Master and Commander Quotes

‘Captain Aubrey’s compliments to Dr Maturin, congratulates him upon his safe arrival, and will be very happy to dine with him at the George this day at three o’clock; has not yet shipped paper, pens, or ink, and begs to be excused the informality of his reply.’

Certainly Sophie had drunk her porter, and a glass of bosun’s grog – had eaten splendidly: Jack loved a girl that tucked in hearty.

‘I am most deeply sorry, sir: most heartily ashamed,’ said the footpad, hanging his head.

‘There's many a slip twixt the cup and the sip, you know.’

‘An ill-looking parcel of bastards,’ he reflected, seeing a bailiff in every full-grown man. ‘But my God, what a life. Doing this every day, cooped up with a ledger – what a life.’

‘I distinctly remember that he termed you a lubber.’ ‘Yes, but a lecherous lubber: I kept a girl in the cable-tiers. It was a reflection upon my morals, not my seamanship.’

‘Wittles is up,’ said Killick, appearing in the doorway together with the homely reek of boiled cabbage.

‘Forgive me if I am a little late,’ he said, walking into the smell of toasted cheese. ‘I am just come from the mizzentop.’

‘They love zeal in Whitehall,’ observed Jack, ‘particularly when it don’t cost them anything.’

‘Those bleeding caulkers at the Yard,’ Killick muttered, ‘don’t know their fucking business . . . I’d caulk ’em . . . oh, I’d caulk ’em, and with a red-hot caulking iron in their . . .’ The fancy pleased him; his face grew less surly.

It was extremely gratifying - the Captain had been seen to go pale, and Bonden too, the patient's cousin - blood running down Joe's neck regardless - brains clearly to be seen - something not to be missed for a mint of money - instructive, too - and they made the most of it.

Teaching young gentlemen has a dismal effect upon the soul. It exemplifies the badness of established, artificial authority. The pedagogue has almost absolute authority over his pupils: he beats them and insensibly he loses the sense of respect due to them as fellow human beings.

Throughout the night the wind backed until it was blowing hard from the north; there it stayed, north-east, north, never allowing more than close-reefed topsails, if that, for nine days on end, nine days of rain, snow, steep wicked seas, and a perpetual fighting for their lives.

The sea was a treacherous element; a ship but a frail conveyance – fragilis ratis – tossed by the billows at their whim, and subject to every wind that blew.

‘Oh dear, oh dear,’ cried Plaice. ‘He’s a-taking off his coat. We should never have let him off alone on those – – sands. Mr Babbington said “Do not let him go a-wandering on them – – sands, Plaice, or I’ll have the hide off your – back”. Ahoy! The Doctor ahoy, sir!'

Left to himself, Stephen looked at his private stock of laudanum, his bottled fortitude: at one time he had made great use of it, up to four thousand drops a day, but now he did not even draw the cork.

William Babbington, too, is an excellent young man; though he was harpooned by a lamentable trollopy wench the moment he set foot ashore, and eventually was obliged to be placed under restraint.

‘There is a ship on fire,’ said Jack in horror, his heart pumping so hard that he could scarcely keep the steady deep-red glow in his object-glass. ‘I hope to God it is not one of ours. I hope to God they drown the magazines.’

'But my Sophie must have a medical man– apart from anything else, you have no notion of what a hypochondriac your seaman is: they love to be physicked, and a ship’s company without someone to look after them, even the rawest half-grown surgeon’s mate, is not a happy ship’s company'

Another elephant crossed in front of them, a trim pole set up on the howdah, bearing a streamer that read Revenge as it floated on the breeze: most of the ship’s starboard maintopmen were there, clinging to one another in a tight mass, while their larboard colleagues ran behind.

‘There was a smart little whippersnapper of an attorney in Dover that had the infernal confidence to make me an offer. I have never been so mortified in my life. I had rather go to the stake, or look after the Teapot for the rest of my days.'

The sloth not easily alarmed; as soon as it was provided with a piece of hawser stretched taut in the cabin it went fast to sleep, hanging by its claws and swaying with the roll as it might have done in the wind-rocked branches of its native forest.

'When one sea-officer is to be roasted, there is always another at hand to turn the spit,’ said the bear. ‘It is an old service proverb. I hope to God I have that fornicating young sod under my command one day. I’ll make him dance a hornpipe – oh, such a hornpipe.'

‘It is my belief, Mr Brown, that you will never be really happy until there is not a King’s ship left in the Mediterranean and you can walk round your yard mustering a full complement of paint-pots every day of the week, never issuing out so much as a treenail.’

Davis was no seaman although he had spent his whole life afloat, a dull-witted, clumsy fellow, very strong and very dangerous when vexed or drunk, easily vexed and easily intoxicated.

"‘Well, sir,’ said Babbington. ‘I must not keep you.’

‘You must not keep your strumpet either,’ said Stephen, glancing out of the window.

‘Oh, sir,’ cried Babbington. ‘She is not a strumpet. She is a clergyman’s daughter.’"

In his gaiety of heart, Jack was very near a witticism; he felt it floating there, almost within reach; but somehow it escaped and he confined himself to laughing as cheerfully as Stephen’s vexation would with decency allow.

‘Damn her for a flibbertigibbet, the hussy. Without her we would be sailing along as sweet as – ’ for the moment nothing typically sweet occurred to his mind, so he added ‘swans’ in an angry growl. ‘God-damned swans.’

‘Collingwood used to say that a mutiny was always the fault of the captain or the officers,’ said Jack, ‘so perhaps we shall find them as innocent as so many lambs unhung, and merely maligned.’

‘A bearded vulture! It is a bearded vulture!’ he cried. ‘A young bearded vulture.’ ‘Well,’ said Jack instantly – not a second’s hesitation – ‘I dare say he forgot to shave this morning.’ His red face crinkled up, his eyes diminished to a bright blue slit and he slapped his thigh.