Stephen said, ‘Captain Aubrey, your butt-ends and your hanging knees cannot be attempted to be rectified, as I understand you, until you have her docked, three thousand miles away; so may I beg you to clap a stopper over all and to accept the inevitable with a decent appearance of unconcern? If we fall apart, why, we fall apart, and there is the end to it. For my part, I have every confidence of reaching Bombay.’ ‘What I know, and what you don’t know,’ cried Jack, ‘is that I have not so much as a single ten-inch spike left aboard.’ ‘God set a flower upon you, my dear, with your ten-inch
...more
