#ttgs1

[aubreyad-indexed]

He consoled himself with reflecting that the steward's eavesdropping was perfectly disinterested - the true miser's love for coins as coins, not as a means of exchange - and that his loyalty to Jack's interests (as perceived by Killick) was beyond all question.

–The Thirteen Gun Salute, Patrick O’Brian

[aubreyad-indexed]

Jack Aubrey had little notion of his friend’s mathematical or astronomical abilities and none whatsoever of his seamanship, while his performance at billiards, tennis or fives, let alone cricket, would have been contemptible if they had not excited such a degree of hopeless compassion; but where physic, a foreign language and political intelligence were concerned, Maturin might have been all the Sibyls rolled into one, together with the Witch of Edmonton, Old Moore, Mother Shipton and even the holy Nautical Almanack.

-The Thirteen Gun Salute, Patrick O'Brian

[aubreyad-indexed]

He looked aft, where Stephen would ordinarily be leaning over the taffrail gazing at the wake. No Stephen. ‘I suppose the Doctor has gone below,’ he said. ‘He would have liked that. We might ease off again and ask him to come on deck.’

'I doubt we might get a short answer,’ said Pullings in a low voice. 'He is sitting there with so many papers he might be paying off a first-rate, and he roared at Mr. Martin just now like a bull.’

As far as devotion was concerned, Nathaniel Martin’s was directed more towards Maturin than Aubrey, and Stephen’s snappishness had quite wounded him.

–The Thirteen Gun Salute, Patrick O'Brian