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Sophia was right: these were indeed the thoughts that flooded into Stephen’s mind at the name of that unlucky tree – these and a great many more, as he sat silently by the glow of the fire. Not that they had far to travel; they hovered most of the time at no great distance, ready to appear in the morning when he woke, wondering why he was so oppressed with grief; and when they were not immediately present their place was marked by a physical pain in his midriff, in an area that he could cover with the palm of his hand.
Stephen had spared no expense in making himself more unhappy,
conglobulate
‘By your leave, sir,’ cried the captain of the afterguard, bending over Dr Maturin and shouting into the bag that covered his head. ‘If you please, now.’ ‘What is it?’ asked Stephen at last, with a bestial snarl. ‘Nigh on four bells, sir.’ ‘Well, what of it? Sunday morning, surely to God, and you would be at your holystoning?’ The bag, worn against the moon-pall, stifled his words but not the whining tone of a man jerked from total relaxation and an erotic dream.
‘Oh, you must not interfere with custom.
Once he had established that Jack and Hervey were connected with families he knew, he treated them as human beings; all the others as dogs – but as good, quite intelligent dogs in a dog-loving community.
Valuable and ingenious he might be, thought Jack, fixing him with his glass, but false he was too, and perjured. He had voluntarily sworn to have no truck with vampires, and there, attached to his bosom, spread over it and enfolded by one arm, was a greenish hairy thing, like a mat – a loathsome great vampire of the most poisonous kind, no doubt. ‘I should never have believed it of him: his sacred oath in the morning watch and now he stuffs the ship with vampires; and God knows what is in that bag. No doubt he was tempted, but surely he might blush for his fall?’ No blush; nothing but a look
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...dsomely, handsomely; do not alarm the sloth, I beg.
‘I cannot imagine,’ said Jack, recovering the chaplain and guiding him along the gangway, ‘what that sloth has against me. I have always been civil to it, more than civil; but nothing answers. I cannot think why you speak of its discrimination.’
The sloth sneezed, and looking up, Jack caught its gaze fixed upon him; its inverted face had an expression of anxiety and concern. ‘Try a piece of this, old cock,’ he said, dipping his cake in the grog and proffering the sop. ‘It might put a little heart into you.’ The sloth sighed, closed its eyes, but gently absorbed the piece, and sighed again. Some minutes later he felt a touch on his knee: the sloth had silently climbed down and it was standing there, its beady eyes looking up into his face, bright with expectation. More cake, more grog: growing confidence and esteem. After this, as soon
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... the sloth, and cried, 'Jack, you have debauched my sloth.'
On the other side of the cabin-bulkheads Mr Atkins said to Mr Stanhope, ‘High words between the Captain and the Doctor, sir. Hoo, hoo! Pretty strong – he pitches it pretty strong: I wonder a man of spirit can stomach it. I should give him a thrashing directly.’ Mr Stanhope had no notion of listening behind bulk-heads, and he did not reply; but he could not prevent himself from catching isolated sentiments, such as ‘ . . . tes moeurs crapuleuses . . . tu cherches à corrompre mon paresseux . . . va donc, eh, salope . . . espèce de fripouille’, for the dialogue had switched to French on the
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and then again, you know, I do so long to be married! The idea of being married drives a man, by God: you can have no idea. Married to Sophie, I mean: I beg pardon if I have spoke awkward again.’ ‘Why, my dear, I am no great friend to marriage, as you know; and sometimes I wonder whether you may not set too great a store on a contract compelling you to be happy – whether any arrival can amount to the sum of voyages – whether, in fact, it would not be better to travel indefinitely.’
But Lord, the infinite possibilities of self-deception – the difficulty of disentangling the countless strands of emotion and calling each by its proper name – of separating business from pleasure.
‘While this lasts, not a man shall leave the ship. Gather ye rose-pods while ye may, as dear Christy-Pallière used to say.’ ‘May you not find the men grow wilful and discontented? May they not, with a united mind, rush violently from the ship?’ ‘They will not be pleased. But they know we must catch the monsoon with a well-found ship; and they know they are in the Navy – they have chosen their cake, and must lie on it.’ ‘You mean, they cannot have their bed and eat it.’ ‘No, no, it is not quite that, neither. I mean – I wish you would not confuse my mind, Stephen.
the European wives were harder to persuade. Few had much room to cast stones, but hypocrisy has never failed the English middle class in any latitude, and they flung them in plenty with delighted, shocked abandon – rocks, boulders, limited in size only by fear for their husband’s advancement.
Like all Hindu ceremonies he had seen, this appeared to be going forward with great excitement, great good humour, and a total lack of organisation.
WHEN HE FOUND Dil she was playing a game so like the hop-scotch of his youth that he felt the stirring of that ancient anxiety as the flat stone shuffled across the lines towards Paradise. One of her companions hopped exulting to the goal itself, her anklets clashing as she went. But it was false, cried Dil, she had not hopped fair – a blind hyaena could have seen her stagger and touch the ground: glaring about with clenched fists to call heaven and earth to witness she caught sight of Stephen and abandoned the match, calling out as she left them, that they were daughters of whores – they
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You have no notion what bitches women are.
‘Will you tell me what you were musing upon, now?’ said Stephen. ‘It must have been rarely pleasant.’ ‘I was thinking about marriage,’ said Jack, ‘and the garden that goes with it.’ ‘Must you have a garden when you are married?’ cried Stephen. ‘I was not aware.’
Jack paused to compliment Mr White on his sermon (a strongly-worded confutation of Arminianism)
And then again, such deeply stupid men are able to come by wealth, often by no exertion, by no handling or even possession of merchandise, but merely by writing figures in a book.
The officers who were wafting this enormous treasure across the ocean in their leisurely East-India fashion were well rewarded for doing so; this pleased them, because, among other things, it allowed them to be magnificently hospitable; and they were the most hospitable souls afloat. No sooner had Captain Muffit, the commodore, made out the frigate’s tall mainmast in the light of dawn, than he sent for his chief steward, his head Chinese and his head Indian cook; and signals broke out aboard the Lushington: the one to the Surprise, Request honour of captain’s and officers’ company to dinner,
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‘I believe, sir, this is your first taste of warfare,’ he said. ‘I am afraid you must find it pretty wearisome, with no cabin and no proper meals.’ ‘Oh, I do not mind that in the least, sir,’ cried the chaplain. ‘But I must confess that in my ignorance I had expected something more shall I say exciting? These slow, remote manoeuvres, this prolonged anxious anticipation, formed no part of my image of a battle. Drums and trumpets, banners, stirring exhortations, martial cries, a plunging into the thick of the fray, the shouting of captains – this, rather than interminable waiting in discomfort,
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‘God,’ he thought, ‘never let me outlive my wits.’
It was clear to a man with far less knowledge of morphology than Stephen possessed that there was nothing under Diana’s gown, and he looked out of the window with a light frown: he wished his mind to be perfectly clear.
‘Oh, I know what o’clock it is,’ said Etherege crossly.
IN HIS JOURNAL Stephen wrote, ‘At most times the diarist may believe he is addressing his future self: but the real height of diary-writing is the gratuitous entry, as this may prove to be.
peccavi nimis cogitatione, verbo, et opere
No: we are not the sort of men that educated, intelligent, well-brought-up young women cross a thousand miles of sea for. They like us well enough ashore, and are kind, and say Good old Tarpaulin when there is a victory. But they don’t marry us, not unless they do it right away – not unless we board them in our own smoke. Given time to reflect, as often as not they marry parsons, or clever chaps at the bar.’
Besides, lawyers make notoriously bad husbands, from their habit of incessant prating; whereas your sailor has been schooled to mute obedience,’
