Treason's Harbour Quotes

“Yet,'said Maturin, pursuing his own thought, 'there is a quality in dogs, I must confess, rarely to be seen elsewhere and that is affection: I do not mean the violent possessive protective love for their owner but rather that mild, steady attachment to their friends that we see quite often in the best sort of dog. And when you consider the rarity of plain disinterested affection among our own kind, once we are adult, alas - when you consider how immensely it enhances daily life and how it enriches a man's past and future, so that he can look backward and forward with complacency - why, it is a pleasure to find it in brute creation.”
― Patrick O'Brian, Treason's Harbour

“Here he found Stephen looking frowsty and discontented - there was nothing that more thoroughly persuaded Jack of his friend's innocence with regard to Mrs Fielding than this three days' beard, this vile old wig - and Stephen said to him 'If the woman does not issue a more Christian invitation in two minutes, I shall drink that,' - pointing to the gunroom's coffee, weak, insipid, only just luke-warm. 'She has asked us to take chocolate with her. Chocolate at this time in the morning, dear Mother of God. Suff on her.”
― Patrick O'Brian, Treason's Harbour

“Good morning, Doctor," cried Jack, appearing behind him. 'I did not know you were in
the hotel.'
'Good morning, sir,' said Stephen. 'I was not. I slept with a friend.'
'Oh, I see,' said Jack. He was pleased, in that Stephen's frailty gave countenance and justification to his own, but at the same time he was disappointed, more disappointed than pleased, since a frail Stephen necessarily fell short of the very highest standard of virtue. Jack regarded him not so much as a saint as a being removed from temptations: he was never drunk, nor was he given to dangling after women in far foreign ports, still less did he go to brothels with the other officers, and although he was notoriously lucky at cards he very rarely played; so this commonplace fall, negligible in another man or in Jack Aubrey himself, took on a heinous aspect.”
― Patrick O'Brian, Treason's Harbour

“but there was another factor that had not come into play when they marched down to Suez in the darkness - by day the vast expanse of desert, perfectly level in every direction, offered no shelter for those who wished to relieve themselves; and as several of the Surprises, including their captain, were as shamefast and bashful in their actions as they were licentious in their speech, this led to a great loss of time as men hurried off so that distance, often very great distance, should preserve their modesty.”
― Patrick O'Brian, Treason's Harbour

“It sounded as though you were having a battle there,' said Jack.
'No. It was only a tooth, a troublesome tooth: sure I have delivered many a child with less pains to all concerned.”
― Patrick O'Brian, Treason's Harbour

“Profane oaths, cursings and execrations (forbidden in any event by the second Article of War) were laid aside or modified, and it was pleasant to hear the bosun cry 'Oh you . . . unskilful fellow' when a hand called Faster Doudle, staring aft at Mrs Fielding, dropped a marline-spike from the maintop, very nearly transfixing Mr Hollar's foot. Punishment, in the sense of flogging at the gangway, was also laid aside; and though this was of no great consequence in a ship that so very rarely saw the cat, the general sense of relaxation and indulgence might have done great harm to discipline to the Surprise had she not had an exceptional ship's company. She always had been a happy ship; now she was happier still; and it occurred to Stephen that a really handsome, thoroughly good-natured but totally inaccessible young woman, changed at stated intervals, before familiarity could set in, would be a very valuable addition to any man-of-war's establishment.”
― Patrick O'Brian, Treason's Harbour

“Why, sir, what's all this? Surely you have not forgot you are entertaining the Captain?'
'And how am I supposed to entertain the Captain, for all love?' asked Stephen. 'Am I to grin at him through a horse-collar, propose riddles and conundrums, cut capers?'
'Come, sir,' said Calamy, 'the gunroom is entertaining the Captain to dinner, and you
have only ten minutes to change. There is not a moment to be lost.”
― Patrick O'Brian, Treason's Harbour

“Have a cup of tea,' said the bosun in a very loud voice; and then louder still, 'Tea. Cha.'
The odabashi made no reply but an awkward writhe of his body and stood looking at the ground, his arms dangling low on either side.
'Well, this is a hairy bugger, and no mistake,' said the bosun, surveying him. 'Such a ugly cove I never seen: more like a hape than what you might call a human.'
'Hape!' cried the odabashi, stung out of his shyness, 'You can put that where the monkey put the nuts. You're no oil-painting yourself, neither.'
The dead silence that followed this was broken at last by the bosun, who asked 'did the odabashi speak English?'
'Not a fucking word,' said the odabashi.
'No offence intended, mate,' said the bosun, holding out his hand.
'And none taken,' said the odabashi, shaking it.”
― Patrick O'Brian, Treason's Harbour

“Yet his own daughters were not outstandingly meek: he thought of their shrill bawling 'Oh Papa, Papa, do come on, Papa. We shall never get up the hill at this rate. Pray, Papa, do not be such a slug.' Early it would have been 'goddam slug', they having caught a free way of speaking from the seamen who formed part of the household, but since the last voyage or two Sophie had taken the matter in hand, and now girlish cries of 'infernal swab' or 'short-arsed cullion' were to be heard only in the remoter parts of Ashgrove wood.”
― Patrick O'Brian, Treason's Harbour

“Oh, Captain Aubrey,' cried she, 'I have a service to beg of you.'
Mrs Fielding had but to command, said Jack, smiling at her with great affection; he was at her orders entirely - very happy - delighted - could not be more so.
'Why then,' she said, 'you know I am a little talkative - the dear Doctor has often said so, desiring me to peep down - but alas I am not at all writative, at least not in English. English spelling! Corpo di Baccho, English spelling! Now if I give you a dictation and you write it down in good English, I can use the words when I write to my husband.'
'Very well,' said Jack, his smile fading.
It was just as he had feared: and he must have been quite mistaken about the signals.
Mr Fielding was to understand that the excellent Captain Aubrey had saved Ponto from being drowned: Ponto now doted upon Captain Aubrey and ran up to him in the street. Wicked people therefore said that Captain Aubrey was Laura's lover. Should these rumours reach Mr Fielding he was to pay no attention. On the contrary. Captain Aubrey was an honourable man, who would scorn to insult a brother-officer's wife with dishonest proposals; indeed she had such confidence in his perfect rectitude that she could visit him without even the protection of a maid. Captain Aubrey knew very well that she would not ply the oar.
'Ply the oar, ma'am?' said Jack, looking up from his paper, his pen poised.
'Is it not right? I was so proud of it.'
'Oh yes,' said Jack. 'Only the word is spelt rather odd, you know,' and he wrote she would not play the whore very carefully, so that the letters could not be mistaken, smiling secretly as he did so, his frustration and disappointment entirely overcome by his sense of the ridiculous.”
― Patrick O'Brian, Treason's Harbour

“That is not the Dryad. It has three masts.'

'There is no concealing anything from the Doctor,' said Jack, and turning directly to him he went on, 'Give you joy of our prize: we took her in the night.'

'Breakfast is disgracefully late,' said Stephen.”
― Patrick O'Brian, Treason's Harbour

“just before his arrival his two lieutenants had very nearly come to blows over the meaning of the word dromedary. They were both good seamen and amiable companions, but they were both given to writing verse, Mowett being devoted to the heroic couplet while Rowan preferred a Pindaric freedom, and each thought the other's not only incorrect but devoid of grammar, sense, meaning, and poetic inspiration. At two bells in the afternoon watch this rivalry had spilled over on to the name of the transport: why, it was difficult to make out, since dromedary could not conceivably be made to rhyme with anything”
― Patrick O'Brian, Treason's Harbour

“His forehead hurt, but not very much, and he lay there swinging with the long motion of the ship, watching the grey light grow and musing upon cuckoldry, cuckoldom, and the almost universal mirth excited by that state.
...
Her cousin Sophie, Jack Aubrey's wife, was completely different. She was not a prude, and she cared no more for Mrs Grundy than Diana; and yet no one but a maniac would ever write to tell Jack that he was a cuckold, although on a basis of reciprocity he deserved a whole hall-full of antlers.
...
Jack considered for a moment and then said with a stern look, 'What the devil did you mean by saying, I was thinking about you - what is a cuckold's neck?”
― Patrick O'Brian, Treason's Harbour

“The ostensible purpose of Mr Wray's visit was to check corruption in the dockyard, and it appeared to Maturin that he would probably be more successful in this than in counter-espionage. Intelligence was a highly specialized concern, and as far as he knew this was Wray's first direct connection with the department. Corruption on the other hand was universal, open to all; and since Wray in his youth had kept a carriage and a considerable establishment on an official salary of a few hundred a year and no private means it was likely that he was tolerably well acquainted with the subject.”
― Patrick O'Brian, Treason's Harbour

“Two blue jackets, sir, one pea jacket, two pair of blue trousers, two pair of shoes, six shirts, four pairs of stockings, two Guernsey frocks, two hats, two black Barcelona handkerchiefs, a comforter, several pair of flannel . . .’ he blushed and in a low voice said ‘drawers. And two waistcoats; as well as one bed, one pillow, two blankets and two hammocks,”
― Patrick O'Brian, Treason's Harbour

“Come athwart my hawse and I shall ride you down, you half-baked son of an Egyptian fart,’ to a wool-gathering jolly-boat; and art echoed from either shore.”
― Patrick O'Brian, Treason's Harbour

“Wittles is up' said Killick”
― Patrick O'Brian, Treason's Harbour

“There is a restless itch to be busy, a tedious obsessive hurry: waste not a minute, they cry, as though the only right employment for time were rushing forwards, no matter where, so it be farther on.”
― Patrick O'Brian, Treason's Harbour

“at my time of life these things are only a matter of course. I hope you will live to hoist yours at the main.”
― Patrick O'Brian, Treason's Harbour

“In general I have found that the uglier the man, the greater his vanity.”
― Patrick O'Brian, Treason's Harbour

“Yet,’ said Maturin, pursuing his own thought, ‘there is a quality in dogs, I must confess, rarely to be seen elsewhere and that is affection: I do not mean the violent possessive protective love for their owner but rather that mild, steady attachment to their friends that we see quite often in the best sort of dog. And when you consider the rarity of plain disinterested affection among our own kind, once we are adult, alas – when you consider how immensely it enhances daily life and how it enriches a man’s past and future, so that he can look back and forward with complacency – why, it is a pleasure to find it in brute creation.’ Affection”
― Patrick O'Brian, Treason's Harbour

“Certainly he had heard of Homer, and had indeed looked into Mr Pope’s version of his tale; but for aught he could make out, the fellow was no seaman. Admittedly Ulysses had no chronometer, and probably no sextant neither; but with no more than log, lead and lookout an officer-like commander would have found his way home from Troy a d—d sight quicker than that. Hanging about in port and philandering, that was what it amounted to, the vice of navies from the time of Noah to that of Nelson. And as for that tale of all his foremast-hands being turned into swine, so that he could not win his anchor or make sail, why, he might tell that to the Marines. Besides, he behaved like a very mere scrub to Queen Dido.”
― Patrick O'Brian, Treason's Harbour

“or there will be wigs on the green.”
― Patrick O'Brian, Treason's Harbour

“However, there was nobody missing, and after a brief inspection Mowett could report 'All present and sober, sir, if you please,' without more falsehood than could be borne, since the few hands who were still drunk by naval standards did not fall until after the inspection; and they were quietly slung on to camels' backs among the tents and seamen's bags.”
― Patrick O'Brian, Treason's Harbour

“I am heartily sorry for it, he being a most capable, obliging man, speaking all the languages of the Levant and excellent English too - might have built the Tower of Babel singlehanded.”
― Patrick O'Brian, Treason's Harbour

“They were climbing now, climbing the hill of hardened mud upon which the castle stood, and once they had left the lee of the dunes the flies grew less; the heat, on the other hand, was greater still. 'You are going a very disagreeable colour,' said Stephen. 'Should not you throw off that thick coat, and loosen your neckcloth? Heavy, corpulent subjects are liable to be carried off in a twinkling, if not by a frank, straightforward apoplexy, then at least by a
cerebral congestion.”
― Patrick O'Brian, Treason's Harbour

“Not so hellfire unpoetical as all that, brother,' said Jack. 'Rowan came out with as fine a thing as ever I heard only this very morning, just before we rigged church. He and the second mate were looking at the six-pounders and he said "Oh ye mortal engines, whose rude throats/Th'im-mortal Jove's dread clamours counterfeit." '
'Capital, capital. I doubt if Shakespeare could have done much better,' said Stephen, nodding gravely. Of late he had noticed a very vicious tendency in these two young men, a tendency to indulge in bare-faced theft, each confident that the other's reading scarcely went beyond Robinson's Elements of Navigation.”
― Patrick O'Brian, Treason's Harbour

“The dear Doctor was not leaving yet; he was going to indulge her by staying for a while; and
this she said with a smile at Stephen, a smile that Jack intercepted and that gave him a blow as sharp and sudden as a pistol-shot. For although he might mistake signals addressed to himself he could scarcely be mistaken about those flying for another man.”
― Patrick O'Brian, Treason's Harbour

“I am so sorry,' she said. 'I will try to do better now.'
Alas for the word. The adagio called for subtle phrasing, and it called in vain: she cast him several apologetic looks until a particularly wild aberration made him pause, his bow in the air, when she laid her hands in her lap and said 'Shall we go back to the beginning?'
'By all means,' said Stephen. But it was not a successful experiment: between them they slowly murdered poor Contarini, Maturin now playing as badly as his partner, and when his A string broke with a solemn twang two thirds of the way through the adagio there was a general feeling of relief.”
― Patrick O'Brian, Treason's Harbour

“They dismissed the imperfect subjunctive with perfect indifference on either side, and Jack, his imagination now somewhat heated, was speaking of the gossip that concerned them. In spite of her imperfect knowledge of English and his want of perfect coherence she caught the general drift of his remarks and before he could reach the point of expressing his earnest desire that these rumours should be given a solid foundation - his view that natural justice required such a course, since they had suffered innocently - she cut him short.”
― Patrick O'Brian, Treason's Harbour