Master and Commander (Aubrey & Maturin, #1)

by Patrick O'Brian

‘Certainly I could,’ said Stephen, ‘if I chose to play the spy.

‘You must give a hare her law, there is no doubt.

In hare coursing, the hare’s law is the head start given to the giorra before the dogs are released.

Indeed, it is not far from morose delectation: take great care of that sin, James, I beg.

A venal sin? This is the enjoyment/solace of morose and pessimistic thought

‘Do not hate Jack Aubrey for it: do not drink so much: do not destroy yourself for what will not last’ against the disadvantage of setting off an explosion; for in spite of his apparent calm, James Dillon was on a hair-trigger, in a state of pitiful exacerbation.

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.

‘Treble, sir,’ said James, and looking at him Stephen saw that look of mad happiness he had known often enough, in former years – the contained look of a fox about to do something utterly insane.

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?’

Through his glass Stephen could see her sideways jaws open and close; then there was a blur of movements so rapid that for all his care and extreme attention he could not follow them, and the male’s head was off, clamped there, a detached lemon, under the crook of her green praying arms. She bit into it, and the eye’s glow went out; on her back the headless male continued to copulate rather more strongly than before, all his inhibitions having been removed. ‘Ah,’ said Stephen with intense satisfaction, and noted down the time again.

‘You do not need a head, nor even a heart, to be all a female can require.’

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

She was an odd, doll-like little creature with a wooden face, both shy and extremely self-satisfied, rather alarmingly young; she spoke slowly, with an odd writhing motion of her upper body, staring at her interlocutor’s stomach or elbow, so her exposition took some time. Her husband was a tall, moist-eyed, damp-handed man, with a meek, Evangelical expression, and knock-knees: had it not been for those knees he would have looked exactly like a butler. ‘If that man lives,’ reflected Stephen, as Laetitia prattled on about Plato, ‘he will become a miser: but it is more likely that he will hang himself.

Costive; piles; flat feet.’

‘Indigence, ma’am, indigence. For all that clysters is not gold, on shore. And then, of course, a fervid desire to bleed for my country.’

All that glisters is not gold. A clyster is an old word for an enema haha

‘He is a wit. I must take care of him, I declare. But still, you have to look after the common sailors too, Dr Maturin, not only the midshipmen and officers: that must be very horrid.’

for so small and Evangelical a woman she had drunk a remarkable quantity of wine and her face was coming out in blotches.

The wine brought Mr Ellis into full bloom at last; the diffidence and the timidity melted away from the mound of wealth, and he told the company about discipline – order and discipline were of primordial importance; the family, the disciplined family, was the cornerstone of Christian civilization; commanding officers were (as he might put it) the fathers of their numerous families, and their love was shown by their firmness. Firmness.

Let them look at the French revolution, the disgraceful rebellion in Ireland, to say nothing – looking archly at their stony faces – of the unpleasantness at Spithead and the Nore – all greed, and to be put down by fear.

I have the honour, the great honour, of being presented to the Duke of Clarence,’ he began, impressively. ‘Have you ever seen him?’ ‘I am acquainted with His Highness,’ said Jack, who had been shipmates with that singularly unattractive hot-headed cold-hearted bullying Hanoverian.

‘The man whose name I forget, the money-man, was an eminently curious study,’ said Stephen.

Stephen has already forgotten his name

‘Oh, he was a dull ignorant superficial darting foolish prating creature in himself, to be sure, but I found him truly fascinating. The pure bourgeois in a state of social ferment. There was that typical costive, haemorrhoidal facies, the knock-knees, the drooping shoulders, the flat feet splayed out, the ill breath, the large staring eyes, the meek complacency; and, of course, you noticed that womanly insistence upon authority and beating once he was thoroughly drunk? I would wager that he is very nearly impotent: that would account for the woman’s restless garrulity, her desire for predominance, absurdly combined with those girlish ways, and her thinning hair – she will be bald in a year or so.’ ‘It might be just as well if everybody were impotent,’ said Jack sombrely. ‘It would save a world of trouble.’

‘And having seen the parents I am impatient to see this youth, the fruit of their strangely unattractive loins: will he be a wretched mammothrept? A little corporal? Or will the resiliency of childhood…?’

‘So it is,’ said Jack, his good nature and pleasure in life flooding back at the sight of Stephen’s delight. ‘And with any luck I dare say we shall have a sight of the mountains of Candia, too. But come, we must get aboard: if we go on standing here we shall be run down.’

He regains his energy from Stephen’s odd bursts of enthusiasm

‘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.’ His red face crinkled up, his eyes diminished to a bright blue slit and he slapped his thigh, bending in such a paroxysm of silent mirth, enjoyment and relish that for all the Sophie’s strict discipline the man at the wheel could not withstand the infection and burst out in a strangled ‘Hoo, hoo, hoo,’ instantly suppressed by the quartermaster at the con.

‘There are times,’ said James quietly, ‘when I understand your partiality for your friend. He derives a greater pleasure from a smaller stream of wit than any man I have ever known.’

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.

‘Maimonides has an account of a lute-player who, required to perform upon some stated occasion, found that he had entirely forgot not only the piece but the whole art of playing, fingering, everything,’ wrote Stephen. ‘I have sometimes had a dread of the same thing happening to me; a not irrational dread, since I once experienced a deprivation of a similar nature: coming back to Aghamore when I was a boy, coming back after an eight years’ absence, I went to see Bridie Coolan, and she spoke to me in Irish. Her voice was intimately familiar (none more, my own wet-nurse); so were the intonations and even the very words; yet nothing could I understand – her words conveyed no meaning whatever. I was dumbfounded at my loss.

Maimonides: revered Jewish Torah scholar, influence on Aquinas, theologian, philosopher. Spanish Jew who wrote in Arabic to Hebrew. Middle Age pre-eminent astronomer and physician to the Sultan. A spectacularly interesting person. Wrote guide for the perplexed (reconciled Aristotle with Pentateuch) Logic / Rational Man - interested in moral character development. Everyone has an innate disposition (KNOW THYSELF) People have an innate character (and an environmental character of course) that they must reconcile for the world. He invites people to challenge their negative traits to benefit the world. A beautiful philosopher. Hopeful

flocci-naucinihili-pilification of all other aspects of existence that angers me.

JA is in many ways more suited to be a pirate chief in the Caribbean a hundred years ago: and for all his acumen JD is in danger of becoming an enthusiast – a latter-day Loyola, if he is not knocked on the head first, or run through the body.

For rational Catholic Stephen, Iggy Loyola, the mercenary arsehole, who founded the Jesuits. Jesuit motto : as if a dead body Jesuits are cruel and showy and have that sexualised death-cult egotistical non-Christianity which angers a brave/kind/sensitive man like SM

‘Indeed they are,’ said Stephen. ‘I was astonished, when first I went to London, to find that a man might not go out from one year’s end to the other.’ ‘Yes,’ said James. ‘Ideas upon matters of honour are altogether different in the two kingdoms. Before now I have given Englishmen provocation that would necessarily have called for a meeting in Ireland, with no result. We should call that remarkably timid; or is shy the word?’

for no one on board had the least opinion of his abilities as a seaman.

where the sailmaker’s mates were sewing Tom Simmons into his hammock.

‘Of course they do, sir: for it is against the law. How much did he drink? Why, now, Tom was a popular young chap, so I dare say he had the whole allowance, bating maybe a sip or two just to moisten their victuals. That would make it close on a quart.’

‘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.’

putting a keener edge, a sharper point, on cutlasses, pikes, boarding-axes, marines’ bayonets, midshipmen’s dirks, officers’ swords.

it was natural that a man’s messmates should be low after burying him, and even his whole watch (for Tom Simmons had been well liked – would never have had so deadly a birthday present otherwise); but this solemnity affected the whole ship’s company and there was none of those odd bursts of song on the fo’c’sle, none of those ritual jokes called out. There was a quiet, brooding atmosphere, not at all angry or sullen, but – Stephen, lying in his cot (he had been up all night with poor Simmons) tried to hit upon the definition – oppressive? – fearful? – vaticinatory?

‘Sir, sir,’ said Mowett, ‘you are getting wet.’ ‘Yes,’ said Stephen; and after a pause he added, ‘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?’

but that one ball made a sad mess in the galley – upset all the coppers and unshipped the smoke-funnel.’

‘What nonsense you do talk, to be sure,’ said Stephen. ‘What “balls”, as you sea-officers say: it is a matter of common observation that a man may be sincerely attached to two women at once – to three, to four, to a very surprising number of women. However,’ he said, ‘no doubt you know more of these things than I.

it seems to me that the greater mass of confusion and distress must arise from these less evident divergencies – the moral law, the civil, military, common laws, the code of honour, custom, the rules of practical life, of civility, of amorous conversation, gallantry, to say nothing of Christianity for those that practise it.

‘Come, let us drink up our wine, and I will compound you a dose – requies Nicholai. Perhaps tomorrow you should be let blood: it is three weeks since you was let blood.’

An opium based bolus

Oh the wild geese a-flying a-flying a-flying, The wild geese a-swimming upon the grey sea.’ Stephen whistled a bar and then, in his disagreeable crake, he sang ‘They will never return, for the white horse has scunnered Has scunnered has scunnered The white horse has scunnered upon the green lea.’

A mystery song WB Yeats ref 1913? Also a reference to Flight of the Earls

But the self-possessed happiness radiating from their captain and his lieutenant, and the spontaneous delighted cheer from the first half of the crew, changed this wonderfully; and as they set about clearing the sloop there were not above four or five who looked glum – the others might have been going to the fair.

ran close-hauled straight for the Spaniard’s side.

Go straight at em

‘Full elevation. Not a shot till we touch,’

He darted below. Stephen had four quiet wounded men, two corpses. ‘We’re boarding her,’ said Jack. ‘I must have your man – every man-jack aboard. Will you come?’ ‘I will not,’ said Stephen. ‘I will steer, if you choose.’

With an enormous shrieking cheer fore and aft the Sophies leapt up the frigate’s side. Jack was over the shattered bulwark straight down on to a hot gun run in and smoking, and its swabber thrust at him with the pole.

‘Dillon, Dillon, the starboard gangway! Thrust for the starboard gangway!’

‘Otros cincuenta!’ he shouted, for good measure: and as Stephen nodded, calling out something in Spanish, he raced back into the fight, his sword high and his pistol searching.

Bonden ran aft, leaping over the dead Spanish captain. Jack hallooed and pointed. Hundreds of eyes, glancing or staring or suddenly looking back, half-comprehending, saw the Cacafuego’s ensign race down – her colours struck. It was over.

The word passed, and no answer came. He was lying there near the starboard gangway, where the most desperate fighting had been, a couple of steps from little Ellis. When Jack picked him up he thought he was only hurt; but turning him he saw the great wound in his heart.