Quotes from the Aubreyad

One quote per day from the works of Patrick O'Brian. They will mainly be from the Aubreyad but occasionally something else might slip in. Enjoy!

[quotingobrian]

In times of stress Jack Aubrey had two main reactions: he either became aggressive or he became amorous; he longed either for the violent catharsis of action or for that of making love. He loved a battle: he loved a wench.

Master and Commander, Patrick O’Brian

[quotingobrian]

‘Thank you, thank you,’ said Stephen, scrambling up the dark sea-washed band to the shining white surface beyond: and there he stopped dead. Immediately in front of his nose, almost touching it, there was a sitting booby. Two, four, six boobies, as white as the bare rock they sat on – a carpet of boobies, young and old; and among them quantities of terns. The nearest booby looked at him without much interest; a slight degree of irritation was all he could detect in that long reptilian face and bright round eye. He advanced his finger and touched the bird, which shrugged its person; and as he did so a great rush of wings filled the air – another booby landing with a full crop for its huge gaping child on the naked rock a few feet away. ‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph,’ he murmured, straightening to survey the island, a smooth mound like a vast worn molar tooth, with birds thick in all the hollows. The hot air was full of their sound, coming and going; full of the ammoniac smell of their droppings and the reek of fish; and all over the hard white surface it shimmered in the heat and the intolerable glare so that birds fifty yards up the slope could hardly be focused and the ridge of the mound wavered like a taut rope that had been plucked. Waterless, totally arid. Not a blade of grass, not a weed, not a lichen: stench, blazing rock and unmoving air. ‘This is a paradise,’ cried Stephen.

HMS Surprise, Patrick O’Brian

[quotingobrian]

Jack, watching from his side of the quarterdeck, was wholly amazed: he had no idea that Stephen could hold a sword, nor yet load a pistol, still less knock the pips out of a playing-card at twenty paces: yet he had known him intimately. He was pleased that his friend was doing so well; he was pleased at the respectful silence; but he was a little sad that he could not join in, that he stood necessarily aloof – the captain could not compete – and he was obscurely uneasy. There was something disagreeable, and somehow reptilian, about the cold, contained way Stephen took up his stance, raised his pistol, looked along the barrel with his pale eyes, and shot the head off the king of hearts

Post Captain, Patrick O’Brian

[quotingobrian]

Neither Killick nor Bonden had ever expressed the slightest concern about Captain Aubrey’s trial and condemnation. They had the great delicacy of feeling in important matters that Jack, after many, many years experience and very close contact, had come to expect of the lower deck; there was no overt sympathy whatsoever apart from their attentive presence, and Killick was if anything more cross-grained than he had been all these years, by way of showing that there was no difference.

The Letter of Marque - Patrick O’Brian

[quotingobrian]

Wray laughed and said ‘I remember a Frenchman who acknowledged all sorts of very grave faults in Buonaparte, including tyranny, as you so rightly say, and even worse a total ignorance of French grammar, usage and manners, but who nevertheless supported him with all his might. His argument was this: the arts alone distinguish men from the brutes and make life almost bearable – the arts flourish only in time of peace – universal rule is a prerequisite for universal peace – and here as I recall he quoted Gibbon on the happiness of living in the age of the Antonines, concluding that in effect the absolute Roman emperor, even Marcus Aurelius, was a tyrant, if only in posse, but that the pax romana was worth the potential exercise of this tyranny. As my Frenchman saw it, Napoleon was the only man or rather demi-god capable of imposing a universal empire, so on humanitarian and artistic grounds he fought in the Garde impériale.’

Treason’s Harbour, Patrick O’Brian

[quotingobrian]

It was a cheerful meal. Jack was a good host, and when he had time to concern himself with them he was fond of the little brutes from the midshipmen’s berth; furthermore he was in remarkably high spirits and he amused himself and the young gentlemen extremely by dwelling at length on the fact that the country they had just quitted was practically the same as Dalmatia – a mere continuation of Dalmatia – so famous for its spotted dogs. He himself had seen quantities of spotted dogs – had even hunted behind a couple of braces – spotted dogs in a pack of hounds, oh Lord! – while the town of Kutali was positively infested with spotted youths and maidens, and now the Doctor swore he had seen spotted eagles . . . Jack laughed until the tears came into his eyes. In a Dalmatian inn, he said, by way of pudding you could call for spotted dick, give pieces of it to a spotted dog, and throw the remains to the spotted eagles.

The Ionian Mission, Patrick O’Brian

[quotingobrian]

In the cabin he was shocked to find Jack Aubrey standing waiting for him, unusually tall, grave and stern, dressed in a fine bottle-green coat and a gleaming newly-tied neck-cloth. ‘Really, Stephen, what a fellow you are,’ he said. ‘We are invited to dine in the gunroom and here you are like something sent aboard from the receiving-ship. Padeen, there. Pass the word for Padeen.’ And to Padeen, ‘Shave and brush your master directly: put out his best coat, black satin breeches, silk stockings, silver-buckled shoes. He will be here in five minutes.’ In five minutes he was there, bleeding from three small cuts and looking somewhat confused.

The Letter of Marque, Patrick O’Brian

[quotingobrian]

‘But do you think they will ever see us, with this fog, and no moon, no moon at all?’ ‘They may find it a little difficult, though it is amazing how something that floats shows up on the night sea, when you are looking for it. In any case I shall hail every so often, like a minute gun, to help them. But, you know, it would be no very great harm, were we to have to wait until day. The water is as warm as milk, there is no kind of a sea apart from the swell, and if you stretch out your arms, stick out your belly and throw your head back till your ears are awash you will find you float as easy as kiss my hand.’ The minute-gun hails succeeded one another in a long, long series; Stephen floated easy; and they drifted westwards on the equatorial current, westwards and probably a little north. Jack reflected upon the relativity of motion, upon the difficulty of measuring the speed or set of a current if your ship is moving with it and you can neither anchor nor observe any fixed point of land; and he wondered how Mowett would set about searching once the alarm was raised. If the observations were conscientiously made and the log accurately heaved, read and recorded, then it would not be very hard for him to run back close-hauled or even with the wind one point free, always provided that the breeze remained steady at south-east by south and that his estimate of the current was correct: each degree of error in that would, in the course of an hour’s sailing at four and a half knots, amount to … In the midst of his calculations he became aware that Stephen, lying there as stiff as a board, was becoming distressed. ‘Stephen,’ he said, pushing him, for Stephen’s head was thrown back so far that he could not easily hear, ‘Stephen, turn over, put your arms round my neck, and we will swim for a little.’ Then as he felt Stephen’s feet on the back of his legs, ‘You have not kicked off your shoes. Do not you know you must kick off your shoes? What a fellow you are, Stephen.’ So they went on, sometimes swimming gently, sometimes floating in the luke-warm sea, rising and falling on the very long, regular swell. They did not talk much, though Stephen did observe that it was all very much easier, now that he was allowed to change position from time to time; even the act of floating came to him more naturally with use – ‘I believe I may set up as a Triton.’ And on another occasion he said, ‘I am very deeply indebted to you, Jack, for supporting me in this way.’

The Far Side of the World, Patrick O’Brian

[quotingobrian]

Do you remember the Leopard, Stephen?’ ‘The horrible old Leopard?’ ‘What a fellow you are, to be sure. First you crab my new filly, the finest prospect for the Oaks I have ever seen – and let me tell you, old Stephen, with all due modesty, that I am the best judge of a horse in the Navy.’ ‘I make no doubt of it, my dear: I have seen several naval horses, ha, ha. For horses they must be called, since they generally have the best part of four legs, and no other member of the animal kingdom can call them kin.’ Stephen relished his own wit, and for some little time he uttered the creaking sound that was his nearest approach to laughter, and said, ‘The Oaks, forsooth!’

Desolation Island, Patrick O’Brian

[quotingobrian]

Or listen to this: a neat gentleman’s residence, standing upon gravel, is to be let by the year, at moderate terms. Stabling for ten, it says.’ ‘Are there any rooms?’ ‘Why, of course there are. It couldn’t be called a neat gentleman’s residence, without there were rooms. What a fellow you are, Stephen.

Post Captain, Patrick O’Brian

[quotingobrian]

The library was indeed a noble room, running almost the whole width of the first floor, with five bays to the south and an east window; though the early light had scarcely yet strength enough to show more than shadowy ranges of book-cases, all of a kind, panelling, and countless dim spines behind glass, long tables in the middle, wing-chairs by the fireplace, and some rolled-up sacking bundles, Sophie’s shame. ‘My great-grandfather the judge was a prodigious reader,’ said Jack, ‘and so was his great-grandfather – it skips generations, sometimes, like stamina in horses. You must spend a day or two in here, if it comes on to rain.’

The Yellow Admiral, Patrick O’Brian

[quotingobrian]

‘Upon my word, Sophie, you are in prodigious fine looks today,’ he said, narrowing his eyes and peering at her. ‘Your hair – I dare say you have been brushing it?

Post Captain, Patrick O’Brian

[quotingobrian]

‘I am not sure that the response is altogether civil: but be that as it may, I will tell you, Jack, that if they are bad in Port Desire and worse in Bahia, they are likely to be downright outrageous in the River Plate, where we are to meet the South African ships. Yet if I am not mistaken we are likely to be there well before Lord Leyton – well before even your little squadron …’ ‘What the Devil do you mean by my little squadron? It is a perfectly normal squadron, rather large than otherwise. Two ships of the line apart from Suffolk: a fifty-gun ship, two considerable sloops of war …’ ‘Hush, hush, Jack. Never fly into a passion, soul,’ cried Stephen, seeing that his friend was seriously annoyed. ‘Sure you must know after all this time that we use little as an endearment – a meliorative term, as one says my little Puss to a handsome Amazon that weighs fifteen stone in her shift. So we arrive, do you follow me now, well before his lordship, whom God preserve, and our natural allies, all because of our commendable zeal.

The Unfinished Voyage of Jack Aubrey, Patrick O’Brian

[quotingobrian]

There is nothing here. Perhaps it is just as well.' 'Should you like me to look at the paper?' asked Jack. 'By all means. But it is as plain as can be. "Press the third bolt-head under the larboard shelf-piece three foot nine inches from the bulkhead."' 'Stephen,' said Jack, 'I believe that is the starboard shelfpiece you are looking at.' 'Oh your soul to the devil, Jack,' cried Stephen. 'This is my left hand, is it not?' - holding it up - 'And what is on the left or unlucky or indeed sinister side is the larboard.' 'You are forgetting that we have turned about,' said Jack. 'We are now facing aft, you know. The third bolthead, did you say?' He pressed, and instantly and with a surprisingly loud crash a metal box fell from the seam, striking the deck with one corner and bursting open.

The Far Side of the World, Patrick O’Brian

[quotingobrian]

had no choice. When I was a boy it was Homer and Virgil, Homer and Virgil entirely and many a stripe and many a tear between. But I came to love him for all that, and I quite agree with you – he is the very prince of poets. The Odyssey is a fine tale, sure, though I never could cordially like Ulysses: he lied excessively, it seems to me; and if a man lies beyond a certain point a sad falseness enters into him and he is no longer amiable.’ Stephen spoke with some feeling: his work in intelligence had called for a great deal of duplicity – perhaps too much. ‘… no longer amiable. And I should not quarrel with those who say that Homer had no great hand in the poem. But the Iliad, of God love his soul, never was such a book as the Iliad!’

The Far Side of the World, Patrick O’Brian

[quotingobrian]

‘A ship!’ cried Jack, springing heavily into the air. There were tears in his eyes, and Stephen saw that he might wish to shake hands at any minute. He disliked all effusion, privately thinking the English far too much given to weeping and the flow of soul; he pursed his lips with a sour expression, and put his hands behind his back.

The Mauritius Command, Patrick O’Brian

[quotingobrian]

'Hold him,' said Jack to the dark seamen closing in. 'Maragall, ask him where Stephen is.' 'Vous etes un officier anglais, monsieur?' asked Dutourd, ignoring Maragall. ‘Answer, God rot your bloody soul,’ cried Jack with a flush of such fury that he trembled.

HMS Surprise, Patrick O’Brian