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April 14 - July 19, 2020
oakum
loose fiber obtained by untwisting old rope, used especially in caulking wooden ships
—There might also be an Act VI in which everyone was dead, but it wouldn’t make for good opera so Daniel omits it.
“Paganism? Then we are all pagans! It is a symbol of Mercury—patron of commerce—who has been worshipped in this cellar—and in this city—for a thousand years, by Bishops as well as business-men. It is a cult that adapts itself to any religion, just as easily as quicksilver adopts the shape of any container—
The Great God Mammon
But there were other families where the emotional wounds of the participants never healed, never even closed up and scabbed over, and no one even bothered to cover them up
Sir Winston Churchill—Fellow of the Royal Society,
Sir Winston Churchill, the Cavalier Colonel (1620 - 1688)
loose slippers whose flat soles dragged on the ground and made clacking noises with each step.
Flip-flops!
Mayflower had (fortunately for her!) been born with that ability, peculiar to certain women, of being able to talk about her womb in any company without it seeming inappropriate, and not only that but you never knew where in a conversation, or a letter, she would launch into it, plunging everyone into a clammy sweat as her descriptions and revelations forced them to consider topics so primal that they were beyond eschatology—even Drake had had to shut up about the Apocalypse when Mayflower had gotten rolling.
This was my oldest sister, bless her heart. She meant well.
‘New York’?” Daniel asked. “Clever…but too obviously derivative of ‘New Amsterdam,’” Churchill said.
#TMBG
“Admiral de Ruyter sailed down to Guinea and took away all of the Duke of York’s slave-ports,” Daniel said.
The Sugar - Slaves - Rum triangle.
Those navies ran on rum.
He stepped into the middle of the room and held up the bloody rag. “The menstruum of a human female,” he announced, “only a few minutes old!”
Reminds me of the panty scene in 16 Candles
Isle of Dogs,
I <3 Dogs
Qwghlmian
Gotta be Wales. Took me an entire book to figure this out.
“Eeeyuh, I hate these things—loathsome people exhibiting all manner of freakish behaviors—like a morality play depicting my own life.”
King Louis stamps Ultima Ratio Regum on all of his cannon—” “The last argument of kings.”
Why didn’t you tell me that the Knight of the Rustling Leaves was a clitoriste? I suppose this should come as no surprise given that her husband Philippe is a homosexual, but it caught me somewhat off guard. Does she have lovers? Hold, I presume too much; does she even know what she is?
French frigate flying the coat of arms of the Arcachon family: fleurs-de-lis and Neeger-heads in iron collars.
John Hawkins, a freeman of Plymouth, had a coat-of-arms surmounted by a bound slave. He is considered a pioneer of the English slave-trade. In 1562, he brought slaves from Guinea to the Dominican Republic.
In 2016, Harvard Law School accepted a petition to change its coat-of-arms. The School adopted a substantial contributor family's coat-of-arms. However, the 18th century Royall family crest they chose belonged to a notoriously brutal slave trader.
And the Africans who had brought him out were rewarded with baptisms, iron jewelry, and a free trip to Martinique to spend the rest of their lives working in the agricultural sector.
I was issued my weapon: a sickle lashed to the end of a stick.
There are some MMORPGs that espouse the idea that 'war-scythes' are not authentic medieval weapons. One is a fantasy MMORPG featuring cat people.
not the country and not the city, but a blend of the most vile features of both.
Wow. The 'burbs have been around a long time.
I realized that he was already climaxing inside of me.
Oops!
Of children free of blemish and of blot.
It's a trap!
So they decreed that henceforth, any person who appeared before the Aro oracle and asked a stupid question would be immediately seized by the warriors who stood guard in the temple, and flung into slavery.” “Hmmm…if stupid questions are as common in Africa as they are where I come from, that policy must’ve produced a flood of wretches!” “It did—yet still the pilgrims flocked to our town.”
MOSEH DE LA CRUZ, the Kohan with the Plan
I am gobstopped
“My name is Excellentissimo Domino Jeronimo Alejandro Peñasco de Halcones Quinto, Marchioni de Azuaga et de Hornachos, Comiti de Llerena, Barcarrota, et de Jerez de los Caballeros, Vicecomiti de Llera, Entrín Alto y Bajo, et de Cabeza del Buey, Baroni de Barrax, Baza, Nerva, Jadraque, Brazatortas, Gargantiel, et de Val de las Muertas, Domino Domus de Atalaya, Ordinis Equestris Calatravae Beneficiario de la Fresneda.
You killed my father! Prepare to die!
“How can you say that the same coin is now worth more?”
The Earl of Upnor took one look at it and then, with no hesitation, aimed his other pistol down into the ditch and put his charger out of its misery.
Nicely done.
You don’t engage in courtly play-fightin’ with one such as this. You get a great friggin’ tree-branch and keep hittin’ him with it until he dies.
Cleric-type: 2h melee, staff or mace weap because they can't draw blood.
You’ll bleed to death shortly or heal up in a few weeks—the liver has a miraculous power of regeneration, while the body lives. Take it from an Irishman.
‘In Memoriam, Louis Anglesey, Earl of Upnor, finest swordsman in England, beaten to death with a stick by an Irishman.’
One of the elephants made known his intention to turn around and go back. Jack could not discern, from this range, whether his driver was of the same mind, or not; but it did not matter, for the elephant was leaving.
That is what an institution is: something that has been instituted.
Ravenscar
Comstock is one of my favorite characters in this series.
I love L'Emmerdeur, tho.
“What, by gambling that their customers will die?” “That is no gamble, Dr. Waterhouse.”
Death & taxes - the only sure bets.
“What d’you mean we, sir?”
Do you have a mouse in your pocket?
The captain stretched out a mangled hand towards the bow, then let it fall.
Pirates: innovators in Equal Economic Opportunity for people of every color, age, gender, sexual orientation and disability.
This was called being taken a-back, and it could happen to persons as well as ships.
Minerva had crawled underneath the legends, compass-roses, analemmas, and cartouches that were superimposed on all the world’s maps and globes, and vanished from all charts, ceased to exist.
You're off the edge of the map now! Here there be monsters!
“She sails upside-down. She leaps from place to place and her form shifts, as if she were a droplet of quicksilver trapped between sea and sky.”
A fata morgana - a reflection of something over the horizon. I remember hearing about Detroit having one happen.
forced labor,
Slaves
Jack’s chief source of discomfort, then, was a feeling well known to soldiers of low rank, to doctors’ patients, and to people getting their hair cut; namely, that he was utterly in the power of an incompetent.
Possibly because their wool was exported—mostly to Holland—which was in fact sinking into the sea! Q.E.D.
“The ship Minerva of Rumor and Legend? Or the real one?”
I am in love with Minerva. My heart flutters every time they mention her.
“As long as the candles don’t go out, we have nothing to fear from this atmosphere,” said Daniel, who was deeply sick and tired of hearing semi-learned people ascribe all their problems to damps.
“Mr. MacDougall took over,” Daniel guessed, “and could not stop adding one clever bit after another.” “Until Roger cut him off—somewhat emphatically, I’m afraid,” said Catherine, and winced in a manner that made Daniel want to stroke her hair.
“Not true, unless you count real estate development as one of the black arts.”
Trust me, it is.
We came up to take in the view, they seemed to say, and never expected the Spanish Inquisition.
No one expects the Spanish Inquisition!!!
“No, stay…. Those…those were his words? ‘It’s a lay’?” “That was the entire message. What’s it signify? If you don’t mind my asking.” “It means we should all turn around and go back to London.” Barnes laughed. “Why’d we want to do such a thing, Doctor?”
Ah, the Die Hard distraction trope.
“Because though I have not done violence I have seen rather a lot of it. Not all of the men who employ it are stupid, or evil. Only most of them. The rest use it reluctantly, as a way, when all else has failed, of seizing the main chance.
rich Baron so concerned for his personal security that he believed that even the birds of the air were wind-up toys invented by hashishin to fly in his windows and put anthrax into his beer.”
Enlisting Soldiers without Authority. An ingrossed Bill from the Lords, intituled, An Act, to prevent the listing of her Majesty’s Subjects to serve as Soldiers, without her Majesty’s License, was read a Second time.
