HMS Surprise (Aubrey & Maturin, #3)

by Patrick O'Brian

Stephen’s confidence in Captain Aubrey’s seamanship was as entire, as blind, as Jack’s in the medical omniscience of Dr Maturin;

‘You mean, they cannot have their bed and eat it.’

From his earliest acquaintance with the Navy, Stephen had been oppressed by this sense of hurry

Superstition?

but my heated expectations, founded upon the Arabian Nights, a glimpse of the Moorish towns in Africa, and books of travel, were poor thin insubstantial things compared with the reality.

There is here a striving, avid and worldly civilisation, of course; these huge and eager markets, this

I had no conception of the ubiquitous sen...

my sense of the humanity with which I am surrounded.

What an agreeable city it is, where a man may walk naked in the heat if it pleases him!

But measuring my garment with his hand he observed that there was not one single wisdom.

as though I, too, were a child?

I am tempted to purchase her: above all I should wish to preserve her in this present state, not sexless, but unaware of her sex, free of her person and of all the gutters and bazaars of Bombay, wholly and immediately human: wise, too.

It is hard to think of her lively young spirit sinking, vanishing in the common lot.

She is right in supposing that I need guidance, however.

Consent unreasonably withheld may justifiably be compelled.

the certified guarantee of not having failed,

Now although Sophie carries humanity to a high pitch of perfection, no young woman more,

still she is human and she is affected by human considerations.

I do not say for a moment tha...

weighs them up; but considerations, the press...

there would have been none of this hesitation, no long stare: he would have known his mind and he would have acted at once, with intelligent deliberation.

Now Stephen wants decisiveness, but only in matters of which he knows—not in naval matters of which he doesn’t.

no sort of evidence for this other than my oh so fallible intuition.

Already I am beginning to murder time,

There are some, and Diana is one I believe, who have a separate truth of their own: ordinary people, Sophie and myself for example, are nothing without the ordinary truth, nothing at all.

‘All my Williams cousins will be married,’ she observed, with a slight check in her bubbling gaiety.

Living large is very well, and certainly I love a rope of pearls as much as any woman: but give me even a grisly damp cold English cottage.’

I am sorry for my ignorance. But I beg you will have the goodness, the very great goodness, to marry me.’

Huzzah!!

with a decent competence, an assured future.’

Tell her you love her!

but romance does not keep the rain away.’

He had made his attempt, delivered his charge, and it had failed: now his heart beat quietly again.

:(

For my part I do not believe that any marriage was ever yet broken by an outside

force.

Nor does it seem to me that any great blame attaches to the bottle she prefers.’

He had never cared for laws at any time.

‘I am of her caste,’

Dil’s face was infinitely calm; the wavering flame made it seem to smile mysteriously at times, but the steady light showed a face as far from emotion as the sea: contained and utterly detached.

The people had gone; the pyre was no more than a dark patch with the sea hissing in its embers; and he was alone. The tide was rising fast.

and salt water and absence will waste it away.

‘had he ever considered the ship thus seen as a figure of the present – the untouched sea before it as the future – the bow-wave as the moment of perception, of immediate existence?’

‘Rich? Oh, yes, they wallow in gold. But he will never hoist his flag!

salt water washes away disappointment as well as other things.

have often been amazed at how you forget, after a few days at sea. You might be sailing in

Lethe, once you have sunk the land. I said, you might be sailing in Lethe, once ...

Forgetfulness!

‘Never,’ said Jack. ‘Sex has never entered my mind, at any time.’ ‘The

Jokes!

burden of sex, I mean.

This life, with its rigid pattern punctuated by the sharp imperative sound of bells, seemed to take on something of the nature

of eternity

they sailed with no relation to an enemy, nor to any potential prize.

This, he reflected, was his true occupation; this, not the self-destructive pursuit of a woman far beyond his reach.

Reason

‘All all of a piece throughout Thy chase had a beast in view Thy wars brought nothing about Thy lovers were all untrue.’

You should not have said that about lovers, Stephen.’

Jack’s mission was never really the envoy—it was the prize-money he might get, not as a reward for himself, but as debt-payment and assurance of his quality to marry. Perhaps both Jack and Stephen accomplished something with their women, even if their official mission failed.