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January 21, 2004I'm such a landlubber...
My good friend Mark Rader gave me Patrick O'Brian's "Master and Commander" last month, and I've made only nominal headway into it. I finally figured out why: Often, I have no idea what's being said.
"The hawser had been made fast to the middle of the yard and then laid along it almost to its starboard extremity, being tied in half a dozen places from the slings to the yardarm with stoppers – bands of spun yarn; the hawser ran from the yardarm up to the top-block at the masthead and so down through another block on deck and thence to the capstan; so as the capstan turned the yard rose from the water, sloping more and more nearly to the vertical until it came aboard quite upright, steered carefully end-on through the rigging."
I haven't been this thoroughly confused by prose since those damnable word problems when and where Train A would pass (or collide with!) Train B, based on their place and time of departure, and their respective speeds.
Posted by patrick at January 21, 2004 09:50 AM
CommentsPoorly translated VCR instruction manuals from the 1850's Siam Provinces read easier than that.
LET FLY!
Posted by: James at January 21, 2004 01:06 PM
Yes, but is there any sodomy in it? I mean, it is about The Queen's Navy. Even if it was The King's Navy at the time -- although that's somehow more suggestive...
Posted by: Jon Bastian at January 21, 2004 06:41 PM
Jon: As near as I can tell, that passage is describing sodomy! ;p
Posted by: Patrick Seitz at January 21, 2004 09:24 PM
And it might even be Middle Earth sodomy at that. Isn't "capstan" what Gollum calls the guy in charge of the boat?
Posted by: Jon Bastian at January 22, 2004 09:24 AM
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