Favorite quotes 4: Jack

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, p. 245.

"I have a damned odd feeling: I do not much care to be home tonight. Strange, because I had looked forward to it -- lively as a libertyman this morning -- and now I do not care for it so much. Sometimes at sea you have that feeling of a lee-shore. Dirty weather, close-reefed top-sails, not a sight of the sun, not an observation for days, no idea of where you are to within a hundred miles or so, and at night you feel the loom of the shore under your lee: you can see nothing, but you can almost hear the rocks grinding out your bottom."

Post Captain, p. 64.

"Christ," he said aloud, the new thought striking him with horror, "what if I had seen them both together?" He dwelt on this possibility for a while, and to get rid of the very unpleasant image of himself, with Sophie's gentle, questioning eyes looking straight at him and wondering, 'Can this scrub be Jack Aubrey?' he turned left and left again, walking fast over the bare Heath until he struck into his first path, where a scattering of birches showed ghastly white in the drizzle. It occurred to him that he should put some order into his thoughts about those two. Yet there was something so very odious, so very grossly indecent, in making any sort of comparison, in weighing up, setting side-by-side, evaluating. Stephen blamed him for being muddle-headed, wantonly muddle-headed, refusing to follow his ideas to their logical conclusion. "You have all the English vices, my dear, including muddle-headed sentiment and hypocrisy." Yet it was nonsense to drag in logic where logic did not apply. To think clearly in such a case was inexpressibly repugnant: logic could apply only to a deliberate seduction or to a marriage of interest.

Taking his bearings, however, was something else again: he had never attempted to do so yet, nor to find out the deep nature of his present feelings. He had a profound distrust for this sort of exercise, but now it was important -- it was of the first importance.

"Your money or your life," said a voice very close at hand.

"What? What? What did you say?"

The man stepped from behind the trees, the rain glinting on his weapon. "I said, 'Your money or your life,'" he said, and coughed.

Instantly the cloak in his face. Jack had him by the shirt, worrying him, shaking him with terrible vehemence, jerking him high off the ground. The shirt gave way: he stood staggering, his arms out. Jack hit him a great left-handed blow on the ear and kicked his legs from under him as he fell.

He snatched up the cudgel and stood over him, breathing hard and waving his left hand -- knuckles split: a damned unhandy blow -- it had been like hitting a tree. He was filled with indignation. "Dog, dog, dog," he said, watching for movement. But there was no movement, and after a while Jack's teeth unclenched: he stirred the body with his foot. "Come, sir. Up you get. Rise and shine." After a few more orders of this sort, delivered pretty loud, he sat the fellow up and shook him. Head dangling, utterly limp; wet and cold; no breath, no heartbeat, very like a corpse. "God damn his eyes," said Jack, "he's died on me."

The increasing rain brought his cloak to mind; he found it, put it on, and stood over the body again. Poor wretched little brute -- could not be more than seven or eight stone -- and as incompetent a footpad as could be imagined -- had been within a toucher of adding "if you please" to his demand -- no notion of attack. Was he dead? He was not: one hand scrabbled in vague, disordered motion.

Jack shivered: the heat of walking and of the brief struggle had worn off in this waiting pause, and he wrapped his cloak tighter; it was a raw night, with frost a certainty before dawn. More vain, irritated shaking, rough attempts at revival. "Jesus, what a bore," he said. At sea there would have been no problem, but here on land it was different -- he had a different sense of tidiness ashore -- and after a disgusted pause he wrapped the object in his cloak (not from any notion of humanity, but to keep the mud, blood and perhaps worse off his clothes), picked it up and walked off.

Seven stone odd was nothing much for the first hundred yards, nor the second; but the smell of his warmed burden grew unpleasant, and he was pleased to see that he was near the place he had entered the Heath, within sight of his own lit window.

"Stephen will soon set him right," he thought: it was known that Stephen could raise the dead so long as the tide had not changed -- had been seen to do it.

Post Captain, p. 178-180.

"How I wish, oh how I wish I were going with you ... It would be of no use begging him to be prudent, not to take risks, I suppose?"

"I will mention it, if you choose. But believe me, honey, Jack is not an imprudent man -- not at sea. He never takes a risk without he has weighed it very carefully: he loves his ship and his men too much, far too much, to run them into any unconsidered danger -- he is not one of your wild, hit-or-miss, fire-eating rapparees."

"He would never do anything rash?"

"Never in life. It's true, you know; quite true," he added, seeing that Sophia was not wholly persuaded that Jack at sea and Jack ashore were two different persons.

H.M.S. Surprise, p. 21.

Jack felt a momentary and quite ignoble pang of jealousy at the sight of the women -- particularly Sophie -- concentrating their idiot love and devotion upon the little creature, but he had barely time to be ashamed of it, he had barely time to reflect 'I have been Queen of the May too long', before Amos Dray, formerly bosun's mate in HMS Surprise and, in the line of duty, the most conscientious, impartial flogger in the fleet before he lost his leg, shaded his mouth with his hand and in a deep rumble whispered, "Toe the lie, my dears."

The two little pudding-faced twin girls in clean pinafores stepped forward to a particular mark on the carpet, and together, piping high and shrill, they cried, "Good morning, sir."

"Good morning, Charlotte. Good morning, Fanny," said their father, bending down until his breeches creaked to kiss them. "Why, Fanny, you have a lump on your forehead."

"I'm not Fanny," said Charlotte, scowling. "I'm Charlotte."

"But you are wearing a blue pinafore," said Jack.

"Because Fanny put on mine; and she fetched me a swipe with her slipper, the ---- swab," said Charlotte, with barely contained passion.

Desolation Island, p. 8-9.

Jack stood there leaning on the rail, looking at the boat and out at the moonlit harbour, the vague looming of the islands and the powerful batteries. The tide flowed, perpetually mounting, the fenders strained and squeaked, and by imperceptible degrees the Arcturus's deck rose above the level of the quay. He kept a continual watch on the shifting currents, the swing of the small-craft and their buoys, the changing sky -- the seaman was all alive -- and all the time his ear was stretched, however illogically at this hour, for some clamour in the town, parties hurrying along the waterfront, searching the ships. He also weighed a number of alternative courses of action if the breeze and his forecasts should fail. And beneath all this his mind strayed far away: to England and Sophie of course, but also to Acasta, his promised command, and the possibility of a meeting that might set the balance more nearly right, and lift the black depression that had been with him ever since his first hour in the Java. Guerrière, Macedonian, and Java; it was more than a man could bear.

Before this Stephen had called him a deeply superstitious man. Perhaps he was: he certainly had a strong belief in luck, as shown by various portents, some of them trivial enough, such as the presence of the star Arcturus overhead, and by a feeling, impossible to define, though a particularly steady confidence formed part of it, that told him when the tide was in his favour. He felt it now, and although from a primitive piety he dared not let the words form even in the remotest corner of his mind, he thought he should succeed.

The Fortune of War, p. 268-269.

Their daily life, though confined and dull, might have been very much more disagreeable. It quickly assumed an ordered shape: Jack did not exactly organize them into watches, but he showed them how the place could be brought to something like naval cleanliness with nothing but the most primitive means and a mere three sweepings in the course of the day.

The Surgeon's Mate, p. 335.

"Do you know, sir," said Jack to Professor Graham, "this is the first decent pudding I have had since I left home. By some mischance the suet was neglected to be shipped; and you will agree that a spotted dog or a drowned baby is a hollow mockery, a whited sepulchre, without it is made with suet. There is an art in puddings, to be sure; but what is art without suet?"

"What indeed?" said Graham. "But there are also puddings in art, I understand -- in the art of managing a ship. Only yesterday I learnt, to my surprise, that you trice puddings athwart the starboard gumbrils, when sailing by and large."

Graham's surprise was nothing to that of the wardroom: "By and large?" they said. "Gumbrils? starboard gumbrils?" Jack's spotted dog hung in his gullet for a moment before he understood that someone had been practising upon the Professor's credulity, an ancient naval form of wit, played off many and many a time on newly-joined young gentlemen, on himself long, long ago, and by Pullings and Mowett on Dr Maturin in former years; but never to his knowledge on any man of Graham's eminence. "Puddings we have, sir," he said, swallowing his own, "and plenty of 'em. There is the wreath of yarns tapering towards the ends and grafted all over that we clap about the fore and main masts just below the trusses before we go into action, to prevent the yards from falling; then there is the pudding on a boat's stern, to act as a fender; and the puddings we lay round the anchor-rings to stop them chafing. But as for the gumbrils, why, I am afraid someone must have been practising on you. They do not exist." The words were scarcely out of his mouth before he wished them back: he knew Stephen extremely well, and that detached, dreamy expression could only mean a consciousness of guilt. "Unless," he added quickly, "it is some archaic term. Yes, I rather think ..."

The Ionian Mission, p. 83-84.

"If he is out of his wits he will have my hand off, maybe," said Jack, having spoken to the dog with no effect. "I must get hold of his collar: a damned long lean." He took off his coat and sword and reached down, far down, but not far enough although he felt his breeches complain. He straightened, took off his waistcoat, loosened his neckcloth and the band of his breeches and leant over again, down into the dimness and the howling that filled the air. This time his hand just touched the water: he saw the dog surge across, called out "Hey there, Ponto, give us your scruff," and poised his hand to seize the collar. To his vexation the animal merely swam heavily to the other side, where it tried to climb the hopeless wall with its flayed, clawless paws, howling steadily.

"Oh you God-damned fool," he cried. "You silly calf-headed bitch. Give us your scruff: bear a hand now, you infernal bugger."

The familiar naval sounds, uttered very loud and echoing in the cistern, pierced through the dog's distress, bringing sense and comfort. He swam over: Jack's hand brushed the hairy head, whipped down to the collar, the damned awkward spiked collar, and took what grip it could. "Hold fast," he said, slipping his fingers farther under. "Stand by." He drew breath, and with his left hand gripping the cistern-rim and his right hooked under the collar, the two as far apart as they could be, he heaved. He had the dog half way out of the water -- a very great weight with such a poor grip, but just possible -- when the edge of the cistern gave way and he fell bodily in. Two thoughts flashed into his plunging mind: 'There go my breeches' and 'I must keep clear of his jaws', and then he was standing on the bottom of the cistern with the water up to his chest and the dog round his neck, its forelegs gripping him in an almost human embrace and its strangled breath in his ear. Strangled, but not demented: Ponto had clearly recovered what wits he possessed. Jack let go the collar, turned the dog about, grasped his middle, and crying "Away aloft" thrust him up towards the rim. Ponto got his paws on to it, then his chin; Jack gave his rump one last powerful heave and he was gone: the mouth of the cistern overhead was empty, but for the pale sky and three stars.

Treason's Harbour, p. 37-38.

On a walk of this kind in the Mediterranean islands he usually saw tortoises, which he did not dislike at all -- far from it -- but they seemed rare on Gozo, and it was not until he had been going for some time that he heard a curious tock-tock-tock and he saw a small one running, positively running across the road, perched high on its legs; it was being pursued by a larger tortoise, who, catching it up, butted it three times in quick succession: it was the clap of the shells that produced the tock-tock-tock. "Tyranny," said Jack, meaning to intervene: but either the last blows had subdued the smaller tortoise -- a female -- or she felt that she had shown all the reluctance that was called for; in any case she stopped. The male covered her, and maintaining himself precariously on her domed back with his ancient folded leathery legs he raised his face to the sun, stretched up his neck, opened his mouth wide and uttered the strangest dying cry.

"Bless me," said Jack, "I had no notion ... how I wish Stephen were here."

Treason's Harbour, p. 52.

The Indiamen were seen quite early in the morning while Jack was in the pure green sea, with nothing below him for a thousand fathoms and nothing on either hand but the African shore some hundreds of miles away on the left and the far remoter Americas on the right. He swam and dived, swam and dived, delighting in the coolness and the living run of water along his naked body and through his long streaming hair; he felt extremely well, aware of his strength and taking joy in it.

The Far Side of the World, p. 134.

"How it comes back," said Dundas; and between them, drinking port, they retold the tale, with minute details coming fresh to their minds. As youngsters, under the charge of the gunner of the Bellerophon, 74, in the West Indies, they had played the same game. Jack, with his infernal luck, had won on that occasion too: Dundas claimed his revenge, and lost again, again on a throw of double six. Harsh words, such as cheat, liar, sodomite, booby and God-damned lubber flew about; and since fighting over a chest, the usual way of settling such disagreements in many ships, was strictly forbidden in the Bellerophon, it was agreed that as gentlemen could not possibly tolerate such language they should fight a duel. During the afternoon watch the first lieutenant, who dearly loved a white-scoured deck, found that the ship was almost out of the best kind of sand, and he sent Mr Aubrey away in the blue cutter to fetch some from an island at the convergence of two currents where the finest and most even grain was found. Mr Dundas accompanied him, carrying two newly-sharpened cutlasses in a sailcloth parcel, and when the hands had been set to work with shovels the two little boys retired behind a dune, unwrapped the parcel, saluted gravely, and set about each other. Half a dozen passes, the blades clashing, and when Jack cried out "Oh Hen, what have you done?" Dundas gazed for a moment at the spurting blood, burst into tears, whipped off his shirt and bound up the wound as best he could. When they crept aboard a most unfortunately idle, becalmed and staring Bellerophon, their explanations, widely different and in both cases so weak that they could not be attempted to be believed, were brushed aside, and their captain flogged them severely on the bare breech. "How we howled," said Dundas. "You were shriller than I was," said Jack. "Very like a hyena."

The Commodore, p. 4-5.

Jack tuned his restrung fiddle: they talked for a while about pitch and how some people maintained that A should sound thus -- Jack played the note and said "I cannot bear it. I hate to think that our grandfathers should be such flats." After a moment, he chuckled, reflecting upon the double meaning of the word, and said "That was pretty good, Stephen, don't you think? Such flats. You smoked it, of course. But can you think of Corelli playing in that moaning, small-beer-and-water kind of whine?"

The Commodore, p. 211.