the carpenter's mistake

aubreyad + age of sail sideblog, currently on the mauritius command. i am here to write better one piece fanfiction

me already knowing william herschel by name as the reason uranus was almost named george + uranus' glyph ♅ has an "h" for herschel but thank you POB writing RPF for telling me his sister was WAY COOLER

[Jack] came down on deck, and Stephen, looking attentively at him, saw that he had what might be called his battle-face: it was not the glowing blaze of immediate action, of boarding or cutting out, but a remoter expression altogether—cheerful, confident, but withdrawn—filled with natural authority. He did not speak, apart from giving an order to hitch the runners to the mastheads and to double the preventer-backstays, but paced the quarterdeck with his hands behind his back, his eyes running from the frigates to the line-of-battle ship. Stephen saw the first lieutenant approach, hesitate, and step back. 'On these occasions,' he reflected, my valuable friend appears to swell, actually to increase in his physical as well as his spiritual dimensions is it an optical illusion? How I should like to measure him. The penetrating intelligence in the eye, however, is not capable of measurement. He becomes a stranger: I, too, should hesitate to address him.'

"A strong impression: but how to convey it when you are no great hand with a pen? In the lamplight he stared at he gash in his forearm, fresh blood still oozing through the bandage, and reflected; all at once it occurred to him that of course he had not the slightest wish to convey it; nor anything like it. As far as dear Sophie was concerned life at sea was to be — why, not exactly an eternal picnic, but something not altogether unlike; occasional hardships, to be sure (shortage of coffee, fresh milk, vegetables), and guns going off now and then, and a clash of swords, but without any real people getting hurt: those that happened to die did so instantly, from wounds that could not be seen; they were only figures in the casualty list."