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‘Sure, his motive is obvious to a child. He hopes to provoke you into an outburst. He hopes you will disobey and ruin your career. I do beg you will not be blinded with anger.’
Jack’s anger is justified but ultimately only destructive in potential.
Pupils contract symmetrically to a diameter of about a tenth part of an inch, noted Stephen on a corner of a page. There was a loud, decided crack, a melancholy confused twanging, and with a ludicrous expression of doubt and wonder and distress, Jack held out his violin, all dislocated and unnatural with its broken neck. ‘It snapped,’ he cried. ‘It snapped.’ He fitted the broken ends together with infinite care and held them in place. ‘I would not have had it happen for the world,’ he said in a low voice. ‘I have known this fiddle, man and boy, since I was breeched.’
This is so damned heartbreaking. This is Jack’s lowest ebb in the book.
It is a horrible horrible feeling to break a musical instrument. He has had one of the portals to his emotional life taken away
– old Harte, – old Harte, That red-faced son of a dry French fart. Hey ho, stamp and go, Stamp and go, stamp and go, Hey ho, stamp and go.
Part of the Battle of Tory Island
‘Mr Babbington,’ he said in a low voice, in case he should be mistaken, for he had only seen this happen once before, ‘tell the captain, with my duty, that I believe Amelia is going to cheer us.’
hats off,
the captain of the foretop (paralytic) and both bosun’s mates. Jack disrated Morgan, promoting the dumb negro Alfred King,
Drunkenness is acceptable until it affects the sailing and fighting of the ship
‘Strabo tells us that the ancient Irish regarded it as an honour to be eaten by their relatives – a form of burial that kept the soul in the family,’ he said, waving the book.
‘I have been thinking about Dillon all day. All day long I have been thinking about him, off and on. You would scarcely credit how much I miss him.
because it was about Irishmen, no doubt; and Dillon was Irish. Though you would never have thought so – never to be seen drunk, almost never called anyone out, spoke like a Christian, the most gentleman-like creature in the world, nothing of the hector at all – oh Christ. My dear fellow, my dear Maturin, I do beg your pardon. I say these damned things … I regret it extremely.’
Oh Jack…
I produce it as a sin-offering, conscious of my offence. Your very good health, sir.’
Do not think I mean to run him down in any way – I only mention it as an instance, that even a very well-bred man can make these blunders sometimes, for I am sure he never meant
all in a mother,
‘We may not be able to do all we could wish in physic,’ said Stephen with quiet satisfaction, ‘but at least we can give an emetic that answers, I believe. You were saying, sir?’
Don’t do stupid things when you should be doing what you should be doing - do stupid shit and you need to problem solve
Also don’t hold grapeshot in your mouth
‘It will be attracting every living thing,’ he reflected, with anxiety. ‘What will be the conduct of the bats?’
‘It lights up the whole sky,’ said Stephen. It also lit up the deck of the Formidable,
Desaix, 74, Captain Christy-Pallière (a splendid sailer),
Ever since the crew had come to know of Jack’s private intelligence about Spanish shipping there had been this persistent rumour of a galleon, and now it was fulfilled.
It was difficult to say just when all the delight vanished:
but the Sophie had the weather-gage,
It was clear that the packet had told what the Sophie was.
The Sophie is fucked
‘stand by to out sweeps.’
Chekhov’s Sweeps
all the sweeps that Malta had allowed her (four short, alas)
Stephen noticed that there was an officer to almost every sweep. He stepped forward to one of the few vacant places, and in forty minutes all the skin was gone from his palms.
a double allowance of cheese – there will be nothing hot for a while.’ ‘If I may say so, sir,’ said the purser with a pale leer, ‘I fancy there will be something uncommon hot, presently.’
The purser is delighted in being correct. Jack WILL get them all killed.
‘Aye aye, sir,’ said the gunner briskly, but his movements were strangely slow, unnatural and constrained as he sprung the capsquares, like those of a man walking along the edge of a cliff, by will-power alone.
Its splash coincided exactly with the fountain thrown up not ten yards away by a ball from the Desaix’s bow-chaser, and the next gun went overboard with less ceremony.
The sloop had gained perhaps a quarter of a mile. ‘But he will not let me do that again,’ reflected Jack.
‘we will bear up in two minutes’ time, set stuns’ls and run between the flagship and the seventy-four.
A desperate manoeuvre
The Sophie was through the line, not too badly mauled – certainly not disabled; her studdingsails were set and she was running fast, with the wind where she liked it best.
a mile in the first five minutes.
the utter destruction of the elm-tree pump,
‘We may have done it,’ he said again. Yet the words were scarcely formed in his mind before he saw a signal break out aboard the admiral, and the Desaix began to turn into the wind.
Desaix was running at well over eight without her studdingsails.
then the Sophies’ hearts died within them.
Jack looked up at the sky. It looked down on him,
‘Now, I am afraid that unless something very surprising happens we are going to be taken or sunk in the next half hour.’
‘Oh, yes, and my purse.’
Money is just not a priority. Oh Stephen…
‘Masthead!’ he cried. ‘What do you see?’ Seven ships of the line just ahead? Half the Mediterranean fleet? ‘Nothing, sir,’ answered the look-out slowly, after a most conscientious pause.
men putting on their best clothes (two or three waistcoats together, and a shoregoing jacket on top), asking their particular officers to look after money or curious treasures, in the faint hope they might be preserved – Babbington had a carved whale’s tooth in his hand, Lucock a Sicilian bull’s pizzle. Two men had already managed to get drunk:
‘By God, he’s going to riddle us with grape.’
The broadside’s roar and the fall of the Sophie’s maintopgallantmast and foretopsail yard came almost together – in the thunder a hail of blocks, odd lengths of rope, splinters, the tremendous clang of a grape-shot striking the Sophie’s bell; and then a silence.
‘Clew up,’ called Jack, continuing the turn that brought the Sophie into the wind. ‘Bonden, strike the colours.’
It always falls to Bonden to lower the colours - what a contrast with the previous chapters.
‘Not the illustrious Dr Juan Ramis, the author of the Specimen Animalium?’
You intend it as a proof per contra of what you advance, I take it? Reversed, inverted, or arsy-versy, as you say in English. Most interesting.’
‘A busy morning, Captain Aubrey,’ said Captain Pallière, catching sight of him.
‘Many, many more than I could have wished,’ said Captain Pallière. ‘But the Formidable and the Indomptable have suffered worse – both their captains killed, too.
Stephen might have come straight out of a busy slaughterhouse. His sleeves, the whole of the front of his coat up to his stock and the stock itself were deeply soaked, soaked through and through and stiff with drying blood.
I was strangely upset today, I must confess, and I need what is it? The knitting up of ravelled care? And what is more, since we are likely to be exchanged in a few days, I shall have a court-martial on top of it all.’
Byng – shot for an error of judgment
1750? Had been ordered to Mahon. Byng was shot for cowardice.
Voltaire said ‘here they shoot their Admirals ‘pour encourager les autres’
