What are you tittering at, Mr Holles?' asked Captain Aubrey.'Nothing, sir.''Now I come to think of it, I have a letter from your guardian, Mr Holles. He wishes to be assured that your moral welfare is...
West was the only officer on the quarterdeck, and it so happened that the party of hands making dolphins and paunch-mats on the forecastle were all Shelmerstonians. West was gaping rather vacantly ove...
Were you ever in Elsinore, Mr Jagiello?’ asked Jack.Oh, many a time, sir,’ said Jagiello. ‘I know it well. I believe I could show you Hamlet’s grave from here.’I was really wondering whether they had...
There are some midshipmen who will never have the decency to lie down and die, whatever the circumstances. Because they are born to be hanged, no doubt,' added the lieutenant darkly.
The sea has receded!’ cried Stephen. ‘I am amazed.’ ‘They tell me it does so twice a day in these parts,’ said Jack. ‘It is technically known as the tide.
The lookout that first sights the cat shall have ten guineas and remission of sins, short of mutiny, sodomy, or damaging the paintwork.
The dear Doctor was not leaving yet; he was going to indulge her by staying for a while; andthis she said with a smile at Stephen, a smile that Jack intercepted and that gave him a blow as sharp and s...
Tell me, sir, do you know of any banker that really understands his business? Some modern Fugger?' 'Oh, Stephen, if you please,' cried Jack.
Stephen came on deck reflecting with satisfaction upon his sloth, now a parlour-boarder with the Irish Franciscans at Rio, and a secret drinker of the altar-wine.
She then recovered her wits and averting her eyes from the wreck of her house she shook Babbington's hand, embraced Stephen tenderly, greeted all the officers, young gentlemen and seamen she knew, and...
Of course she will put on a cap,’ said Sophie, with a pitying look. ‘How could she possibly receive strange gentlemen without a cap? But her hair must be dressed under it.
Life is a long disease with only one termination and its last years are appalling: weak, racked by the stone, rheumatismal pains, senses going, friends, family, occupation gone, a man must pray for im...
Jack was already mother-naked when he heard the cry and saw the splash. He slipped from the gunwale into the clear water, made out the vague form at a surprising depth, dived, fished it up, swam to th...
Jack had never been a hypocrite until he became a father, and even now it did not come easy.
It must be a weary life, being in a permanent state of rage or at least at half-cock.
If I no longer love Diana,’ he wrote, ‘what shall I do?’ What could he do, with his mainspring, his prime mover gone? He had known that he would love her for ever - to the last syllable of recorded ti...
I will tell you a thing about women. They are superior to men in this, that they have an unfeigned, objective, candid admiration for good looks in other women – a real pleasure in their beauty. Yours,
I read novels with the utmost pertinaity. I look upon them - I look upon good novels - as a very valuable part of literature, conveying more exact and finely-distinguished knowledge of the human heart...
He sat on as the sun's rays came slowly down through the trees, lower and lower, and when the lowest reached a branch not far above him it caught a dewdrop poised upon a leaf. The drop instantly blaze...
He had pursued his strikingly beautiful, spirited, fashionable wife for years and years before marrying her in mid-Channel aboard a man-of-war: for so many years indeed that he had become a confirmed...