Master and Commander (Aubrey & Maturin, #1)

by Patrick O'Brian

Where there was no equality there was no companionship: when a man was obliged to say ‘Yes, sir,’ his agreement was of no worth even if it happened to be true. He had known these things all his service life; they were perfectly evident; but he had never thought they would apply so fully, and to him.

Babbington, unable to think of anything to put, had filled his pages with asking after everybody at home and in the village, human beings, dogs, horses, cats, birds, and even the great hall clock, to such an extent that he was now filled with an overwhelming nostalgia.

Lol

‘No,’ said the officer, crossing himself. ‘No, no. Keep off, or we shall fire into you. Keep out to sea – the sea will cure them. God be with you, poor people. And a happy voyage to you.’

On his knees, and with his chin level with the top of the table, Stephen watched the male mantis step cautiously towards the female mantis. She was a fine strapping green specimen, and she stood upright on her four back legs, her front pair dangling devoutly; from time to time a tremor caused her heavy body to oscillate over the thin suspending limbs, and each time the brown male shot back. He advanced lengthways, with his body parallel to the table-top, his long, toothed, predatory front legs stretching out tentatively and his antennae trained forwards: even in this strong light Stephen could see the curious inner glow of his big oval eyes. The female deliberately turned her head through forty-five degrees, as though looking at him. ‘Is this recognition?’ asked Stephen, raising his magnifying glass to detect some possible movement in her feelers. ‘Consent?’ The brown male certainly thought it was, and in three strides he was upon her; his legs gripped her wing-covers; his antennae found hers and began to stroke them. Apart from a vibratory, well-sprung quiver at the additional weight, she made no apparent response, no resistance; and in a little while the strong orthopterous copulation began. Stephen set his watch and noted down the time in a book, open upon the floor. Minutes passed. The male shifted his hold a little. The female moved her triangular head, pivoting it slightly from left to right. Through his glass Stephen could see her sideways jaws open and close; then ...

Lol distracted by bugsex

‘That reminds me,’ said Jack, ‘have you anything that will keep my wig on? A most ridiculous thing happened as I was crossing the square: there was Dillon on the far side, with a woman on his arm – Governor Wall’s sister, I believe – so I returned his salute with particular attention, do you see. I lifted my hat right off my head and the damned wig came with it. You may laugh, and it is damned amusing, of course; but I would have given a fifty-pound note not to have looked ridiculous with him there.’ ‘Here is a piece of court plaster,’ said Stephen.

‘Dinner?’ cried Stephen, as though the meal had just been invented. ‘Dinner? Oh, yes: charmed – delighted.’

Stephen was engaged in a close discussion of the comparative merits of the crayfish and the true lobster with Miss Wade

Mr Ellis was clearly very much at home in Captain Harte’s house, for without having to ask the way he walked to the sideboard, opened the lead-lined door and took out the chamber-pot, and looking over his shoulder he went on without a pause to state that fortunately the lower classes naturally looked up to gentlemen and loved them, in their humble way; only gentlemen were fit to be officers. God had ordered it so, he said, buttoning the flap of his breeches; and as he sat down again at the table he observed that he knew one house where the article was silver – solid silver.

Rly at dinner u couldn't wait til u finished ur story and gone somewhere else

‘Did you say Alexandria?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘In Lower Egypt?’ ‘Yes. Did I not tell you? We are to run an errand to Sir Sydney Smith’s squadron before our next cruise. He is watching the French, you know.’ ‘Alexandria,’ said Stephen, stopping in the middle of the quay. ‘O joy. I wonder you did not cry out with delight the moment you saw me. What an indulgent admiral – pater classis – O how I value that worthy man!’ ‘Why, ’tis no more than a straight run up and down the Mediterranean, about six hundred leagues each way, with precious little chance of seeing a prize either coming or going.’ ‘I did not think you could have been such an earthling,’ cried Stephen. ‘For shame. Alexandria is classic ground.’

Maturins unashamed delight about everything is goals

‘It is ungrateful in me to repine,’ he wrote, ‘but when I think that I might have paced the burning sands of Libya, filled (as Goldsmith tells us) with serpents of various malignity; that I might have trodden the Canopic shore, have beheld the ibis, the Mareotic grallatores in their myriads, even perhaps the crocodile himself; that I was whirled past the northern coast of Candia, with Mount Ida in sight all day long; that at a given moment Cythera was no more than half an hour away, and yet for all my pleas no halt to be made, no “heaving to”; and when I reflect upon the wonders that lay at so short a distance from our course – the Cyclades, the Peloponnese, great Athens, and yet no deviation allowed, no not for half a day – why, then I am obliged to restrain myself from wishing Jack Aubrey’s soul to the devil. Yet on the other hand, when I look over these notes not as a series of unfulfilled potentialities but as the record of positive accomplishment, how many causes have not I for rational exultation! The Homeric sea (if not the Homeric land); the pelican; the great white shark the seamen so obligingly fished up; the holothurians; euspongia mollissima (the same that Achilles stuffed his helmet with, saith Poggius); the nondescript gull; the turtles! Again, these weeks have been among the most peaceful I have known:

Cute af maturin is reframe king fck yeah

nothing he had ever heard in his adult life had so chilled him (upon reflexion) as the admiral’s remarks about post rank. They had been kindly meant; they were totally convincing; they haunted his mind. ‘I wonder you should be so concerned over a mere title – a tolerably Byzantine title,’ observed Stephen. ‘After all, you are called Captain Aubrey now, and you would still only be called Captain Aubrey after that eventual elevation; for no man, as I understand it, ever says “Post-captain So-and-so”. Surely it cannot be a peevish desire for symmetry – a longing to wear two epaulettes?’

Rank was a matter of no importance whatever, said General Aubrey: a woman took rank from her husband; goodness of heart was what signified; and good hearts, Jack, and damned fine women, were to be found even in cottage kitchens; the difference between not quite sixty-four and twenty-odd was of very little importance. The words ‘an old stallion to a young – ’ had been crossed out,

I was with u at first...

A dark form drifted from the sombre cliff-face on the starboard beam – an enormous pointed wingspan: as ominous as fate. Stephen gave a swinish grunt, snatched the telescope from under Jack’s arm, elbowed him out of the way and squatted at the rail, resting the glass on it and focusing with great intensity. ‘A bearded vulture! It is a bearded vulture!’ he cried. ‘A young bearded vulture.’ ‘Well,’ said Jack instantly – not a second’s hesitation – ‘I dare say he forgot to shave this morning.’

Stephen and James were playing chess in the gun-room: James’ furious attack, based upon the sacrifice of a knight, a bishop and two pawns, had very nearly reached its culminating point of error, and for a long placid stretch of time Stephen had been wondering how he could avoid mating him in three or four moves by any means less obvious than throwing down the board. He decided ( James minded these things terribly) to sit it out until the drum beat to quarters, and meanwhile he waved his queen thoughtfully in the air, humming the Black Joke.

‘Look for yourself. And why is there no rogue’s yarn in it, Mr Ricketts? Because it never come off of the King’s yard, that’s why: Mr Screw-penny Bleeding Commissioner Brown never set eyes on it. Which Goldilocks bought it out of his own pocket, as likewise the paint you’re a-sitting on. So there, you mean-souled dough-faced son of a cow-poxed bitch,’ he would have added, if he had not been a peaceable, quiet sort of a man, and if the drum had not begun to beat to quarters.

Lol mr watt

Stephen rose six inches from his perch at the masthead, and with his hands folded to prevent their involuntary clutching at passing ropes, yards, blocks, and with the ape-nimble Babbington keeping pace, heaving him in towards the weather backstay, he descended through the dizzy void to the deck, where they let him out of the cocoon in which they had hoisted him aloft; for no one on board had the least opinion of his abilities as a seaman. He thanked them absently and went below, where the sailmaker’s mates were sewing Tom Simmons into his hammock.

‘A quart. Well, it is a great deal: but I am surprised it should kill a man. At an admixture of three to one, that amounts to six ounces or so – inebriating, but scarcely lethal.’ ‘Lord, Doctor,’ said the gunner, looking at him with affectionate pity, ‘that ain’t the mixture. That’s the rum.’ ‘A quart of rum? Of neat rum?’ cried Stephen. ‘That’s right, sir. Each man has his half-pint a day, at twice, so that makes a quart for each mess for dinner and for supper: and that is what the water is added to. Oh dear me,’ he said, laughing gently and patting the poor corpse on the deck between them, ‘if they was only to get half a pint of three-water grog we should soon have a bloody mutiny on our hands. And quite right, too.’ ‘Half a pint of spirits a day for every man?’ said Stephen, flushing with anger. ‘A great tumbler? I shall tell the captain – shall insist upon its being poured over the side.’

Oh maturin no

He was thinking of his own childhood – the then intensity of the present – happiness not then a matter of retrospection nor of undue moment – when the howling of the bosun’s pipe for dinner caused his stomach to give a sharp sudden grinding wring and he swung his legs over the side. ‘I am grown a naval animal,’ he observed.

Lol maturin

Marshall reappeared. ‘What did you do to that woman?’ called Jack. ‘Knocked her down, sir,’ replied Marshall phlegmatically. ‘Tartan’s no more a Ragusan than I am. Captain only talks the lingua franca, says Codpiece, no right Italian at all; Missis has a Spanish set of papers in her pinny; hold’s full of bales consigned to Genoa.’ ‘The infamous brute to strike a woman,’ said James aloud.

He also likes young boys never forget: marshall is a fckn creep

‘It is the rain.’ ‘That’s right, sir,’ said Mowett. ‘Should not you like to step below, to get out of it? Or may I bring you a tarpaulin jacket?’ ‘No. No. No. You are very good. No…’ said Stephen, his attention wandering, and Mowett, having failed in the first part of his mission, went cheerfully on to the second: this was to stop Stephen’s whistling, which made the after-guard and quarter-deckmen – the crew in general – so very nervous and uneasy. ‘May I tell you something nautical, sir – do you hear the guns again?’

Theyre all so cute to maturin we love u but pls stop whistling

‘Avast that God-damned – foolery, God rot your – eyes,’ he called out in an enormous line-of-battle voice. He rarely swore, apart from an habitual damn or an unmeaning blasphemy, and the men, who in any case had expected him to be far more pleased with the taking of a neat privateer, fell perfectly mute, with nothing more than the rolling of an eye or a wink to convey secret understanding and delight.

Jacks spooky swearing

‘Timely, sir, bosun of the Superb,’ said a tremendous voice at the opening door. ‘Oh, beg pardon, sir…’ ‘Not at all, Mr Timely,’ said Jack. ‘I am very happy to see you.’

“I tell you what, Goldilocks” – for we call him Goldilocks in the service, you know, in much the same way as they call me Hell-fire Davy, or Thundering Richards

‘Yes, sir,’ said the lieutenant: and after a slight pause, ‘Wilson and Plimpton have represented to me that it would grieve them very much to be flogged by King.’ ‘Of course it will grieve them very much. I sincerely hope it will grieve them very much. That is why they are to be flogged. They were drunk, were they not?’ ‘Blind drunk, sir.

‘You see that cape?’ said Stephen, who was gazing at it with an open book dangling from his hand, his thumb marking the place. ‘It is Cabo Roig, the seaward limit of Catalan speech: Orihuela is a little way inland, and after Orihuela you hear no more Catalan – ’tis Murcia, and the barbarous jargon of the Andalou. Even in the village round the point they speak like Morescoes – algarabia, gabble-gabble, munch, munch.’ Though perfectly liberal in all other senses, Stephen Maturin could not abide a Moor.

Oh

‘Mr Day,’ said Jack, ‘be so good as to prepare some fire barrels – say half a dozen. Mr Dalziel, unless it comes on to blow I think we may take the boats in at about midnight. Dr Maturin, let us rejoice and be gay.’

Yay

Once there was an ominous clangour high overhead – flamingoes on their way to the Mar Menor, or maybe as far as the marshes of the Guadalquivir: but for the most part it was featureless darkness, almost a denial of time.

The blaze increased: in its light they could see the other fires and their smoke, quite pale; the whole of the bay, the village; the cutter and the launch pulling away from the shore and the jolly-boat crossing to meet them; and all round behind, the brown hills, sharp in light and shade. At first the column had been perfectly straight, like a cypress; but after the first quarter of an hour its tip began to lean southwards and inland, towards the hills, and the smoke-cloud above to stream away in a long pall, lit from below. The brilliance was if anything greater, and Stephen saw gulls drifting across between the sloop and the land, all heading for the fire. ‘It will be attracting every living thing,’ he reflected, with anxiety. ‘What will be the conduct of the bats?’

The bats

‘I have been contemplating on emotion.’ ‘Emotion,’ said Dr Ramis. ‘Yes,’ said Stephen. ‘Emotion, and the expression of emotion. Now, in your fifth book, and in part of the sixth, you treat of emotion as it is shown by the cat, for example, the bull, the spider – I, too, have remarked the singular intermittent brilliance in the eyes of lycosida: have you ever detected a glow in those of the mantis?’

‘Do you think they will attack?’ asked Captain Pallière, turning to Jack. ‘Or do you think they will anchor off Gibraltar?’ ‘To tell you the truth, sir,’ said Jack, looking over the sea at the towering Rock, ‘I am quite sure they will attack. And you will forgive me for saying, that when you reckon up the forces in presence, it seems clear that we shall all be in Gibraltar tonight. I confess I am heartily glad of it, for it will allow me to repay a little of the great kindness I have met with here.’ There had been kindness, great kindness, from the moment they exchanged formal salutes on the quarter-deck of the Desaix and Jack stepped forward to give up his sword: Captain Pallière had refused to take it, and with the most obliging expressions about the Sophie’s resistance, had insisted upon his wearing it still. ‘Well,’ said Captain Pallière, ‘let it not spoil our breakfast, at all events.’

‘Well, thank you, Captain Aubrey,’ he said, after a moment, and Jack stood up. ‘I see you are wearing your sword,’ observed the Admiral. ‘Yes, sir. The French captain was good enough to give it back to me.’ ‘Very handsome in him, though I am sure the compliment was quite deserved; and I have little doubt the court-martial will do the same. But, you know, it is not quite etiquette to ship it until then: we will arrange your business as soon as possible – poor Ferris will have to go home, of course, but we can see to you here. You are only on parole, I believe?’ ‘Yes, sir: waiting for an exchange.’ ‘What a sad bore. I could have done with your help – the squadron is in such a state … Well, good day to you, Captain Aubrey,’ he said, with a hint of a smile, or at least a lightening in his expression. ‘As you know, of course, you are under nominal arrest, so pray be discreet.’

So weirdly civil dining with captor captain cap giving his sword back but rly they are enemy navies this is much more wholesome than war crimes, guys just do this shit instead

The officers of the Hannibal and the Sophie were on parole: that is to say, until they were exchanged for French prisoners of equal rank they were bound in honour to do nothing against France or Spain – they were merely prisoners in more agreeable surroundings.

Just chillin

In an attempt at diverting his mind he privately sang a ballad about the Battle of the Nile: We anchored alongside of them like lions bold and free. When their masts and shrouds came tumbling down, what a glorious sight to see! Then came the bold Leander, that noble fifty-four, And on the bows of the Franklin she caused her guns to roar; Gave her a dreadful drubbing, boys, and did severely maul; Which caused them loud for quarter cry and down French colours haul. The tune was charming, but the inaccuracy vexed him: the poor old Leander had fifty-two guns, as he knew very well, having directed the fire of eight of them.

Cuuute lol jack

and now Jack could see that their flagship was indeed the Real Carlos, of a hundred and twelve guns, one of the most powerful ships afloat; that one of the other three-deckers was of the same force; and the third of ninety-six. It was a most formidable squadron – four hundred and seventy-four great guns, without counting the hundred odd of the frigates – and the ships were surprisingly well handled.

‘Very well,’ said Stephen, after a moment’s thought. ‘I can leave a note. And we will fill our pockets with ham: then we shall have none of your wry looks and short answers.’

HAM pockets

‘Stephen,’ he cried, bursting open the door, his shining face far larger and higher than usual. ‘Victory! Come out at once and drink to a victory! Give you joy of a famous victory, old cock,’ he cried, shaking him terribly by the hand. ‘Such a magnificent fight.’

There’s Dalziel and Marshall going by. Ahoy! Dalziel ahoy! Marshall! Ahoy there!

Ur not a pirate