where_away | Entries tagged with character: jack

Two weevils crept from the crumbs. 'You see those weevils, Stephen?' asked Jack solemnly.
'I do.' 'Which would you choose?' 'There is not a scrap of difference. Arcades ambo. They are the same species of curculio, and there is nothing to choose between them.'
'But suppose you had to choose?'
'Then I should choose the right-hand weevil; it has a perceptible advantage in both length and breadth.'
'There I have you,' cried Jack. 'You are bit -- you are completely dished. Don't you know that in the Navy you must always choose the lesser of two weevils? Oh ha, ha, ha, ha!'

(chapter 2)
Oh ha, ha, ha, ha!
In the movie RC got Jack completely right there!

esteven

After a while Stephen said, ‘So if you were ordered to sea, brother, I collect you would not rage and curse, as being snatched away from domestic felicity-the felicity, I mean, of a parent guiding his daughters’ first interesting steps?’
‘I should kiss the messenger.’ said Jack.
‘This I had supposed for some time now.’ murmured Stephen.

(chapter 1)

...and then Jack did...kiss Stephen, that is ;D

sharpiefan

Current Mood: cheerful

'Killick, Killick there: what's amiss?'

'Which it's your scraper, sir, your number one scraper. The wombat's got at it.'

'Then take it away from him, for God's sake.'

'I dursen't, sir,' said Killick. 'For fear of tearing the lace.'

'Now, sir,' cried the Captain, striding into the great cabin, a tall, imposing figure. 'Now, sir,' - addressing the wombat, one of the numerous body of marsupials brought into the ship by her surgeon, a natural philosopher - 'give it up directly, d'ye hear me, there?'

The wombat stared him straight in the eye, drew a length of gold lace from its mouth, and then deliberately sucked it in again.

'Pass the word for Dr Maturin,' said the Captain, looking angrily at the wombat: and a moment later, 'Come now, Stephen, this is coming it pretty high: your brute is eating my hat.'

'So he is, too,' said Dr Maturin. 'But do not be so perturbed, Jack; it will do him no harm at all, at all. His digestive processes -'

At this point the wombat dropped the hat, shuffled rapidly across the deck and swarmed up into Dr Maturin's arms, peering at close range into his face with a look of deep affection.

'Well, I can keep it under my arm, together with my reports,' said the Captain, picking up a bundle of papers and carefully fitting them round his gold-laced hat to conceal the tear.

Fortune of War, Chapter One

esteven

'It is the price that has to be paid,' he reflected. 'And by God it's worth it.' As the words formed in his mind so the look of profound happiness, of contained delight, formed once more upon his shining face. Yet as he walked off to his meeting at the Crown - to his meeting with an equal -there was a little greater eagerness in his step than the mere Lieutenant Aubrey would have shown.

(chapter 1)

Just after Jack has reflected on the fact that he will be very much alone, being “them” and no longer “us”, the last sentence of the chapter holds the solution to his dilemma.

Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww

sharpiefan

Current Mood: giggly

Jack was of a sanguine temperament; he liked most people and he was surprised when they did not like him. This readiness to be pleased had been damaged of recent years, but it remained intact as far as horses, dogs and sloths were concerned; it wounded him to see tears come into the creature's eyes when he walked into the cabin, and he laid himself out to be agreeable. As they ran down to Rio he sat with it at odd moments, addressing it in Portuguese, more or less, and feeding it with offerings that it sometimes ate, sometimes allowed to drool slowly from its mouth; but it was not until they were approaching Capricorn, with Rio no great distance on the starboard bow, that he found it respond.

The weather had freshened almost to coldness, for the wind was coming more easterly, from the chilly currents between Tristan and the Cape; the sloth was amazed by the change; it shunned the deck and spent its time below. Jack was in his cabin, pricking the chart with less satisfaction than he could have wished: progress, slow, headwinds by night - unaccountable headwinds by night - and sipping a glass of grog; Stephen was in the mizzen-top teaching Bonden to write and scanning the sea for his first albatross. The sloth sneezed and looking up, Jack caught its gaze fixed on him; its inverted face had an expression of anxiety and concern. 'Try a piece of this, old cock,' he said, dipping his cake in the grog and proffering the sop. 'It might put a little heart into you.' The sloth sighed, closed its eye, but gently absorbed the piece, and sighed again.

Some minutes later he felt a touch on his knee: the sloth had silently climbed down and it was standing there, its beady eyes looking up into his face, bright with expectation. More cake, more grog: growing confidence and esteem...

'In this bucket,' said Stephen, walking into the cabin, 'in this small bucket, now, I have the population of Dublin, London and Paris combined: these animalculae - what is the matter with the sloth?' It was curled on Jack's knee, breathing heavily: its bowl and Jack's glass stood empty on the table. Stephen picked it up, peered into its affable, bleary face, shook it, and hung it upon its rope. It seized hold with one fore and one hind foot, letting the others dangle limp, and went to sleep.

Stephen looked sharply round, saw the decanter, smelt the sloth, and cried, 'Jack, you have debauched my sloth.'

(HMS Surprise - not sure of the exact chapter as I don't have the book to hand and am copy/pasting from an entry I posted a while back in my own journal. :( )

esteven

The bosun's cat dropped through the open skylight: it was a lean young cat of indifferent character, somewhat whorish, and it at once began rubbing itself against their legs, purring.
'That reminds me,' said Jack, absently pulling its tail, 'Hollar is going to ask you for a really good name, a classical name that will reflect credit on the ship. He thinks Puss or Tib is low.'
'The only possible name for a bosun's cat is Scourge,' said Stephen.
Understanding dawned on Captain Aubrey quite fast, and his great fruity laugh boomed out, setting the larboard watch on the grin as far forward as the break of the forecastle. 'Oh Lord,' he said, wiping his bright blue eyes at last, 'how I wish I had said that. Get away, you silly beast,' - this to the cat, which had now crawled up his breast and was rubbing its whiskers against his face, its eyes closed in a foolish ecstasy
'Killick, Killick there. Remove the bosun's cat: take it back to his cabin. Killick, do you know its name?'
Killick detected the slight tremble in his Captain's voice, and since for once he was feeling relatively benign he said No, he did not.
'Its name is Scourge,' said Jack, bursting out again. 'Scourge is the name of the bosun's cat, oh ha, ha, ha, ha!'

(chapter 3)

Scourge must be the only animal that loves Jack. :D

esteven

' 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 I 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.

(chapter 11)

Testudo aubreii just has to put in an appearance at

where_away

esteven

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.' Unwilling to disturb them, he fetched a cast quite round the pair and walked on, trying to recall some lines of Shakespeare that had to do not exactly with tortoises but with wrens...

(chapter 2)

This charming scene has it all: tortoises, Jack yearning for Stephen and sex. ;D

heather_mist

"'Come, let me have your pistols. I thought as much: what's this?'
'A teratoma,' said Stephen sulkily.
'What's a teratoma?' asked Jack, holding the object in his hand. 'A kind of grenado?'
'It is an inward wen, a tumour: we find them, occasionally, in the abdominal cavity. sometimes they contain long black, hair, sometimes a set of teeth: this has both hair and teeth. It belonged to a Mr Elkins of the City, an eminent cheese-monger. I prize it much.'
'By God,' cried Jack, thrusting it back into the holster and wiping his hand vehemently upon the horse, 'I do wish you would leave people's bellies alone. So you have no pistols at all, I collect?'
'If you wish to be so absolute, no I have not.' "

Post Captain, Chapter Three

esteven

'Why, Stephen, there you are,' cried Jack. 'I was quite anxious for you.'
'Aye?' said Stephen, setting a cabbage-leaf parcel on the table and taking an egg from his pocket and a loaf from his bosom. 'I have brought a beef-steak to recruit you for your interview, and what passes for bread in these parts. I strongly urge you to take off your clothes, to sponge yourself all over - the copper will answer admirably -and to lie between sheets for an hour. Rested, shaved, coffee'd, steaked, you will be a different man.

Just for the Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww... and maybe a contribution or two for the wip ;D

(chapter six)

esteven

'Must I put on silk stockings?'
'Certainly you must put on silk stockings. And do show a leg, my dear chap: we shall be late, without you spread a little more canvas.'
'You are always in such a hurry,' said Stephen peevishly, groping among his possessions. A Montpellier snake glided out with a dry rustling sound and traversed the room in a series of extraordinarily elegant curves, its head held up some eighteen inches above the ground.
'Oh, oh, oh,' cried Jack, leaping on to a chair. 'A snake!'
'Will these do?' asked Stephen. 'They have a hole in them.'
'Is it poisonous?'
'Extremely so. I dare say it will attack you, directly. I have very little doubt of it. Was I to put the silk stockings over my worsted stockings, sure the hole would not show:
but then, I should stifle with heat. Do not you find it uncommonly hot?'
'Oh, it must be two fathoms long. Tell me, is it really poisonous? On your oath now?'
'If you thrust your hand down its throat as far as its back teeth you may meet a little venom; but not otherwise. Malpolon monspessulanus is a very innocent serpent. I think of carrying a dozen aboard, for the rats - ah, if only I had more time, and if it were not for this foolish, illiberal persecution of reptiles. . . What a pitiful figure you do cut upon that chair, to be sure. Barney, Barney, buck or doe, Has kept me out of Channel Row,' he sang to the serpent; and, deaf as an adder though it was, it looked happily into his face while he carried it away.

(chapter six)

note:
With its head held up some eighteen inches above the ground it must have been close to those7 ft mentioned in wike. Venom or not, I, too, might have jumped on a chair

esteven

Jack, having fixed his discouraging latitude with a twilight observation, and having drunk coffee with the Turks, retired to gasp in his cabin.
'God help us, Stephen,' he said, throwing a towel over his nakedness as Stephen came in, 'we might be in a hammam, a bagnio, a Turkish flaming bath. I must have lost a couple of stone.'
'You could spare as much again,' said Stephen

(chapter six)

esteven

Jack stood tall and magnificent in a flowered silk dressing-gown, looking sharply up and down the deck

...and if I remember correctly, there cannot have been much underneath in the line of clothing. *g*

(chapter five)

heather_mist

" 'And we run as fast as ever we can along the shore and so take the tower from behind.' ...'Let us say ten minutes to run from the cove to the tower, and...'
'Allow twenty, if you please,' said Stephen, 'You portly men of a sanguine complexion often die suddenly, from unconsidered exertion in the heat. Apoplexy - congestion.'
'I wish, I wish you would not say things like that, Doctor,' said Jack in a low tone: they all looked at Stephen with some reproach and Jack added, 'Besides, I am not portly.'
'The captain has an uncommon genteel figgar,' said Mr Marshall."
Master and Commander Ch 7

No Jack, of course you are not portly,... *pets*

heather_mist

"And as Stephen rose to wave and hoot, Jack saw that he was dressed from head to foot in a single tight dull-brown garment; it clung to him, and his pale, delighted face emerged from a woollen roll at the top, looking unnaturally large. His general appearance was something between that of an attenuated ape and a meagre heart....

'Mr Simmons,' said Jack, fixing him with a hard, savage eye, 'this is my friend Dr Maturin, who will be accompanying me. Dr Maturin, Mr Simmons, the first lieutenant of the Lively.'
'Your servant, sir,' said Stephen, making a leg: and this, thought Jack, was perhaps the most hideous action that a person in so subhuman a garment could perform....

Jack got him into the after-cabin at last... here he sat on a locker and gazed at Stephen's garment. It had been horrible at a distance; it was worse near to - far worse...
'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' "
Post Captain Ch. 12

Words Fail Me.
*facepalm*

esteven

And some of them are very mere rakes," says he, piercing me through and through with that damned cold eye of his,' said Jack, filling Stephen's glass and spreading himself comfortably along the locker

(chapter four)

I should not be surprised, having read through the books several times, but it continues to amaze me how very early we find quotes of the slashy kind. I mean, first getting Stephen to loosen up by filling his glass and then spreading himself. I am sure the doctor took the hint

esteven

There were plenty of people on the little quarter-deck- the master at the con, the quartermaster at the wheel, the marine sergeant and his small-arms party, the signal midshipman, part of the afterguard, the gun-crews, James Dillon, the clerk, and still others - but Jack and Stephen paced up and down as though they were alone, Jack enveloped in the Olympian majesty of a captain and Stephen caught up within his aura. It was natural enough to Jack, who had known this state of affairs since he was a child, but it was the first time that Stephen had met with it, and it gave him a not altogether disagreeable sensation of waking death: either the absorbed, attentive men on the other side of the glass wall were dead, mere phantasmata, or he was - though in that case it was a strange little death, for although he was used to this sense of isolation, of being a colourless shade in a silent private underworld, he now had a companion, an audible companion.

(chapter four)

I always felt this was the first time that showed how together Jack and Stephen are, even this early on.
*smiles*

esteven

'Never,' said Jack. 'Sex has never entered my mind, at any time.'

(chapter eight)

esteven

Himself, and by that I mean Jack Aubrey for he does indeed personify the ship, has become grave, stern, unapproachable. He asks no man's opinion, and I have the impression that he knows exactly what he is doing - that he sails with the same determination and clarity of mind as the great albatrosses that sometimes accompany us,black-browed, wandering, and royal.
(chapter seven)

Stephen describes the essence of Jack...and after all their decades together he is clearly in awe of his friend.

esteven

'As for the blue devils of which you complain, my dear, do not expect too much from my remedies: youth and unthinking happiness are not to be had in a bottle, alas. You are to consider that a certain melancholy and often a certain irascibility accompany advancing age: indeed, it might be said that advancing age equals ill-temper. On reaching the middle years a man perceives that he is no longer able to do certain things, that what looks he may have had are deserting him, that he has a ponderous great belly, and that however he may yet burn he is no longer attractive to women; and he rebels. Fortitude, resignation and philosophy are of more value than any pills, red, white or blue.'
'Stephen, surely you would never consider me middle-aged, would you?'
'Navigators are notoriously short-lived, and for them middle-age comes sooner than for quiet abstemious country gentlemen. Jack, you have led as unhealthy a life as can well be imagined, perpetually exposed to the falling damps, often wet to the skin, called up at all hours of the night by that infernal bell. You have been wounded the Dear knows how many times, and you have been cruelly overworked. No wonder your hair is grey.'
'My hair is not grey. It is a very becoming buttercup-yellow.'
Jack wore his hair long, clubbed and tied with a broad black bow. Stephen plucked the bow loose and brought the far end of plait round before his eyes.
'Well I'm damned,' said Jack, looking at it in the sunlight.
'Well I'm damned; you are quite right. There are several grey hairs . . . scores of grey hairs. It is positively grizzled, like a badger-pie. I had never noticed.'
Six bells.
'Will I tell you something more cheerful?" asked Stephen.
'Please do,' said Jack, looking up from his queue with that singularly sweet smile Stephen had known from their earliest acquaintance.
(chapter one)

*always melts at the mention of that singularly sweet smile*

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Entries tagged with character: jack

The lesser of two weevils

I should kiss the messenger

A wombat and a hat

"Us", "Them" and a meeting with an equal

One debauched sloth

Scourge, the bosun's cat

Testudo Aubreii for all eternity

Tortoises are having it away and Jack gives them room to manoeuvre

A teratoma, but no pistols

Steaks, Bread, Egg and lying between sheets

Silk Stockings, Snakes and a commander on a chair

throwing a towel over his nakedness

A flowered silk dressing-gown

An Uncommon Genteel Figgar

The Infamous Brown Knitted Garment

Spreading himself comfortably along the locker

he now had a companion, an audible companion

Stephen said, 'Have you ever contemplated upon sex, my dear?'

Jack, the albatross

Buttercup-yellow hair

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