#Stephen Mast

[neosatsuma]

honestly no wonder Stephen struggles, like. he spends all day categorizing animals!! if it has hair and nurses, it's a mammal. if it has 6 legs it's an insect. So he's obediently counting masts, then the navy comes in like "well it's not technically a sloop but we call it a sloop. commodore isn't a rank except it kind of is but only temporarily. Gun ratings don't actually necessarily correspond to the number of guns. a hawser isn't HAWSER-laid it's CABLE-laid." Like man whaddahell. poor guy this ain't right

[bitterkarella]

Midnight Pals: Goncharov tear down that wall

Stephen King: hey neil did you hear that tumblr made up a fake scorcese movie? King: Joe told me about it Gaiman: haha! how delightfully whimsical! how droll! Gaiman: will the limitless vista of the human imagination ever fail to delight?

Poe: neil did you hear about goronovich? Gaiman: haha! the fake movie! how droll! Lovecraft: hey neil did you hear about gorbochov? Gaiman: haha! the fake movie! how droll! Koontz: hey neil did you hear about goobooboo? Gaiman: haha. the fake movie. how droll. Barker: hey neil

King: neil everyone wants to hear your opinion on goaijiruchev Gaiman: please steve stop Gaiman: for days, i have been buffeted upon the tides of whimsy Gaiman: until i must scream, like odysseus tied to the mast, NO MORE Gaiman: NO MORE King: King: so what's your opinion

Gaiman: confound that infernal fiction! Gaiman: only in this late hour do i realize my folly Gaiman: recognizing that the unbounded human imagination can be twisted for evil Gaiman: sweet merciful gilgamesh, let us banish this wretched tulpa back to the distant caves of memory!

Koontz: hey neil what do you think about girugamesh Gaiman: i think that cursed palimpsest should sink into the darkest depths of the river lethe!! Gaiman: oh no dean Gaiman: please no Gaiman: dry your tears, good dean Gaiman: my anger was not for you

King: Gorbavaich! Gogoogamoo! Gaiman: Koontz: haha this is fun! Gabagoo! Gargamel! Gaiman: Gaiman: i must amend my long-stated position on imagination Gaiman: i now believe that it's bad Koontz: Gantagocho! Gaiman: please stop Gaiman: i hate whimsy now Gaiman: gods it hurts

In conclusion, tumblr is a land of contrasts and also BUY MY BOOK:

[onefellsloop]

an Aubreyad crossover

‘Upon my word, Stephen,’ said Jack, sitting down heavily in his armchair. ‘I am sorry to see even a privateer in such a bad way. They are filthy ships, as a whole, but it is a wonder that such a squalid wreck of a sloop ever made it past Bermuda.’

‘I hesitate to correct you, my dear, but that was never a sloop. I distinctly noted but a single mast.’

‘What a fellow you are, Stephen: I am sure that you only say these things to rile me. And I have been riled enough by that ruffian, you know. What does he mean by putting to sea with a crew of untrained, undisciplined fishermen, and never exercising his guns? Every man jack of them is quite unprepared for an action.’

‘It is a sad, foolish business, so it is. Would you ever have the rosin about you?’

‘A dreadful list to larboard,’ he continued, as he hunted about the cabin. ‘I should not be surprised if they had sprung a leak, and had not the wit to fother it; I suppose you noticed that they did not stop their pumping the whole time we was aboard. She is in a worse state than the horrible old Leopard ever was, and I have not even the heart to speak of her sails. How did you find your fellow - the cook, was it?’

‘Alas, there was but little I could do for him. He was comatose; insensible; inebriate, forsooth: I doubt he has been wholly sober since he was breeched. I have warned many times - I have petitioned through the fleet - about the deleterious effects of the seaman’s attachment to his rum ration; a monstrous degrading pernicious attachment, harmful to life and to limb. Sure there was a young fellow upon the deck; could not have been more than seventeen years old, and his brain rotted quite away. He would keep babbling on American gold, and the Dear knows there are not two doubloons to rub together between Boston and Charlestown.’

‘Well, one cannot blame a man for thinking about gold; certainly not a privateersman. It is all the poor devils have to hope for. But I tell you, that captain was a rum cove: three months to make Montego Bay, by God! Shall we have the Boccherini?’

‘With all my heart.’

‘Still,’ said Jack, as he lifted his bow, ‘I am happy that we could replace their main truck. I daresay that it is the only really solid piece of the whole outfit. And it is wonderful how an action may bring a crew together, if only there was a miserable little tub about for them to catch.'

'So you have said, joy. Perhaps then, with the blessing, we will have not have seen the last of Barrett’s privateers.'

-

(I'm sorry! I know it's the wrong war! I couldn't get it out of my head!)

[bomberqueen17]

Liveblogging the Aubreyad 2: Post Captain, part 1

The main thing to know about the second book in Patrick O'Brian's Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin series is that it's really really really fucking long.

i was trying to sum up the plot even to myself and uh. it’s like. Late in the book there’s a dated letter and I realized it literally covers an almost four-year period. So like… as Inigo Montoya says, “Let me explain. No, no there is too much. Let me sum up.” But I can’t.

I went through and summarized the whole book in detail one night when I was having an insomnia issue and it was like a fever dream, and I'd read it twice and listened to it a third time before I started this project and still was like "WAIT there's MORE?" as I kept skimming through. But I'm gonna try.

I will begin unpromisingly with some tedious background worldbuilding stuff, though. Yes the entertaining way to do this would be We Didn't Start The Fire style rapid-fire snippets but do you know how much work that is? no I spent long enough reading this book I'm not doing that for you. Sorry.

I will relent, however, and give you one exciting tidbit: this book contains female characters, plural! Yes multiples of them! Round characters, with multiple facets apiece! Enticing, no?

So the underlying mechanic beneath like, a solid 75% of the plot of these books is promotion. For every naval officer in the series, this is a large portion of their motive for every issue.

There are three categories of members of the Navy in this respect. The first one is the foremast jacks-- your enlisted men, though in this time period they were often impressed, forcibly conscripted. They can achieve various ranks within themselves, specialty crews and various small statuses and such, but even the most dignified, long-serving of them is still subject to being flogged or beaten or disciplined at any time without any real recourse.

The next category is the ratings, or warrant officers-- subtle distinctions among them, but broadly speaking on the same level. The master is in charge of the navigation and general sailing of the ship, the bosun the rigging and masts, the purser the purse (money and supplies), the gunner you can probably guess. A surgeon has a warrant rather than a commission. And the midshipmen have ratings, not commissions either.

But midshipmen are eligible for promotion to lieutenant after six years of sea time. Once they are made lieutenant, they are a commissioned officer, no longer subject to flogging or dismissal out of hand-- they must be court-martialed for such a thing to occur. They get half-pay when on shore. They accrue seniority. A lieutenant can then be promoted to master and commander, as we saw in the first book. And from there he can be promoted to a post-captain, and from there promotion is automatic (though, crucially, a command is not), according to seniority. This will become important later. A post captain will become an admiral solely through seniority, in due time when it is his turn.

But an officer who doesn't have a stellar service record AND influential friends is very likely to be sidelined regardless of seniority. Many, many men serve thirty years as a lieutenant, never promoted. Still more languish as master's mates, the seniormost rating of a midshipman's rank. And even once made post, men languish ashore, and by the time they're made admiral, have so little renown that they're never given any kind of command at all and stay ashore doing nothing more than drawing half-pay.

I'm explaining all of this because much of the series winds up being an ongoing, meditative reflection on the benefits and flaws of such a situation, and we see incompetent men promoted while competent ones are sidelined, over and over. And this book shows the beginning of Jack Aubrey's career-long struggle to not only keep himself moving up this ladder, but also to try to take some of his people with him-- especially TOM PULLINGS, who as a former foremast jack from a family of dirt farmers, has absolutely no political influence of any kind, and cannot hope for any.

(This is, I think, part of what makes this series so readable. On the face of it it seems like oh no this is some rah-rah Royal Navy bullshit, but if you actually look at it, it's a pretty warts-and-all depiction, oftentimes depressingly heavy on the warts, which is much more interesting and also easier to stomach. I did have a little trouble with the book where they're fighting the War of 1812, though, where everyone was so dispirited that the Americans kept winning and I was like "wait no I'm rooting for those guys." LOLLL.)

But you didn't come here for this. You came here to know what happens in this book. And for that, I will do my best to convey some of it. I'll lead with a couple of teasers.

there are fly honeys. oh yes.

Stephen forcefems Jack into adopting a female bear as his fursona, for literally months. No I am not making this up.

TOM PULLINGS no you'll just have to get there to see, I can't bullet point him

Jack abducts a mugger

Barret Bonden beats a cop unconscious

That's enough teasers. Let's start with the fly honeys.

Everyone is ashore, and Jack has set himself and Stephen up in a sweet bachelor pad, with a crew of his favorite sailors as household staff. (Don't you fear, Preserved Killick is here.) His nearby neighbors are a household entirely made up of women: a horrible old woman, with three reasonably hot young daughters, and an incredibly hot niece. The war is over for now (it's the Peace of Amiens) and there are no ships to be had, but Jack has some money and is ready to do some fox hunting in more than one meaning of the word.

The neighbor is called Mrs. Williams and her oldest daughter, Sophia, is 27, willowy and ethereal, innocent and appealing. But her cousin Diana, about the same age, is a young widow brought up in India, and has incomparable style and dash. Stephen is completely smitten, but makes the mistake of telling her he's not really into women as women so much as he is interested in them as people, and she spends the next age treating him like absolute shit trying to get him to admit he's into her. Meanwhile, Jack is really into Sophia, but Diana is so dashing he can't help wanting to pursue her too, and so he and Stephen wind up unhappily romantic rivals. It doesn't help that Sophia is too innocent and entirely under her mother's idiot ill-natured thumb to straightforwardly reciprocate Jack's interest.

Jack throws a huge party, to be sociable, on Valentine's Day, in honor of the Battle of Cape St Vincent, of which he is a veteran. Babbington attends, and on his way there he is to pick up Diana, who had been sent to stay with another relative for a bit to get her out of the way so Jack would pay more attention to Sophia instead, Mrs. Williams being, to put it kindly, a conniving old bitch.

Babbington, as it turns out, is a horrible driver, which leads to perhaps the single funniest passage of the book.

“… she said [to herself], 'It will never do. This young man will have to be taken down.' The lane ran straight up hill, rising higher and higher, with God knows what breakneck descent the other side. The horse slowed to a walk - the bean-fed horse, as it proved by a thunderous, long, long fart. ‘I beg your pardon,' said the midshipman in the silence. 'Oh, that's all right,' said Diana coldly. 'I thought it was the horse.' A sideways glance showed that this had settled Babbington's hash for the moment. 'Let me show you how we do it in India,' she said, gathering the reins and taking his whip away from him.

Really, Diana is amazing, and you can almost forgive her for how horribly she treats Stephen. And Jack.

Anyway the overarching plot is now beginning-- it comes up (to the reader, though not to other characters per se) that Stephen is becoming quite involved in naval intelligence; his Catalan background means he's indispensible given that the British are keenly interested in using the cause of Catalan independence to divide Spain, preventing it from effectively allying with France, which is quite openly using this peace to amass an invasion army to take England. Shit is tense, in Europe.

But meanwhile at home, various legal matters are resolved badly and it turns out that instead of being owed thousands of pounds in prize-money, Jack has to repay eleven thousand pounds to the owners of ships he took that the courts decided were in fact neutrals. And to make matters worse, his prize-agent, to whom he had entrusted the management of all the money he did earn, suddenly folds, taking all the money and running. Jack's money is just gone, with no recourse. So now Jack, according to the law of the time, is subject to arrest and imprisonment until and unless he can pay off the entire debt.

Which he can't. So he has to go into hiding. And Mrs. Williams decides that as he is in her eyes a common criminal she no longer wants him to court her daughter, so contact with Sophia is cut off, which makes them both miserable.

But Stephen has a Spanish passport. So he takes Jack across to France with him. They visit Christy-Palliere, the French ship captain who captured the Sophie in the previous book. He is delighted to see them-- so delighted that he embraces Jack and kisses him soundly on both cheeks, which makes Jack blush enormously.

And then war breaks out again. Napoleon has all British citizens in France arrested. Jack and Stephen must flee, lest they rot in a French prison for the duration of however long this round of wars lasts.

Whew that's enough plot isn't it? Oh no. There's so much more. I'll divide here. Stay tuned for Part Two, in which the bear thing will be explained, oh yes.

[thiefbird]

SLLT fans! I am returning from hiatus tonight, as soon as I can get tags to work proper <3

Have a little excerpt from the first chapter coming up tonight!

Stephen, considered objectively, was not a particularly excellent specimen of humanity in aesthetic terms - scrawny as he was, and with his tendency towards an unhealthy yellow pallor; still, Jack enjoyed looking at him the way he enjoyed looking at Sophie. There was something not quite beautiful or handsome, but certainly compelling about his form, and after such a long period of separation - the longest since their affair began, and the longest but one in their entire friendship - it felt like a homecoming to be able to rest his eyes on the familiar sight of Stephen cradling Jack's fiddle as he leaned over a desk.

"Really, my dear?" Stephen said, a note of not unkind derision on his tongue as he flipped through the pages. "I should have thought you, of all people, might disdain Beethoven."

Jack had never considered himself a sodomite or paederast, had never been drawn to the coltish, beautiful midshipmen or young lieutenants the way some officers were, nor to the powerfully built hands he kept company with when turned before the mast.

But Stephen was unquestionably no sort of woman, in looks or mannerisms, and the fact of his sex seldom occured to Jack even on the previous occasions they had been in bed together, let alone outside of it. Certainly his knowledge of the fact of it had precipitated his awareness to his love - his romantic love, for he had believed himself to love Stephen as a friend since nearly the day after their meeting in Mahón - but it was in no way the cause of it; it had merely come up upon him so slow and subtle that he had been wholly immersed for months or years before coming to. No, he loved Stephen as he was, as a man.

"Beethoven ain't a Papist, is he? No, no, ignore me; you should not seem so put out by his appearing on your desk if it were that, soul."

[rmoonstoner]

Kinktober 2023

***

Theme:

Masturbation

***

Warnings:

18+, age gap, sparring is foreplay, masturbation, Stephen has a really big dick, dirty talk, sexual taunting/frustration, face fucking, come swallowing, sparring with Stephen, that one move that stops men in their tracks in anime, you know the one. Crotch to face leg lock.

***

Pairing:

Doctor Strange x Fem!Apprentice!Reader

***

Summary:

Stephen thinks about his apprentice in ways he knows that he really shouldn't. He gets caught in the act by you.

***

He didn't know when he became so infatuated with you, but now he was one hundred percent certain that he couldn't continue to deny his basic carnal urges. He had a thing for you the moment he first laid eyes on you, and yet he kept it to himself. You were young, almost young enough to pass as his daughter, yet that didn't stop his depraved thoughts about you.

Today was one of those days that tested his patience.

You were bound and determined to beat him at hand to hand combat, with no magic tricks or magical artifacts to aid either person, and Stephen had let you win this time.

You were doing poorly, but when he started to tease you playfully, you got really mad, really quickly. You lunged at him after the third time that he called you weak, and you knocked him over quite easily without his trusty cloak on his shoulders. He was not expecting the way you came at him either, with you jumping high enough to wrap your legs around his head.

He didn't know what to do as your spandex covered crotch came flying at his face, effectively surprising him enough to catch him off guard and knock him onto his back. He hit the ground hard, the air rushing from his lungs against your warm center. When he inhaled, all he could smell was your sweet scent and he found himself unable to do a damn thing about it.

He expected you to get off of him immediately, but you stayed there and cackled at him.

"Do you concede, old man?"

The cockiness of your voice sounded far more sultry to him then he'd ever heard out of you. His brain backfired, and all he could think about was grabbing hold of your thighs, banishing your clothes, and opening his mouth to pleasure you…

But instead, he grunted and raised a shaking hand to your thigh and gently patted it to give you the signal that he was giving up. Again he waited for you to get off of him, but you rocked forward and looked down at his eyes.

The look you gave him was something he could only describe as a smug look of pleasure, followed by a flirtatious wink, before you finally got up and off of him. The second you stood up, he sat up and crossed his legs, facing away from you as he subtly adjusted his hard cock in his pants as you joyously declared your win.

"I win."

***

Now it was midnight, and Stephen had locked himself away in his personal office. He had been itching to have a moment of peace all day since that little sparring match he had with you. He couldn't get the memory of your smell, or your soft, yet strong thighs that were once wrapped around his entire head. He kept replaying the odd way you rocked on his face, and how you seemed to get off on that. He had been at full mast since, and he was lucky his robes hid his erection perfectly.

Which was good, because you wouldn't leave his side until about forty minutes ago, when you claimed you were going to bed.

Now Stephen was sitting in his chair, with his cell phone propped up on the desk. He had a photo of you in your swim suit that you had sent him last week. It was meant to tease him about declining your offer to go to the beach with you. You called him an old fuddy duddy, and he left you on read. He didn't know what he was supposed to say to such a photo, and he figured anything he could come up with would sound inappropriate.

It didn't stop him from promptly saving the photo into his personal folder for later.

Later, being now.

He had his robes pulled open to reveal his chest. His pants were unfastened, his throbbing and rigid cock proudly on display as he thought about what it would be like to go down on you. The head was leaking freely as he wrapped his fingers around his member, squeezed himself good, and began to stroke himself slowly.

"Fuck… You smelled so fucking good, and you were so fucking warm… I bet you taste even better…" He groaned with a few quick tugs as his eyes slid halfway shut. He swept his thumb over the blunt tip and spread his precome around in slow circles.

"I bet you were wet… Naughty little thing, getting off on sitting on your Master's face, and fucking rocking your sweet pussy against my mouth…" His voice was low and rough, almost as if he were trying to be quiet.

He didn't know why he was trying to be quiet. You were in your bedroom, which was next door to his bedroom…

Which was precisely why he was in his office, all the way at the other end of the Sanctum.

"Gods… I just want to pin you down and fuck that attitude right out of you…" He grunted and his hand sped up as he leaned all the way back in his chair. His brows furrowed as the sensations rocked him to his very core.

"I bet you're fucking tight. You'd feel so good wrapped around my cock…"

***

You couldn't sleep. It had been thirty minutes of staring at your four poster bed's canopy, and all you could think about was how empowering it had been to finally best your teacher, even if it was a cheap win. The way he suddenly froze and easily gave up was so fucking adorable.

And hot as fuck.

His mouth had been right where you wanted it, so hot and moist, and you even tried to give him a hint that you wanted him to win, that you wanted him to best you and flip you over…

Dominate you…

But he took the high road, and gave up too fast, leaving you wanting. You thought for sure you could seduce him, but he denied you. Even following him around all day and brushing up against him didn't make him look at you again.

You got up and left your room in your nightgown, wandering towards Stephen's personal office. If you couldn't sleep, you were going to borrow one of the books that Stephen had. He had given you permission to borrow them whenever you wished, as long as you left him a note on what you took and when. You usually left it on his desk, then left. You got right up to his office door and heard something that made you still and go completely quiet.

It sounded like Stephen was still awake and in his office!

Oh good, perhaps you wouldn't need to leave a note. You could just grab the book, show it to him, and be on your way…

"Fuck… You smelled so fucking good, and you were so fucking warm… I bet you taste even better…"

A shiver ran through you when you registered what he was saying. You swallowed hard and quietly pressed yourself against the door.

"I bet you were wet… Naughty little thing, getting off on sitting on your Master's face, and fucking rocking your sweet pussy against my mouth…"

Your legs squeezed together as you listened to him moan and continue to talk dirty to himself. You could hear his fancy wooden and leather office chair creaking as he moved. Every word made your pussy tingle and drip. You couldn't help it as your hand moved down your front and palmed your breast, while the other one snaked downwards. You bunched up your gown and slipped your hand between your thighs where you weren't wearing underwear.

"Gods… I just want to pin you down and fuck that attitude right out of you…"

Oh Gods above!

He felt the same way about you as you did for him!

"I bet you're fucking tight. You'd feel so good wrapped around my cock…"

You bit your lip in effort to hold back the whine that tried to escape your lips, and leaned against the door. The door suddenly creaked very loudly, then just as suddenly, it opened. You felt your body tip over without the door there to brace you and you squeaked in surprise.

***

Stephen heard the groan of old wood and his head whipped up to look at the door just as it flew open. His first thought was to hide himself and what he was doing, but when he saw your shocked face and the position of your hands, he froze you in your place.

Time was still moving, yet you were not. You blinked a few times when you saw the odd angle you were in, then slowly looked over at Stephen as your whole body got hot with embarrassment at being caught like this…

With your nightgown hiked up so Stephen could clearly see your hands and what they had been doing.

A sinister thought ran through his mind.

You came to his office at midnight, wearing that fucking see through sheer fabric, with no underwear, and…

And!

With your hands cupping your soft flesh, one with breast in it, the other with two fingers, knuckle deep into your wet hole.

Stephen suddenly felt a dark arousal course through him. He brought one hand up and tilted it, making your body rise off of the ground and pulled you in. You stared at him, not sure if you were frozen from being caught with your hands in your pants, or if he had actually frozen you and you couldn't move. The door slammed shut and locked itself up tightly and you huffed.

"Well, well, well… Look at what we have here…"

You shivered at the tone in his voice and let out a soft whine. He sounded smooth, voice buttery soft as his eyes raked your form. You noticed he was blushing, his eyes clearly full of lust. You exhaled through your nose and felt your walls clench around your fingers. You still were having a hard time with this. You looked him over again, and saw him just sitting there in his chair…

And his robes were wide open, showing off his muscular torso. One side, the left, had fallen down, showing his bare shoulder. He had scars all over his skin, but the one that was the most vividly visible, was the spider web like dark red patch over his heart. Almost none of it healed right, and you recalled Master Wong telling you that Stephen had once been stabbed there while defending his Sanctum. Your eyes slowly went lower. The top part of his abdomen was fully exposed, but the desk got in the way of what you really wanted to see.

"Where's that smart mouth, now? Hm, princess?"

"Right here, old man. Maybe I'll let you use it if you show me that dick." You snarked back. You didn't know what came over you.

Stephen's brows shot up and he grinned wickedly at you. He placed his hands on the desk and he moved you to stand in front of it.

"Careful now. You're treading on thin ice." He warned you.

"And you were jacking off while thinking about me."

"Touche. I can see you were as well." He replied as he laced his fingers together and made you sit in the chair across from him. You whined when you didn't get to see his cock.

"You see… I'm in my office, in the middle of the night. You came to me, and burst in here, without permission."

"So that's a no, then?" You retorted rudely.

"Excuse me?" He asked with a raised brow.

"I'm taking it as a no that you don't want to use my mouth?" You snapped, and he blinked very slowly a few times, before smirking at you

"Oh, if you're offering, I'll definitely take you up on that offer, but I really don't think you can handle me."

"I call bullshit." You chuckled. He looked dead serious.

"Really? Because my last girlfriend thought it was too big."

"Ha! That's what a man with a small penis would say." You taunted him. He didn't bat an eye. Instead, his smile got wider and he titled his head

"Of course you'd say such a thing. Haha, silly me. We're too much alike. Cocky, self assured, full of yourself, unable to shut the fuck up…" Stephen purred out.

"Then make me shut up. Show me the goods, or I will assume it's tiny, and that's why you're so fucking grumpy all the time." You hissed at him, while he laughed softly.

"Such a potty mouth. I've never seen you so unhinged." He said as he shifted in his seat. You glared at him.

"Try me, old man. You're just sour, because you're a tall ass mother fucker, with a little penis-" You kept taunting him, not realizing he was moving his chair back to stand. When he finally did, you stopped talking, your eyes going to stare down at his groin.

Your mouth hung open at how big he was, the words dying on your tongue as you salivated at the sight of him. He was not joking when he said it was big, but you didn't think it would be, you know…

That big!

"Well, well, well. Speechless, are we?" Sephen chuckled as he stepped around his desk and came to stand beside you. Your eyes followed his every movement, eyes staying on his. You watched as he flicked his wrist and the chair you were sitting in suddenly turned so you were facing him.

At this angle, you were now eye level with his dick, with him standing so close, his cock was just a foot away from your face. It looked even bigger up close, with the fat velvety head tinged a deep pink, and purple veins pulsing along his shaft. The tip was wet, leaking precome, and you licked your lips as your eyes met his once more.

"That's… That's not big. That's fucking huge!" You remarked with a touch of concern in your voice. He raised a brow and wrapped his hand around his cock, giving it a good squeeze and a tug. Your eyes darted back down, a small gasp came from you.

"So you're saying it would be too much for you then?"

"N-no…"

"Then what is it, princess? You can tell me, your master." The way he said master this time made you shiver. He held a whole different meaning in his tone.

"It's just… I haven't… It's been ages since I had sex last." You finally admitted.

Stephen's face softened a bit and he reached out to cup your face with his free hand. His thumb caressed your cheek softly.

"How about this, then… I like you more than I should, and you clearly like me just as much. Want to start out slow?"

"What do you mean?" You breathed back.

"You watch me, and I watch you. No touching each other. Then, you decide whether or not you want to go any farther with me."

"Why do I have to decide?"

"I'm in a position of power, my dear. I want this badly, but I must know if you really do as well." He gave himself a squeeze, his thumb twitching at the underside of his cock.

"Okay… May I be allowed to move?" You asked timidly, and he smiled eith a small laugh.

"I didn't tell you that you couldn't." He hummed and leaned against his desk, his hand still loosely holding his erection.

"Oh… Yes." You suddenly felt a bit stupid, but he stayed quiet and waited for you to get comfortable.

You scooted back in your chair and looked up at his eyes, then back down to his cock. He was now dripping to the floor with how aroused he was. You sighed and spread your legs, going to take off your gown, when he reached out with his free hand and waved the garment away.

"Yeah, just like that, princess. I want to see you, all of you." He groaned and placed a hand behind him, bracing it on his desk as his hips jutted forwards a bit.

Your eyes looked down, seeing the way his scarred hands pleasured himself. You groaned back as you moved your hands back to where they had been, before falling into his office so carelessly. You first cupped a breast and gently rubbed your nipple between two fingers, then used the other hand to spread your cunt out for him to see. He grunted and sped up his hand as he watched your fingers dip in and out, your juices dripping onto the leather of the chair beneath you.

"You see this, Master? You did this to me. You do this to me every day. Do you know how frustratingly awful it's been, being around a man such as yourself, and you're constantly treating me like I'm a fragile moron? I just want to please you, make you proud of me." You purred out the words while rubbing your clit. He stared, unable to tear his eyes away as you added another finger to your dripping hole.

"Fuck… Everyday?" He grunted and cleared his throat. His hand slowed down, thumb rubbing his slick around his head.

"I am proud of you. I just… I have been trying to keep you at arms length. What would your friends say?"

"They'd congratulate me on shagging the Sorcerer Supreme." You hummed back and fucked your pussy faster.

"You'd tell them that? Ugnnn…" He groaned started to fuck into his fist in a steady rhythm.

"Oh yes. I'd be quite proud to tell them I have sex with you everyday."

"Everyday..? Fuck!"

Stephen growled as your pussy made loud squelching noises. You tilted your head back and pinched your nipple a few times, before bringing up your fingers from your pussy and slipping them into your mouth. You sucked on them and he huffed and whined, his hand going faster, grip tightening.

"Everyday."

"Gods… Gonna come…"

"Come in my mouth." You purred, then opened your mouth and stuck out your tongue. He was quick to move forward, his hand going to the back of your head and gripping your hair tightly. He pulled you forward, pushing the head of his cock into your mouth.

You leaned forward and took as much of him as you could and sucked hard while rubbing him with your tongue. He groaned and stroked himself harder, his hips pushing forward and backwards as you let him fuck your face. With a loud grunt and a deep sigh, he came hard, spurting his seed into your mouth. You swallowed every last drop and kept sucking him until he was spent. When he was done, he was breathing heavily and grinning ear to ear at you.

"So much for not touching each other. Now it's your turn to come."

***

Part two will be later in the month.

[ltwilliammowett]

The Irish Currach

The currach is a traditional Irish boat built from a light wooden frame covered with tarred leather or canvas. They were usually 4.80 to 5.50 m long and slightly less than 1 m wide. Depending on the purpose for which they were built and where they were built, they could be seaworthy with a keel and sail or flat as a river or coastal vessel. It is not known exactly when they first appeared on the coasts of Ireland, but they seem to have been around since the Neolithic period.

A modern Kerry currach 

Used for fishing or transport, they could also be used for other purposes. Pytheas of Massalia is said to have used one around 340 BC during his exploration of north-western Europe. Whether he actually did so is questionable, since his account of the voyage has been lost and other ancient authors like to portray him as a liar and label his observations as fictitious. Today's researchers, however, believe him to a large extent.

Pytheas on his voyage to Thule in 340 BC, by Stephen Biesty 2011

In chapter 4 of the Navigatio Sancti Brendani, the author describes how St Brendan and his monks built a curragh for the planned sea voyage in 565 and 573 AD across the open sea to the "Isle of the Blessed". The material is described in detail: resin-soaked ox hides tanned in oak tan for the covering, ash wood for the frames and oak wood for gunwale, oars, oars and mast, all made waterproof with (sheep) fat. Then a hull was constructed from longitudinal and transverse frames joined with leather strips, the skins pulled over them and sewn together with flax fibre threads. Oars, mast, leather straps (for the shrouds and sheets), leather sails, as well as spare skins, woods and grease completed the equipment.

Book illustration Manuscriptum translationis germanicae Cod. Pal. Germ. 60, fol. 179v (University Library  of Heidelberg, Germany), written around 1460 AD. St. Brendan in a currach.

A similarly constructed boat is described in the mythical tales Immram Curaig Maíle Dúin ("The Voyage of the Boat of Máel Dúin") from the 10th century and Immram Brain ("Bran's Voyage") from the 8th century. The currach survives to this day and caused quite a stir in the 17th century when an attempt was made to recreate a seagoing one. Captain Thomas Phillips, described and drew it as follows: "A portable vessel made of wicker, commonly used by the wild Irish". The ocean-going vessel is about 6m long, has a keel and rudder, a ribbed hull and a mast in the middle of the vessel. Because of the keel, the ship is built from the bottom up. A fairing (probably made of animal skins) was added, with the sides supported by poles in the gaps.

The mast is supported by stays and double shrouds on each side, the latter sloping down to an outer plank which serves as a chain stay. The forestay runs over a small fork above the yard, which carries a square sail: a branch is tied to the top of the mast. The stern is topped by double half-rings which could support a cover.

Captain Thomas Phillips - Currach, 17th century

Phillips' sketches suggest that such a vessel was by all means common in his time and probably in use earlier. The keel would improve the handling of the boat, but the hull would remain flexible.

A modern Donegal Sea Currach

Today's currachs are sturdy, light and versatile vessels. Their framework consists of a truss formed by frames and stringers and surmounted by a gunwale. There is a stem and stern post, but no keel. For this it is rowed but can also have a mast and sail, but with a minimum of rigging. The outside of the hull is covered with tarred canvas or calico, a substitute for animal skin. They are used for, recreation, fishing, ferries and for transporting goods and livestock, including sheep and cattle.  

[scotianostra]

On August 22nd, 1138 The Battle of the Standard was fought.

David I King of Scots was famously the ‘ane Sair sanct for the croun’ which quite literally meant “one costly saint to the crown” his piety led to uniquely-generous royal donations to the monastic orders. Sanctity, however, did not prevent him carrying on that other Scots royal tradition - invading England.

Also known as the Battle of Northallerton, the Battle of the Standard was one of two major battles fought in the civil war between the English King Stephen and Empress Matilda in the troubled times down south, known as The Anarchy. The Scottish King David I had crossed the border into England at the head of an army some 16,000 strong, in order to support his niece Matilda’s claim to the throne against Stephen.

With Stephen busy fighting rebel barons in the south of the country, it was left to a mainly locally raised force to repel the invading Scots. Thanks in a large part to Archbishop Thurstan of York, who preached that to withstand the Scots was to do God’s work, an English army of around 10,000 men was recruited.

At the head of the English army was a mast mounted on a cart proudly flying the consecrated banners of the minsters of Beverley, Ripon and York, earning the battle its name.

The English took up their position across the Great North Road a few miles north of Northallerton, blocking the Scots advance southwards. Attempting a surprise early morning attack, King David found the English well prepared and waiting for him.

The battle began with a charge by the unarmoured ‘wild’ Galwegian spearmen, who fell in large numbers under the hail of English arrows. The Galwegians finally fled when two of their leaders were killed.

Although greatly outnumbered, the English resisted several sustained Scottish attacks. Fierce hand to hand fighting continued for around three hours until the Scottish lines broke and retreat turned into a rout. The victorious Yorkshiremen however, failed to take full advantage of the rout allowing many of the Scots to escape and regroup at Carlisle.

As a result of the battle, the Scots would control northern England for the next 20 years, so although they lost the battle they did gain a foothold for some time. On the death of David, his successor and grandson, Malcolm IV was soon forced to surrender David’s gains to King Henry II, the son of the Empress Matilda, who succeeded Stephen as King of England.

[icy-book]

Now, Coach Darnell just wanted a fun little hiking trip for the school. Give the kids some exercise, let the parents be involved. It's free, they get to be in nature, and it's a perfectly lovely laid-back afternoon. Unfortunately for him, the entire Close-Foster-Freeman-Swift-Stephen-Stampler-Marlowe-Swallows-Oak-Garcia-Wilson-Actually-Likely-dear-god-how-many-last-names-do-these-people-have family decided to chaperone.

 Henry: We should go to [fairly far away trail] it's a prefect one for the kids

Carol: How are we going to get there though? The school doesn't have enough minibuses

Darryl: Well, Odessey-san could probably fit about a class and some parents and teachers

Mercedes: And the journey is less than an hour so we can use our no-emission fuel source

Glenn: Guess that means I'm riding with you guys, huh

Darnell, who only knows the Odessey as Darryl's rundown car the kiddads got kidnapped in that one time: Hold on, are you seriously suggesting that we try and fit 30+ people into a 30-something year old minivan that runs on a weird fuel source that you never name and has to be changed every hour, that for some reason only Glenn use?

TJ, completely missing the multiple problems: ... she's bigger on the inside

TJ: She can fit a class

 Sparrow will not stop picking up squirrels. No one knows how he's even able to get that close to them or why they don't freak out when he picks them up (the answer is druid powers). There's a picture of him holding twenty and surrounded by more on the school's socials.

 Grant: This hike will be a great opportunity to spend time with Lincoln's new friends and see what they're like

*Sees Link with a terrifying goth girl who acts just like Terry Jr as a teen (including hating her new stepdad), a weeb who has the exact same vocal mannerisms as Glenn and cool guy energy as Nicky, and clearly Normal Oak*

Grant: You know what, never mind, maybe we should go back to homeschooling him

 (Grant: *he's just like me fr meme /negative*)

 Darnell: I don't want a repeat of soccer camp '22, Terry Jr

TJ: I did absolutely nothing wrong

Darnell: You stuck Lark on top of the flat mast saying, and I quote, "Naughty children go on the pole"

TJ: And it got him to stop setting fire to the goal posts, didn't it?

 Every single one of the s1 parents made homemade snacks. Every. Single. One.

 Henry, ranting about nature and rocks: and you know the chasm we're walking by is actually made by a waterfall slowly eroding its own overhang and slowly moving backwards along the valley

Darryl: Henry, we do this trail once a month and you mention this every single time. I did take high school geography. I know how oxbow lakes are formed

Glenn in the background: the chasm we're walking by is also where I fucked your mom WOO

Samantha: I'm pretty sure Autumn was more likely to make love here with Ronnie than you, Glenn

Glenn: Damn, Sam, still bringing out the decade-old burns

 At one point, Nicky hurts his ankle (plus his asthma is acting up) so Terry just starts giving him a piggy back unprompted.

Lark: Hey Teej, can you carry me as well for a bit

TJ: no <3

Nicky absolutely did not need to be carried the entire rest of the trail, but what was he supposed to do? Tell Terry to put him down? Obviously not an option

(Terry also could easily have carried Lark too, he was just being petty. He also knew he could have stopped carrying Nicky after like, 10 minutes, but hey, Nicky wasn’t complaining, and maybe he liked being able to be this close to him again, sue him)

 They go to a milkshake diner place after the hike (which has vegan options to appease the Swallows-Oak-Garcias). Glenn and Morgan get those couples straws and you know this meme?

They both do the thing in the bottom picture, but they share the glasses that they put the bottom end of the straws into so it still ends up looking like the top picture. Alternatively, they only share one glass, and the other straw is in an individual glass. Which of course means they get into a whole Freddie-esque tangent/rant about why the middle glass needs to be twice as big because it's being consumed at double the rate of the other two

Jodie is not jealous at all as he watches this. Nope. Nuh-uh.

Scam and Mark somehow snuck onto the trip. No one knows how. Terry spends the entire diner celebration shooting the paper coverings that come with straws at takeout places at Mark because he still hasn't forgiven her for upsetting Ron

Poor Darnell just has to keep dealing with this weird-ass blend of 4, maybe 5, different families that just keep on happening. Unfortunate downsides of being Carol’s best friend

[kevinjmann]

UKI - Episode 370

UKI: Episode 370 is now here on Mixcloud

Featuring:

1. JAY MAX - Que Noche

2. Stephen Salewon's Music - All Around

3. James Atlas - Retail Therapy

4. Tony Pearshouse - Dreaming

5. Gunny Markefka - Bye Bye Halley

6. Ronan Furlong Music - Tied To The Mast

7. Koda Corvette - Back To Your Place

8. Scarlett Gunner - Sideshow

9. @lukaszmusic_ - Say What You Want

10. Majeeed - WiLL I?

11. nasmore - I'm The Last One

12. Ryan Petitjean - Heartless

13. Mai-Lan B. My songs - Sensibilité

14. 𝗠𝗘𝗟𝗔𝗡𝗜𝗘 𝗣𝗥𝗜𝗙𝗧𝗜 - Fear

15. Yasmine Baïou - Sahara

16. Kati Sommer - Prince Of Arabia

17. @curly_chains - Coral Crowd

Broadcast on

Sword Radio UK - www.swordradiouk.com - Thursday 9pm

KrystalRadio Station - www.krystalradio.net - Friday 7pm

Pop Radio UK - www.popradiouk.co.uk - Monday 8pm , Tuesday 8pm and Wednesday 8pm

Bunka Radio (Columbia) - https://www.bunkaradio.com/ - Monday 1am

Charlie Mason Radio (USA) - www.charliemasonradio.com - Tuesday 10pm

YOUR LOCAL INDEPENDENT AND UNSIGNED MUSICIANS - PLEASE BUY THEIR MUSIC - KEEP THE SCENE ALIVE!

[junkyard-gifs]

Becoming Growltiger.

"Could do it again...!"

He fades into the background...

... Raffish Munkustrap whips off his old coat and he dons his eyepatch with his back to the audience...

... while the rest of the crew get the rigging set up.

and the spotlight reveal!

(hold on, Misto needs to polish this bit of mast right here.)

Felix Martin, with Stephen Martin Allan as Mistoffelees, Jan-Eike Majert as Mungojerrie, Florian Fetterle as Munkustrap, and Dominik Hees as Tugger.

Vienna revival, 21 June 2022. Filmed by @falasta​ and @cryptidvoidwritings​; giffed with permission.

[huxs-waifu]

10,000 Nights - Final Chapter - Greek tragedy **Smut**

Chapter Summary:

So here we are at the final chapter of this story, We have the Honeymoon enjoy the final smut , as always please drop a comment.

Thank you to everyone who has supported me and this fiction for the last 2 years! It's really been a labour of love and opened so many doors for me. Please do not threat though this is not the end of Chrissy and my strange - I've got an NSFW alphabet and a few extras coming.

AS well as a spin-off/ sequel series - the working title is Norse/Greek Tragedy. So if you want to know what happens to Chalice in the future this will be her story! with a particular Trickster god named Loki ;) along with her relationship with mum and dad but not as you expect.

Part Twelve - can be found here

A03 link - https://archiveofourown.org/works/30666221/chapters/93492631

Playlist - https://huxs-waifu.tumblr.com/post/650653939084279808/via

Masterlist - https://huxs-waifu.tumblr.com/post/670776247958257664/10000-nights-masterlist-the-cloak-seems-intent

After the wedding, we retired to a honeymoon suite that Tony had offered up. Stephen carried me over the threshold traditionally not via a portal, he decided he wanted at least some normal parts of a wedding. That was the whole point of having a second wedding.

Strange practically tumbled me onto the bed and started loosening his tie.

"Woah someone can't wait tonight, relax it's our honeymoon" sitting up and taking his hands in mine gently taking the fingers away from the loosened tie.

"I want to make another one. A baby that is not an interdimensional rift"

"You want another one already. Like literally right now. You know how much trouble chalice caused us"

"Well my little wife. I want to make lot with you. Plus it's a lot more fun making one intentionally ."

"Ok calm down Daddy," I smirked. A pang jolted through Stephen, his blue eyes dilated.

"You finally did it. You called me Daddy!"

"Oh, no little one you will be calling me Daddy from now on. No more of that old man business." Grabbing my ass pulling me into him, as I stood up from the bed. his dress trousers are straining half-mast already. "Do you understand how delicious that sounds coming out of your mouth, wife?"

"I'd been saving it up. Anyway, you ARE a daddy now old man" getting on my knees,

Poking him in the chest. Before continuing to take off the tie.

"Well if I can't continue with the old man routine.  What about you calling me little one? I'm not that girl you followed into a wine closet."

"No, you're not. Yes, it does work both ways. You are a woman. A bright celestial goddess. You are all women to me. Every inch of your curves, your pinprick scars that litter your body. Your blood that runs hot and your milk that flows to feed our child. Are all women, My wife" capturing our lips together. “Now Goddess, I wish for you to get back on this bed.”

“In the dress still?” Swaying the skirts of the tulle back and forth. Watching his eyes change to that of hunger, like a snake being hypnotised by the movement. ”Be a shame to waste the lingerie underneath, i know how much you adore your Wife in it”

A low growl escapes his mouth in pleasure, before flicking his hand to the side of him the dress falling off around my ankles and sliding away much as the cape does with its scared. Bared to him the pump this time was attached to my arm hidden by the voluminous sleeves of the dress. “You never fail to surprise me my goddess with your pump-hiding skills”

“Face it it's one of the reasons you like me.”

“Oh its up there on the list with many things I love about you Chrissy. Including your underwear choices.” his hands reach out enjoying touching the golden yellow bra cup, the silk gliding over his fingertips. Not that he could feel it but silk gave his hands a nice cooling sensation. The white lace edges contrasted beautifully, and don't even get him started on the thong that was barely there.

Looking up at him I capture his lips again, his grip tightening on my breast. “It's time to get you undressed too.” whispering between kisses. I grab hold of his wrist though before he can magically remove them.” no magic!” As I discard his suit jacket, he stops groping me to shake his hands in defeat. Getting to work on the shirt buttons. Every Centimetre relieved of his porcelain skin had me giddy with joy. My hand sliding inside his shirt to feel the skin-to-skin contact, making light tracings over this well-toned lean pecs before continuing the shirt removal.

“We're going to be all night if you keep up like this.”

“Paintance Wizard, we've got the rest of our lives together.”

“Well the former supreme has waited 1000’s years , I think I owe it to him to speed this up.” flicking his trousers off to join the rest of the suit. before taking each side of my face and receiving a hungry kiss. My own hands are firmly pressed on his chest as he walks me backwards onto the bed. “Now my beautiful wife do as I say and spread those legs.”

Moving into the centre of the bed, complying with his demands. Coyly opening my legs wide to show off the barely-there underwear.The bed dipped lightly as he sits in front on his knees eys filled with lust before even touching me his hands connecting to my hips all the same. As with his best grip possible the coolness of them glade down the sides of the thong. Removing them “see you don't need magic to do everything.”

“You always say that but I do”

“No, you don't, I love your hands. I love every inch of you. Your amazing magic or not.”

“Darling, you are the most wonderful person in the world.” As strange dips capturing my lips his fingers start to weave in and out of my folds with his fingers. A moan escapes me and into his mouth, causing him to smirk. “Please allow me to give you pleasure before you give me mine. Goddess, I intend to worship all of you tonight. Kissing down my jaw, over the clavicle, across the shoulder and stopped kissing above the pump. “That's every part of you.” fingers enter deeper making a sweet scissoring motion before drawing back out.

A low husky mewl releases from me as they pull out completely. The doctor positioned himself in front letting his ridge member slap a couple of times before finding his placement inside me.The sticky sloppy draw of my pussy dragged up and down Stephens's cock. He looked upon me with a gleeful grin, eyes connecting in the darkness. Before a flash of madness passed through them his thrusts became ploughing movements making the bed squeak with every pump of hips. Making sure to bottom out every time. My body gladly takes every inch of him and more.

Growling sitting up, I hooked an arm around his neck and legs around his waist. The thrusts are deep and lounging as we grind against one another. Lost in the ecstasy of the sweaty lust filled the room. Sweat dripping down our bodies, I closed my eyes only to be met by his forehead against mine. “ Look at me Chrissy, I want you to look into my eyes as I take you over the edge.”Swallowing feeling the change in movement to one of eager pace, hitting the indie of me in that special place. His hands hooked into the hair at the back of my head. Opening my eyes to see my now husband looking so intensely at my face. “Fucking celestial.”

At those words my body broke down into its release, Stephan chasing his own in three more powerful blows. His seed becoming nestled in me, time stopped as if the stone in the eye knew we needed it.

The morning after.

Placing a hand on his chest pushing Strange back into the pillows. The White silk of the honeymoon suite is the complete difference from the sumptuous red of the sanctum four-poster bed. Tracking each mole and scar lazily before giving a soft kiss to the centre of his body.

As I draw back up. His hands grab at the ample and tender breast flesh hanging above him. Kneading the skin."I can feel it. Your heart is beating."

"Beats only for you, Stephen "

"I love you. I can't tell you enough." Moving his hand from my body clutching at my face. "I never want to be lonely again. I'm glad i found you in this universe, makes me almost feel sad for the others in theirs, that don't have you."

Bending over, the style of hair coming unravelled one side. Placing a kiss on his lips. Smooching away at my now husband. Kneed on top straddling him. "I want to tell you how much I love every day. Spend 10,000 nights with you and 10,000 more."

So we spend every night together from that moment on. A good year when by, with love and laughter. Until that one faithful day when, a spaceship crashed and Strange ran after tony.

*SNAP*

@too-short-for-my-own-good @avengershumanresources​ @fluffyprettykitty​ @d0ct0rstrangewife @type1diabetesinfandom @strangelockd​

[bomberqueen17]

Liveblogging the Aubreyad, book 4 pt 3

ok yeah IDK why I thought I'd be able to keep working on that summary while on a transatlantic flight and back and the assorted shit I was doing there, that was kind of silly. But. I'm going to wrap this up. This book is a weird one, because it is stolen so wholesale without much alteration from real historical events.

Anyway we left off on what was about to be Thee Worst Defeat of the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Era, which nobody really remembers because it was part of a campaign that otherwise did not go well at all for France, but. Not to be spoilery. We left off at Ile de la Passe, and the French were just showing up, and the gunners who had taken the French battery at the mouth of the harbor were... not ready.

The various forces who came to the location aboard the Nereide are dispersed, having been engaged in little harrying actions here and there, and when the French show up-- five ships, two frigates, a corvette, and two captured British indiamen-- they have trouble getting into position. The gunners in the fort do not have an officer by, and while they roughly understand what to do, they are not confident. Also they raise a false French flag, and once the ships have been lured it in, they pull it down, and the person in charge of running up the replacement colors carelessly tosses it aside where it lands in a tub of burning slow-match and started a fire that blows up a magazine.

The Nereide has fired two broadsides and made the French corvette strike, but could not take possession, and meanwhile the fort has taken heavy casualties and damaged most of its guns without doing any damage of note to the French.

The French corvette un-strikes her colors and continues in to the harbor with the rest of the French ships, and they all get in easily with no further damage, under little fire; the Nereide engages them, but each slips through without much damage.

Clonfert sends to Pym for reinforcements. Pym comes with Sirius, promising Iphegenia and Magicienne to follow. Sirius and Nereide move into the channel to confront the cornered French. They do not have good maps, their pilots do not know the shoals, and the French have removed all buoys and markers. Sirius strikes hard on a coral reef and is aground and they cannot refloat her. Nereiede moors nearby to assist.

Sirius is hauled off the next morning as the other two British ships arrive, and Nereiede leads them in the pass.

Sirius strikes hard again. As they make their final approach, Magicienne strikes as well, so now two of the four British ships are aground. They had planned to have each ship take on a French opponent; Nereide, under the glory-hungry Clonfert, decides to take on two, to make up for the ships that cannot come up. Magicienne is at least in range, though only a few of her guns can bear. Iphegenia is not aground but becomes trapped behind a shoal after an interlude of fighting; three of the French ships run aground but all can bring their guns to bear on Nereide, and all fall to hammering her until most of her pople are dead.

Clonfert is badly wounded in the face and neck by a splinter. Stephen patches him up, and he insists on going back to the fight. He determines that the Nereide must strike, but they cannot get the colors down, they are stuck. In the morning the French are still firing on them, and Clonfert has the mast chopped down so that the colors will come down and the French will stop firing on what is mostly a dead ship full of dead and wounded men.

They load those who cannot bear to become prisoners into a boat, and leave the rest for the French; Stephen goes in the boat, and away. Clonfert stays with the ship, in his bandages.

Meanwhile, Pym is in charge, and Iphegenia, under Lambert, has freed herself from her trapped position. Lambert begs leave to go in , attack the French with all the hands from the Magicienne and Sirius to board the French, to retake the Nereide-- he is confident they can win the day. But Pym is not very bright and insists that he has to instead help Sirius unground herself. Meanwhile the Magicienne now gets the same treatment the Nereide did, but enough of her men survive to set her on fire rather than leaving her to be captured, and they all scramble aboard the Iphegenia, back to help the Sirius, which still cannot be brought off her reef.

Finally Pym realizes the Sirius cannot be saved, and they evacuate her onto the Iphegenia as well, and burn her. Now alone, the Iphegenia cannot sail out of the harbor, but must warp out instead-- using a boat to carry an anchor, then winching in the anchor, then carrying another anchor out in the boat, a laborious and slow process. By the time she is out in the channel, French reinforcements are arriving.

The Iphegenia sends men to the fort at the mouth of the harbor, the one that had done no good to begin with, but there is almost no ammunition left. She must surrender. They have lost utterly.

A few can be sent away in the ship's launch, and so away Stephen goes, with the Iphegenia's young gentlemen and ship's boys and other people her captain cannot bear to see made prisoner for possibly years, and a letter to the captain's wife. Lambert is bitterly furious: he could have won, but Pym was too stupid. Pym is vaguely aware of this but nothing can now be done.

Stephen gets to St. Paul's harbor on La Reunion with the news, and Jack calmly reckons that the odds are worse now but they must carry on.

The Windham Indiamen has passed back and forth between British and French hands now about four or five times; she was in French hands at Ile de la Passe but shied away from the channel and did not come in. As she bore away for Riviere Noire, TOM PULLINGS re-re-recaptured her in the schooner he picked up to replace Groper at St Paul after the island was taken.

Jack in Boadicea comes to Ile de la Passe to see what remains. The French have captured yet another British ship, the Ranger, full of badly-needed stores and supplies, and is using them to repair their damaged ships. The French squadron is all present, and enough of them that Boadicea can do nothing, but Jack sends a fast aviso under one of his midshipmen ahead of him back to St Paul to ask them to arm the Windham Indiaman with the unseaworthy Otter's guns, and let Otter's Tompkinson come out in her, as a makeshift consort which will allow Boadicea to engage the French.

But as Jack approaches, the Windham has not been prepared, and Jack is furious.

Out to meet them comes a transport, the Emma, cracking on as fast as she can. And it's TOM PULLINGS, with the news that Captain Tompkinson declined the command, believing that the Windham was not seaworthy. Emma's commander, a lieutenant friend of Tom's (she's from the flotilla of transports that came down with the Groper), is ill, but agreed that Tom should take her, and here she is, with all of the hands from Emma and the former Groper, all the guns from Windham and some from Otter, with gunners and small-arms-men from Keating's land forces to boot.

But Emma is only a transport, and she cannot sail fast enough, no matter what Pullings may do. They cannot catch the French, so Jack sends Pullings off in the Emma to make for Rodriguez and then cruise beyond it to warn off British ships so the French shall at least not be able to capture any more Indiamen or store ships.

Boadicea heads back for La Reunion, and Jack refits the Otter and the Windham, ignoring the unhappy Tompkinson. There, they get news that another British frigate has arrived-- HMS Africaine, of 36 18-lb guns-- commanded by-- why it's none other than Captain Corbett, formerly of the Nereide, the flog-happy hard-horse Jack had worked so hard to get rid of. But he is back at Rodriguez with a beautiful powerful ship-- and the French are hard on his tail.

Otter, Staunch, and Boadicea hurry out to meet Africaine, who is in hot pursuit of the Iphegenie (yes, just now she was HMS Iphegenia) and the Astree. Africaine is faster than any of the others, being new and beautiful-- the "plum" reward Corbett was given for Jack choosing to send him up to be promoted. Jack worries briefly that Corbett will engage without waiting for the others to come up, but dismisses this worry; Corbett is smarter than that.

Corbett is not smarter than that. He engages the Iphegenia and Astree without waiting for the rest of the squadron. Boadicea, able to hear the gunfire, leaves the others behind and hurries to catch up, but the breeze fails. She manages to get within eyeshot just in time to see Africaine, completely dismasted, strike her colors, and the French, for some reason, continue to fire into her for another quarter of an hour, inhumanely brutal, and the wind won't allow Boadicea to come up.

Boadicea finally gets just close enough to give Iphegenia two furious broadsides, doing her a great deal of damage but not enough to cripple her, and then veers away; he cannot fight both ships and knows it. He waits to windward while Staunch and Otter labor to catch up, and as he contemplates the situation, watching the French hover there uneasily, Jack feels that the situation has changed, and that the force is on his side. He believes he can prevail; somehow he feels that once his forces are marshaled, he will retake the Africaine and then the French will not be able to regain their momentum, and he feels the whole campaign will inevitably succeed and this is the French high-water mark, right here. He is convinced that the French don't have their hearts in it, don't want it badly enough, and he can do what he must do with the few assets at his disposal, simply by being sharper and surer.

With Staunch and Otter having been told the plan, the three British ships sail enthusiastically toward the "uneasy French heap" to leeward. The Astree passes a towline to the wounded Iphegenia and they abandon the Africaine and sail away, declining the engagement.

The Africaines are so angry at their treatment, so eager for revenge, that some of them leap over the side and swim to the Boadicea, begging her to go in chase of the French and catch them so they can take their revenge for how they were handled.

'I know you can do it, sir," cried one with a bloody dressing round his upper arm, "I was shipmates along of you in Sophie, when we fucked the big Spaniard. Don't say no, sir." "I am glad to see you, Herold," said Jack, "and I wish I could say yes, with all my heart. But you are a seaman--look how they lay. Three hours stern chase, and five French frigates to northwards ready to come down for the Africaine. I understand your feelings, lads, but it's no go. Bear a hand with a towline, and we shall take your barky into St Paul's and refit her: then you shall serve the Frenchmen out yourselves." They looked longingly at the Astree and the Iphigenia, and they sighed; but as seamen they had nothing to say.

Captain Corbett was mysteriously killed in the engagement-- heavily implied that he was scragged by the crew , but no one will say and no one saw anything, of course. Africaine's surgeon, Mr. Cotton, says to Stephen that the other officers had begged him to confine Corbett, who was mad with authority, but alas it could not be done, and Corbett had never taught the hands to fire their guns because it would have marked up the deck too much.

Stephen helps Mr. Cotton with the many, many casualties, and in return Cotton comes aboard the next morning to help Stephen trephine the Boadicea's sole casualty, a seaman with a depressed cranial fracture. Jack of course supersititously takes it into his mind that if the seaman survives, then his luck will hold, so he gets very invested. (Spoiler: He does.)

Stephen goes out in the aviso Pearl of the Mascarenes for more intelligence work, and this time they send Bonden with him. They come flying back a few days later with the signal Enemy in sight due north-- the Africaine is not yet refitted but the Boadicea, Staunch, and Otter all come out to help because the Pearl witnessed HMS Bombay getting into a scrap with the French Venus and corvette Victor. Boadicea comes up after Bombay has been taken, but not long after. Venus is badly damaged, and Victor takes Bombay in tow to flee, but they are not moving very fast. Boadicea chases slowly-- the winds are not favorable for any of them-- and to pass the time, it being Sunday, Jack musters to divisions and inspects the ship. And the whole time everyone is trying to watch without watching as the Bombay's towline parts, the Venus has to come up to help, and the Boadicea is catching up amazingly.

Finally the Victor runs, leaving the Venus to stand and fight; she comes bravely up to the Boadicea but has staked everything on her first broadside doing enough damage, and Jack saw what she was about and put about just as she fired, so most of her shots missed. In return Boadicea ranges up directly next to her, fires a broadside of grapeshot only at her decks, and then the fifty volunteers Jack had taken aboard from the Africaine are given a one-minute headstart to board her, before the Boadiceas join them. Unsurprisingly, they win.

Now Jack's squadron has two more damaged but quite powerful ships: the Bombay and the Venus. And the French commodore, Hamelin, was killed by Boadicea's grapeshot. Jack is absolutely certain now that he can win this whole shooting-match with what he has now, and that the French will not fight hard any longer. They add the two new ships to the Africaine refitting, and work day and night to get them done; the attack must go while they have momentum, and they work like heroes to get ready. Finally they are ready for the final assault, and set off, the whole squadron and all the transports, to carry it out.

They have just sunk the land when they catch sight of a sail-- it is the Emma, Tom Pullings still in command, who was summoned to join them but they hadn't expected to see him so soon.

Then they see more sail. Four sail. Surely Emma could see them better, but she has no signal flying. Why is she saying nothing? More sails. Who could they be? They must be British ships. Indiamen? Jack realizes suddenly, with cold terror, that they must be British men of war. Now that they are like to win the whole thing, Admiral Bertie has stirred himself to come get some glory.

They turn around to meet the Emma and see that there are seventeen ships now, absolutely men of war.

Tom Pullings comes aboard, absolutely delighted and full of news.

He took a dog-eared Naval Chronicle from his pocket and plucked an official letter from among its pages, marking the place with his thumb; but holding the letter aloft, not quite delivering it, he said, "So no post, sir, since I last saw you?" "Not a word, Tom," said Jack. "Not a word since the Cape; and that was out of order. Not a word for the best part of a year." "Then I am the first," cried Pullings with infinite satisfaction. "Let me wish you and Mrs Aubrey all the joy in the world." He grasped Jack's limp, wondering hand, wrung it numb, and showed the printed page, reading aloud, "At Ashgrove Cottage, Chilton Admiral, in Hants, the lady of Captain Aubrey, of the Boadicea, of a son and heir," following the words with his finger.

Remember back in part 1 of this, how Sophie enticed Jack to stay one more night at home?

Well this is the result of that. I told you it was plot-significant!

So the Admiral comes up with a fleet to snatch the glory right out of Jack's mouth, and expects to be resented for it, but Jack is so overwhelmingly delighted at finding out he has a third child (and first son, he had badly wanted a son) that no bad mood can touch him.

Everyone else is furious. Col. Keating is absolutely incoherent with wrath, as this sort of thing has happened to him before and of course the squadron has brought with it more troops and a general to supersede him, so he will get no credit for the entire campaign. Pullings is devastated when he realizes that they were in fact just fine without his reinforcements, and if only he'd been less adept at cracking on to catch up to them he could have slow-walked it so that the attack could have gone off without these reinforcements-- he is really upset about it once he understands the situation, it was absolutely in his power to have delayed long enough for it not to happen--

but Jack is so happy that none of this bothers him.

Stephen takes advantage, and uses his skills to poison the Admiral a little, murmuring to the secretary the Admiral had sent to help them about how Jack is so unconcerned because of his great influence politically, no one really knows but he has all these connections, he didn't need any of this at all to advance his career, he's really going to wind up very highly-placed, etc. etc. It's not much but it makes him feel a little better.

So the Admiral, deeply unnerved, puts all his pressure on the new general to go along with the existing plan, to press ahead precisely as it was planned out by the men they've superseded, and so they do. The French capitulate with only the briefest show, for pride.

Stephen goes ashore at Port-Louis before the capitulation is even complete, to check in with the captured McAdam and Clonfert. Jack has a letter from Lady Clonfert that he wishes to bring to Clonfert later that day, and wishes to tell Clonfert how much the fleet praises his noble defense of Nereiade-- kind things to say to an injured comrade. Stephen asks whether this would be advisable, and McAdam says perhaps Stephen should come a few minutes ahead just to see. Clonfert has been strange, lately.

Stephen watches the capitulation with a collection of wounded Nereiades who have come down to a bend in the road; they agree to look for his dodo-feather pillow when they go aboard after the Nereiade is returned to the British in the capitulation. Then he goes and meets with Jack, and they go back up to see Clonfert. Along the way they discuss the Admiral's official despatch about the victory-- carrying such a thing home is a tremendous honor and the bearer is almost invariably promoted.

Stephen goes in ahead to check on Clonfert and McAdam meets him, roaring drunk. "Make a lane there," he cried. "Make a lane for the great Dublin physician. Come and see your patient, Dr Maturin, you whore."

Clonfert has torn his bandages off and bled to death.

“Stephen bent to listen for any trace of a heart-beat, straightened, closed Clonfert's eyes, and pulled up the sheet. McAdam sat on the side of the bed, weeping now, his fury gone with his shouting; and between his sobs he said, "It was the cheering that woke him. What are they cheering for? says he, and I said the French have surrendered. Aubrey will be here and you shall have your Nereide back. Never, by God, says he, not from Jack Aubrey: run out McAdam and see are they coming. And when I stepped out of the door so he did it, and so bloody Christ he did it." A long silence, and he said, "Your Jack Aubrey destroyed him. Jack Aubrey destroyed him.”

There's the end of the weird, one-sided rivalry. Stephen just says he died, and tells Jack no more of it. Jack is sincerely regretful.

Then the Admiral's victory dinner, and countless speeches, but Stephen's subtle intelligence-poisoning of the Admiral bears its fruit.

“In the course of my long career," said the Admiral, "I have been compelled to give many orders, which, though always for the good of the service, have sometimes been repugnant to my finer feelings. For even an Admiral retains finer feelings, gentlemen." Dutiful laughter, pretty thin. "But now, with His Excellency's permission, I shall indulge myself by giving one that is more congenial to the spirit of a plain British sailor." He paused and coughed in a suddenly hushed atmosphere of genuine suspense, and then in an even louder voice he went on, "I hereby request and require Captain Aubrey to repair aboard the Boadicea as soon as he has finished his dinner, there to receive my despatches for the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty and to convey them to Whitehall with all the diligence in his power. And to this, gentlemen"--raising his glass -'I will append a toast: let us all fill up to the brim, gunwales under, and drink to England, home and beauty, and may Lucky Jack Aubrey reach 'em with fair winds and flowing sheets every mile of the way.”

The end!

[siena-sevenwits]

Soaked in Seaweed: or, Upset in the Ocean. (An Old-fashioned Sea Story)

by Stephen Leacock

It was in August in 1867 that I stepped on board the deck of the Saucy Sally, lying in dock at Gravesend, to fill the berth of second mate.

Let me first say a word about myself.

I was a tall, handsome young fellow, squarely and powerfully built, bronzed by the sun and the moon (and even copper-coloured in spots from the effect of the stars), and with a face in which honesty, intelligence, and exceptional brain power were combined with Christianity, simplicity, and modesty.

As I stepped on the deck I could not help a slight feeling of triumph, as I caught sight of my sailor-like features reflected in a tar-barrel that stood beside the mast, while a little later I could scarcely repress a sense of gratification as I noticed them reflected again in a bucket of bilge water.

“Welcome on board, Mr. Blowhard,” called out Captain Bilge, stepping out of the binnacle and shaking hands across the taffrail.

I saw before me a fine sailor-like man of from thirty to sixty, clean-shaven, except for an enormous pair of whiskers, a heavy beard, and a thick moustache, powerful in build, and carrying his beam well aft, in a pair of broad duck trousers across the back of which there would have been room to write a history of the British Navy.

Beside him were the first and third mates, both of them being quiet men of poor stature, who looked at Captain Bilge with what seemed to me an apprehensive expression in their eyes.

The vessel was on the eve of departure. Her deck presented that scene of bustle and alacrity dear to the sailor’s heart. Men were busy nailing up the masts, hanging the bowsprit over the side, varnishing the lee-scuppers and pouring hot tar down the companion-way.

Captain Bilge, with a megaphone to his lips, kept calling out to the men in his rough sailor fashion:

“Now, then, don’t over-exert yourselves, gentlemen. Remember, please, that we have plenty of time. Keep out of the sun as much as you can. Step carefully in the rigging there, Jones; I fear it’s just a little high for you. Tut, tut, Williams, don’t get yourself so dirty with that tar, you won’t look fit to be seen.”

I stood leaning over the gaff of the mainsail and thinking—yes, thinking, dear reader, of my mother. I hope that you will think none the less of me for that. Whenever things look dark, I lean up against something and think of mother. If they get positively black, I stand on one leg and think of father. After that I can face anything.

Did I think, too, of another, younger than mother and fairer than father? Yes, I did. “Bear up, darling,” I had whispered as she nestled her head beneath my oilskins and kicked out backward with one heel in the agony of her girlish grief, “in five years the voyage will be over, and after three more like it, I shall come back with money enough to buy a second-hand fishing-net and settle down on shore.”

Meantime the ship’s preparations were complete. The masts were all in position, the sails nailed up, and men with axes were busily chopping away the gangway.

“All ready?” called the Captain.

“Aye, aye, sir.”

“Then hoist the anchor in board and send a man down with the key to open the bar.”

Opening the bar! the last sad rite of departure. How often in my voyages have I seen it; the little group of men soon to be exiled from their home, standing about with saddened faces, waiting to see the man with the key open the bar—held there by some strange fascination.

Next morning with a fair wind astern we had buzzed around the corner of England and were running down the Channel.

I know no finer sight, for those who have never seen it, than the English Channel. It is the highway of the world. Ships of all nations are passing up and down, Dutch, Scotch, Venezuelan, and even American.

Chinese junks rush to and fro. Warships, motor yachts, icebergs, and lumber rafts are everywhere. If I add to this fact that so thick a fog hangs over it that it is entirely hidden from sight, my readers can form some idea of the majesty of the scene.

We had now been three days at sea. My first sea-sickness was wearing off, and I thought less of father.

On the third morning Captain Bilge descended to my cabin.

“Mr. Blowhard,” he said, “I must ask you to stand double watches.”

“What is the matter?” I inquired.

“The two other mates have fallen overboard,” he said uneasily, and avoiding my eye.

I contented myself with saying, “Very good, sir,” but I could not help thinking it a trifle odd that both the mates should have fallen overboard in the same night.

Surely there was some mystery in this.

Two mornings later the Captain appeared at the breakfast-table with the same shifting and uneasy look in his eye.

“Anything wrong, sir?” I asked.

“Yes,” he answered, trying to appear at ease and twisting a fried egg to and fro between his fingers with such nervous force as almost to break it in two—“I regret to say that we have lost the bosun.”

“The bosun!” I cried.

“Yes,” said Captain Bilge more quietly, “he is overboard. I blame myself for it, partly. It was early this morning. I was holding him up in my arms to look at an iceberg, and, quite accidentally I assure you—I dropped him overboard.”

“Captain Bilge,” I asked, “have you taken any steps to recover him?”

“Not as yet,” he replied uneasily.

I looked at him fixedly, but said nothing.

Ten days passed.

The mystery thickened. On Thursday two men of the starboard watch were reported missing. On Friday the carpenter’s assistant disappeared. On the night of Saturday a circumstance occurred which, slight as it was, gave me some clue as to what was happening.

As I stood at the wheel about midnight, I saw the Captain approach in the darkness carrying the cabin-boy by the hind leg. The lad was a bright little fellow, whose merry disposition had already endeared him to me, and I watched with some interest to see what the Captain would do to him. Arrived at the stern of the vessel, Captain Bilge looked cautiously around a moment and then dropped the boy into the sea. For a brief instant the lad’s head appeared in the phosphorus of the waves. The Captain threw a boot at him, sighed deeply, and went below.

Here then was the key to the mystery! The Captain was throwing the crew overboard. Next morning we met at breakfast as usual.

“Poor little Williams has fallen overboard,” said the Captain, seizing a strip of ship’s bacon and tearing at it with his teeth as if he almost meant to eat it.

“Captain,” I said, greatly excited, stabbing at a ship’s loaf in my agitation with such ferocity as almost to drive my knife into it—“You threw that boy overboard!”

“I did,” said Captain Bilge, grown suddenly quiet, “I threw them all over and intend to throw the rest. Listen, Blowhard, you are young, ambitious, and trustworthy. I will confide in you.”

Perfectly calm now, he stepped to a locker, rummaged in it a moment, and drew out a faded piece of yellow parchment, which he spread on the table. It was a map or chart. In the centre of it was a circle. In the middle of the circle was a small dot and a letter T, while at one side of the map was a letter N, and against it on the other side a letter S.

“What is this?” I asked.

“Can you not guess?” queried Captain Bilge. “It is a desert island.”

“Ah!” I rejoined with a sudden flash of intuition, “and N is for North and S is for South.”

“Blowhard,” said the Captain, striking the table with such force as to cause a loaf of ship’s bread to bounce up and down three or four times, “you’ve struck it. That part of it had not yet occurred to me.”

“And the letter T?” I asked.

“The treasure, the buried treasure,” said the Captain, and turning the map over he read from the back of it—“The point T indicates the spot where the treasure is buried under the sand; it consists of half a million Spanish dollars, and is buried in a brown leather dress-suit case.”

“And where is the island?” I inquired, mad with excitement.

“That I do not know,” said the Captain. “I intend to sail up and down the parallels of latitude until I find it.”

“And meantime?”

“Meantime, the first thing to do is to reduce the number of the crew so as to have fewer hands to divide among. Come, come,” he added in a burst of frankness which made me love the man in spite of his shortcomings, “will you join me in this? We’ll throw them all over, keeping the cook to the last, dig up the treasure, and be rich for the rest of our lives.”

Reader, do you blame me if I said yes? I was young, ardent, ambitious, full of bright hopes and boyish enthusiasm.

“Captain Bilge,” I said, putting my hand in his, “I am yours.”

“Good,” he said, “now go forward to the forecastle and get an idea what the men are thinking.”

I went forward to the men’s quarters—a plain room in the front of the ship, with only a rough carpet on the floor, a few simple arm-chairs, writing-desks, spittoons of a plain pattern, and small brass beds with blue-and-green screens. It was Sunday morning, and the men were mostly sitting about in their dressing-gowns.

They rose as I entered and curtseyed.

“Sir,” said Tompkins, the bosun’s mate, “I think it my duty to tell you that there is a great deal of dissatisfaction among the men.”

Several of the men nodded.

“They don’t like the way the men keep going overboard,” he continued, his voice rising to a tone of uncontrolled passion. “It is positively absurd, sir, and if you will allow me to say so, the men are far from pleased.”

“Tompkins,” I said sternly, “you must understand that my position will not allow me to listen to mutinous language of this sort.”

I returned to the Captain. “I think the men mean mutiny,” I said.

“Good,” said Captain Bilge, rubbing his hands, “that will get rid of a lot of them, and of course,” he added musingly, looking out of the broad old-fashioned port-hole at the stern of the cabin, at the heaving waves of the South Atlantic, “I am expecting pirates at any time, and that will take out quite a few of them. However”—and here he pressed the bell for a cabin-boy—“kindly ask Mr. Tompkins to step this way.”

“Tompkins,” said the Captain as the bosun’s mate entered, “be good enough to stand on the locker and stick your head through the stern port-hole, and tell me what you think of the weather.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” replied the tar with a simplicity which caused us to exchange a quiet smile.

Tompkins stood on the locker and put his head and shoulders out of the port.

Taking a leg each we pushed him through. We heard him plump into the sea.

“Tompkins was easy,” said Captain Bilge. “Excuse me as I enter his death in the log.”

“Yes,” he continued presently, “it will be a great help if they mutiny. I suppose they will, sooner or later. It’s customary to do so. But I shall take no step to precipitate it until we have first fallen in with pirates. I am expecting them in these latitudes at any time. Meantime, Mr. Blowhard,” he said, rising, “if you can continue to drop overboard one or two more each week, I shall feel extremely grateful.”

Three days later we rounded the Cape of Good Hope and entered upon the inky waters of the Indian Ocean. Our course lay now in zigzags and, the weather being favourable, we sailed up and down at a furious rate over a sea as calm as glass.

On the fourth day a pirate ship appeared. Reader, I do not know if you have ever seen a pirate ship. The sight was one to appal the stoutest heart. The entire ship was painted black, a black flag hung at the masthead, the sails were black, and on the deck people dressed all in black walked up and down arm-in-arm. The words ���Pirate Ship” were painted in white letters on the bow. At the sight of it our crew were visibly cowed. It was a spectacle that would have cowed a dog.

The two ships were brought side by side. They were then lashed tightly together with bag string and binder twine, and a gang plank laid between them. In a moment the pirates swarmed upon our deck, rolling their eyes, gnashing their teeth and filing their nails.

Then the fight began. It lasted two hours—with fifteen minutes off for lunch. It was awful. The men grappled with one another, kicked one another from behind, slapped one another across the face, and in many cases completely lost their temper and tried to bite one another. I noticed one gigantic fellow brandishing a knotted towel, and striking right and left among our men, until Captain Bilge rushed at him and struck him flat across the mouth with a banana skin.

At the end of two hours, by mutual consent, the fight was declared a draw. The points standing at sixty-one and a half against sixty-two.

The ships were unlashed, and with three cheers from each crew, were headed on their way.

“Now, then,” said the Captain to me aside, “let us see how many of the crew are sufficiently exhausted to be thrown overboard.”

He went below. In a few minutes he reappeared, his face deadly pale. “Blowhard,” he said, “the ship is sinking. One of the pirates (sheer accident, of course, I blame no one) has kicked a hole in the side. Let us sound the well.”

We put our ear to the ship’s well. It sounded like water.

The men were put to the pumps and worked with the frenzied effort which only those who have been drowned in a sinking ship can understand.

At six p.m. the well marked one half an inch of water, at nightfall three-quarters of an inch, and at daybreak, after a night of unremitting toil, seven-eighths of an inch.

By noon of the next day the water had risen to fifteen-sixteenths of an inch, and on the next night the sounding showed thirty-one thirty-seconds of an inch of water in the hold. The situation was desperate. At this rate of increase few, if any, could tell where it would rise to in a few days.

That night the Captain called me to his cabin. He had a book of mathematical tables in front of him, and great sheets of vulgar fractions littered the floor on all sides.

“The ship is bound to sink,” he said, “in fact, Blowhard, she is sinking. I can prove it. It may be six months or it may take years, but if she goes on like this, sink she must. There is nothing for it but to abandon her.”

That night, in the dead of darkness, while the crew were busy at the pumps, the Captain and I built a raft.

Unobserved we cut down the masts, chopped them into suitable lengths, laid them crosswise in a pile and lashed them tightly together with bootlaces.

Hastily we threw on board a couple of boxes of food and bottles of drinking fluid, a sextant, a chronometer, a gas-meter, a bicycle pump and a few other scientific instruments. Then taking advantage of a roll in the motion of the ship, we launched the raft, lowered ourselves upon a line, and under cover of the heavy dark of a tropical night, we paddled away from the doomed vessel.

The break of day found us a tiny speck on the Indian Ocean. We looked about as big as this (.).

In the morning, after dressing, and shaving as best we could, we opened our box of food and drink.

Then came the awful horror of our situation.

One by one the Captain took from the box the square blue tins of canned beef which it contained. We counted fifty-two in all. Anxiously and with drawn faces we watched until the last can was lifted from the box. A single thought was in our minds. When the end came the Captain stood up on the raft with wild eyes staring at the sky.

“The can-opener!” he shrieked, “just Heaven, the can-opener.” He fell prostrate.

Meantime, with trembling hands, I opened the box of bottles. It contained lager beer bottles, each with a patent tin top. One by one I took them out. There were fifty-two in all. As I withdrew the last one and saw the empty box before me, I shroke out—“The thing! the thing! oh, merciful Heaven! The thing you open them with!”

I fell prostrate upon the Captain.

We awoke to find ourselves still a mere speck upon the ocean. We felt even smaller than before.

Over us was the burnished copper sky of the tropics. The heavy, leaden sea lapped the sides of the raft. All about us was a litter of corn beef cans and lager beer bottles. Our sufferings in the ensuing days were indescribable. We beat and thumped at the cans with our fists. Even at the risk of spoiling the tins for ever we hammered them fiercely against the raft. We stamped on them, bit at them and swore at them. We pulled and clawed at the bottles with our hands, and chipped and knocked them against the cans, regardless even of breaking the glass and ruining the bottles.

It was futile.

Then day after day we sat in moody silence, gnawed with hunger, with nothing to read, nothing to smoke, and practically nothing to talk about.

On the tenth day the Captain broke silence.

“Get ready the lots, Blowhard,” he said. “It’s got to come to that.”

“Yes,” I answered drearily, “we’re getting thinner every day.”

Then, with the awful prospect of cannibalism before us, we drew lots.

I prepared the lots and held them to the Captain. He drew the longer one.

“Which does that mean,” he asked, trembling between hope and despair. “Do I win?”

“No, Bilge,” I said sadly, “you lose.”

But I mustn’t dwell on the days that followed—the long quiet days of lazy dreaming on the raft, during which I slowly built up my strength, which had been shattered by privation. They were days, dear reader, of deep and quiet peace, and yet I cannot recall them without shedding a tear for the brave man who made them what they were.

It was on the fifth day after that I was awakened from a sound sleep by the bumping of the raft against the shore. I had eaten perhaps overheartily, and had not observed the vicinity of land.

Before me was an island, the circular shape of which, with its low, sandy shore, recalled at once its identity.

“The treasure island,” I cried, “at last I am rewarded for all my heroism.”

In a fever of haste I rushed to the centre of the island. What was the sight that confronted me? A great hollow scooped in the sand, an empty dress-suit case lying beside it, and on a ship’s plank driven deep into the sand, the legend, “Saucy Sally, October, 1867.” So! the miscreants had made good the vessel, headed it for the island of whose existence they must have learned from the chart we so carelessly left upon the cabin table, and had plundered poor Bilge and me of our well-earned treasure!

Sick with the sense of human ingratitude I sank upon the sand.

The island became my home.

There I eked out a miserable existence, feeding on sand and gravel and dressing myself in cactus plants. Years passed. Eating sand and mud slowly undermined my robust constitution. I fell ill. I died. I buried myself.

Would that others who write sea stories would do as much.

[daincrediblegg]

2, 9, 11, 12, 22?

2. Do you read/reread your own fics? It really honestly kindof depends on the fandom on this one. Generally speaking when I put some creative thing out there of any kind I am loathe to re-watch or re-read it (with the exception of looking at my own fanart- unless it was especially bad I love looking back at some of my old stuff just for the sheer thrill of seeing how much progress I’ve made) BUtT!!!! There is the exception of when it’s like. I’m either in a fandom in which the character I like gets character assassinated in fics a lot of the time and I need enrichment from outside sources or my own. OR when I’m just in a fandom where people don’t write x reader fics that much for the character and I’m the only one writing them and I have to re-read myself bc that’s the only content out there (current predicament re; everything Jared Harris has been in and it’s a crime that I’ve spent the whole year trying to remedy lmao).

9. Do you write every day? If you wrote today, share a sentence of what you’ve written!

OK SO!!!! This was actually a couple of paragraphs I got down yesterday and it’s some of the more solid stuff I’ve put out in recent months, but I’m very proud of how it turned out:

Sinclair was never particularly fussy when it came to her appearance, which made changing for dinner a fairly brief affair. She had learned from an early age that there was certainly no room for such attentions on a ship, and in fact had great fun in witnessing first-time sea-faring ladies, passengers of course on The Demeter, who tried to keep their appearances in spite of the swell and sway of the high seas. She remembered fondly then, the laugh of Mrs. Rose Anthony. How she’d wished to hear it now and all these months gone past. She would have laughed to see Fitzjames on the deck this morning, with that ridiculous cloak flowing behind him like a peacock with his feathers at half mast. None of the men would see it as she did. Not that she was in too much want of friends among them. But fewer still would understand her sense of humor as Rose had.  Pondering this, Sinclair forewent her shirt and waistcoat- both of which were custom tailored, as it wouldn’t do for the navy to commission such a garment. But her father had, for her sake. One of his many parting gifts. The very same man whose picture Sinclair’s gaze drifted to as she buttoned the deep blue bodice that had also been part of the set he had purchased for her, this one long sleeved to match the deep blue flannel day skirt she kept on, and which had served her so well in the chilly climate. She’d missed too how well he’d been able to do her hair for an occasion like this, where Sinclair now only managed a bun tied fairly neatly to the back of her head (more than she’d dare to manage for her daily duties, she might add), but it suited her all the same for the impression Sir John, and indeed, most of the men had of her. Neat as a pin. Diligent. A fixture of a plain sort of beauty in the corner. Never the center of their attentions, but never quite ignored.

12. Do you have a playlist for your current WIP(s)? Share it!

As I said in the other ask I have like. Just so many. None of them coherent- but THIS ONE has been my instrumental inspiration for a little while so there you have it. Someday I will consolidate all my fave lady terror vibes into a proper playlist... but that is not today...

22. Do you know how your fic will end before you start writing?

I mean… sort of. Like in general I do like to have some kind of sense where something is going before I start it- if it’s anything I’ve learned from commercial failures like GOT and the Star Wars Sequels it’s that poor planning will fucking kill you because actually as it turns out narrative structure is important. But at the same time- I think this was a quote from George R.R. Martin that some writers are “builders” who have everything pre-conceived before they put anything down (in reference to Stephen King), and some are “gardeners” (like George) who let stories just grow as they go. For me personally I’ve never felt too tied to either camp, so I put forth my secret third option being: “chef”. I know what I want the end-product to be. I have a general sense of what it should taste like and how I should cook it-thematically speaking. But things still come up as I go. Sometimes it needs a bit more of one spice than another and I try to listen to those instincts when they tell me to add something to what I’m making. 

11 ANSWERED HERE

[ltwilliammowett]

The Caravel

The caravel began as a fishing boat with Latin sails in Portugal in the 13th century. At the beginning of the 14th century, before the time of the great Portuguese discoveries, the same name was used for a two-masted, Latin-sailed merchant ship with forecastle and hut for Mediterranean and coastal voyages. After land links to India had been severed by Turkish occupations and the Mediterranean voyage had lost its importance, Portugal became the nation that intensively sought a southern sea route to India. Prince Henry, known as Henry the Navigator (1394 to 1460), was a far-sighted promoter of shipbuilding and shipping. He deserves credit not only for initiating the further development of the caravel, but also for founding a state-supported observatory and a navigation school at a very early stage.

From the two-masted caravels, the relatively slender three-masted Latin sail caravels (caravela latina) emerged, which were better suited for longer journeys and had exclusively Latin sails on all three masts. A typical feature, to which the name of the ship type is also attributed, was the Kraweel construction, in which the ship's planks butted together directly at their longitudinal seams, so that smooth surfaces were created on the outside and inside of the ship's side walls. The seams were caulked so that the ships took little water even in a swell. In addition, the smooth outer skin could be better protected against fouling and worm damage. Another feature of the caravel was the relatively high stern.

A caravela latina, by Stephen Biesty (x)

Under the influence of and in continuation of Roman traditions with divided square sails, the development of the three-masted square-rigged caravel (caravela redonda) took place during the 15th century, with square sails on the bowsprit, foremast and mainmast. Above the mainsail on the mainmast was the topsail. Because of their favourable steering characteristics, square-rigged caravels always had lateen sails on the mizzen mast. From the 14th to the 16th century, caravels were among the most seaworthy sailing ships, including four-masted caravels. Some consider this a forerunner of the galleons.

Reconstruction of a Caravel of Christopher Columbus. Drawing by Julio Guillen Y Tato (1897-1972), 1932 (x)

Vasco da Gama's ships were also caravels. Of the three ships with which Columbus sailed along Central America in 1492, the Pinta and the Nina were probably caravels, the Santa Maria was probably a Nao. He gave the speed in his diary as up to 15 Italian miles per hour, which is about 11 knots. So it was pretty fast, if you can call it that. The usual Portuguese caravels had a carrying capacity of 50 to 60 tonnes, and later a much higher capacity. Thus, the ships of the Magellan also included larger four-masted caravels.

Because of its advantages over Holland, the caravel construction method soon became the determining construction method for wooden ships throughout Europe. Thus, in 1460, the first "Karvielscheepen" were built in Holland in considerable sizes for 400 loads (800t) carrying capacity with a length of about 43 m and a width of 12 m. In the first half of the 16th century, Lübeck and Gdansk took a leading position in the construction of large Caravel ships.

Square-rigged caravels (here caravela armada) fighting and escorting naos in India Armadas, in: Livro de Lisuarte de Abreu, c. 1565 (x)

A little later, however, the carrack and later the galleons took over and the caravels became less and less important. But not completely, because as a caravela armada - an armed caravel - it remained in service with the Portuguese until the 18th century and was nothing other than a larger cross sail caravel. The Portuguese used it as an escort on the Brazil and India routes as well as to protect shipping with the Atlantic islands, it was used to monitor the Straits of Gibraltar, but also for coastal protection and anti piracy.