HMS Surprise

he had paid little attention to Jack’s anxiety, an anxiety that, like his own, had been growing as the vague charming future became more sharply defined, more nearly the decisive present. He, too, was oppressed by a feeling that this great happiness of travelling month after month towards a splendid end was soon to be broken: a sense not indeed of

Then again the Company had done her proud – no royal dock-yard’s niggling over a halfpennyworth of tar – and her sumptuous refit, her new sails, new copper, beautiful Manilla cordage, had brought back much of her youth: it had not dealt with certain deep-seated structural defects, the result of age and the Marengo’s handling of her, but for the mom

tu cherches à corrompre mon paresseux

Perhaps a glass of Madeira? They have an excellent sercial here, that I can conscientiously recommend.’

‘Poor dear,’ said Jack, his mind still with his ship, ‘I am afraid she is growing old: all the spirit in the world, but anno domini can’t be beat.

How I hate a man that makes scenes, particularly in this weather, when the least exertion brings you out in a muck-sweat. Everybody is furious in this weather.

He was growing fat again, but in any case he had no intention of getting out of the way of running up and down the rigging, as some heavy captains did: the feel of the shrouds under his hands, the give and spring of live rigging, the heave and swing on the roll as he came over into the top made him deeply happy.

the Surprise was once more in a lonely sea, two thousand miles of dark blue water with never an island to break its perfect round: not the faintest smell of land even on the strongest breeze – the ship was a world self-contained, swimming between two perpetually-renewed horizons.

as you are aware, everything, everything decided by our colleagues in the other departments of the Admiralty or the Navy Office is either carried out with endless deliberation if indeed it ever reaches maturity, or in a furious hurry.