Captain Aubrey took him by the elbow and said in a private voice, 'Hold hard, Stephen: this is the Admiral, you know.'
Stephen looked at Aubrey with his strange pale eyes, red-rimmed now after days and nights of almost incessant exertion, and said, 'Listen now, Jack, will you? I have an amputation on my hands, and I would not pause to chat with the Archangel Gabriel himself. I have only stepped up to fetch my small retractor from the cabin. And tell that man not to talk so loud.'
–The Surgeon's Mate, Patrick O’Brian












