#ttgs1

He consoled himself with reflecting that the steward's eavesdropping was perfectly disinterested - the true miser's love for coins as coins, not as a means of exchange - and that his loyalty to Jack's interests (as perceived by Killick) was beyond all question.

Jack Aubrey had little notion of his friend’s mathematical or astronomical abilities and none whatsoever of his seamanship, while his performance at billiards, tennis or fives, let alone cricket, would have been contemptible if they had not excited such a degree of hopeless compassion; but where physic, a foreign language and political intelligence were concerned, Maturin might have been all the Sibyls rolled into one, together with the Witch of Edmonton, Old Moore, Mother Shipton and even the holy Nautical Almanack.

He looked aft, where Stephen would ordinarily be leaning over the taffrail gazing at the wake. No Stephen. ‘I suppose the Doctor has gone below,’ he said. ‘He would have liked that. We might ease off again and ask him to come on deck.’