still-sophistory:“Never mind the disappointment. Salt water will wash it away. You will be ama
still-sophistory:“Never mind the disappointment. Salt water will wash it away. You will be amazed at how unimportant it will seem in a week’s time — how everything will fall into place.”It was the true word: once the Surprise had turned south about Ceylon to head for the Java Sea, the daily order seized upon them all. The grind of holystones, the sound of swabs and water on the decks at first light; hammocks piped up, breakfast and its pleasant smells; the unvarying succession of the watches; noon and the altitude of the sun, dinner, grog; Roast Beef of Old England on the drum for the officers; moderate feast; quarters, the beating of the retreat, the evening roar of the guns, topsails reefed, the setting of the watch; and then the long, warm starlit, moonlit evenings, often spent on the quarterdeck, with Jack leading his two bright midshipmen through the intricate delights of astral navigation. This life, with its rigid pattern punctuated by the sharp imperative sound of bells, seemed to take on something of the nature of eternity as they slanted down towards the line, crossing it in ninety-one degrees of longitude east of Greenwich. The higher ceremonies of divisions, of mustering by the open list, church, the Articles of War, marked the due order of time rather than its passage; and before they had been repeated twice most of the frigate’s people felt both past and future blur, dwindling almost into insignificance: an impression all the stronger since 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.— HMS SurpriseThe Books:.01 Master and Commander - .EPUB ; .LIT ; .MOBI ; .RAR.02 Post Captain - .EPUB ; .LIT ; .MOBI ; .RAR.03 H.M.S. Surprise - .EPUB ; .LIT ; .MOBI ; .RAR.04 The Mauritius Command - .EPUB ; .LIT ; .MOBI ; .RAR.05 Desolation Island - .EPUB ; .LIT ; .MOBI ; .RAR.06 The Fortune of War - .EPUB ; .LIT ; .MOBI ; .RAR.07 The Surgeon’s Mate - .EPUB ; .LIT ; .MOBI ; .RAR.08 The Ionian Mission - .EPUB ; .LIT ; .MOBI ; .RAR.09 Treason’s Harbour - .EPUB ; .LIT ; .MOBI ; .RAR.10 The Far Side of the World - .EPUB ; .LIT ; .MOBI ; .RAR.11 The Reverse Of The Medal - .EPUB ; .LIT ; .MOBI ; .RAR.12 The Letter Of Marque - .EPUB ; .LIT ; .MOBI ; .RAR.13 The Thirteen Gun Salute - .EPUB ; .LIT ; .MOBI ; .RAR.14 The Nutmeg Of Consolation - .EPUB ; .LIT ; .MOBI ; .RAR.15 Clarissa Oakes - .EPUB ; .LIT ; .MOBI ; .RAR.16 The Wine-Dark Sea - .EPUB ; .LIT ; .MOBI ; .RAR.17 The Commodore - .EPUB ; .LIT ; .MOBI ; .RAR.18 The Yellow Admiral - .EPUB ; .LIT ; .MOBI ; .RAR.19 The Hundred Days - .EPUB ; .LIT ; .MOBI ; .RAR.20 Blue at the Mizzen - .EPUB ; .LIT ; .MOBI ; .RAR “The carrier has brought you an ape.” “What sort of an ape?” asked Stephen. “A damned ill-conditioned sort of an ape. It had a can of ale at every pot-house on the road, and is reeling drunk. It has been offering itself to Babbington.” — Post CaptainThe Movie:Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World - 900MB, .POB → .MP4, SUBSMaster and Commander OST - .RARThey made Stephen a little canvas boat, and it was thought that if he were obliged to wear two sea-elephant’s bladders, blown up and attached to his person, he could not come to harm in such a placid sea; but after an unfortunate experience in which he became involved in his umbrella and it was found that the bladders buoyed up his meagre hams alone, so that only the presence of Babbington’s Newfoundland preserved him, he was forbidden to go unaccompanied.— Desolation IslandThe Marginalia:The Patrick O’Brian Mapping ProjectA Guide for the Perplexed: Translations of all Non-English Phrases in Patrick O’Brian’s Sea TalesThe Patrick O’Brian CompendiumThe Dear SurpriseAubrey/Maturin Travels on Google EarthMusic in the Aubrey/Maturin SeriesLobscouse and Spotted Dog: Which It’s a Gastronomic Companion to the Aubrey/Maturin Novels of Patrick O’Brian“Why there you are, Stephen,” cried Jack. “You are come home, I find.”“That is true,” said Stephen with an affectionate look: he prized statements of this kind in Jack.— HMS SurpriseThe Fandom:perfect_duet @ LJ / DWhms_surprise @ LJmandc_read @ LJ / DWmandc_watch @ LJdespatches @ LJ / DWage_of_sail @ DWFic @ AO3Fic by astolat Stephen had been put to sleep in his usual room, far from children and noise, away in that corner of the house which looked down to the orchard and the bowling-green, and in spite of his long absence it was so familiar to him that when he woke at about three he made his way to the window almost as quickly as if dawn had already broken, opened it and walked out onto the balcony. The moon had set: there was barely a star to be seen. The still air was delightfully fresh with falling dew, and a late nightingale, in an indifferent voice, was uttering a routine jug-jug far down in Jack’s plantations; closer at hand and more agreeable by far, nightjars churred in the orchard, two of them, or perhaps three, the sound rising and falling, intertwining so that the source could not be made out for sure. There were few birds that he preferred to nightjars, but it was not they that had brought him out of bed: he stood leaning on the balcony rail and presently Jack Aubrey, in a summer-house by the bowling-green, began again, playing very gently in the darkness, improvising wholly for himself, dreaming away on his violin with a mastery that Stephen had never heard equalled, though they had played together for years and years. — The CommodoreThe AU Where Stephen Maturin is a Dragon (No, Really):Temeraire - astolat “…The coffee has a damned odd taste.” “This I attribute to the excrement of rats. Rats have eaten our entire stock; and I take the present brew to be a mixture of the scrapings at the bottom of the sack.” “I thought it had a familiar tang,” said Jack. — The Mauritius Command -- source link