few seconds' difference between defeat and victory. Yet they blazed with all the splendour of guinea-gold, the pride of the crews, who surreptitiously breathed upon them, wiping off the mist with a silk handkerchief. 'A loblolly-girl, for all love? I wonder at it, Jack.' 'Come, come, Stephen: you say a loblolly-boy for an ancient of sixty or even more: it is only a figure of speech, a naval figure of speech. And speaking of figures, Poll's is very like a round-shot; she is a kind, cheerful, conscientious soul, but she is not likely to stir the amorous propensities of the sick-berth. Besides, she is perfectly used to seamen, and would instantly put them down. Will you at least have a word with her? I said I should mention her name. We were shipmates once, and I can answer for her being kind - no blackguarding, no bawling out orders, not topping it the ship's corporal; kind, honest, sober, and very tender with the wounded.' 'Of course I will see her, brother: a kind, honest and sober nurse is a rare and valuable creature, God knows.' Jack rang the bell and to the answering Killick he said, 'Tell Poll Skeeping the Doctor will see her directly.' Poll Skeeping had been at sea, off and on, for twenty years, sometimes under harsh and tyrannical officers; but for her 'directly' still allowed latitude enough for putting on a clean apron, changing her cap and finding her character: thus equipped she hurried to the cabin door, knocked and walked in, a little out of breath and obviously nervous. She bobbed to the officers, holding her character to her bosom. 'Sit down, Poll,' said Captain Aubrey, waving to a chair. 'This is Dr Maturin, who would like to speak to you.' She thanked him and sat, bolt upright, the envelope of her character held like a shield. 'Mrs Skeeping,' said Stephen, 'I am without a sick-berth attendant, a loblolly-boy, and the Captain tells me that you might like the post.' 'That was very kind in his honour,' she said, bowing to Jack. 'Which I should be happy to be your sick-berth attendant, sir.' 'May I ask about your experience and professional qualifications? The Captain has already told me that you are kind, conscientious, and tender to the wounded; and indeed one can hardly ask more. But what of amputation, lithotomy, the use of the trephine?' 'Bless you, sir, my father, God rest his soul' (crossing herself) 'was a butcher and horse-knacker in the wholesale line, down Deptford way, and my brothers and me used to play at surgeons in the jointing house: then when I was at Haslar they put me almost straight away into the theatre. So, do you see, sir, I am hardly what could be called squeamish. But may I show you my character, sir? The surgeon of my last ship, a very learned gentleman, tells what I can do better than ever I could manage.' She passed the somewhat aged cover, and begging Jack's pardon Stephen broke the seal. The elegant Latin testimonial to Mrs Skeeping's worth, capabilities, and exceptional sobriety was written in a remarkably familiar hand but one to which he could not give a name until he turned the page and saw the signature of Kevin Teevan, an Ulster Catholic from Cavan, a friend of his student days and yet another Irishman who saw the Napoleonic tyranny as a far greater and more immediate evil than the English government of Ireland. 'Well,' he said, patting the letter affectionately, 'anyone so highly spoken of by Mr Teevan will certainly answer for me; and since I do not yet have an assistant surgeon - he will be coming aboard this afternoon - I will show you the sick-berth myself, if the Captain will excuse us.' 'There,' he went on at last, having displayed the neat arrangements of the Surprise, 'that deals with the ventilation system: no ship of the line can show a better. Now pray tell me how Mr Teevan was when last you saw him.' 'He was brimming full of joy, sir. A cousin with a practice in some grand part of London and with too many patients, offered him a partnership, and he left Mahon that very evening in Northumberland, going home to pay off and lay up. For that was when we thought it was all over, the pity and woe ... that Boney.' 'The pity and woe indeed,' said Stephen. 'But with the blessing we shall soon settle his account.' And running his eye over the neat shelves of the forward medicine-chest, he said, 'We are short of blue ointment. Do you understand the making of blue ointment, Mrs Skeeping?' 'Oh dear me yes, sir: many is the great jar I have ground in my time.' 'Then pray reach me down the little keg of hog's lard, the jar of mutton suet, and the quicksilver. There are two mortars with their pestles just below the colcothar of vitriol.' When they had ground away companionably at their ointment for perhaps half a glass Stephen said, 'Mrs Skeeping, in my sea-time I have seen few, very few women at all, although I am told they are not in fact so very rare. Will you tell me how they come to be aboard and why they stay in a place so often damp and always so bare of comfort?' 'Why, sir, in the first place a good many warrant-officers - like the gunner, of course - take their wives to sea, and some captains allow the good petty-officers to do the same. Then there are wives that take a relation along - my particular friend Maggie Cheal is the bosun's wife's sister. And some just take passage, with the captain's or first lieutenant's leave. And there are a few in very hard times by land that dress as men and are not found out until very late, when no notice is taken: they speak gruff, they are good seamen, and there is not much odds after forty. And as for staying aboard, it is not a comfortable life to be sure, except in a first or second rate that does not wear a flag; but there is company, and you are sure of food; and then men, upon the whole, are kinder than women - you get used to it all, and the order and regularity is a comfort in itself. For my part it was as simple as kiss your hand. At Haslar I was put to look after an officer, a post-captain that had lost a foot - there had been a secondary resection and the dressing was very delicate. His wife, Mrs Wilson, and the children came to see him every day, and when the wound was healed and he posted to a seventy-four in Jamaica she asked me to go with them, looking after the little ones. It was a long, slow voyage with no foul weather and everybody enjoyed it, most of all the children. But they had not been there a month before they were all dead of the Yellow Jack. Luckily for me, the officer who took over Captain Wilson's ship brought a great many youngsters aboard, more than the gunner's wife could deal with; so we having made friends on the way over, she asked me to give her a hand - and so it went, relations in ships - I had a sister married to the sailmaker's mate in Ajax - friends in ships, with a spell or two in naval hospitals - and here I am, loblolly-boy in Surprise, I hope, sir, if I give satisfaction.' 'Certainly you are, particularly as I learn from Mr Teevan that you do not play the physician, puzzle the patients with long words or criticize the doctor's orders.' Mrs Skeeping thanked him very kindly; but having taken her leave she paused at the door, and blushing she said, 'Sir, might I beg you to call me just Poll, as the Captain does, and Killick and all the others I have been shipmates with? Otherwise they would think I was topping it the knob; and that they will not abide, no, not if it is ever so.' 'By all means, Poll, my dear,' said Stephen. #70 - From The Hundred Days , page 113: The long pause after the gunroom's dinner, while Jack and Christy-Palliere carried on with their conversation in the cabin, was filled, as far as Stephen and Richard were concerned, with medical consultation. 'I do not in any way mean to criticize the Royal Navy's food,' said Richard, when they were alone. 'An excellent dinner, upon my word, and remarkably good wine. But what was that ponderous mass, glutinous and yet crumbling, enveloped in a sweet sauce, that came at the end?' 'Why, that was plum duff, a great favourite in the service.' 'Well, I am sure it is very good if you are used to it: but I fear that such very heavy cooking does not suit my digestion, delicate from childhood. Frankly, sir, I think that I may die.' After the usual questions, palpations and other gestures, Stephen suggested a comfortable vomit: this was rejected with a shudder, but a moderate glass of brandy was exhibited with some small beneficial effect, and they spent the rest of their time playing a languid series of games of piquet for love, keeping themselves awake with coffee. More ****** Return to Top ****** Return to Chuck's Home Page The following link will take you to a parody (not written by me, I wish I had that sort of talent,) of what a POB Aubrey-Maturin book which was ghostwritten by Tom Clancy would be like. If you had read most or all of the Aubrey-Maturin books, I think it will give you a good chuckle; and even if you have read only the preceding excerpts, I think you will find it quite funny. This little background may help: 1) Jack is a captain who believes in gunnery practice every day. This takes a lot of gunpowder and the Navy does not issue enough powder to make this possible, so Jack, with his own money buys powder to make up the difference. One time, I forget the exact circumstances (in The Ionian Mission,) Jack got a good deal on powder that was used for making fireworks, so when the cannons were fired, they belched great streaks of color and maybe sparks, along with the cannonballs. 2) Once when the ship made a short stop in Brazil, Stephen, being also a great naturalist, went ashore into the jungle and returned to the ship with a three-toed sloth. The sloth became something of a ship's pet, albeit an alcoholic one, and spent much time in the ship's rigging, when it wasn't too drunk to climb. (Jack secretly overcame the sloth's initial fear of him by giving the sloth wine; naturally, it became a habit.) 3) On a cruise to the Red Sea, Stephen took a newfangled diving bell, and actually walked in the muck on the seabed. I just hope the parody link is still a functioning link; and remember, I did not write this, but wish I did. (You can see my 100% non-POB attempt at humor here:Peggy Sooth.) The POB/Tom Clancy parody is this link, I hope: Tom Clancy Does Aubrey-Maturin Return to Top******* Return to Chuck's Home Page |