sailors

"They had come a long way, those gypsies encamped for their evening meal on the dusty greensward by the winding mountain road in Provence. ... A long journey, hot and stifling and endlessly, monotonously repetitive across the already baking plains of Central Europe or slow and difficult and exasperating and occasionally dangerous in the traversing of the great ranges of mountains that had lain in their way."

"Big crime is big business, and big criminals are big businessmen, running their illegal activities with all the meticulous care and administrative precision of their more law-abiding colleagues."

"Kind of a treble agent, see?" Schaffer said in a patient explaining tone. "That's one better than double."

"I was glad I was alive. Glad to be alive. It had been the sort of night that didn’t look like having any morning, but here I was and I was glad. The girls were glad. I was warm and dry and fed, the jonge Genever was happily chasing the red corpuscles in a game of merry-go-round, all the coloured threads were weaving themselves into a beautiful pattern and by day’s end it would be over. I had never felt so good before. I was never to feel so good again."

"The Major Smiths of this world don't drive over the edge of a cliff. Quotation from the future Mrs. Schaffer. The Major Smiths of this world don't fall off the roofs of cable cars. Quotation from the future. Mrs. Schaffer's future husband."

"I should have listened to Hunslett. Again I should have listened to Hunslett. And again for Hunslett's sake. But I didn't know then that Hunslett was to have time for all the sleep in the world."

"The first thing I noticed was the gun in his hands, and it wasn't the sort of gun a beginner carries around with him. A big dull black German Mauser 7.63. One of those economical guns; the bullet goes clear through three people at once."

"She had the best kind of courage, or maybe the worst kind, the kind that gets you into trouble."

"This won't look so good in my obituary," Schaffer said dolefully. There was a perceptible edge of strain under the lightly spoken words. ... "Gave his life for his country in a ladies' lavatory in Upper Bavaria."

"Unspecified exhortation, when translated into practice, is always liable to a certain amount of executive misdirection."

"They have every good reason to fear those from the outside world. We, ironically known as the civilizados—in practically everything that matters they're a damned sight more civilised than we are—bring them so-called progress, which harms them, so-called change, which harms them, so-called civilisation, which harms them even more, and disease, which kills them."

"The motorcycle patrol's decision to elect for discretion in lieu of suicidal valour was as immediate as it was automatic."

"The Peacemaker Colt has now been in production, without change in design, for a century. ... It is the oldest hand-gun in the world, without question the most famous and, if efficiency in its designated task of maiming and killing be taken as criterion of its worth, then it is also probably the best hand-gun ever made."

"Just before Christmas, two Allied countries had sustained naval losses of shocking dimensions: Britain had lost two great ships—Prince of Wales and Repulse—in a single bombing attack, and America, at Pearl Harbor, had suffered a crippling blow that robbed her of half her effective fleet at one stroke. ("Proper uproar, it must have been," Lockhart overheard someone in the mess-decks say; and another anonymous voice answered: "Biggest surprise since Ma caught 'er tits in the mangle....") The attack brought America into the war, an ally coming to the rescue at a most crucial moment: but her principal war was never the Atlantic—that lifeline remained, from beginning to end, the ward of the British and the Canadian navies. America turned her eyes to the Pacific, where she had much to do to stem the furious tide of the Japanese advance: in the Atlantic, the battle of escort against U-boat still saw the same contestants in the ring, now coming up for the fourth round, the bloodiest so far."

"She plunged down and kept on going down, driving down to the black floor of the Arctic, driven down by the madly spinning screws, the still thundering engines her own executioner."

"Every man is what environment and heredity make him."

"There are no brave men and cowardly men in the world, my son. There are only brave men. To be born, to live, to die—that takes courage enough in itself, and more than enough. We are all brave men and we are all afraid, and what the world calls a brave man, he, too, is brave and afraid like all the rest of us. Only he is brave for five minutes longer."

"Women, I thought: if they fell over a cliff and thought there was company waiting at the bottom, they'd comb their hair on the way down."

"With a face and a figure and an acting talent like that, she could have had Hollywood tramping a path of beaten gold to her doorstep."

"He says if it's a choice between a prisoner-of-war camp in Germany and internment in Switzerland he knows which side of the frontier he’s coming down on... After that we fly down the Swiss side of Lake Constance, turn east at Lindau, climb to eight thousand to clear the mountains and it’s only a hop, skip and jump to the Weissspitze." "I see," Smith said weakly. "But—but don't the Swiss object?" "Frequently, sir."

"Schaffer caught her by the shoulders, kissed her briefly and smiled at her. She looked at him in surprise. "Well, aren't you glad to see me?" Schaffer demanded. "I've had a terrible time up there. Good God, girl, I might have been killed." "Not as handsome as you were two hours ago." She smiled, gently touched his face where Carraciola's handiwork with the Schmeisser had left its bloody mark, and added over her shoulder as she climbed into the bus: "And that's as long as you've known me." "Two hours! I've aged twenty years tonight. And that, lady, is one helluva long courtship.""

"We know about this deliberate policy admittedly as effective as it is suicidal—of endless provocation, waiting for something, for somebody to break. But please, Major Sherman, please do not try to provoke too many people in Amsterdam. We have too many canals."

"When one searches any place, be it a gypsy caravan or a baronial mansion, methodically and exhaustively, one has to wreck it completely in the process."

"A terrified rat will swear to anything."

"Foster always said that education was very important, but that it didn't really matter, because intelligence was more important than that, and that even intelligence didn't count for so much, that wisdom was far more important still. He said he had no idea in the world whether you had education or intelligence or wisdom and that it couldn't matter less, a blind man could see that you had a good heart, and the good heart was all that mattered in this world."

""I am sorry, Miss Lemay. This must have been a great shock to you and it's all my fault. Will you come and have a drink with me? You look as if you need one." She dabbed her cheek some more and looked at me in a manner that demolished all thoughts of instant friendship. "I wouldn't even cross the road with you," she said tonelessly. The way she said it indicated that she would willingly have gone half-way across a busy street with me and then abandoned me there. If I had been a blind man."

"They'll be coming for you, Mr. Jones. They'll be coming any moment now. I hate to say this, but I must. It is my duty to warn you what will happen to you, an enemy spy. You'll be tortured, Mr. Jones—not simply everyday tortures like pulling out your teeth and toe-nails, but unspeakable tortures I can't mention with Miss Ellison here—and then you'll finish in the gas chambers. If you're still alive. ... Oh God, when they strip you off and strap you down on the torture table—" Two seconds later Carnaby-Jones was over the sill and sliding down the nylon rope. His eyes were screwed tightly shut. Mary said, admiringly: "You really are the most fearful liar ever." "Schaffer keeps telling me the same thing," Smith admitted. "You can't all be wrong."

"Lockhart had already been in collision a number of times with the Russian interpreter, a small fiery individual who seemed to regard every request for stores or facilities as yet another example of the top-hatted capitalists milking the simple proletariat. On their last morning, an hour before sailing, there developed between them a row so furious and so all-embracing that it was difficult to remember that it had started with a complaint about the quality of the fresh meat supplied to Saltash for her return journey. When it had ranged widely, from a comparison of the Russian and the British standards of living, to an analysis of their respective war efforts, and fists had been shaken on both sides-for Lockhart found this habit of emphasis infectious—the interpreter took a stormy departure. At the head of the gang-way he turned, for a final blistering farewell."You English," he said, in thunderous accents and with extraordinary venom, "think we know damn nothing—but I tell you we know damn all.""

"It was a marvellous morning, clear as a mirror, warm as the promise of love, bright as heaven."

"Ericson was a big man, broad and tough: a man to depend on, a man to remember: about forty-two or -three, fair hair going grey, blue eyes as level as a foot rule, with wrinkles at the corners — the product of humour and of twenty years' staring at a thousand horizons."

"To all things an end, to every night its dawn; even to the longest night when dawn never comes, there comes at last the dawn."

"Nature wanted to show mankind, an irreverent, over-venturesome mankind, just how puny and pitifully helpless a thing mankind really is"

"The moment when a man hears that a girl's fiance has died only that day is the last moment that that man should ever begin to fall in love with her, but I'm afraid that's just how it was. The emotions are no respecters of the niceties, the proprieties and decencies of this life."

"Dr. MacDonald was a big heavily-built man in his late forties, with that well-leathered and spuriously tough look you quite often find among a certain section of the unemployed landed gentry who spend a great deal of time in the open air, much of it mounted on large horses in pursuit of small foxes."

"Many had found, or were finding, that the point of no return was not necessarily the edge of the precipice: it could be the bottom of the valley, the beginning of the long climb up the far slope, and when a man had once begun that climb he never looked back to that other side."

"Major Rutledge of the Buffs, Eton and Sandhurst as to intonation, millimetrically tooth-brushed as to moustache, Savile Row as to the quite dazzling sartorial perfection of his khaki drill, was so magnificently out of place in the wild beauty of the rocky, tree-lined bluffs of that winding creek that his presence there seemed inevitable."

"Cruelty and hate and intolerance are the monopoly of no particular race or creed or time. They have been with us since the world began and are still with us, in every country in the world."

"The intolerance of ignorance, not wanting to know – that is the last real frontier on earth."

"It is no small thing, Major, to be lost in a blizzard in the night skies over war-torn Europe."

"All the sailors swore that they never saw handsomer made women in their lives, and declared they would all to a man live on two thirds allowance rather than lose so fine an opportunity of getting a girl apiece."

"Before I will, pill or part Buy a ship, I'll be a sheaphart!"

"Be meeri I see a sael gif sias er a gefais i owt topsaelyw lowt tipsi gif way ar y gauafwynt kynill agynilly gwynt."

"If I have failed in discovering a Continent it is because it does not exist."

"From what I have said of the Natives of New-Holland they may appear to some to be the most wretched people upon Earth, but in reality they are far more happier than we Europeans; being wholly unacquainted not only with the superfluous but the necessary Conveniences so much sought after in Europe, they are happy in not knowing the use of them. They live in a Tranquillity which is not disturb'd by the Inequality of Condition: The Earth and sea of their own accord furnishes them with all things necessary for life, they covet not Magnificent Houses, Household-stuff &c., they live in a warm and fine Climate and enjoy a very wholesome Air. ... In short they seem'd to set no Value upon any thing we gave them, nor would they ever part with any thing of their own for any one article we could offer them; this in my opinion argues that they think themselves provided with all the necessarys of Life and that they have no superfluities."

"The study of Cook is the illumination of all discovery."

"For the aborigins of Australia, and to a lesser extent for the Maori of New Zealand, the Cook expedition was the beginning of a catastrophe from which they have never fully recovered."

"I whose ambition leads me not only farther than any other man has been before me, but as far as I think it possible for man to go ..."

"Sire, To whom can the Missionary Society so properly dedicate these first-fruits of their labours as to Your Majesty, by whose order the voyages of discovery were first undertaken, which have brought into view the numerous islands dispersed over the Pacific Ocean? The reports made concerning them attracts the general attention of European nations; and Your Majesty's subjects felt themselves peculiarly interested, whether their views led them to confider these discoveries as tending to enlarge the bounds of science, or as opening a field of commercial speculation. A nobler object, Sire, has engaged the attention of the Missionary Society, who, believing CHRISTIANITY to be the greatest blessing ever imparted to mankind, desired to communicate that inestimable gift, with all its happy effects, to these unenlightened regions."

"Our informant states, that he had the misfortune to witness several human sacrifices during his stay at Calabar, the only part of the coast which he visited, where he was horrified by such barbarous exhibitions. To his credit for humanity, (although he candidly confesses that he has, by fortuitous circumstances, been engaged, as was the author of the foregoing pages, in the slave trade) he on several occasions interfered, but in vain, to save the lives ot the innocent victims thus consigned to a fearful destruction. On seeing a beautiful young female brought down to the beach for execution, he became deeply interested in her fate; and, after all arguments to forbear were found to be unavailing, although he was then poor, he eagerly inquired if the girl might be purchased; in hopes of concluding a bargain, and thus saving her life. The Duke and the populace were, however, headstrong in their purpose, telling him, "No can sell — you no savey we country fash." The poor creature was instantly decapitated. At these executions the sufferers are pinioned, and tied in a sitting posture to a stake driven in the ground; and round their heads, so as to cross their eyes, is fixed a rope, the end of which is held by some bystanders who participate in the sacrifice. The executioner comes up with a leaden-handled sword, and generally at one blow severs the head from the body; when it is instantaneously pulled away by the rope, and; while yet warm, is tossed up in the air, and played with like a ball. If the executioner fail to strike off the head at a blow, the spectators set up a laugh of scorn and disappointment. On another occasion, he witnessed the inhumation of two men alive, and two women from the upcountry. They were put in couples, male and female, into separate holes, and covered with earth. "These terrible sights," he remarks, "put me in a horrible state of feeling. I was nearly fainting. I thought I should have died, and was not myself again for a long time.""

"While we lay in the river Mersey a number of men one day came on board, and amongst them was a prepossessing young sailor of apparently about eighteen years of age, named Jack Koberts. This youth drank grog, sang songs, chewed tobacco, enjoyed a yarn, and appeared in all respects, saving the slenderness of his build, like one of ourselves. In a few days, however, we discovered that Jack's true name and designation was Jane Roberts, and a very beautiful young woman she was. She was landed with all possible gentleness, and, I was informed, soon after married a respectable young man. It is remarkable, that about this time several handsome young women committed themselves in the same way, and some probably succeeded in eluding all discovery of their sex, and made a voyage or two to sea."