Favorite quotes 2: Stephen

Jack glanced at the top of the pile, paused, then cried, "There! There you are. Just so. There's the service for you from clew to earing -- the Royal Navy, stock and fluke. You get into a fine flow of patriotic fervour -- you are ready to plunge into the thick of the battle -- and you are asked to sign this sort of thing." He passed Stephen the carefully-written sheet.

His Majesty's Sloop Sophie
at sea

My Lord,
I am to beg you will be pleased to order a Court Martial to be held on Isaac Wilson (seaman) belonging to the Sloop I have the honour to Command for having committed the unnatural Crime of Sodomy on a Goat, in the Goathouse, on the evening of March 16th.
I have the Honour to remain, my Lord,
Your Lordship's most obedient very humble servant

The Rt. Hon. Lord Keith, K.B., etc., etc.
Admiral of the Blue.

"It is odd how the law always harps upon the unnaturalness of sodomy," observed Stephen. "Though I know at least two judges who are paederasts; and of course barristers ... What will happen to him?"

"Oh, he'll be hanged. Run up at the yard-arm, and boats attending from every ship in the fleet."

"That seems a little extreme."

"Of course it is. Oh, what an infernal bore -- witnesses going over to the flagship by the dozen, days lost ... The Sophie a laughing-stock. Why will they report these things? The goat must be slaughtered -- that's but fair -- and it shall be served out to the mess that informed on him."

"Could you not set them both ashore -- on separate shores, if you have strong feelings on the moral issue -- and sail quietly away?"

"Well," said Jack, whose anger had died down. "Perhaps there is something in what you propose. A dish of tea? You take milk, sir?"

"Goat's milk, sir?"

"Why, I suppose it is."

"Perhaps without milk, then, if you please."

Master and Commander, p. 116-117.

It was Paris, with a rectangular sail-cloth parcel. Stephen ran to him, took it from his arms with infinite precaution and set it on the table, pressing his ear to its side. "Listen, Jack," he said, smiling. "Put your ear firmly to the top and listen while I tap." The parcel gave a sudden momentary hum. "Did you hear? That shows they are queen-right -- that no harm has come to their queen. But we must open it at once; they must have air. There! A glass hive. Is it not ingenious, charming? I have always wanted to keep bees."

"But how in God's name do you expect to keep bees in a man-of-war?" cried Jack. "Where in God's name do you expect them to find flowers, at sea? How will they eat?"

"You can see their every motion," said Stephen, close against the glass, entranced. "Oh, as for their feeding, never fret your anxious mind; they will feed with us upon a saucer of sugar, at stated intervals. If the ingenious Monsieur Huber can keep bees, and he blind, the poor man, surely we can manage in a great spacious xebec?"

"This is a frigate."

"Let us never split hairs, for all love. There is the queen! Come, look at the queen!"

"How many of those reptiles might there be?" asked Jack, holding pretty much aloof.

"Oh, sixty thousand or so, I dare say," said Stephen carelessly. "And when it comes on to blow, we will ship gimbals for the hive. This will preserve them from undue lateral motion."

"You think of almost everything," said Jack. "Well, I will wear the bees, like Damon and Pythagoras -- ho, a mere sixty thousand bees in the cabin don't signify, much. But I tell you what it is, Stephen: you don't always think of quite everything."

"You refer to the queen's being a virgin?" said Stephen.

"Not really. No. What I really meant was, that this is a crack frigate."

"I am delighted to hear it. There she goes -- she lays an egg! You need not fear for her virginity, Jack."

"And in this frigate they are very particular. Did not you remark the show of uniforms as you came aboard -- an admiral's inspection -- a royal review?"

"No. I cannot truthfully say that I did. Tell me, brother, is there some uneasiness on your mind?"

"Stephen, will you for the love of God take off that thing?"

"My wool garment? You have noticed it, have you? I had forgot, or I should have pointed it out. Have you ever seen anything so deeply rational? See, I can withdraw my head entirely: the same applies to the feet and the hands. Warm, yet unencumbering; light; and above all healthy -- no constriction anywhere! Paris, who was once a framework knitter, made it to my design; he is working on one for you at present."

"Stephen, you would favour me deeply by taking it right off. It is unphilosophical of me, I know, but this is only an acting-command, and I cannot afford to be laughed at."

"But you have often told me that it does not matter what one wears at sea. You yourself appear in nankeen trousers, a thing that I should never, never countenance. And this" -- plucking at his bosom with a disappointed air -- "partakes of the nature both of the Guernsey frock and of the free and easy pantaloon."

Post Captain, p. 405-407.

In the morning he appeared, eager and sharp-set at the breakfast-table, on the first stroke of the bell. "Are you sure you should not stay abed?" cried Jack.

"Never in life, soul," said Stephen, reaching for the coffee-pot, "am I not telling you for ever that I am well? A slice of that ham, if you please. No, in all sobriety, if it had not been for poor unhappy Nicholls, I should have been glad to be marooned. It was uncomfortable -- I was roasted, to be sure -- but it has done extraordinary things to my sinews, more than the waters of Bath in a hundred years. No pain, no awkwardness! I could dance a jig, and an elegant jig. And quite apart from that, what else would have allowed me day after day of detailed observation? The arthropods alone ... Before I went to bed last night, before I turned in, I threw down a mass of undigested notes, and merely for the arthropods there were seventeen pages! You shall see them. You shall have the maidenhead of my observations."

"I shall be very happy; thank you, Stephen."

H.M.S. Surprise, p. 137.

"A most capital dinner, upon my word. The duck was the best I have ever tasted."

"I was sorry to see you help yourself to him a fourth time: duck is a melancholy meat. In any case the rich sauce in which it bathed was not at all the thing for a subject of your corpulence. Apoplexy lurks in dishes of that kind. I signalled to you, but you did not attend."

"Is that why you were looking so mumchance?"

"I was displeased with my neighbours, too."

"The nymphs in green? Delightful girls."

"It is clear you have been a great while at sea, to call those sandy-haired coarse-featured pimply short-necked thick-fingered vulgar-minded lubricious blockheads by such a name. Nymphs, forsooth. If they were nymphs, they must have had their being in a tolerably rank and stagnant pool: the wench on my left had an ill breath, and turning for relief I found her sister had a worse; and the upper garment of neither was free from reproach. Worse lay below, I make no doubt. 'La, sister,' cries the one to the other, breathing across me -- vile teeth; and 'La, sister,' cries the other. I have no notion of two sisters wearing the same clothes, the same flaunting meretricious gawds, the same tortured Gorgon curls low over their brutish criminal foreheads; it bespeaks a superfetation of vulgarity, both innate and studiously acquired. And when I think that their teeming loins will people the East ... Pray pour me out another cup of coffee. Confident brutes."

H.M.S. Surprise, p. 278-279.

He strolled up the beach. "Such a charming observation, Stephen," he called out as he came near the tree. "I am sorry to have kept you so long, but it was worth it. All our calculations tally, and the chronometers were out by twenty-seven mile. We have laid down the island as exactly -- my God, what is that monstrous thing?"

"It is a tortoise, my dear. The great land-tortoise of the world: a new genus. He is unknown to science, and in comparison of him, your giants of Rodriguez and Aldabra are inconsiderable reptiles. He must weight a ton. I do not know that I have ever been so happy. I am in such spirits, Jack! How you will ever get him aboard, I cannot tell; but nothing is impossible to the Navy."

"Must we get him aboard?"

"Oh, no question about it. He is to immortalise your name. This is Testudo aubreii for all eternity; when the Hero of the Nile is forgotten, Captain Aubrey will live on in his tortoise. There's glory for you."

"Why, I am much obliged, Stephen, I am sure. I suppose we might parbuckle him down the beach. How did you come by him?"

"I wandered a little way inland, looking for specimens -- that box is filled with 'em: such wealth! Enough for half a dozen monographs -- and there he was in an open space, eating Ficus religiosa. I plucked some high shoots he was straining for, and he followed me down here, eating them. He is the most confiding creature, wholly without distrust. God help him and his kind when other men find out this island. See his gleaming eye! He would like another leaf. It does me good to see him. This tortoise has quite recovered me," he cried, putting his arm around the enormous carapace.

H.M.S. Surprise, p. 362.

As they skirted the meagre potatoes he pointed over the hedge and said, "That is the cow."

"I thought it must be a cow: for milk, I make no doubt?"

"Just so. Vast great quantities of milk, butter, cream, veal: that is to say, we look forward to them presently. At the moment she happens to be dry."

"Yet she does not look gravid. Rather the reverse, indeed: lean, Pharaonic, cadaverous."

"Well, the fact of the matter, Stephen," said Jack, staring at the cow, "the fact of the matter is that she refuses the bull. He is game enough, oh Lord, yes; but she will have nothing to say to him. Then he flies into a hellfire passion, bellowing and tearing up the ground; and we go without milk."

"From a philosophical point of view, her behaviour is logical enough. Reflect upon the continual, wearisome pregnancies, the price of a momentary and I may say aleatory pleasure. Reflect upon the physical discomfort of a full udder, to say nothing of the necessary parturition, with its attendant perils. I do not mention the uneasiness of seeing one's offspring turned into a blanquette de veau; for this is peculiar to the cow. Were I a female of any kind, I should beg to decline these general cares; and were I, in this particular case, a heifer, I should certainly choose to remain dry. Yet it must be confessed that from a domestical point of view celibacy in a cow takes on a different aspect entirely: here the general good calls out for teeming loins."

"Yes," said Jack. "It does."

The Mauritius Command, p. 21-22.

It stood before him now, a pale creature with a bulky hog-backed body close on five feet long, a broad tail, an immense elongated head ending in a disk-like snout, short stout legs and disproportionately long translucent ass's ears; it was partially covered with sparse yellowish hair that showed the unwholesome nightwalker's skin below; it blinked repeatedly. The aardvark was acutely conscious of its position and from time to time it licked its small tubular lips, for not only had it been measured and weighed, while a tuft of bristles that could ill be spared had been clipped from its flank, but now it was being looked at through a diminishing-glass and drawn. It was a meek, apologetic animal, incapable of biting and too shy to scratch; and it grew lower and lower in its spirits: its ears drooped until they obscured its weak, melancholy, long-lashed eyes.

"There, honey, it is done," said Stephen, showing the aardvark its likeness.

The Mauritius Command, p. 166-167.

"Lord, Sophie, perhaps there may be something in what you say. I was so taken up with this damned business of Kimber and the Leopard and my letter to the Admiralty that I hardly considered -- of course, I saw he looked hipped, and I supposed she had played him some vile trick. But he never gave me so much as a hint of it; he never said, 'My affairs don't run as smooth as I could wish, in a certain quarter, so I will go with you in the Leopard', or 'Jack, I could do with a change of climate, I could do with a tropical climate'. I should have smoked that instantly."

"Stephen is far too delicate. Once he had seen that you had changed your mind about the ship, he would never mention his own concerns. But if you had heard him speak of wombats -- oh, just in passing, and not with any sense of ill-usage -- it would have brought tears to your eyes. Oh, Jack, he is so very low."

Desolation Island, p. 68-69.

"Lord, Stephen," said Jack, when they had returned to the Ariel, "I do not know that I have ever been so sleepy: I shall turn in as soon as we have unmoored."

"Surely we are not to set off again without a pause, for all love?"

"Eh?"

"Are we to set off at once? And on a Friday too?"

"Yes, of course we are. You said yourself that the sooner they were repatriated the better; the Admiral and the politico quite agreed; so here it is in my orders. You had better look at them: they speak of you. And as for its being Friday, I don't believe in omens any more, not after this last caper."

"We really might be a parcel of Wandering Jews," said Stephen in a discontented voice. He took the orders and observed, "There seems to be a somewhat petulant insistence upon command and authority here. After so agreeable and shall I say matey afternoon I should have looked for My dear Aubrey rather than this cold and peremptory Sir; and surely the whole tenor is arrogant, devoid of common amenity, calculated to arouse a spirit of indignant revolt. Sir, You are hereby required and directed to proceed without a moment's loss of time, in His Majesty's ship under your command, together with the ships and vessels named in the margin, to Hano Bay, where you will find a convoy under the protection of his Majesty's ships ... I wish Humbug had been among them: such pompous hectoring tautologous semi-literate stuff ... you will leave the convoy when you reach the Broad Fourteens and make your way with the utmost diligence to the Bordeaux stream, where you may expect to find His Majesty's ship Eurydice for intelligence of the situation in the Bight of Biscay; failing her you will proceed to Santandero or Passages for the same purpose ... and in all matters having to do with the landing of the Spanish troops you will follow the advice of Dr S. Maturin, who alone is to determine ... seek his guidance on the opportunity of ... Marquess of Wellington ... submit to his judgment ... A man of any spirit would be more inclined to toss S. Maturin into the sea than to ask his advice after this ... Spanish troops, forsooth." He had been aware for some time that Jack was asleep, but he maundered on until Hyde came in with the news that the Ariel's signal to proceed to sea was flying aboard the flagship.

The Surgeon's Mate, p. 265-266.

Not all their tastes were the same, however: from behind his green spectacles Stephen watched Wray when the young man of the house, a beautiful youth with caressing ways, brought them their drinks, their cigars, their lights, and then unnecessary lights again, and it occurred to him that the Second Secretary was probably a paederast, or at least one who, like Horace, might burn for either sex. This aroused no virtuous indignation in Stephen; no indignation of any kind. He loved Horace, and, having the usual tolerant Mediterranean attitude, he had loved many another man with the same eclectic inclinations.

Treason's Harbour, p. 245.

Few creatures in the sea gave Stephen Maturin more delight than dolphins, and here in the Strait of Otranto he had them by the score. One particular troop had been with the ship ever since he finished with the sick-bay, and he had been watching them all this time, as far forward as he could get, leaning against the warm figurehead and gazing down. The dolphins would come racing up the larboard, the sunlit side, and leap all together before crossing and going down to play in the wake before running up again: sometimes they would scratch themselves against the frigate's side or even her cutwater before turning, but generally they leapt, and he would see their amiable faces clear of the water. The same troop, with two exceptionally fat, profusely spotted dolphins in it, had appeared several times before; he knew most of the individuals, and he was convinced that they were aware of his presence. He hoped that they recognized him and even liked him, and each time they rose he waved.

Treason's Harbour, p. 290.

Dr Maturin had many of the virtues required in a medical man: he listened to what his patients had to say; he wished even the most repulsive of them well, once they had committed themselves to his care; he was indifferent to their fees; and with a great deal of reading and a great deal of experience, he was fully aware of the narrow limits of his powers -- an awareness that on occasion he disguised, but only to keep their spirits up (he was a great believer in the healing powers of cheerfulness, if not of open mirth). Yet he had some faults, and one was a habit of dosing himself, generally from a spirit of inquiry, as in his period of inhaling large quantities of the nitrous oxide and of the vapour of hemp, to say nothing of tobacco, bhang in all its charming varieties in India, betel in Java and the neighbouring islands, qat in the Red Sea, and hallucinating cacti in South America, but sometimes for relief from distress, as when he became addicted to opium in one form or another; and now he was busily poisoning himself with coca-leaves, whose virtue he had learnt in Peru.

The Commodore, p. 187-188.

"It is only a rough draft, Doctor," said Tom.

Stephen read for a while. "What do you mean by expediently?" he asked. "... proceeded as expediently as possible."

"Why, as fast as ever we could sail," said one; and "Like expedition, you know," said the other. "With the greatest expedition."

"If you do not like as fast as ever we could sail..." began Stephen.

"No," said Tom. "As fast as ever we could sail is low."

"Then put with the utmost celerity," said Stephen.

"Celerity. There's a word for you," said Tom, smiling. "How do you spell it, sir?" A pause. "How do you... are you feeling quite well, sir?"

Startled, they both looked at him with great concern as he sat there gasping. Jack pulled the bell-line and to the answering Grimble he said "Pass the word for the surgeon's mate. Tell Killick to ready cot, nightshirt, chamber-pot."

Both assistant-surgeons reported within the minute, Killick only seconds later, and in the ensuing contention the faint Stephen, weak in body and will, was overwhelmed by kindly insistence. "Infection be damned," said the Commodore. "I had a touch of the yellow jack in Jamaica when I was a boy: I was salted. Besides, it ain't infectious."

The Commodore, p. 227.