Patrick O'Brian

Captain Aubrey and the crew of the Surprise are pursuing an American privateer through the Great South Sea.

The Wine-Dark Sea (Vol. Book 16) (Aubrey/Maturin Novels)

Gavin

“even if West had been in high favour with his commander it would have been quite useless to suggest that if it was necessary to promote foremast jacks, as it was in this case, then they might be made master’s mates, herding with the midshipmen, so that the gun-room should be preserved: useless, because Jack Aubrey belonged to an older Navy in which a collier’s mate like James Cook could die a much-honoured post-captain, and a foremast-hand like William Mitchell might begin his career by being flogged round the fleet and end it as a vice-admiral, rather than to the modern service, in which an officer had not only to pass for lieutenant but also for gentleman if he were to advance.”

—

“Stephen was not a heavy, impercipient man in most respects, yet he had known Jack Aubrey all these years without discovering that he disliked even a very little blood and slime extremely: that is to say, cold blood and slime. In battle he was accustomed to wading ankle-deep in both without the least repulsion, laying about him in a very dreadful manner. But he could scarcely be brought to wring a chicken’s neck, still less watch a surgical operation.

—

“although analogies kept flitting through his mind like clues to the solution of a puzzle, none would settle or cling to its fellows.”

—

“the ancient generations were not to be despised. The confident system of his youth – universal reform, universal changes, universal happiness and freedom – had ended in something very like universal tyranny and oppression. The ancient generations were not to be despised; and the seamen’s firm belief that Friday was unlucky was perhaps less foolish than the philosophe’s conviction that all the days of the week could be rendered happy by the application of an enlightened system of laws. He wished the main conference had not been set for Friday.
Blushing at his momentary weakness, he turned his mind to Hurtado”

—

“the guinea-pig or cavy. He is neither beautiful nor intelligent, and he is the most indifferent eating imaginable – barely edible at all, indeed, after the first half-dozen braces. Unhappily he is readily domesticated; he dries, smokes or salts easily; and he can be carried for ever in this dry, dry cold air – a cold air in which the native potato too can be and alas is dried, frozen, dried again and so packed up. I have tried to make this dish a little more palatable by adding mushrooms, our ordinary European mushrooms, Agaricus campestris, which to my perfect stupefaction I found growing here in alpine meadows: but my dear companion told me I should certainly drop down dead, his followers too assured me and one another that I should swell, then drop down dead; and it angered them so when I survived a week that Eduardo had to beg me to stop”

—

“When we have finished breakfast – pray help yourself to bacon and pass the dish – I will show you something more extraordinary by far. Our rudder has gone by the board.’
‘Oh, oh,’ cried Stephen, aghast. ‘Are we rudderless, so?’
‘I will not deceive you, brother: we are without a rudder. Do you remember asking me about pintles?’ Stephen nodded, still much concerned. ‘Well, it appears that at some point in our dreadful passage through the drift-ice a great floe must have lifted the pintles off the dumb-chalder and the braces, or most of them, and destroyed the wood-locks, so that it was hanging by little more than the tiller. We did not notice it, since we barely touched the helm sailing large; but when the lightning struck the rudder-head, shattering all down to the waterline, why, it dropped clean away.’ He pointed to the shattered, blackened rudder-head, now covered by a decent cloth.
‘Is there any help for such a state of affairs?’
‘Oh, I am sure we shall find something,’ said Jack. ‘May I trouble you for the marmalade? Capital marmalade, you must confess; though not quite as good as Sophie’s.’
Stephen had often heard Jack say, when life at sea grew more trying than the human frame could bear, ‘that it was no use whining’; but he had never “seen quite this degree of insouciance, or what he felt tempted to call irresponsible levity. How much was assumed as a captain’s duty in a virtually hopeless situation? How much was Jack’s natural reaction? He was not a man much given to strike attitudes. How hopeless was the situation in fact?”

—

“that, much nearer to us,’ said Stephen to the ecstatic Reade, ‘is what we at sea term a schooner; but you need not be afraid. She carries little in the way of guns.’
‘A Baltimore clipper, sir, I believe,’ said Mr Adams.
‘Indeed? I could have sworn she was a schooner, in spite of those rectangular sails in front.’
‘Certainly, sir. She is certainly a schooner in rig. The clipper part refers to her hull.’
‘Oh, she has a hull as well, has she? I was not aware”

—

The Wine-Dark Sea (Vol. Book 16) (Aubrey/Maturin Novels)

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