More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
He took no notice of the goat abaft the manger, that fixed him with an insulting devilish split-pupilled eye and defecated with intent;
‘Up all hammocks’. He heard a rushing of feet and a great terrible voice calling ‘All hands, all hands ahoy! Out or down! Out or down! Rouse and bitt! Rise and shine! Show a leg there! Out or down! Here I come, with a sharp knife and a clear conscience!’
‘The idea is that every man shall know exactly where to go in action – in an emergency,’ said Jack. ‘It would never do if they had to stand pondering.
But, Dillon, what can the fellow be thinking of? Did he suppose we were engaged? Blind? However, this is not time to … We will board, of course, if only the Norwegians can hold out long enough. I hate firing into a galley, in any event. I believe you may have all our pistols and cutlasses served out.
‘No, no, no,’ said Stephen. ‘I deprecate violence. My part is to heal rather than to kill; or at least to kill with kindly intent. Pray let me take my place, my station, in the cockpit.’
‘A very clever gentleman he must be, no question. The men are wonderfully pleased. “How kind,” they say, “to saw off Ned Evans’ leg so trim, and to sew up John Lakey’s private parts so neat; as well as all the rest; he being, so to speak, on leave – a visitor, like.”
‘Are you very much attached to money?’ asked Stephen. ‘I love it passionately,’ said Jack, with truth ringing clear in his voice. ‘I have always been poor, and I long to be rich.’
Jack stood there by the starboard knighthead, willing the sloop on with all his might, and feeling that his right arm might not be too great a price for an effective bow-chaser.
‘The Spanish colours, Mr Babbington,’ said Jack; and looking round Stephen saw the yellow and red break out at the peak. ‘We are sailing under false colours,’ whispered Stephen. ‘Is not that very heinous?’ ‘Eh?’ ‘Wicked, morally indefensible?’ ‘Bless you, sir, we always do that, at sea. But we’ll show our own at the last minute, you may be sure, before ever we fire a gun. That’s justice. Look at him, now – he’s throwing out a Danish waft, and as like as not he’s no more a Dane than my grandam.’
‘My dear creature, I have done with all debate. But you know as well as I, patriotism is a word; and one that generally comes to mean either my country, right or wrong, which is infamous, or my country is always right, which is imbecile.’
What is more, it appears to me that this is a critical time for him, a lesser climacteric – a time that will settle him in that particular course he will never leave again, but will persevere in for the rest of his life. It has often seemed to me that towards this period (in which we all three lie, more or less) men strike out their permanent characters; or have those characters struck into them.
‘Certainly you must put on silk stockings. And do show a leg, my dear chap: we shall be late, without you spread a little more canvas.’
The remora was so strong it had certainly torn the sheathing off, they explained to him; but that was nothing – it was so strong it could hold the sloop motionless, or almost motionless, in a brisk gale! But now they had him – there was an end to his capers now, the dog – and now the Sophie would run along like a swan.
‘Let us say ten minutes to run from the cove to the tower, and …’ ‘Allow twenty, if you please,’ said Stephen. ‘You portly men of a sanguine complexion often die suddenly, from unconsidered exertion in the heat. Apoplexy – congestion.’
‘And think of our poor doctor, all alone among them damned trees – why, there might be owls. God damn the service, I say, and the – San Fiorenzo, and the bleeding Amelia, too.’
‘The identity I am thinking of is something that hovers between a man and the rest of the world: a mid-point between his view of himself and theirs of him – for each, of course, affects the other continually. A reciprocal fluxion, sir. There is nothing absolute about this identity of mine.
‘Wish you joy of the capture, sir,’ said the carpenter. ‘No damage, rightly speaking; no struc-tur-al damage; but that one ball made a sad mess in the galley – upset all the coppers and unshipped the smoke-funnel.’
An ape on a rock no great way off threw a turd at him, quite unprovoked; and when he half rose in protest it shook its wizened fist and gibbered so furiously that he sank down again, so low were his spirits.
‘Oh, I shall plead guilty at once,’ said Stephen. ‘And I shall add that I was sitting in the powder-magazine with a naked light at the time, imagining the death of the King, wasting my medical stores, smoking tobacco and making a fraudulent return of the portable soup. What solemn nonsense it is’
