Aboard Quotes

Lots of things can be fixed. Things can be fixed. But many times, relationships between people cannot be fixed, because they should not be fixed. You're aboard a ship setting sail, and the other person has joined the inland circus, or is boarding a different ship, and you just can't be with each other anymore. Because you shouldn't be.

You sneaked into my cabin?” Annabeth rolled her eyes. “Percy, you’ll be seventeen in two months. You can’t seriously be worried about getting in trouble with Coach Hedge.” “Uh, have you seen his baseball bat?” “Besides, Seaweed Brain, I just thought we could take a walk. We haven’t had any time to be together alone. I want to show you something—my favorite place aboard the ship.” Percy’s pulse was still in overdrive, but it wasn’t from fear of getting in trouble. “Can I, you know, brush my teeth first?” “You'd better,” Annabeth said. “Because I’m not kissing you until you do. And brush your hair while you’re at it.

When you are in the middle of a story it isn't a story at all, but only a confusion; a dark roaring, a blindness, a wreckage of shattered glass and splintered wood; like a house in a whirlwind, or else a boat crushed by the icebergs or swept over the rapids, and all aboard powerless to stop it. It's only afterwards that it becomes anything like a story at all. When you are telling it, to yourself or to someone else.

I resisted the urge to hurl my plate at him. “Of course not, Ian. It’s just that normally at this hour, Bones and I are fucking like rabbits, so I get twitchy when I have to wait for him to climb aboard.

No matter how old you are now. You are never too young or too old for success or going after what you want. Here’s a short list of people who accomplished great things at different ages 1) Helen Keller, at the age of 19 months, became deaf and blind. But that didn’t stop her. She was the first deaf and blind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree. 2) Mozart was already competent on keyboard and violin; he composed from the age of 5. 3) Shirley Temple was 6 when she became a movie star on “Bright Eyes.” 4) Anne Frank was 12 when she wrote the diary of Anne Frank. 5) Magnus Carlsen became a chess Grandmaster at the age of 13. 6) Nadia Comăneci was a gymnast from Romania that scored seven perfect 10.0 and won three gold medals at the Olympics at age 14. 7) Tenzin Gyatso was formally recognized as the 14th Dalai Lama in November 1950, at the age of 15. 8) Pele, a soccer superstar, was 17 years old when he won the world cup in 1958 with Brazil. 9) Elvis was a superstar by age 19. 10) John Lennon was 20 years and Paul Mcartney was 18 when the Beatles had their first concert in 1961. 11) Jesse Owens was 22 when he won 4 gold medals in Berlin 1936. 12) Beethoven was a piano virtuoso by age 23 13) Issac Newton wrote Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica at age 24 14) Roger Bannister was 25 when he broke the 4 minute mile record 15) Albert Einstein was 26 when he wrote the theory of relativity 16) Lance E. Armstrong was 27 when he won the tour de France 17) Michelangelo created two of the greatest sculptures “David” and “Pieta” by age 28 18) Alexander the Great, by age 29, had created one of the largest empires of the ancient world 19) J.K. Rowling was 30 years old when she finished the first manuscript of Harry Potter 20) Amelia Earhart was 31 years old when she became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean 21) Oprah was 32 when she started her talk show, which has become the highest-rated program of its kind 22) Edmund Hillary was 33 when he became the first man to reach Mount Everest 23) Martin Luther King Jr. was 34 when he wrote the speech “I Have a Dream." 24) Marie Curie was 35 years old when she got nominated for a Nobel Prize in Physics 25) The Wright brothers, Orville (32) and Wilbur (36) invented and built the world's first successful airplane and making the first controlled, powered and sustained heavier-than-air human flight 26) Vincent Van Gogh was 37 when he died virtually unknown, yet his paintings today are worth millions. 27) Neil Armstrong was 38 when he became the first man to set foot on the moon. 28) Mark Twain was 40 when he wrote "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer", and 49 years old when he wrote "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" 29) Christopher Columbus was 41 when he discovered the Americas 30) Rosa Parks was 42 when she refused to obey the bus driver’s order to give up her seat to make room for a white passenger 31) John F. Kennedy was 43 years old when he became President of the United States 32) Henry Ford Was 45 when the Ford T came out. 33) Suzanne Collins was 46 when she wrote "The Hunger Games" 34) Charles Darwin was 50 years old when his book On the Origin of Species came out. 35) Leonardo Da Vinci was 51 years old when he painted the Mona Lisa. 36) Abraham Lincoln was 52 when he became president. 37) Ray Kroc Was 53 when he bought the McDonalds Franchise and took it to unprecedented levels. 38) Dr. Seuss was 54 when he wrote "The Cat in the Hat". 40) Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger III was 57 years old when he successfully ditched US Airways Flight 1549 in the Hudson River in 2009. All of the 155 passengers aboard the aircraft survived 41) Colonel Harland Sanders was 61 when he started the KFC Franchise 42) J.R.R Tolkien was 62 when the Lord of the Ring books came out 43) Ronald Reagan was 69 when he became President of the US 44) Jack Lalane at age 70 handcuffed, shackled, towed 70 rowboats 45) Nelson Mandela was 76 when he became President

LOG ENTRY: SOL 381 I’ve been thinking about laws on Mars. Yeah, I know, it’s a stupid thing to think about, but I have a lot of free time. There’s an international treaty saying no country can lay claim to anything that’s not on Earth. And by another treaty, if you’re not in any country’s territory, maritime law applies. So Mars is “international waters.” NASA is an American nonmilitary organization, and it owns the Hab. So while I’m in the Hab, American law applies. As soon as I step outside, I’m in international waters. Then when I get in the rover, I’m back to American law. Here’s the cool part: I will eventually go to Schiaparelli and commandeer the Ares 4 lander. Nobody explicitly gave me permission to do this, and they can’t until I’m aboard Ares 4 and operating the comm system. After I board Ares 4, before talking to NASA, I will take control of a craft in international waters without permission. That makes me a pirate! A space pirate!

All aboard for one last trip.

I live in two worlds. One is a world of books. I've been a resident of Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County, hunted the white whale aboard the Pequod, fought alongside Napoleon, sailed a raft with Huck and Jim, committed absurdities with Ignatius J. Reilly, rode a sad train with Anna Karenina and strolled down Swann's Way. It's a rewarding world, but my second one is by far superior. My second one is populated with characters slightly less eccentric, but supremely real, made of flesh and bone, full of love, who are my ultimate inspiration for everything.

He fixed his dark eyes on her. 'I am Kekrops, the first and eternal king of Athens. I would welcome you to my city.' He held up the covered platter. ' Also, I brought a Bundt cake.' Piper glanced at her friends. 'A trick?' 'Probably?' Annabeth said. 'At least he brought dessert.' Percy smiled down at the snake guys. 'Welcome aboard!

How do you know when the Sarows is coming? (Is coming is coming is coming aboard) When the wind dies away but still sings in your ears, (In your ears in your head in your blood in your bones.) When the current goes still but the ship, it drifts along, (Drifts on drifts away drifts alone.) When the moon and the stars all hide from the dark, (For the dark is not empty at all at all.) (For the dark is not empty at all.) How do you know when the Sarows is coming? (Is coming is coming is coming aboard) Why you don't and you don't and you won't see it coming, (You won't see it coming at all.)

Is that how you're going to take me? Scare me into voluntarily coming aboard, then steal my Ice Cube?" "It's always cubes with you," noted Foaly, somewhat randomly. "What's wrong with a nice sphere?

It's awful bad luck to bring a woman aboard the ship." "It's awful worse luck not to.

How bitterly glad I am to see you. You bring joy and pain in equal measure. Joy because you are with me, but pain because it won't be for long. What do you know about the sea? Nothing. What do I know about the sea? Nothing. Without a driver this bus is lost. Our lives are over. Come aboard if your destination is oblivion-- It should be our next stop. We can sit together. You can have the window seat, if you want. But it's a sad view. Oh enough of this disembling. Let me say plainly: I love you, I love you, I love you. I love you, I love you, I love you. Not the spiders, please.

I will have you without armor. Those were the words she'd said to Kaz aboard the Ferolind, desperate for some sign that he might open himself to her, that they could be more than two wary creatures united by their distrust of the world.

No,” he muttered, running a hand through his copper hair. “No. No. There are dozens.” “Kell?” she asked, moving to touch his arm. He shook her off. “Dozens of ships, Lila! And you had to climb aboard his.” “I’m sorry,” she shot back, bristling, “I was under the impression that I was free to do as I pleased.” “To be fair,” added Alucard, “I think she was planning to steal it and slit my throat.” “Then why didn’t you?” snarled Kell, spinning on her. “You’re always so eager to slash and stab, why couldn’t you have stabbed him?

The man, a huge grin spreading over his face, was slower to stand, first grabbing a cane from against the wall. "Welcome aboard the Rampion, Your Magesticness. Captain Carswell Thorne, at your service." He bowed.

I have twenty-eight excellent girls aboard this ship, and their pasts have shaped them. Just as yours has shaped you. And every single one of them, down to little Roslyn, deserves your respect.

Old age is like a plane flying through a storm. Once you're aboard there's nothing you can do.

It’s not something you can control, Mare,” he replies, still standing so far away. “We can’t choose who we love. I wish, more than anything, that we could.” I feel cracked open. My skin still runs hot from Cal’s embrace, remembering the feel of him only moments ago. But in the deepest part of me, in spite of every fiber of my being, I think beyond the clearing, to ice-colored eyes, an empty promise, and a kiss aboard a boat.

As night fell, Yamamoto, aboard the huge battleship Yamato, steamed eastward at full speed into the night. Far ahead the destroyers went to flank speed to search for the US carriers. Lookouts, with the best night-vision binoculars in the world, swept the night horizon where the very dark sky meets the black ocean. The faintest shape, the tiniest pinprick of light, would show there was something out there, like the superstructure of a ship over the horizon. There was nothing.

When you are in the middle of a story it isn’t a story at all, but only a confusion; a dark roaring, a blindness, a wreckage of shattered glass and splintered wood; like a house in a whirlwind, or else a boat crushed by the icebergs or swept over the rapids, and all aboard powerless to stop it. It’s only afterwards that it becomes anything like a story at all. When you are telling it, to yourself or to someone else.

This is your captain speaking. Welcome aboard flight...one, from...here to there. We'll be cruising at a height of ten feet, going up to twelve and a half feet if we see anything big. And our copilot today is a flask of coffee.

It was Silver's voice, and before I had heard a dozen words, I would not have shown myself for all the world. I lay there, trembling and listening, in the extreme of fear and curiostiy, for, in those dozen words, I understood that the lives of all the honest men aboard depended on me alone.

Ladies and gentleman," he said over the speakers, "welcome aboard this recently liberated Gulfstream V. If I could have your attention for just a few moments, I'd like to go over the safety features of this aircraft. It has an engine, to make us go, and wings, to keep us in the air. There are seatbelts, which won't do you an awful lot of good if we fly into the side of a mountain.

The parting, like the white fruit of an apple discolouring instantly around the bite, had begun three days before when they had met aboard the Rakuyo.

They’d welcomed him aboard their ship. Nico had never allowed himself the luxury of friends, but the crew of the Argo II was as close as he’d ever come. The idea of any of them dying made him feel empty – like he was back in the giants’ bronze jar, alone in the dark, subsisting only on sour pomegranate seeds.

Climb aboard, Jonesy. I'm going to send you up where the air is rare and the view is much more than fair.

Come aboard if your destination is oblivion- it should be our next stop. We can sit together. You can have the window seat if you want. But it's a sad view.

He remembered the time he had hooked one of a pair of marlin. The male fish always let the female fish feed first and the hooked fish, the female, made a wild, panic-stricken, despairing fight that soon exhausted her, and all the time the male had stayed with her, crossing the line and circling with her on the surface. He had stayed so close that the old man was afraid he would cut the line with his tail which was sharp as a scythe and almost of that size and shape. When the old man had gaffed her and clubbed her, holding the rapier bill with its sandpaper edge and clubbing her across the top of her head until her colour turned to a colour almost like the backing of mirrors, and then, with the boy’s aid, hoisted her aboard, the male fish had stayed by the side of the boat. Then, while the old man was clearing the lines and preparing the harpoon, the male fish jumped high into the air beside the boat to see where the female was and then went down deep, his lavender wings, that were his pectoral fins, spread wide and all his wide lavender stripes showing. He was beautiful, the old man remembered, and he had stayed.

It was as if Boeing built one plane and, without doing a single flight test, told airline passengers, “Hop aboard.

…though I wouldn’t have admitted it, even to myself, I didn’t want God aboard. He was too heavy. I wanted Him approving from a considerable distance. I didn’t want to be thinking of Him. I wanted to be free—like Gypsy. I wanted life itself, the color and fire and loveliness of life. And Christ now and then, like a loved poem I could read when I wanted to. I didn’t want us to be swallowed up in God. I wanted holidays from the school of Christ.

A quick, sharp laugh from Quint broke the thread of tension. "What a pair of assholes," he said. "I seen that coming since you came aboard this morning.

I’m enchanted by your beauty, my lady. Welcome aboard. You make a most welcome addition to our acerbic company…a lovely-smelling one, too. (Vik)

What Dad didn't understand was that no matter how much he hated or feared the future, it was coming, and there was only one way to deal with it: by climbing aboard.

A bus came. I climbed aboard and sat on the plastic seat while the things of our city turned in the windows like the images in a slot machine.

Man cannot spend all his time doing evil, and even in the company of pirates there must be some sweet moments on their sinister ship when you feel as if you were aboard a pleasure yacht.

I climb aboard my tricycle and pedal my heart to the stars.

It seemed strange, the Muslim Maghrib prayer aboard a Viking ship full of atheists and pagans. Then again, Samirah's ancestors had been dealing with Vikings since the Middle Ages. I doubted this was the first time prayers to Allah had been said aboard a longship. The world, the worlds, were a lot more interesting because of constant intermixing.

Keep your elbows in!" Sturmhond berated Mal. "Stop flapping them like some kind of chicken." Mal let out a disturbingly convincing cluck. Tamar raised a brow. "Your friend seems to be enjoying himself." I shrugged. "Mal's always been like that. You could drop him in a camp full of Fjerdan assassins, and he'd come out carried on their shoulders. He just blooms wherever he's planted." "And you?" "I'm more of a weed," I said drily. Tamar grinned. In combat, she was cold and silent fire, but when she wasn't fighting, her smiles came easily. "I like weeds," said said, pushing herself off from the railing and gathering her scattered lengths of rope. "They're survivors." I caught myself returning her smile and quickly went back to working on the knot that I was trying to tie. The problem was that I liked being aboard Sturmhond's ship. I liked Tolya and Tamar and the rest of the crew. I like sitting at meals with them, and the sound of Privyet's lilting tenor. I liked the afternoon when we took target practice, lining up empty wine bottles to shoot off the fantail and making harmless wagers.

Come aboard if your destination is oblivion - it should be our next stop.

I don’t think—” “Clearly. Why start now?” Ivan’s face flushed in anger. “You don’t—” Sturmhond leaned in close, the laughter gone from his voice, his easy demeanor replaced by something with a sword’s edge. “I don’t care who you are on land. On this ship, you’re nothing but ballast. Unless I put you over the side, in which case you’re shark bait. I like shark. Cooks up tough, but it makes for a little variety. Remember that the next time you have a mind to threaten anyone aboard this vessel.” He stepped back, his jolly manner restored. “Go on now, shark bait. Scurry back to your master.” “I won’t forget this, Sturmhond,” Ivan spat. The captain rolled his eyes. “That’s the idea.

I live to feel her fingers move inside of me like this. The bus makes another stop. A fat man climbs aboard, hauling himself up the stairs. I would kill him for one more moment with her fingers inside me. I don’t have to. She gives me my moment for free. He lives because of her generosity. We all live because of her generosity.

Life is a train ride, and at the many stations along the route, people important to us debark, never to get aboard again, until by the end of the journey, we sit in a passenger car where most of the seats are empty.

Your boat's not like to sink, I don't think. Boats only sink when I'm aboard.

Well may I get aboard. [He sees a bear.] This is the chase: I am gone for ever! [Exist pursued by a bear.]

How did you come to be a pirate?” “I was aboard a pirate ship.” She rolled her eyes at him. “How did you come to be aboard a pirate ship?

I suppose the fundamental distinction between Shakespeare and myself is one of treatment. We get our effects differently. Take the familiar farcical situation of someone who suddenly discovers that something unpleasant is standing behind them. Here is how Shakespeare handles it in "The Winter's Tale," Act 3, Scene 3: ANTIGONUS: Farewell! A lullaby too rough. I never saw the heavens so dim by day. A savage clamour! Well may I get aboard! This is the chase: I am gone for ever. And then comes literature's most famous stage direction, "Exit pursued by a bear." All well and good, but here's the way I would handle it: BERTIE: Touch of indigestion, Jeeves? JEEVES: No, Sir. BERTIE: Then why is your tummy rumbling? JEEVES: Pardon me, Sir, the noise to which you allude does not emanate from my interior but from that of that animal that has just joined us. BERTIE: Animal? What animal? JEEVES: A bear, Sir. If you will turn your head, you will observe that a bear is standing in your immediate rear inspecting you in a somewhat menacing manner. BERTIE (as narrator): I pivoted the loaf. The honest fellow was perfectly correct. It was a bear. And not a small bear, either. One of the large economy size. Its eye was bleak and it gnashed a tooth or two, and I could see at a g. that it was going to be difficult for me to find a formula. "Advise me, Jeeves," I yipped. "What do I do for the best?" JEEVES: I fancy it might be judicious if you were to make an exit, Sir. BERTIE (narrator): No sooner s. than d. I streaked for the horizon, closely followed across country by the dumb chum. And that, boys and girls, is how your grandfather clipped six seconds off Roger Bannister's mile. Who can say which method is superior?" (As reproduced in Plum, Shakespeare and the Cat Chap )

Poole and Bowman had often humorously referred to themselves as caretakers or janitors aboard a ship that could really run itself. They would have been astonished, and more than a little indignant, to discover how much truth that jest contained.

New orders: Make sure everybody who doesn't want to live here is aboard in five minutes. We are leaving. -Captain Kevyn Andreyasn

The evening light was like honey in the trees When you left me and walked to the end of the street Where the sunset abruptly ended. The wedding-cake drawbridge lowered itself To the fragile forget-me-not flower. You climbed aboard. Burnt horizons suddenly paved with golden stones, Dreams I had, including suicide, Puff out the hot-air balloon now. It is bursting, it is about to burst

I live in two worlds. One is a world of books. I’ve been a resident of Faulkner’s Yoknapatowpha County, hunted the white whale aboard the Pequod, fought alongside Napoleon, sailed a raft with Huck and Jim, committed absurdities with Ignatius J. Reilly, rode a sad train with Anna Karenina, and strolled down Swann’s Way.

Yawning, I stumbled off the trolley after him and tried to get out of the way of people rushing aboard. Apparently manners weren' t a thing of the past. They' d never existed at all.

Upon the occasion of history's first manned flight - in the 1780's aboard the Montgolfier brothers' hot-air balloons - someone asked Franklin what use he saw in such frivolity. "What use," he replied, "is a newborn baby?

It made me shiver. And I about made up my mind to pray, and see if I couldn't try to quit being the kind of a boy I was and be better. So I kneeled down. But the words wouldn't come. Why wouldn't they? It warn't no use to try and hide it from Him. Nor from ME, neither. I knowed very well why they wouldn't come. It was because my heart warn't right; it was because I warn't square; it was because I was playing double. I was letting ON to give up sin, but away inside of me I was holding on to the biggest one of all. I was trying to make my mouth SAY I would do the right thing and the clean thing, and go and write to that nigger's owner and tell where he was; but deep down in me I knowed it was a lie, and He knowed it. You can't pray a lie--I found that out. So I was full of trouble, full as I could be; and didn't know what to do. At last I had an idea; and I says, I'll go and write the letter--and then see if I can pray. Why, it was astonishing, the way I felt as light as a feather right straight off, and my troubles all gone. So I got a piece of paper and a pencil, all glad and excited, and set down and wrote: Miss Watson, your runaway nigger Jim is down here two mile below Pikesville, and Mr. Phelps has got him and he will give him up for the reward if you send. HUCK FINN. I felt good and all washed clean of sin for the first time I had ever felt so in my life, and I knowed I could pray now. But I didn't do it straight off, but laid the paper down and set there thinking--thinking how good it was all this happened so, and how near I come to being lost and going to hell. And went on thinking. And got to thinking over our trip down the river; and I see Jim before me all the time: in the day and in the night-time, sometimes moonlight, sometimes storms, and we a-floating along, talking and singing and laughing. But somehow I couldn't seem to strike no places to harden me against him, but only the other kind. I'd see him standing my watch on top of his'n, 'stead of calling me, so I could go on sleeping; and see him how glad he was when I come back out of the fog; and when I come to him again in the swamp, up there where the feud was; and such-like times; and would always call me honey, and pet me and do everything he could think of for me, and how good he always was; and at last I struck the time I saved him by telling the men we had small-pox aboard, and he was so grateful, and said I was the best friend old Jim ever had in the world, and the ONLY one he's got now; and then I happened to look around and see that paper. It was a close place. I took it up, and held it in my hand. I was a-trembling, because I'd got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself: "All right, then, I'll GO to hell"--and tore it up.

And when the day arrives for the final voyage and the ship of no return is set to sail, you’ll find me aboard, traveling light, almost naked, like the children of the sea.

Some women, Commander Norton had decided long ago, should not be allowed aboard ship; weightlessness did things to their breasts that were too damn distracting.

Without a driver this bus is lost. Our lives are over. Come aboard if your destination is oblivion - it should be our next stop. We can sit together. You can have the window seat, if you want. But it's a sad view.

She gave a short laugh to throw him off track. "It so happens I am a trifle more sophisticated than that. I hardly go about mooning and cultivating romantic notions of heroic knights sweeping me away to unknown isles aboard stolen ships." He smiled. "A knight rode a horse, my dear; he was not a sea captain.

It is so beautiful to be loved as Laurie loves me; he isn’t sentimental, doesn’t say much about it, but I see and feel it in all he says and does, and it makes me so happy and so humble that I don’t seem to be the same girl I was. I never knew how good and generous and tender he was till now, for he lets me read his heart, and I find it full of noble hopes and impulses and purposes, and am so proud to know it’s mine. He says he feels as if he ‘could make a prosperous voyage now with me aboard as mate, and lots of love for ballast.’ I pray he may, and try to be all he believes me, for I love my gallant captain with all my heart and soul and might, and never will desert him while God lets us be together. Oh, Mother, I never knew how much like heaven this world could be when two people love and live for one another!

Perhaps the most chaotic of Divisions Ke Hui Feng 第一 Ψ visited was Recycling. First, it was mammoth, so big most of her tour was spent aboard a drone. Thousands of Dazhong used the 401 thoroughfares from both east and west, the 427 from the south and the 400 from the north to bring their loads of recyclables from the MASS to the enormous MEG Recycling Centre. The roadways might be in ruins outside the MEG boundaries, jagged fragments of pavement between cavernous potholes and trails made by traders, but within the MEG the wide lanes had been cleared and covered with recycled rubber. They were smooth and divided, one lane in—one lane out, between hundred-metre high foamstone walls on either side. No one from the MASS would ever get into the MEG illegally; at least, that was how it seemed. Only those with proper credentials could enter the massive gates: MASS traders, or trading companies, who specialized as middlemen between the gatherers and the Recycling Centre. Not far outside the gates the MASS traders had rebuilt ancient warehouses in which they received goods, stored, and sorted them, then brought them, usually by land freighters, down the ingress roads to meet MEG approved Di sān overseers and, of course, decontaminated Dazhong who further sorted the goods.

Let’s see! I’ll put you to work right away! Aye! No—first I’ll give you a tour! No—I’ll introduce you to my crew! No—I’ll let you rest! No—I’d better get you into uniforms! Aye! It’s important that everyone aboard wear a waterproof uniform in case the submarine collapses and we find ourselves underwater! Of course, in that case we’ll need diving helmets! Except Sunny because she can’t wear one! I guess she’ll drown! No—she can curl up inside a diving helmet! Aye! The helmets have a tiny door on the neck just for such purpose! Aye! I’ve seen it done! I’ve seen so many things in my time!” “Excuse me,” Violet said, “but could you tell us who you are?

I had no idea there'd be so many Sherpas aboard!" exclaimed Miss Simpkins. "I'm not a Sherpa," Nadira said. "I'm a gypsy." "Oh, my goodness!" said the chaperone.

Shouldn’t she stay on the boat?” The cat’s ear twitched, and Lila felt that whatever pleasant inclinations the cat was forming toward her, she’d just lost them. “Don’t be ridiculous,” said Alucard. “The ship’s no place for a cat.” Lila was about to point out that the cat had been aboard the ship as long as she had when he added, “I believe in keeping my valuables with me.” Lila perked up. Were cats so precious here? Or rare? She hadn’t ever seen another one, but in the little time she was ashore, she hadn’t exactly been looking. “Oh yeah?” “I don’t like that look,” Alucard said, twisting chest and cat away. “What look?” asked Lila innocently. “The look that says Esa might conveniently go missing if I tell you what she’s worth.

The Laundry field operations manual is notably short on advice for how to comport one’s self when being held prisoner aboard a mad billionaire necromancer’s yacht, other than the usual stern admonition to keep receipts for all expenses incurred in the line of duty.

… and the Baudelaire orphans climbed aboard, turning the tables of their lives and breaking their unfortunate cycle for the very first time.

He longed for a storm. But life aboard ship taught him only the regularity of natural law and the dynamic stability of the wobbling world.

Got a ship with women and cats aboard, you’ll have the finest luck you can hope

Well, crew, welcome aboard the gas freighter _Rocinante_.' 'What does that name even mean?'... 'It means we need to go find some windmills

When you are powerless, something can happen to you and afterwards it has not happened. For you, it happened, but somehow they remember it differently, or don't remember it at all. You can tell them, but it slips their minds. When you are powerless, everything you do seems in vain. You stow your bag, show your ticket, climb the steps. All the sinners climb aboard.

Even the fantasies that had consoled and comforted her for so many years aboard the satellite were growing feeble. She was not a warrior, brave and strong and ready to defend justice. She was not the most beautiful girl in the land, able to evoke empathy and respect from even the most hard-hearted villain. She was not even a damsel knowing that a hero would someday rescue her.

Nine times out of 10, the most charming thing to say in any given situation will be the exact opposite of what one really feels.

A human of significantly less clumsiness than most came aboard, a small male, and despite its diminutive stature, it moved with a warrior’s confidence and wore a very large and fine hat. Such hats often signified humans who considered themselves important, which was adorable for the first few moments and trying ever after.

ART said, You are aboard the Perihelion, registered teaching and research vessel of the Pansystem University of Mihira and New Tideland. Then it added, I’m not going to hurt your humans, you little idiot.

Welcome aboard Mon Remonda. Let’s get the rest of your pilots in... so I can get out of this torture suit." "But, sir, I was just going to say how smart you looked in your uniform. I think we ought to stay here, in uniform, a couple of hours so the holographers can capture the image. You know, for the historians." "Wedge, I think I’m going to have you killed." "Yes, sir. I trust you’ll wear your dress uniform for an event like that.

My son used to believe that he could look at a plane in flight and make it explode in midair by simply thinking it. He believed, at thirteen, that the border between himself and the world was thin and porous enough to allow him to affect the course of events. An aircraft in flight was a provocation too strong to ignore. He’d watch a plane gaining altitude after taking off from Sky Harbor and he’d sense an element of catastrophe tacit in the very fact of a flying object filled with people. He was sensitive to the most incidental stimulus and he thought he could feel the object itself yearning to burst. All he had to do was wish the fiery image into his mind and the plane would ignite and shatter. His sister used to tell him, Go ahead, blow it up, let me see you take that plane out of the sky with all two hundred people aboard, and it scared him to hear someone talk this way and it scared her too because she wasn’t completely convinced he could not do it. It’s the special skill of an adolescent to imagine the end of the world as an adjunct to his own discontent. But Jeff got older and lost interest and conviction. He lost the paradoxical gift for being separate and alone and yet intimately connected, mind-wired to distant things.

A pirate once shouted ‘Avast! I’ve caught you, you seadog, at last! Best pull out your sword— I’m coming aboard! Drop your britches, and climb up me mast!

There were always those passengers who came aboard bearing grudges against the modern age.

Anxiety is the price of the ticket to life: intrapsychic depression is the by-product of the refusal to climb aboard.

This edition of The Motorcycle Diaries, the notes describing a journey made without hesitation, aboard the noisy motorcycle La Poderosa II (which gave out halfway, but only after transmitting to the adventure a joyous impulse we, too, receive), free as the wind, with the sole purpose of getting to know the world, is dedicated to people whose youth is not merely sequential, but wholehearted and spiritual.

First having read the book of myths, and loaded the camera, and checked the edge of the knife-blade, I put on the body-armor of black rubber the absurd flippers the grave and awkward mask. I am having to do this not like Cousteau with his assiduous team aboard the sun-flooded schooner but here alone. There is a ladder. The ladder is always there hanging innocently close to the side of the schooner. We know what it is for, we who have used it. Otherwise it is a piece of maritime floss some sundry equipment. I go down. Rung after rung and still the oxygen immerses me the blue light the clear atoms of our human air. I go down. My flippers cripple me, I crawl like an insect down the ladder and there is no one to tell me when the ocean will begin. First the air is blue and then it is bluer and then green and then black I am blacking out and yet my mask is powerful it pumps my blood with power the sea is another story the sea is not a question of power I have to learn alone to turn my body without force in the deep element. And now: it is easy to forget what I came for among so many who have always lived here swaying their crenellated fans between the reefs and besides you breathe differently down here. I came to explore the wreck. The words are purposes. The words are maps. I came to see the damage that was done and the treasures that prevail. I stroke the beam of my lamp slowly along the flank of something more permanent than fish or weed the thing I came for: the wreck and not the story of the wreck the thing itself and not the myth the drowned face always staring toward the sun the evidence of damage worn by salt and sway into this threadbare beauty the ribs of the disaster curving their assertion among the tentative haunters. This is the place. And I am here, the mermaid whose dark hair streams black, the merman in his armored body. We circle silently about the wreck we dive into the hold. I am she: I am he whose drowned face sleeps with open eyes whose breasts still bear the stress whose silver, copper, vermeil cargo lies obscurely inside barrels half-wedged and left to rot we are the half-destroyed instruments that once held to a course the water-eaten log the fouled compass We are, I am, you are by cowardice or courage the one who find our way back to this scene carrying a knife, a camera a book of myths in which our names do not appear.

I once expected to spend seven years walking around the world on foot. I walked from Mexico to Panama where the road ended before an almost uninhabited swamp called the Choco Colombiano. Even today there is no road. Perhaps it is time for me to resume my wanderings where I left off as a tropical tramp in the slums of Panama. Perhaps like Ambrose Bierce who disappeared in the desert of Sonora I may also disappear. But after being in all mankind it is hard to come to terms with oblivion - not to see hundreds of millions of Chinese with college diplomas come aboard the locomotive of history - not to know if someone has solved the riddle of the universe that baffled Einstein in his futile efforts to make space, time, gravitation and electromagnetism fall into place in a unified field theory - never to experience democracy replacing plutocracy in the military-industrial complex that rules America - never to witness the day foreseen by Tennyson 'when the war-drums no longer and the battle-flags are furled, in the parliament of man, the federation of the world.' I may disappear leaving behind me no worldly possessions - just a few old socks and love letters, and my windows overlooking Notre-Dame for all of you to enjoy, and my little rag and bone shop of the heart whose motto is 'Be not inhospitable to strangers lest they be angels in disguise.' I may disappear leaving no forwarding address, but for all you know I may still be walking among you on my vagabond journey around the world." [Shakespeare & Company, archived statement]

How perfect to be aboard a ship with maybe a hundred years still in my pocket. But it's late, for all of us, and in truth the only ship there is is the ship we are all on burning the world as we go.

Margaret and James Shineman, newlyweds from Oil City, Wyoming, who suddenly found themselves aboard the fastest, most luxurious ship in service, for their journey to Scotland to visit Margaret’s family. The visit was to be a surprise. Both were killed.

It's striking how many of the world's biggest problems, and many of the small ones too. are eliminated by the simplest of solutions – having women around.

When I’m rich,” Jesper said behind him. “I’m going somewhere I never have to see snow again. What about you, Wylan?” “I don’t know exactly.” “I think you should buy a golden piano-” “Flute.” “And play concerts on a pleasure barge. You can park it in the canal right outside your father’s house.” “Nina can sing,” Inej put in, “We’ll duet,” Nina amended. “Your father will have to move.” She did have a terrible singing voice. He hated that he knew that, but he couldn’t resist glancing over his shoulder. Nina’s hood had fallen back, and the thick waves of her hair had escaped her collar. Why do I keep doing that? He thought in a rush of frustration. It had happened aboard the ship, too. He’d tell himself to ignore her, and the next thing he knew his eyes would be seeking her out.

As the ego-dead, so we might imagine, we would continue to know pain in its various forms—that is the essence of existence—but we would not be cozened by our egos to take it personally, an attitude that converts an individual’s pain into conscious suffering. Naturally, we would still have to feed, but we would not be omnivorous gourmands who eat for amusement, gorging down everything in nature and turning to the laboratory for more. As for reproduction, who can say? Animals are driven to copulate, and even as the ego-dead we would not be severed from biology, although we would not be unintelligently ruled by it, as we are now. As a corollary of not being unintelligently ruled by biology, neither would we sulk over our extinction, as we do now. Why raise another generation destined to climb aboard the evolution treadmill? But then, why not raise another generation of the ego-dead? For those who do not perceive either their pleasures or their pains as belonging to them, neither life nor death would be objectionable or not objectionable, desirable or not desirable, all right or not all right. We would be the ego-dead, the self-less, and, dare we are, the enlightened.

(pg.31) "As it was, my first days on Earth were somewhat anticlimactic. Mother and Father seemed so happy tempting and corrupting that I didn't want to interrupt them. But the fact was that I hadn't the slightest clue what to do with myself. I tried to convince cows to take over the world, to rampage across the fields slaughtering all in their wake, to start a new religion of udder worship, to build cities devoted to the consumption of grass, their aqueducts running with fresh milk. I even prepared a pictorial presentation of cows traveling into outer space aboard butter-powered space churns, but the cows seemed unconvinced, and soon returned to wondering how many stomachs they had. The current belief was seventeen. Cows:Unambitious.

Ok. And we are getting there… how?” she inquired, her words dripping with skepticism. “Wait… don’t tell me. Your supersonic spaceship is parked outside the window waiting for us to jump aboard!” “No… we will not be using a Star Transporter today. Instead, we will be using a teleporting device. I must prepare you,” he replied so matter-of-factly.

Jim Elliot once said, “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.” Radical obedience to Christ is not easy; it is dangerous. It is not smooth sailing aboard a luxury liner; it is sacrificial duty aboard a troop carrier. It’s not comfort, not health, not wealth, and not prosperity in this world. Radical obedience to Christ risks losing all these things. But in the end, such risk finds its reward in Christ. And he is more than enough for us.

Man is an everlack, an infinite withoutness, afloat on an apparently endless ocean of apparently endless indifference to individual things. Obscurely he sees catastrophes happening to other rafts, rafts that are too distant for him to determine whether they have other humans aboard, but too numerous and too identical for him to presume that they have not.

At last I managed to haul it aboard. It was over three feet long. The bucket was useless. It would fit the dorado like a hat.

I was going off the rails on a crazy train. You could practically hear Ozzy screaming “All aboard!” Don

Step aboard and we will fly through the window, through the sky

Here’s an image that sticks: imagine a loaded Boeing 747 crashing every three days, killing everyone aboard. That’s how many people die on U.S. highways every year.

the education of the young gentlemen aboard is almost all a matter of trigonometry: even of algebra, Heaven preserve us.

Go, brother! If I’m not back aboard in half an hour, tell your wife I love her!

When you are truly afraid, you experience an urgent desire to split from your body. You want to remove yourself from the thing that will experience pain and horror, but you are that thing. You are aboard a sinking ship, and you are the ship itself.

Noah, however, was a son of a bitch of a captain who ran a very tight ship. Only pairs of the best and the brightest were allowed to climb the plank—perpetuate the species, repopulate the planet, and all that Nazi nonsense. Would Noah have allowed a lesbian zebra aboard, an unmarried hedgehog, a limping lemur?

What entity aboard this ship exhibits all the personality traits of a cold-blooded killing machine, combined with the monstrous, overweening vanity and laziness of a convalescent war god lounging in their personal Valhalla while their minions prepare their armor? There's only one answer. The Persian tomcat sits underneath the alien horror, washing itself without concern.

It could have been fantasy. While I love the idea of swimming with mermaids, climbing aboard a pirate ship, being the last beings on Earth—there is nothing better than my reality. I can’t think of a greater, more magnificent adventure. Than this one.

Yet here, Laertes? Aboard, aboard, for shame! The wind sits in the shoulder of your sail, And you are stay'd for. There, my blessing with thee. And these few precepts in thy memory See thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue, Nor any unproportion'd thought his act. Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar. Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel; But do not dull thy palm with entertainment Of each new-hatch'd, unfledged comrade. Beware Of entrance to a quarrel; but being in, Bear't that the opposed may beware of thee. Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice; Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment. Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy, But not express'd in fancy; rich, not gaudy; For the apparel oft proclaims the man, And they in France of the best rank and station Are of a most select and generous, chief in that. Neither a borrower nor a lender be; For loan oft loses both itself and friend, And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry. This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man. Farewell. My blessing season this in thee!

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT! Due to the cumulative effect of collective sharing and loving intentionality, the Shame Train has derailed at the junction of Self-Belief and Divine Uniqueness. The engine couldn’t run on self-hatred any longer. All formerly shamed passengers please disembark the train. You are free. A new train—fueled by healthy self-regard and sacred purpose—will be along momentarily to pick you up. No tickets required on this self-love train—just a growing faith in your sacred magnificence. All aboard!

Like the Baron, Mathilde developed a formula for acting out life as a series of roles—that is, by saying to herself in the morning while brushing her blond hair, "Today I want to become this or that person," and then proceeding to be that person. One day she decided she would like to be an elegant representative of a well-known Parisian modiste and go to Peru. All she had to do was to act the role. So she dressed with care, presented herself with extraordinary assurance at the house of the modiste, was engaged to be her representative and given a boat ticket to Lima. Aboard ship, she behaved like a French missionary of elegance. Her innate talent for recognizing good wines, good perfumes, good dressmaking, marked her as a lady of refinement.

Some women, Commander Norton had decided long ago, should not be allowed aboard ship; weightlessness did things to their breasts that were too damn distracting. It was bad enough when they were motionless; but when they started to move, and sympathetic vibrations set in, it was more than any warm-blooded male should be asked to take. Some women, Commander Norton had decided long ago, should not be allowed aboard ship; weightlessness did things to their breasts that were too damn distracting. It was bad enough when they were motionless; but when they started to move, and sympathetic vibrations set in, it was more than any warm-blooded male should be asked to take. He was quite sure that at least one serious space accident had been caused by acute crew distraction, after the transit of a well-upholstered lady officer through the control cabin.

Wow. Sumi sat back in total stupor. So no one had ever climbed aboard that giant piece of sexy male and taken him for a ride. Unbelievable. Who in their right mind would bypass that opportunity? She didn’t know who this Dariana was, but the female had to be the dumbest cow ever bred. It

Ah,” said Varney. “Then I’m working for you, aren’t I?” “Yes, you are,” said Mr. Croup. “I’m afraid we don’t have any redeeming features.” “That doesn’t bother me,” said Varney. “Good,” said Mr. Croup. “Welcome aboard.

How good to see you, Miss Jones.” That debonair tone, the friendly press of his hand upon mine. It was such a contrast to our final moments in the cottage that I couldn’t help but smirk. “Thank you for having me,” I replied, loudly enough for the duke to hear. “But I haven’t,” said Armand under his breath. “So far.” I tugged back my hand. “Ever the gentleman, aren’t you?” “I try. Come aboard, waif. Come and experience a gentleman’s world.

Adventure stank. She boasted sixty oars, a single sail, and a long lean hull that promised speed. Small, but she might serve, Quentyn thought when he saw her, but that was before he went aboard and got a good whiff of her.

As their shoulders touched, the riverboat was no longer earthbound. With only the two of them aboard, it lifted into the sky, navigating a sea of white billows. The boy was the figurehead beneath the bowsprit, eyes searching for the way. Neftali was the paddle wheel, moving them forward as one ancient spirit.

A dozen or so miles out, Churchill abruptly asked, “Where is Nelson?” Meaning, of course, the cat. Nelson was not in the car; nor did he appear to be in any of the other vehicles. Churchill ordered his driver to turn around and go back to No. 10. There, a secretary cornered the terrified cat and trapped him under a wastebasket. With Nelson safely aboard, the cars resumed their journey. —

Hadrian gestured toward the sentinel. “So, what’s going on between you and Thranic, anyway? He appears to really hate you—even more than most people.” Royce did not look in his direction. He sat nonchalantly, pretending to ignore the world, as if they were the only two aboard. “Funny thing, that. I never met him, never heard of him until this voyage, and yet I know him rather well, and he knows me.” “Thank you, Mr. Esrahaddon. Can you provide me with perhaps a more cryptic answer?” Royce smiled. “I see why he does it now. It’s rather fun.

If I had your life story, it would be the first thing I mentioned to anyone. ‘Hullo, I’m Chase Reynaud. I learned to toddle aboard a merchant ship, and the Seven Seas rocked my cradle. And have I mentioned that no tropical sunset could compare with your beauty?’ The women would fall into bed with me.” “Don’t they fall into bed with you anyway?” “That’s true. But they might do so a half minute faster. Over months and years, those half minutes add up. So let’s hear the rest of the tale.

And I may not omit here a special work of God's providence. There was a proud and very profane young man [aboard the Mayflower], one of the seamen, of a lusty, able body, which made him the more haughty; he would always be contemning the poor people in their [sea]sickness, and cursing them daily with grievous execrations, and did not let to tell them, that he hoped to help cast half of them overboard before they came to their journey's end, and to make merry with what they had; and if he were by any gently reproved, he would curse and swear most bitterly. But it pleased God before they came half seas over, to smite this young man with a grievous disease, of which he died in a desperate manner, and so was himself the first that was thrown overboard. Thus his curses light on his own head; and it was an astonishment to all his fellows, for they noted it to be the just hand of God upon him.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I'd planned to speak to you tonight to report on the state of the Union, but the events of earlier today have led me to change those plans. Today is a day for mourning and remembering. Nancy and I are pained to the core by the tragedy of the shuttle Challenger. We know we share this pain with all of the people of our country. This is truly a national loss. Nineteen years ago, almost to the day, we lost three astronauts in a terrible accident on the ground. But we've never lost an astronaut in flight. We've never had a tragedy like this. And perhaps we've forgotten the courage it took for the crew of the shuttle. But they, the Challenger Seven, were aware of the dangers, but overcame them and did their jobs brilliantly. We mourn seven heroes: Michael Smith, Dick Scobee, Judith Resnik, Ronald McNair, Ellison Onizuka, Gregory Jarvis, and Christa McAuliffe. We mourn their loss as a nation together. For the families of the seven, we cannot bear, as you do, the full impact of this tragedy. But we feel the loss, and we're thinking about you so very much. Your loved ones were daring and brave, and they had that special grace, that special spirit that says, "Give me a challenge, and I'll meet it with joy." They had a hunger to explore the universe and discover its truths. They wished to serve, and they did. They served all of us. We've grown used to wonders in this century. It's hard to dazzle us. But for twenty-five years the United States space program has been doing just that. We've grown used to the idea of space, and, perhaps we forget that we've only just begun. We're still pioneers. They, the members of the Challenger crew, were pioneers. And I want to say something to the schoolchildren of America who were watching the live coverage of the shuttle's take-off. I know it's hard to understand, but sometimes painful things like this happen. It's all part of the process of exploration and discovery. It's all part of taking a chance and expanding man's horizons. The future doesn't belong to the fainthearted; it belongs to the brave. The Challenger crew was pulling us into the future, and we'll continue to follow them. I've always had great faith in and respect for our space program. And what happened today does nothing to diminish it. We don't hide our space program. We don't keep secrets and cover things up. We do it all up front and in public. That's the way freedom is, and we wouldn't change it for a minute. We'll continue our quest in space. There will be more shuttle flights and more shuttle crews and, yes, more volunteers, more civilians, more teachers in space. Nothing ends here; our hopes and our journeys continue. I want to add that I wish I could talk to every man and woman who works for NASA, or who worked on this mission and tell them: "Your dedication and professionalism have moved and impressed us for decades. And we know of your anguish. We share it." There's a coincidence today. On this day three hundred and ninety years ago, the great explorer Sir Francis Drake died aboard ship off the coast of Panama. In his lifetime the great frontiers were the oceans, and a historian later said, "He lived by the sea, died on it, and was buried in it." Well, today, we can say of the Challenger crew: Their dedication was, like Drake's, complete. The crew of the space shuttle Challenger honored us by the manner in which they lived their lives. We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and "slipped the surly bonds of earth" to "touch the face of God." Thank you.

It was the first time I had spoken to them directly. In doing so, I felt myself cross a fine but very distinct line, the line between speculating about the existence of a metaphysical plane of some sort and climbing aboard for the ride. I knew I had let go of my sanity. It was terrifying. I only did it because my fear of what was happening to my body had become greater than my fear of holding on to rational beliefs.

Living aboard one's sailboat and having neither house nor vehicle nor job, and needing none, would be hubris—the most arrogant presumption—and therefore suitable punishable by the gods. One would be drowned by Poseidon early on and die extremely happy.

Papa taps on the skylight and I look up. He waves at me and smiles. I smile back. For now, I don't need to know what lies ahead. For now it's enough just to be here, safe aboard the Morning Star with my family and friends. For now, it's enough to be home.

The first woman who spent any amount of time aboard this ship was Elizabeth de Obregon, whom we salvaged from the wrack of the Manila Galleon at the same time as him who burned it, one Edouard de Gex.” “He’s dead, by the way.” “Again? I am glad to hear it.

Maybe we are all Beths, boarding other people's life journeys, or letting them hop aboard ours. For a while we ride together. A few minutes, a few miles. Companions on the road, sharing our air and our view, our feet swaying to the same beat. Then you get off at your stop, or I get off at mine. Unless we decide to stay on longer together. p 251

I always like to be in the presence of people who are good at and love their jobs, Irrespective of their jobs.

She’d worried, after Asterin and Vesta had left them aboard the ship they’d sailed here, that she might have made a mistake in choosing to travel with three immortal males. That she’d be trampled underfoot. But Gavriel had been kind from the start, making sure Elide ate enough and had blankets on frigid nights, teaching her to ride the horses they’d spent precious coin to purchase because Elide wouldn’t stand a chance of keeping up with them on foot, ankle or no. And for the times when they had to lead their horses over rough terrain, Gavriel had even braced her leg with his magic, his power a warm summer breeze against her skin.

Here’s the cool part: I will eventually go to Schiaparelli and commandeer the Ares 4 lander. Nobody explicitly gave me permission to do this, and they can’t until I’m aboard Ares 4 and operating the comm system. After I board Ares 4, before talking to NASA, I will take control of a craft in international waters without permission. That makes me a pirate! A space pirate!

Why has the car stopped?" "Ah!" I said with manly frankness that became me well. "There you have me." You see, I'm one of those birds who drive a lot but don't know the first thing about the works. The policy I pursue is to get aboard, prod the self-starter, and leave the rest to Nature. If anything goes wrong, I scream for an A.A. scout. It's a system that answers admirably as a rule, but on the present occasion it blew a fuse owing to the fact that there wasn't an A.A. scout within miles.

so the plan had been to get into the hostile ship through its lock and then run around getting shot and murdering my way through whoever was aboard until I could get control. (I hadn’t used those exact words during the planning process with Indah and Aylen, but we all knew what we were talking about.)

Within himself Jack had not the slightest doubt of victory, but it would never do to let this conviction take the form of even unspoken words; it must remain in the state of that inward glow which had inhabited him ever since the retaking of the Africaine, and which had now increased to fill the whole of his heart - a glow that he believed to be his most private secret, although in fact it was evident to everyone aboard from Stephen Maturin to the adenoidal third-class boy who closed the muster-book.

We will have to remember where our cranks belong in our national life, so that they can resume their proper roles as lonely guardians of the frontiers of the national imagination, prodding and pushing, getting us to think about things in new ways, but also knowing that their place is of necessity a lonely and humble one. There is nothing wrong with a country that has people who put saddles on their dinosaurs. It’s a wonderful show and we should watch them and applaud. We have no obligation to climb aboard and ride.

Those who would take over the earth And shape it to their will Never, I notice, succeed. The earth is like a vessel so sacred That at the mere approach of the profane It is marred And when they reach out their fingers it is gone. For a time in the world some force themselves ahead And some are left behind, For a time in the world some make a great noise And some are held silent, For a time in the world some are puffed fat And some are kept hungry, For a time in the world some push aboard And some are tipped out: At no time in the world will a man who is sane Over-reach himself, Over-spend himself, Over-rate himself.

I wish I could help him. I wish I could help the dozens of other Sufferers - all the victims of wounds, maulings, burns, diseases, incipient malnutrition, and melancholic despair - aboard this entrapped ship and her sister ship. I wish I could help myself, for already I am showing the early signs of Nostalgia and Debility. But there is little that I - or any surgeon in the Year of Our Lord 1848 - can do. God help us all.

If I'd been a cowboy, it might've ended well. Somewhere on the ramble, I'm sure I'd have to sell My guns along the highway. My coins to the table To make a gambler's double, I'd double debts to pay. Prob'ly shrink and slink away, It mightn't've ended well. What If I'd been a sailor? I think it might've ended well. From August to May For a searat of man drifting through eternal blue, aboard the finest Debris. I might've called the shanties. From daybreak to storm's set, lines stay Taught, over rhythm unbroken. But, oh, there's a schism unspoken, a mighty calling of the lee. An absentminded Pirate, unaccustomed to the sea; To the land, a traitor. I think it mightn't've ended well. What might've worked for me? What might've ended well? Soldier, to bloody sally forth through hell? Teacher of glorious stories to tell? Man of gold, or stores to sell? Lover to a gentle belle? Maybe a camel; A seashell. What mightn't've been a life where it mightn't've ended well?

The Empire was crumbling every day. Trillions of people were free because of the Rebellion. Because she was a general running a battle group instead of a cell leader flying the Ghost on one mad assignment or another. Still, she missed her old crew. Her family. She wished they all could have been with her aboard the Lodestar.

When you are in the middle of a story it isn’t a story at all, but only a confusion; a dark roaring, a blindness, a wreckage of shattered glass and splintered wood; like a house in a whirlwind, or else a boat crushed by the icebergs or swept over the rapids, and all aboard powerless to stop it. It’s only afterwards that it becomes anything like a story at all. When you are telling it, to yourself or to someone else. —Margaret Atwood, Alias Grace

Cassady is a monologuist, only he doesn't seem to care whether anyone is listening or not. He just goes off on the monologue, by himself if necessary, although anyone is welcome aboard. He will answer all questions, although not exactly in that order, because we can't stop here, next rest area 40 miles, you understand, spinning off memories, metaphors, literary, Oriental, hip allusions, all punctuated by the unlikely expression, 'you understand -

The Herons! The Herons! The mighty, fighting Herons! No other Brotherband you'll see Is even half as darin' We sailed away from Hallasholm, we had to be real quick, For Kloof had eaten Erak's ax and chewed his walking stick. We sailed across the Stormwite and we struck a mighty storm. We had to wear our woolly caps to keep us nice and warm. We sailed around Cape Shelter and then south to Araluen. We called upon the people there to find out what was doin'. We chased an evil slaver to the market of Socorro. "We can't rescue them tonight," said Hal. "We'll get them out tomorrow." Lydia and the Ranger burned the market to the ground. The rest of us, we freed the slaves then headed out of town. The Herons! The Herons! The mighty, fighting Herons! No other Brotherband you'll see Is even half as darin' The slave master named Mahmel was a nasty kind of thug, So Stiggy dropped a rock and crushed him like a bug. We sailed back to Cresthaven and we set the captives free. King Duncan said, "Well done, my lads, you're just the boys for me. My Ranger Gilan has to go hunt down some assassins So go along with him and give these wicked types a thrashin'." A pirate galley barred our way. We quickly overtook 'em. And Ingvar led the charge aboard to stab and chop and hook 'em. We beat the Tualaghi and the Scorpions as well. The Ranger stuck his saxe into the leader, the Shurmel. When all the assassins threw a fit of wild hysterics, Hal grabbed up the Shurmel's staff and brought it back for Erak. The Herons! The Herons! The mighty, fighting Herons! No other Brotherband you'll see Is even half as darin

War is a primarily a game of skill. It is a Contest of mind matched against mind, tactics matched against tactics. But there is also an element of chance that is more suited to games of cards or dice. A wise tactician studies those games, as well, and learns from them. The first lesson of card games is that the cards cannot be played in random order. Only when laid down properly can victory be achieved. In this case, there were but three cards. The first was played at the encampment. The result was entrance to the Strikefast. The second was played aboard ship. The result was promise of passage to Coruscant, and the assignment of Cadet Vanto as my translator. The third was a name: Anakin Skywalker.

There's things that happen in a person's life that are so scorched in the memory and burned into the heart that there's no forgetting them. John Boyne April 28, 1789: The real-life mutiny that inspired John Boyne's novel, Mutiny on the Bounty, took place aboard the HMS Bounty 224 years ago today. Half the ship's crew, seduced by several months of good life on Tahiti, rose up against Captain William Bligh. Some of the mutineers' descendants still live on Pitcairn Island

(…) But I have never known jealousy until I was introduced to it aboard the Etruria. I want to deny it, to pretend I’m some perfect, unfeeling machine who didn’t care, but that’s a vicious lie. I cared. I cared so much I wanted to punch a wall, as senseless and idiotic as that would be. I considered shoving that pompous ass of a ringmaster right off the deck, knowing I’d rejoice in his drowning. It gave me unparalleled pleasure just imagining his demise. You have no idea the strength it takes, shoving that beast inside, remembering that’s not the kind of person I want to be. Not now, or ever. I will not become a monster for you. The kind of love I crave isn’t cruel or possessive. Do not expect me to act either way. I will never beg or use subversive tactics to win your heart. I will earn it because you choose to give it to me of your own free will, or I won’t have it at all. I will never manipulate you. No one should. And if they do? They aren’t worth your time.

Amias Mitchell,’ Kip said. ‘Born aboard the Asteria. Forty Solar days of age as of GC standard day 211/310. He is now, and always, a member of our Fleet. By our laws, he is assured shelter and passage here. If we have food, he will eat. If we have air, he will breathe. If we have fuel, he will fly. He is son to all grown, brother to all still growing. We will care for him, protect him, guide him. We welcome you, Amias, to the decks of the Asteria, and to the journey we take together.’ He spoke the final words now, and the room joined him. ‘From the ground, we stand. From our ships, we live. By the stars, we hope.

A survivor, in another sense, was left alive. The king’s nephew, Stephen, count of Blois, was suffering from a severe bout of diarrhoea and declined to join the revelry aboard the White Ship. Since he would be crowned as king of England fifteen years later, it can plausibly be maintained that an attack of diarrhoea determined the fate of the nation. Statesmen may plot and plan. Learned men may calculate and conclude. Diplomats may debate and prevaricate. But chance rules the immediate affairs of humankind.

Why did she want to go to sea and live the rough unglamorous life of a seaman? ‘Because they told me Negro women couldn’t get in the union. You know what I told them?’ I shook my head, although I nearly knew. ‘I told them, “You want to bet?” I’ll put my foot in that door up to my hip until women of every color can walk over my foot, get in that union, get aboard a ship and go to sea.

They were furious. Did he not know he might catch cold? Why did he not answer their hail? It was no good his telling them he had not heard; they knew better; he had not got flannel ears--Why had he not waited for them? --What was a boat for? Was this a proper time to go a-swimmin? -- Did he think this was midsummer? Or Lammas? -- He was to see how cold he was, blue an trembling like a fucking jelly -- Would a new-joined ships boy have done such a wicked thing? No, sir, he would not. -- What would the skipper, what would Mr Pullings and Mr Babbington say, when they heard of his capers? -- As God loved them, they had never seen anything so foolish: he might strike them blind, else. -- Where had he left his intellectuals? Aboard the sloop? They dried him with handkerchiefs., dressed him by force, and rowed him quickly back to the Polychrest. He was to go below directly, turn in between blankets--no sheets, mind--with a pint of grog and have a good sweat. he was to go up the side now, like a Christian and nobody would notice. Plaice and Lakey were perhaps the strongest men in the ship, with arms like gorillas; they thrust him aboard and hurried him to his cabin without so much as by your leave, and left him there in the charge of his servant, with recommenations for his present care.

This is your captain speaking, so stop whatever you’re doing and pay attention. First of all I see from our instruments that we have a couple of hitchhikers aboard. Hello, wherever you are. I just want to make it totally clear that you are not at all welcome. I worked hard to get where I am today, and I didn’t become captain of a Vogon constructor ship simply so I could turn it into a taxi service for a load of degenerate freeloaders. I have sent out a search party, and as soon as they find you I will put you off the ship. If you’re very lucky I might read you some of my poetry first. “Secondly, we are about to jump into hyperspace for the journey to Barnard’s Star. On arrival we will stay in dock for a seventy-two-hour refit, and no one’s to leave the ship during that time. I repeat, all planet leave is canceled. I’ve just had an unhappy love affair, so I don’t see why anybody else should have a good time. Message ends.

Sounds like a jolly good adventure – rather frightening too, I must say. Fortunate that I was tootling past, say what? Come now, you must be in a bit of a fix. Why don’t you hop aboard and I’ll take you back to Lucille in a jiffy and we’ll have a cuppa and a meeting of the old grey matter, what!” Donald shuffled next to Ralph’s side. Out of the corner of his mouth, he whispered: “What’s he saying?

No. When I was a girl, I wanted to be a pirate.” That brought up an all-too-pleasant image—Miss Marshall, the rich, dark red of her hair unbound and flying defiantly in the wind aboard a ship’s deck. She’d wear a loose white shirt and pantaloons. He would definitely surrender. “I am less shocked than you might imagine,” Edward heard himself say. “Entirely unshocked.” She smiled in pleasure. “A bloodthirsty cutthroat profession? Good thing you gave that up. It would never have suited you.” Her expression of pleasure dimmed. “You’d have succeeded too easily,” Edward continued, “and now you’d be sitting, bored as sin, atop a heap of gold too large to spend in one lifetime. Still, though, wouldn’t it solve ever so many problems if you married a lord? James Delacey could never touch you again if you did.

Then he noticed a little row-boat at about two hundred yards from the shore. There were two or three people aboard, he could not quite make out how many, and they were no doubt fishing, and Merritt (who disliked fish) wondered how people could spoil such an afternoon, such a sea, such pellucid and radiant air by trying to catch white, flabby, offensive, evil-smelling creatures that would be excessively nasty when cooked.

It’s all along of the unicorn’s horn – it’s all along of the glorious hand. Huzzay, three times huzzay for the doctor!’ Lord, how they cheered their surgeon! It was he who had brought the narwhal’s tusk aboard: and the severed hand, the Hand of Glory, was his property: both symbolized (and practically guaranteed) immense good fortune, virility, safety from poison or any disease you chose to name: and both had proved their worth.

Why did you come to the United States? Perhaps no one knows the real answer. I know that migrants, when they are still on their way here, learn the Immigrant's Prayer. A friend who had been aboard La Bestia for a few days, working on a documentary, read it to me once. I didn't learn the entire thing, but I remember these lines: 'Partir es morir un poco / Llegar nunca es llegar' - 'To leave is to die a little / To arrive is never to arrive.

I was its king once, a long time ago, when the great gods decided to send the Flood. Five gods decided, and they took an oath to keep the plan secret: Anu their father, the counselor Enlil, Ninurta the gods’ chamberlain, and Ennugi the sheriff. Ea also, the cleverest of the gods, had taken the oath, but I heard him whisper the secret to the reed fence around my house. ‘Reed fence, reed fence, listen to my words. King of Shuruppak, quickly, quickly tear down your house and build a great ship, leave your possessions, save your life. The ship must be square, so that its length equals its width. Build a roof over it, just as the Great Deep is covered by the earth. Then gather and take aboard the ship examples of every living creature.

To learn one’s longitude at sea, one needs to know what time it is aboard ship and also the time at the home port or another place of known longitude—at that very same moment. The two clock times enable the navigator to convert the hour difference into a geographical separation. Since the Earth takes twenty-four hours to complete one full revolution of three hundred sixty degrees, one hour marks one twenty-fourth of a spin, or fifteen degrees.

Stephen's heart was big to bursting with the violence of his grief, yet even as he looked distractedly from side to side his mind told him that there was something amiss, the more so as the cheering had now almost entirely died away. The whaler had a huge spread of canvas aboard, far too great a press of sail for her possibly to enter the lagoon: she was tearing along with a great bow-wave and she sped past the mouth of the farther channel. A cable's length beyond the Opening her main and fore topgallantmasts carried clean away, as though brought down by a shot, and she instantly hauled to the wind, striking her colours as she did so. Her pursuer came racing into sight round the southern cape, studdingsails aloft and alow on either side—a dead silence from the motionless Norfolks below—fired a full, prodigal broadside to leeward, lowered down a boat and began to reduce sail, cheering like a ship clean out of her mind with delight. 'She is the Surprise,' said Stephen, and he whispered, 'The joyful Surprise, God and Mary be with her.

Still, that would not solve the problem; Percy would merely languish in prison until such time as Grey was recovered enough to testify. No, he decided, Hal’s response would more likely be to knock Grey over the head, bundle him into a sack, and have him smuggled aboard a merchantman bound for China, after which he would declare Grey lost at sea, and… He discovered that he was laughing helplessly at the thought, tears coming to his eyes. “Christ, Hal, I wish you would,” he said aloud, and quite suddenly thought of Aberdeen, realizing for the first time just how desperately his brother loved him.

A pair of aces," Daniel said with a fierce look in his eye. Justin set his cards down quietly and faceup. "Two pair.Jacks and sevens." He sat back as Caine swore in disgust. "You son of-" In frustration, Daniel broke off, shifting his eyes from his daughter to Shelby. "The devil take you, Justin Blade." "You're sending him off prematurely," Shelby commented, spreading her cards. "A straight,from the five to the nine." Alan walked over to look at her cards. "I'll be damned, she drew the six and seven." "No one but a bloody witch draws an inside straight," Daniel boomed, glaring at her. "Or a bloody Campbell," Shelby said easily. His eyes narrowed. "Deal the cards." Justin grinned at her as Shelby scooped in chips. "Welcome aboard," he said quietly and began to shuffle.

Now, when he kissed her or put his arms around her, Scarlet felt like he was staking a claim. Which normally would have sent her on a tirade about relationship independence, except she felt like she’d claimed him a long time ago. The moment she’d expected him to choose her over his pack, the moment she’d dragged him aboard that ship and taken him away from everything he’d ever known, she’d made the decision for them both. He was hers now, just like she was his. Except

I will have you without armor. Those were the words she’d said to Kaz aboard the Ferolind , desperate for some sign that he might open himself to her, that they could be more than two wary creatures united by their distrust of the world. But what might have happened if he’d spoken that night? If he had willingly offered her some part of his heart? What if he had come to her, laid his gloves aside, drawn her to him, kissed her mouth? Would she have pulled him closer? Kissed him back? Could she have been herself in such a moment, or would she have broken apart and vanished, a doll in his arms, a girl who could never quite be whole

So what are they, then,” asked Lila, “these Sea Serpents?” “Swords for hire. They sink their own ships right before they attack.” “As a distraction?” asked Lila. He shook his head. “A message. That they won’t be needing them anymore, that once they’re done killing everyone aboard and dumping the bodies in the sea, they’ll take their victims’ boat instead and sail away.” “Huh,” said Lila. “Exactly.” “Seems like a waste of a perfectly good ship.” He rolled his eyes. “Only you would mourn the vessel instead of the sailors.” “Well,” she said matter-of-factly, “the ship certainly didn’t do anything wrong. The people might have deserved it.

books standing up and other books lying down on top of them; plump, resplendent foreign books stretching themselves comfortably, and other wretched books that peered at you from cramped and crowded conditions, lying like illegal immigrants crowded on bunks aboard ship. Heavy, respectable books in gold-tooled leather bindings, and thin books bound in flimsy paper, splendid portly gentlemen and ragged, shabby beggars, and all around and among and behind them was a sweaty mass of booklets, leaflets, pamphlets, offprints, periodicals, journals, and magazines, that noisy crowd that always congregates around any public square or marketplace.

Off the southeast tip of Italy a young Austrian U-boat commander named Georg von Trapp, later to gain eternal renown when played by Christopher Plummer in the film The Sound of Music, fired two torpedoes into a large French cruiser, the Leon Gambetta. The ship sank in nine minutes, killing 684 sailors. “So that’s what war looks like!” von Trapp wrote in a later memoir. He told his chief officer, “We are like highway men, sneaking up on an unsuspecting ship in such a cowardly fashion.” Fighting in a trench or aboard a torpedo boat would have been better, he said. “There you hear shooting, hear your comrades fall, you hear the wounded groaning—you become filled with rage and can shoot men in self defense or fear; at an assault you can even yell! But we! Simply cold-blooded to drown a mass of men in an ambush!

So what’s fatherhood like, anyway?” Froggy asked Jack. “Is it as wonderful as it seems?” “Do you remember sailing through the clouds aboard the Granny?” Jack asked. “How could I forget?” Froggy said, delighted to recall the fond memories. “The wind blowing across our faces, the birds soaring by our side, the sunrise peeking over the frosty mountains—it was a breathtaking experience.” “Right,” Jack said. “Well, do you remember the part when we got shot out of the sky? Do you remember that feeling in the pit of your stomach as the ship plummeted toward the earth at hundreds of miles per hour toward a most certain death? That’s what fatherhood is like.

The soldier in the field and the crew member aboard a warship inevitably see a war from a limited perspective. Their goal is to carry out their mission or their appointed task, and trust that their commanders are aware of the larger situation and the vast matrix of facts, positions, options, and dangers. Leadership is a role and a task that should never be aspired to lightly. Neither should loyalty be given without reason. Even if the primary reason is nothing more than the soldier's oath and duty, a true leader will work to prove worthy of a deeper trust. But leadership and loyalty are both two-bladed weapons. Each can be twisted from its intended purpose. The consequences are never pleasant.

Pippin?" "Yes, Dash?" "How did we get here?" "Aboard this ship?" she teased. "Nate ordered the sails raised and then --" "Very funny," he said, cutting her off. "You know what I mean. Here. To this place." "Oh, this place," she said, her face growing solemn. "I've wondered that as well, and all I can think of is that we are like our stars." "How so?" "You and I are the two outer stars, and the one between us is everything that keeps us apart." He set his lips together and gazed out at the waves. "Like this ocean," he offered.

CAPT. J. W. SIMMONS, master of the steamship Pensacola, had just as little regard for weather as the Louisiana’s Captain Halsey. He was a veteran of eight hundred trips across the Gulf and commanded a staunch and sturdy ship, a 1,069-ton steel-hulled screw-driven steam freighter built twelve years earlier in West Hartlepool, England, and now owned by the Louisville and Nashville Railroad Company. Friday morning the ship was docked at the north end of 34th Street, in the company of scores of other ships, including the big Mallory liner Alamo, at 2,237 tons, and the usual large complement of British ships, which on Friday included the Comino, Hilarius, Kendal Castle, Mexican, Norna, Red Cross, Taunton, and the stately Roma in from Boston with its Captain Storms. As the Pensacola’s twenty-one-man crew readied the ship for its voyage to the city of Pensacola on Florida’s Gulf Coast, two men came aboard as Captain Simmons’s personal guests: a harbor pilot named R. T. Carroll and Galveston’s Pilot Commissioner J. M. O. Menard, from one of the city’s oldest families. At

When a brother is given the right to pass into the third life as a father, then he chooses his greatest rival or his truest friend to give him passage. You. Speaker—ever since I first learned Stark and read The Hive Queen and the Hegemon, I waited for you. I said many times to my father, Rooter, of all humans he is the one who will understand us. Then Rooter told me when your starship came, that it was you and the hive queen aboard that ship, and I knew then that you had come to give me passage, if only I did well." "You did well, Human.

Once aboard Top Job, George and Nancy had the mainsail and jib up in record time. Bess dutifully coiled the sheets. “The wind is perfect.” George sighed happily, taking the tiller. Top Job sailed smoothly, gathering speed as the sails filled. The boat was running before the wind. As the craft approached the mouth of the harbor, George noticed a post she assumed was a racing marker. She decided to have a look at it, thinking she might take part in Saturday’s races. “Ready about, hard alee!” she called. Nancy uncleated the jib sheet. Then she and Bess scrambled to the other side of the boat. Nancy trimmed the jib sheet, cleating it on the starboard side. George handed her the tiller, saying, “Try her. She handles beautifully.

On the eastward crossing on the Ile de France Thomas Hudson learned that hell was not necessarily as it was described by Dante or any other of the great hell-describers, but could be a comfortable, pleasant, and well-loved ship taking you toward a country that you had always sailed for with anticipation. It had many circles and they were not fixed as in those of the great Florentine egotist. He had gone aboard the ship early, thinking of it, he now knew, as a refuge from the city where he had feared meeting people who would speak to him about what had happened.

Come aboard, come aboard!" cried the gay Bachelor's commander, lifting a glass and a bottle in the air. "Hast seen the White Whale?" gritted Ahab in reply. "No; only heard of him; but don't believe in him at all," said the other good-humoredly. "Come aboard!" "Thou art too damned jolly. Sail on. Hast lost any men?" "Not enough to speak of—two islanders, that's all;—but come aboard, old hearty, come along. I'll soon take that black from your brow. Come along, will ye (merry's the play); a full ship and homeward-bound." "How wondrous familiar is a fool!" muttered Ahab; then aloud, "Thou art a full ship and homeward bound, thou sayest; well, then, call me an empty ship, and outward-bound. So go thy ways, and I will mine. Forward there! Set all sail, and keep her to the wind!

This young woman,” said Diana, “was responsible for the destruction of the Triumvirate’s fleet.” “Well, I had a lot of help,” Lavinia said. “I don’t understand,” I said, turning to Lavinia. “You made all those mortars malfunction?” Lavinia looked offended. “Well, yeah. Somebody had to stop the fleet. I did pay attention during siege-weapon class and ship-boarding class. It wasn’t that hard. All it took was a little fancy footwork.” Hazel finally managed to pick her jaw off the pavement. “Wasn’t that hard?” “We were motivated! The fauns and dryads did great.” She paused, her expression momentarily clouding, as if she remembered something unpleasant. “Um…besides, the Nereids helped a lot. There was only a skeleton crew aboard each yacht. Not, like, actual skeletons, but—you know what I mean. Also, look!” She pointed proudly at her feet, which were now adorned with the shoes of Terpsichore from Caligula’s private collection. “You mounted an amphibious assault on an enemy fleet,” I said, “for a pair of shoes.” Lavinia huffed. “Not just for the shoes, obviously.” She tap-danced a routine that would’ve made Savion Glover proud. “Also to save the camp, and the nature spirits, and Michael Kahale’s commandos.” Hazel held up her hands to stop the overflow of information. “Wait. Not to be a killjoy—I mean, you did an amazing thing!—but you still deserted your post, Lavinia. I certainly didn’t give you permission —” “I was acting on praetor’s orders,” Lavinia said haughtily. “In fact, Reyna helped. She was knocked out for a while, healing, but she woke up in time to instill us with the power of Bellona, right before we boarded those ships. Made us all strong and stealthy and stuff.” Hazel asked, “Is it true about Lavinia acting on your orders?” Reyna glanced at our pink-haired friend. The praetor’s pained expression said something like, I respect you a lot, but I also hate you for being right. “Yes,” Reyna managed to say. “Plan L was my idea. Lavinia and her friends acted on my orders. They performed heroically.” Lavinia beamed. “See? I told you.” The assembled crowd murmured in amazement, as if, after a day full of wonders, they had finally witnessed something that could not be explained.

Wild Peaches" When the world turns completely upside down You say we’ll emigrate to the Eastern Shore Aboard a river-boat from Baltimore; We’ll live among wild peach trees, miles from town, You’ll wear a coonskin cap, and I a gown Homespun, dyed butternut’s dark gold color. Lost, like your lotus-eating ancestor, We’ll swim in milk and honey till we drown. The winter will be short, the summer long, The autumn amber-hued, sunny and hot, Tasting of cider and of scuppernong; All seasons sweet, but autumn best of all. The squirrels in their silver fur will fall Like falling leaves, like fruit, before your shot. 2 The autumn frosts will lie upon the grass Like bloom on grapes of purple-brown and gold. The misted early mornings will be cold; The little puddles will be roofed with glass. The sun, which burns from copper into brass, Melts these at noon, and makes the boys unfold Their knitted mufflers; full as they can hold Fat pockets dribble chestnuts as they pass. Peaches grow wild, and pigs can live in clover; A barrel of salted herrings lasts a year; The spring begins before the winter’s over. By February you may find the skins Of garter snakes and water moccasins Dwindled and harsh, dead-white and cloudy-clear. 3 When April pours the colors of a shell Upon the hills, when every little creek Is shot with silver from the Chesapeake In shoals new-minted by the ocean swell, When strawberries go begging, and the sleek Blue plums lie open to the blackbird’s beak, We shall live well — we shall live very well. The months between the cherries and the peaches Are brimming cornucopias which spill Fruits red and purple, sombre-bloomed and black; Then, down rich fields and frosty river beaches We’ll trample bright persimmons, while you kill Bronze partridge, speckled quail, and canvasback. 4 Down to the Puritan marrow of my bones There’s something in this richness that I hate. I love the look, austere, immaculate, Of landscapes drawn in pearly monotones. There’s something in my very blood that owns Bare hills, cold silver on a sky of slate, A thread of water, churned to milky spate Streaming through slanted pastures fenced with stones. I love those skies, thin blue or snowy gray, Those fields sparse-planted, rendering meagre sheaves; That spring, briefer than apple-blossom’s breath, Summer, so much too beautiful to stay, Swift autumn, like a bonfire of leaves, And sleepy winter, like the sleep of death.

It had been a windy night, that night where his life had taken its turning. The atmosphere, in flood, was trying to wash the trees right off the hills. The big oaks twisted and shuddered like black flames in the moonlight, and the white grass rippled and bannered. The wind that night made him feel his chronic longing. The wind, trying to stampede the trees, was roaring for a grand, universal departure to another solar system, a better deal, and the grass struggled to join the rootless giant of the air. All that lives strives to fly, to master time. All tribes of beings strain to rise in insurrection, all knowing their time is short, all, when the wind blows, wanting to climb aboard. ("The Growlimb")

To the Nameless Saints who soothe the winds and still the restless sea... Lenos turned his grandmother's talisman between his hands as he prayed. I beg protection for this vessel-- A sound shuddered through the ship, followed by a swell of cursing. Lenos looked up as Lila got to her feet, steam rising from her hands. -- and those who sail aboard it. I beg kind waters and clear skies as we make our way-- "If you break my ship, I will kill you all," shouted Jasta. His fingers tightened around the pendant. -- our way into danger and darkness. "Damned Antari," muttered Alucard, storming up the steps to the landing where Lenos stood, elbows on the rail. The captain slumped down against a crate and produced a flask. "This is why I drink." Lenos pressed on. I beg this as a humble servant, with faith in the vast world, in all its power. He straightened, tucking the necklace back under his collar. "Did I interrupt?" asked Alucard. Lenos looked from the singe marks on the deck to Jasta bellowing from the wheel as the ship tepped suddenly sideways under the force of whatever magic the three Antari were working, and at last to the man who sat drinking on the floor. "Not really,

And went on thinking. And got to thinking over our trip down the river; and I see Jim before me all the time: in the day and in the night-time, sometimes moonlight, sometimes storms, and we a-floating along, talking and singing and laughing. But somehow I couldn’t seem to strike no places to harden me against him, but only the other kind. I’d see him standing my watch on top of his’n, ’stead of calling me, so I could go on sleeping; and see him how glad he was when I come back out of the fog; and when I come to him again in the swamp, up there where the feud was; and such-like times; and would always call me honey, and pet me and do everything he could think of for me, and how good he always was; and at last I struck the time I saved him by telling the men we had small-pox aboard, and he was so grateful, and said I was the best friend old Jim ever had in the world, and the ONLY one he’s got now; and then I happened to look around and see that paper.

Roman Centurion's Song" LEGATE, I had the news last night - my cohort ordered home By ships to Portus Itius and thence by road to Rome. I've marched the companies aboard, the arms are stowed below: Now let another take my sword. Command me not to go! I've served in Britain forty years, from Vectis to the Wall, I have none other home than this, nor any life at all. Last night I did not understand, but, now the hour draws near That calls me to my native land, I feel that land is here. Here where men say my name was made, here where my work was done; Here where my dearest dead are laid - my wife - my wife and son; Here where time, custom, grief and toil, age, memory, service, love, Have rooted me in British soil. Ah, how can I remove? For me this land, that sea, these airs, those folk and fields suffice. What purple Southern pomp can match our changeful Northern skies, Black with December snows unshed or pearled with August haze - The clanging arch of steel-grey March, or June's long-lighted days? You'll follow widening Rhodanus till vine and olive lean Aslant before the sunny breeze that sweeps Nemausus clean To Arelate's triple gate; but let me linger on, Here where our stiff-necked British oaks confront Euroclydon! You'll take the old Aurelian Road through shore-descending pines Where, blue as any peacock's neck, the Tyrrhene Ocean shines. You'll go where laurel crowns are won, but -will you e'er forget The scent of hawthorn in the sun, or bracken in the wet? Let me work here for Britain's sake - at any task you will - A marsh to drain, a road to make or native troops to drill. Some Western camp (I know the Pict) or granite Border keep, Mid seas of heather derelict, where our old messmates sleep. Legate, I come to you in tears - My cohort ordered home! I've served in Britain forty years. What should I do in Rome? Here is my heart, my soul, my mind - the only life I know. I cannot leave it all behind. Command me not to go!

Like I said last time, the world our parents grew up in is history. All the old rules, we've thrown them out. We're the ones making the future. We're the founding fathers. Hand us universal Wi-Fi and soup dumplings and we'll fix the world. So how do you fit in? What if you can't code? What if you've never been able to build anything more than a birdhouse? It doesn't matter. You've got skills that you probably disniss as tricks. That dance you can do, that song you can sing, the painting hanging in your room, those are all skills we need. See there's a reason my status online is recruiting for the future. We broke some eggs and we baked a cake. It was delicious, really amazing cream cheese frosting. I saved you a piece, but I don't want to give it to you. I want to teach you how to bake your own cake from scratch. Only, instead of flour and water and eggs, I want you to make something with oil paints, yarn, peptides, or computer parts. The revolution is now. Welcome aboard. And, uh, get ready to create...

His prescription to experience a deep sense of meaning, then, was remarkably pragmatic. He had three recommendations: 1. Have a project to work on, some reason to get out of bed in the morning and preferably something that serves other people. 2. Have a redemptive perspective on life’s challenges. That is, when something difficult happens, recognize the ways that difficulty also serves you. 3. Share your life with a person or people who love you unconditionally. Frankl called this treatment logotherapy, or a therapy of meaning. And surprisingly, it worked. He was put in charge of the mental-health division of the Viennese hospital system because they had lost far too many patients to suicide. When Frankl came aboard, he had more than thirty thousand suicidal patients under his care. The challenge was phenomenal. Frankl created community groups for the patients and taught counselors to identify projects the patients could contribute to, serious work the world needed that would give them a reason to get out of bed in the morning. Frankl also had the patients circle the difficult experiences they’d had and while allowing them to grieve, also asked them to list benefits that had come from their pain. The result of the program was transformational. Not one patient committed suicide on Frankl’s watch.

I didn’t sneer!” said Juliana hastily. “I’d no notion you behaved so dreadfully badly to her. You said you forced her aboard your yacht, but I never supposed that you really frightened her enough to make her fire at you. You need not be in a rage with me for saying so, Dominic, but when I saw Mary at your house she was so placid I made sure you’d not treated her so very brutally after all. Had you?” “Yes,” said Vidal bluntly. He looked at Juliana. “You think it was vastly romantic for Mary to be carried off by me, don’t you? You think you would enjoy it, and you cannot conceive how she should be afraid, can you? Then think, my girl! Think a little! You are in my power at this moment, I may remind you. What if I make you feel it? What if I say to start with that you shall eat your dinner, and force it down your throat?” Juliana shrank back from him involuntarily. “Don’t, Vidal! Don’t come near me!” she said, frightened by the expression in his face. He laughed. “Not so romantic, is it, Ju? And to force you to eat your dinner would be a small thing compared with some other things I might force you to do. Sit down, I’m not going to touch you.” She obeyed, eyeing him nervously. “I—I wish I hadn’t come with you!” she said. “So did Mary, with more reason. But Mary would have died sooner than let me see that she was afraid. And Mary, my love, is not my cousin.

Why should we hate them? Because ours is the only true civilization! Even in science -- consider that we invented the sternpost rudder twelve hundred years before the Europeans did! Fore-and-aft sails in the third century! Treadmill paddle wheel for boats five hundred years later! Warships with rams and twenty paddle wheels by the twelfth century -- the British thought we had copied theirs, the fools! In the thirteenth century we had ships with fifty cabins for passengers, six-masts, double planking, water-tight compartments! Only in the last century did the barbarians even have transverse bulkheads! Five hundred years ago we already had ships four hundred and fifty feet long, and we grew fresh vegetables aboard in tubs! WE sailed the high seas to Sumatra and India, to Aden and Africa and even to Madagascar -- sixty years before the Portuguese bit a piece from the thigh of India! I curse Confucius and all those mad saints who persuaded us against war! Did you ever hear of Sun Wa, who lived three thousand years ago? No? Read the Art of War! 'If you are not in danger, do not fight,' he wrote. Now we are in danger!

Anticipating their calamity and fright when deportation day came (August 6, 1942) he [Henryk Goldszmit, pen name: Janusz Korczak] joined them aboard the train bound for Treblinka, because, he said, he knew his presence would calm them—“You do not leave a sick child in the night, and you do not leave children at a time like this.” A photograph taken at the Umschlagplatz (Transshipment Square) shows him marching, hatless, in military boots, hand in hand with several children, while 192 other children and ten staff members follow, four abreast, escorted by German soldiers. Korczak and the children boarded red boxcars not much larger than chicken coops, usually stuffed with seventy-five vertical adults, though all the children easily fit. In Joshua Perle’s eyewitness account in The Destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto, he describes the scene: “A miracle occurred, two hundred pure souls, condemned to death, did not weep. Not one of them ran away. None tried to hide. Like stricken swallows they clung to their teacher and mentor, to their father and brother, Janusz Korczak.” In 1971, the Russians named a newly discovered asteroid after him, 2163 Korczak, but maybe they should have named it Ro, the planet he dreamed of. The Poles claim Korczak as a martyr, and the Israelis revere him as one of the Thirty-Six Just Men, whose pure souls make possible the world’s salvation. According to Jewish legend, these few, through their good hearts and good deeds, keep the too-wicked world from being destroyed. For their sake alone, all of humanity is spared. The legend tells that they are ordinary people, not flawless or magical, and that most of them remain unrecognized throughout their lives, while they choose to perpetuate goodness, even in the midst of inferno.

Submarines are the worst. Even the largest feel cramped. The last time I was aboard one, we weren’t even allowed to work out. The gym was located on the other side of the nuclear reactor from our quarters, and we weren’t authorized to pass through the reactor area to get there. Aircraft carriers are a hell of a lot larger, but they can be just as boring. At least they have lounges where you can play video games and there are no restrictions on getting to the gym to blow off steam. In fact, on one occasion, we were specifically requested to go to the gym by the CO. We were on the Kitty Hawk when they were having a problem with gangs. Apparently, some punk sailors who were gang members were causing quite a discipline problem aboard ship. The CO of the boat pulled us over and told us when the gang used the gym. So we went down to work out, locked the door behind us, and fixed the gang problem.

When the Archives file out of the room, Galen turns to Emma. She’s ready for him. She holds up her shushing finger. “Don’t even,” she says. “I was going to tell you, but I just didn’t have a chance.” “Tell me now,” he says. “Since it seems I’m the last to know.” He isn’t the last to know, of course. But he’d really hoped she would come to him with it. Before now. Before it became an issue for other people. She raises a hesitant brow. “Please,” he grates out. She sighs in a gust. “I still don’t think it’s important at the moment, but when Rayna took off for the Arena, I hoped on one of the jet skis and tried to follow. But,” she amends, “I did not intend to get in the water. I swear I didn’t. It’s just that Goliath wanted to play, and he tipped over the”-she must sense all his patience oozing out-“anyway, so I come across this Syrena, Jasa, and she’s been caught in a net and two men are pulling her aboard. So me and Goliath helped her.” “Where are the fishermen now?” “Um. Unless Rachel did something drastic, they’re probably at home telling their kids crazy stories about mermaids.” Galen feels a sense of control slipping, but of what he’s not sure. For centuries, the Syrena have remained unnoticed by humans. Now within the span of a week, they’ve allowed themselves to be captured twice. He hopes this does not become a pattern. Toraf must have mistaken his long pause for brooding. “Don’t be too hard on her, Galen,” he says. “I told you, Emma helped her and then went straight home.” “Stay out of this,” Galen says pleasantly. “I knew you told him.” Emma crosses her arms at Toraf. “You really are a snitch.” “You had enough to worry about. And so did I.” Toraf shrugs, unperturbed. “It’s over now.” Nalia pinches the bridge of her nose. “This is where I ground you for life,” she tells Emma. “All three hundred years of it.

The Three-Decker "The three-volume novel is extinct." Full thirty foot she towered from waterline to rail. It cost a watch to steer her, and a week to shorten sail; But, spite all modern notions, I found her first and best— The only certain packet for the Islands of the Blest. Fair held the breeze behind us—’twas warm with lovers’ prayers. We’d stolen wills for ballast and a crew of missing heirs. They shipped as Able Bastards till the Wicked Nurse confessed, And they worked the old three-decker to the Islands of the Blest. By ways no gaze could follow, a course unspoiled of Cook, Per Fancy, fleetest in man, our titled berths we took With maids of matchless beauty and parentage unguessed, And a Church of England parson for the Islands of the Blest. We asked no social questions—we pumped no hidden shame— We never talked obstetrics when the Little Stranger came: We left the Lord in Heaven, we left the fiends in Hell. We weren’t exactly Yussufs, but—Zuleika didn’t tell. No moral doubt assailed us, so when the port we neared, The villain had his flogging at the gangway, and we cheered. ’Twas fiddle in the forc’s’le—’twas garlands on the mast, For every one got married, and I went ashore at last. I left ’em all in couples a-kissing on the decks. I left the lovers loving and the parents signing cheques. In endless English comfort by county-folk caressed, I left the old three-decker at the Islands of the Blest! That route is barred to steamers: you’ll never lift again Our purple-painted headlands or the lordly keeps of Spain. They’re just beyond your skyline, howe’er so far you cruise In a ram-you-damn-you liner with a brace of bucking screws. Swing round your aching search-light—’twill show no haven’s peace. Ay, blow your shrieking sirens to the deaf, gray-bearded seas! Boom out the dripping oil-bags to skin the deep’s unrest— And you aren’t one knot the nearer to the Islands of the Blest! But when you’re threshing, crippled, with broken bridge and rail, At a drogue of dead convictions to hold you head to gale, Calm as the Flying Dutchman, from truck to taffrail dressed, You’ll see the old three-decker for the Islands of the Blest. You’ll see her tiering canvas in sheeted silver spread; You’ll hear the long-drawn thunder ’neath her leaping figure-head; While far, so far above you, her tall poop-lanterns shine Unvexed by wind or weather like the candles round a shrine! Hull down—hull down and under—she dwindles to a speck, With noise of pleasant music and dancing on her deck. All’s well—all’s well aboard her—she’s left you far behind, With a scent of old-world roses through the fog that ties you blind. Her crew are babes or madmen? Her port is all to make? You’re manned by Truth and Science, and you steam for steaming’s sake? Well, tinker up your engines—you know your business best— She’s taking tired people to the Islands of the Blest!

West was the only officer on the quarterdeck, and it so happened that the party of hands making dolphins and paunch-mats on the forecastle were all Shelmerstonians. West was gaping rather vacantly over the taffrail when he saw an extraordinarily handsome woman ride along the quay, followed by a groom. She dismounted at the height of the ship, gave the groom her reins, and darted straight across the brow and so below.    'Hey there,' he cried, hurrying after her, 'this is Dr Maturin's cabin. Who are you, ma'am?'    'I am his wife, sir,' she said, 'and I beg you will desire the carpenter to sling a cot for me here.' She pointed, and then bending and peering out of the scuttle she cried 'Here they are. Pray let people stand by to help him aboard: he will be lying on a door.' She urged West out of the cabin and on deck, and there he and the amazed foremast hands saw a blue and gold coach and four, escorted by a troop of cavalry in mauve coats with silver facings, driving slowly along the quay with their captain and a Swedish officer on the box, their surgeon and his mate leaning out of the windows, and all of them, now joined by the lady on deck, singing Ah tutti contenti saremo cosí, ah tutti contenti saremo, saremo cosí with surprisingly melodious full-throated happiness.

This was why love was so dangerous. Love turned the world into a garden, so beguiling it was easy to forget that rose petals sails appeared charmed. They blazed red in the day and silver at night, like a magician’s cloak, hinting at mysteries concealed beneath, which Tella planned to uncover that night. Drunken laughter floated above her as Tella delved deeper into the ship’s underbelly in search of Nigel the Fortune-teller. Her first evening on the vessel she’d made the mistake of sleeping, not realizing until the following day that Legend’s performers had switched their waking hours to prepare for the next Caraval. They slumbered in the day and woke after sunset. All Tella had learned her first day aboard La Esmeralda was that Nigel was on the ship, but she had yet to actually see him. The creaking halls beneath decks were like the bridges of Caraval, leading different places at different hours and making it difficult to know who stayed in which room. Tella wondered if Legend had designed it that way, or if it was just the unpredictable nature of magic. She imagined Legend in his top hat, laughing at the question and at the idea that magic had more control than he did. For many, Legend was the definition of magic. When she had first arrived on Isla de los Sueños, Tella suspected everyone could be Legend. Julian had so many secrets that she’d questioned if Legend’s identity was one of them, up until he’d briefly died. Caspar, with his sparkling eyes and rich laugh, had played the role of Legend in the last game, and at times he’d been so convincing Tella wondered if he was actually acting. At first sight, Dante, who was almost too beautiful to be real, looked like the Legend she’d always imagined. Tella could picture Dante’s wide shoulders filling out a black tailcoat while a velvet top hat shadowed his head. But the more Tella thought about Legend, the more she wondered if he even ever wore a top hat. If maybe the symbol was another thing to throw people off. Perhaps Legend was more magic than man and Tella had never met him in the flesh at all. The boat rocked and an actual laugh pierced the quiet. Tella froze. The laughter ceased but the air in the thin corridor shifted. What had smelled of salt and wood and damp turned thick and velvet-sweet. The scent of roses. Tella’s skin prickled; gooseflesh rose on her bare arms. At her feet a puddle of petals formed a seductive trail of red. Tella might not have known Legend’s true name, but she knew he favored red and roses and games. Was this his way of toying with her? Did he know what she was up to? The bumps on her arms crawled up to her neck and into her scalp as her newest pair of slippers crushed the tender petals. If Legend knew what she was after, Tella couldn’t imagine he would guide her in the correct direction, and yet the trail of petals was too tempting to avoid. They led to a door that glowed copper around the edges. She turned the knob. And her world transformed into a garden, a paradise made of blossoming flowers and bewitching romance. The walls were formed of moonlight. The ceiling was made of roses that dripped down toward the table in the center of the room, covered with plates of cakes and candlelight and sparkling honey wine. But none of it was for Tella. It was all for Scarlett. Tella had stumbled into her sister’s love story and it was so romantic it was painful to watch. Scarlett stood across the chamber. Her full ruby gown bloomed brighter than any flowers, and her glowing skin rivaled the moon as she gazed up at Julian. They touched nothing except each other. While Scarlett pressed her lips to Julian’s, his arms wrapped around her as if he’d found the one thing he never wanted to let go of. This was why love was so dangerous. Love turned the world into a garden, so beguiling it was easy to forget that rose petals were as ephemeral as feelings, eventually they would wilt and die, leaving nothing but the thorns.

Tomino’s Hell Elder sister vomits blood, younger sister’s breathing fire while sweet little Tomino just spits up the jewels. All alone does Tomino go falling into that hell, a hell of utter darkness, without even flowers. Is Tomino’s big sister the one who whips him? The purpose of the scourging hangs dark in his mind. Lashing and thrashing him, ah! But never quite shattering. One sure path to Avici, the eternal hell. Into that blackest of hells guide him now, I pray— to the golden sheep, to the nightingale. How much did he put in that leather pouch to prepare for his trek to the eternal hell? Spring is coming to the valley, to the wood, to the spiraling chasms of the blackest hell. The nightingale in her cage, the sheep aboard the wagon, and tears well up in the eyes of sweet little Tomino. Sing, o nightingale, in the vast, misty forest— he screams he only misses his little sister. His wailing desperation echoes throughout hell— a fox peony opens its golden petals. Down past the seven mountains and seven rivers of hell— the solitary journey of sweet little Tomino. If in this hell they be found, may they then come to me, please, those sharp spikes of punishment from Needle Mountain. Not just on some empty whim Is flesh pierced with blood-red pins: they serve as hellish signposts for sweet little Tomino. —translated by David Bowles June 29, 2014

He’s a dumb ass,” Emilio said to me. “I’m almost finished.” The second he was out of earshot, Marcus sauntered back up to the bench with stiff, rehearsed swag. Definitely a mirror practicer, that one. “Why you messin’ with Emilio? What’s up with you and me?” He wiped his hand on his black tank top and held it out, presumably for me to take, at which point we’d presumably climb aboard his moped and ride off into the sunset. Before I could shatter his dreams, Samuel smacked his hand away. “Keep it movin’,” Samuel said. He nudged him back toward the bikes, but the guy was unfazed. “She likes me.” “She thinks you stupid,” Samuel said. “And she right.” Marcus cocked an eyebrow and licked his lips, more dazzling mirror work, and leaned in for another proposition. “When you’re ready to graduate from a boy to a man, you call me.” “How about I call when you’re ready to graduate from a boy to a man?” The other guys howled, and just when I decided this game might be kind of fun, Emilio was at the bench, tugging a shirt over his head. “Vamos, princesa.

The boats bumped against the side of the ship, the sailors and passengers shouted lustily, and somewhere a child, as if crushed to death, choked itself with screaming. The damp wind blew through the doors, and outside on the sea, from a reeling boat which showed the flag of the Hotel Royal, a fellow with guttural French exaggeration yelled unceasingly : '* Rrroy-al ! Hotel Rrroy-al ! " intending to lure passengers aboard his craft. Then the Gentleman from San Francisco, feeling, as he ought to have felt, quite an old man, thought with anguish and spite of all these " Royals," " Splendids,' 1 " Excelsiors," and of these greedy, good-for-nothing, garlic-stinking fellows called Italians. Once, during a halt, on opening his eyes and rising from the sofa he saw under the rocky cliff-curtain of the coast a heap of such miserable stone hovels, all musty and mouldy, stuck on top of one another by the very water, among the boats, and the rags of all sorts, tin cans and brown fishing-nets, and,remembering that this was the very Italy he had come to enjoy, he was seized with despair. . .

In the intricate and mutable space-time geometry at the black hole, in-falling matter and energy interacted with the virtualities of the vacuum in ways unknown to the flatter cosmos beyond it. Quasi-stable quantum states appeared, linked according to Schrodinger's wave functions and their own entanglement, more and more of them, intricacy compounding until it amounted to a set of codes. The uncertainty principle wrought mutations; variants perished or flourished; forms competed, cooperated, merged, divided, interacted; the patterns multiplied and diversified; at last, along one fork on a branch of the life tree, thought budded. That life was not organic, animal and vegetable and lesser kingdoms, growing, breathing, drinking, eating, breeding, hunting, hiding; it kindled no fires and wielded no tools; from the beginning, it was a kind of oneness. An original unity differentiated itself into countless avatars, like waves on a sea. They arose and lived individually, coalesced when they chose by twos or threes or multitudes, reemerged as other than they had been, gave themselves and their experiences back to the underlying whole. Evolution, history, lives eerily resembled memes in organic minds. Yet quantum life was not a series of shifting abstractions. Like the organic, it was in and of its environment. It acted to alter its quantum states and those around it: action that manifested itself as electronic, photonic, and nuclear events. Its domain was no more shadowy to it than ours is to us. It strove, it failed, it achieved. They were never sure aboardEnvoy whether they could suppose it loved, hated, yearned, mourned, rejoiced. The gap between was too wide for any language to bridge. Nevertheless they were convinced that it knew something they might as well call emotion, and that that included wondering.

Nothing she says or does would surprise me.” Gideon faced the helm once more, putting his back to Barnaby. He wasn’t about to go anywhere near Sara again, not the way he was feeling now. Let Barnaby deal with her today. “Maybe not, but that doesn’t mean it’s nothing to worry about. You’ve got more schooling than I have, but isn’t Lysistrata the play where the women refuse to have relations with their husbands until the men agree to stop going to war?” With a groan, Gideon clenched the wheel. Lysistrata was among the many words of literature his father had forced down his throat once he was old enough to read. “Yes. But don’t try to tell me she’s teaching them that. It’s Greek, for god’s sake. They wouldn’t understand a word, even if she knew it well enough to recite it.” “She knows it well enough to give them a free translation, I assure you. When I left her she was telling them the story with great enthusiasm.” Barnaby reached for the helm when Gideon swung away from it with an oath. “I should never have taken her aboard,” he grumbled as he strode for the ladder. “I should have sent her back to England gagged and bound!

Who’s teasing? I’m telling him the truth. He ain’t going to have it. Neither one of ‘em going to have it. And I’ll tell you something else you not going to have. You not going to have no private coach with four red velvet chairs that swivel around in one place whenever you want ‘em to. No. and you not going to have your own special toilet and your own special-made eight-foot bed either. And a valet and a cook and a secretary to travel with you and do everything you say. Everything: get the right temperature in your hot-water bottle and make sure the smoking tobacco in the silver humidor is fresh each and every day. There’s something else you not going to have. You ever have five thousand dollars of cold cash money in your pocket and walk into a bank and tell the bank man you want such and such a house on such and such a street and he sell it to you right then? Well, you won’t ever have it. And you not going to have a governor’s mansion, or eight thousand acres of timber to sell. And you not going to have no ship under your command to sail on, no train to run, and you can join the 332nd if you want to and shoot down a thousand German planes all by yourself and land in Hitler’s backyard and whip him with your own hands, but you never going to have four stars on your shirt front, or even three. And you not going to have no breakfast tray brought in to you early in the morning with a red rose on it and two warm croissants and a cup of hot chocolate. Nope. Never. And no pheasant buried in coconut leaves for twenty days and stuffed with wild rice and cooked over a wood fire so tender and delicate it make you cry. And no Rothschild ’29 or even Beaujolais to go with it.” A few men passing by stopped to listen to Tommy’s lecture. “What’s going on?” they asked Hospital Tommy. “Feather refused them a beer,” said. The men laughed. “And no baked Alaska!” Railroad Tommy went on. “None! You never going to have that.” “No baked Alaska?” Guitar opened his eyes wide with horror and grabbed his throat.” You breaking my heart!” “Well, now. That’s something you will have—a broken heart.” Railroad Tommy’s eyes softened, but the merriment in them died suddenly. “And folly. A whole lot of folly. You can count on it.” “Mr. Tommy, suh,” Guitar sang in mock humility, “we just wanted a bottle of beer is all.” “Yeah,” said Tommy. “Yeah, well, welcome aboard.

She lifted his mask and her own veil; then slowly, she placed a hand on either side of his face. Her fingers slid into his hair and Matthias’ focus shattered. It felt like she was touching him everywhere. She looked into his eyes. “Well?” “I don’t feel anything,” he said. His voice sounded embarrassingly hoarse. She arched a brow. “Nothing?” “What did you try to make me do?” “I’m trying to compel you to kiss me.” “That’s foolish.” “Why is that?” “Because I always want to kiss you,” he admitted. “Then how come you never do?” “Nina, you just went through a terrible ordeal—” “I did. That’s true. You know what would help? A lot of kissing. We haven’t been alone since we were aboard the Ferolind.” “You mean when you almost died?” said Matthias. Someone had to remember the gravity of this situation. “I prefer to think of the good times. Like when you held my hair as I was vomiting into a bucket.” “Stop trying to make me laugh.” “But I like your laugh.” “Nina, this is not the time to flirt.” “I need to catch you off your guard, otherwise you’re too busy protecting me and asking me if I’m okay.” “Is it wrong to worry?” “No, it’s wrong to treat me like I might break apart at any moment. I’m not that fine or that fragile.

Human colour is the colour I'm truly interested in, the colour of your humanity. May the size of your heart and the depth of your soul be your currency. welcome aboard my Good Ship. Let us sail to the colourful island of misex identity. You can eat from the cooking pot of mixed culture and bathe in the cool shade of being mixed-race. There is no need for a passport. There are no borders. We are all citizens of the world. Whatever shade you are, bring your light, bring your colour, bring your music and your books, your stories and your histories, and climb aboad. United as a people we are a million majestic colours, together we are a glorious stained-glass window. We are building a cathedral of otherness, brick by brick and book by book. Raise your glass of rum, let's toast to the minorities who are the majority. There's no stopping time, nor the blurring of lines or the blending of shades. With a spirit of hope I leave you now. I drink to our sameness and to our unique differences. This is the twenty-first century and we share this, we live here, in the future. It is a beautiful morning, it is first light on the time of being other, so get out from that shade and feel the warmth of being outside. You tick: Other.

EVERYTHING SMELLED LIKE POISON. Two days after leaving Venice, Hazel still couldn’t get the noxious scent of eau de cow monster out of her nose. The seasickness didn’t help. The Argo II sailed down the Adriatic, a beautiful glittering expanse of blue; but Hazel couldn’t appreciate it, thanks to the constant rolling of the ship. Above deck, she tried to keep her eyes fixed on the horizon—the white cliffs that always seemed just a mile or so to the east. What country was that, Croatia? She wasn’t sure. She just wished she were on solid ground again. The thing that nauseated her most was the weasel. Last night, Hecate’s pet Gale had appeared in her cabin. Hazel woke from a nightmare, thinking, What is that smell? She found a furry rodent propped on her chest, staring at her with its beady black eyes. Nothing like waking up screaming, kicking off your covers, and dancing around your cabin while a weasel scampers between your feet, screeching and farting. Her friends rushed to her room to see if she was okay. The weasel was difficult to explain. Hazel could tell that Leo was trying hard not to make a joke. In the morning, once the excitement died down, Hazel decided to visit Coach Hedge, since he could talk to animals. She’d found his cabin door ajar and heard the coach inside, talking as if he were on the phone with someone—except they had no phones on board. Maybe he was sending a magical Iris-message? Hazel had heard that the Greeks used those a lot. “Sure, hon,” Hedge was saying. “Yeah, I know, baby. No, it’s great news, but—” His voice broke with emotion. Hazel suddenly felt horrible for eavesdropping. She would’ve backed away, but Gale squeaked at her heels. Hazel knocked on the coach’s door. Hedge poked his head out, scowling as usual, but his eyes were red. “What?” he growled. “Um…sorry,” Hazel said. “Are you okay?” The coach snorted and opened his door wide. “Kinda question is that?” There was no one else in the room. “I—” Hazel tried to remember why she was there. “I wondered if you could talk to my weasel.” The coach’s eyes narrowed. He lowered his voice. “Are we speaking in code? Is there an intruder aboard?” “Well, sort of.” Gale peeked out from behind Hazel’s feet and started chattering. The coach looked offended. He chattered back at the weasel. They had what sounded like a very intense argument. “What did she say?” Hazel asked. “A lot of rude things,” grumbled the satyr. “The gist of it: she’s here to see how it goes.” “How what goes?” Coach Hedge stomped his hoof. “How am I supposed to know? She’s a polecat! They never give a straight answer. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got, uh, stuff…” He closed the door in her face. After breakfast, Hazel stood at the port rail, trying to settle her stomach. Next to her, Gale ran up and down the railing, passing gas; but the strong wind off the Adriatic helped whisk it away. Hazel

I’ve always been intimidated by gyms, have never been able to enjoy the towel-round-the-shoulder confidence of somebody who knows he can bench-press 250 pounds, or even knows what that means or how much 250 pounds weighs. I just know I don’t like lifting heavy things, especially since I had this wrist injury which stopped me playing tennis and which means that I’ve gone from being fit and thin-looking to just a feeble streak of unshouldered manhood whose only saving grace is that he doesn’t take up much space, who leaves plenty of room for others—especially now that I was several days into a quasi-hunger strike.

My friend was aboard Sewee, untying his vessel from an ancient sunken post. “Ben?” No response. I slipped off my shoes and waded to the runabout. Pulled myself up the tiny ladder. Found Ben’s hand waiting at the rail. He effortlessly hoisted me into the boat, maneuvering my weight like it was nothing. I sometimes forgot how strong Ben was. How warm his hands could feel. Ben released me. Went back to coiling line. “Are you okay?” I immediately realized it was the wrong thing to say. “Of course I’m okay.” Gruff. Distant. I stood watching him, unsure what to say next. Unbidden, the image of a bench sprang to mind. The two of us, huddled close. Me crying in his arms. I felt blood rush to my face, was grateful for the concealing darkness. “No one expects you to like Chance,” I said finally. “Good.” Not looking up. “Because I don’t.” Another awkward silence. Then Ben huffed, “You like him enough for both of us.” I straightened, surprised. Was that what was bothering him? Jealousy? Why would Ben be jealous of Chance? After everything that spoiled boy had done to me? Did Ben think I was some ditz? That my memory reset with every pretty smile? Am I? I felt a nervous twinge in my stomach. Felt it grow. Ben. Jealous. Because of his feelings for me. The issue would not simply go away. “Ben. I . . .” Words failed. My face grew hot. Ben’s hands stopped moving. He stared at the deck, his long black hair fanning his face. He sucked in a breath, as if on the verge of something.

I felt good and all washed clean of sin for the first time I had ever felt so in my life, and I knowed I could pray now. But I didn't do it straight off, but laid the paper down and set there thinking--thinking how good it was all this happened so, and how near I come to being lost and going to hell. And went on thinking. And got to thinking over our trip down the river; and I see Jim before me all the time: in the day and in the night-time, sometimes moonlight, sometimes storms, and we a-floating along, talking and singing and laughing. But somehow I couldn't seem to strike no places to harden me against him, but only the other kind. I'd see him standing my watch on top of his'n, 'stead of calling me, so I could go on sleeping; and see him how glad he was when I come back out of the fog; and when I come to him again in the swamp, up there where the feud was; and such-like times; and would always call me honey, and pet me and do everything he could think of for me, and how good he always was; and at last I struck the time I saved him by telling the men we had small-pox aboard, and he was so grateful, and said I was the best friend old Jim ever had in the world, and the ONLY one he's got now; and then I happened to look around and see that paper. It was a close place. I took it up, and held it in my hand. I was a-trembling, because I'd got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself: "All right, then, I'll GO to hell"--and tore it up.

Slung on a stage over the gunwale of an old felucca, the Peri. A storm had just passed, rushing away toward the land in a great slope of clouds; already turning yellowish from the desert. The sea there is the color of Damascus plums; and how quiet. Sun was going down; not a beautiful sunset, more a gradual darkening of the air and that storm’s mountainside. The Peri had been damaged, we hove to alongside and hailed her master. No reply. Only the sailor—I never saw his face—one of your fellahin who abandon the land like a restless husband and then grumble for the rest of their term afloat. It’s the strongest marriage in the world. This one wore a kind of loincloth and a rag round his head for the sun which was almost gone. After we’d shouted in every dialect we had among us, he replied in Tuareg: ‘The master is gone, the crew is gone, I am here and I am painting the ship.’ It was true: he was painting the ship. She’d been damaged, not a load line in sight, and a bad list. ‘Come aboard,’ we told him, ‘night is nearly on us and you cannot swim to land.’ He never answered, merely continued dipping the brush in his earthen jar and slapping it smoothly on the Peri’s creaking sides. What color? It looked gray but the air was dark. This felucca would never again see the sun. Finally I told the helmsman to swing our ship round and continue on course. I watched the fellah until it was too dark: becoming smaller, inching closer to the sea with every swell but never slackening his pace. A peasant with all his uptorn roots showing, alone on the sea at nightfall, painting the side of a sinking ship.

You were burning in the middle of the worst solar storm our records can remember. (...) Everyone else fled. All your companions and crew left you alone to wrestle with the storm. “You did not blame them. In a moment of crystal insight, you realized that they were cowards beyond mere cowardice: their dependence on their immortality circuits had made it so that they could not even imagine risking their lives. They were all alike in this respect. They did not know they were not brave; they could not even think of dying as possible; how could they think of facing it, unflinching? “You did not flinch. You knew you were going to die; you knew it when the Sophotechs, who are immune to pain and fear, all screamed and failed and vanished. “And you knew, in that moment of approaching death, with all your life laid out like a single image for you to examine in a frozen moment of time, that no one was immortal, not ultimately, not really. The day may be far away, it may be further away than the dying of the sun, or the extinction of the stars, but the day will come when all our noumenal systems fail, our brilliant machines all pass away, and our records of ourselves and memories shall be lost. “If all life is finite, only the grace and virtue with which it is lived matters, not the length. So you decided to stay another moment, and erect magnetic shields, one by one; to discharge interruption masses into the current, to break up the reinforcement patterns in the storm. Not life but honor mattered to you, Helion: so you stayed a moment after that moment, and then another. (...) “You saw the plasma erupting through shield after shield (...) Chaos was attempting to destroy your life’s work, and major sections of the Solar Array were evaporated. Chaos was attempting to destroy your son’s lifework, and since he was aboard that ship, outside the range of any noumenal circuit, it would have destroyed your son as well. “The Array was safe, but you stayed another moment, to try to deflect the stream of particles and shield your son; circuit after circuit failed, and still you stayed, playing the emergency like a raging orchestra. “When the peak of the storm was passed, it was too late for you: you had stayed too long; the flames were coming. But the radio-static cleared long enough for you to have last words with your son, whom you discovered, to your surprise, you loved better than life itself. In your mind, he was the living image of the best thing in you, the ideal you always wanted to achieve. “ ‘Chaos has killed me, son,’ you said. ‘But the victory of unpredictability is hollow. Men imagine, in their pride, that they can predict life’s each event, and govern nature and govern each other with rules of unyielding iron. Not so. There will always be men like you, my son, who will do the things no one else predicts or can control. I tried to tame the sun and failed; no one knows what is at its fiery heart; but you will tame a thousand suns, and spread mankind so wide in space that no one single chance, no flux of chaos, no unexpected misfortune, will ever have power enough to harm us all. For men to be civilized, they must be unlike each other, so that when chaos comes to claim them, no two will use what strategy the other does, and thus, even in the middle of blind chaos, some men, by sheer blind chance, if nothing else, will conquer. “ ‘The way to conquer the chaos which underlies all the illusionary stable things in life, is to be so free, and tolerant, and so much in love with liberty, that chaos itself becomes our ally; we shall become what no one can foresee; and courage and inventiveness will be the names we call our fearless unpredictability…’ “And you vowed to support Phaethon’s effort, and you died in order that his dream might live.

Here am I, a little animal called a man--a bit of vitalized matter, one hundred and sixty-five pounds of meat and blood, nerve, sinew, bones, and brain,--all of it soft and tender, susceptible to hurt, fallible, and frail. I strike a light back-handed blow on the nose of an obstreperous horse, and a bone in my hand is broken. I put my head under the water for five minutes, and I am drowned. I fall twenty feet through the air, and I am smashed. I am a creature of temperature. A few degrees one way, and my fingers and ears and toes blacken and drop off. A few degrees the other way, and my skin blisters and shrivels away from the raw, quivering flesh. A few additional degrees either way, and the life and the light in me go out. A drop of poison injected into my body from a snake, and I cease to move--for ever I cease to move. A splinter of lead from a rifle enters my head, and I am wrapped around in the eternal blackness. Fallible and frail, a bit of pulsating, jelly-like life--it is all I am. About me are the great natural forces--colossal menaces, Titans of destruction, unsentimental monsters that have less concern for me than I have for the grain of sand I crush under my foot. They have no concern at all for me. They do not know me. They are unconscious, unmerciful, and unmoral. They are the cyclones and tornadoes, lightning flashes and cloud-bursts, tide-rips and tidal waves, undertows and waterspouts, great whirls and sucks and eddies, earthquakes and volcanoes, surfs that thunder on rock-ribbed coasts and seas that leap aboard the largest crafts that float, crushing humans to pulp or licking them off into the sea and to death--and these insensate monsters do not know that tiny sensitive creature, all nerves and weaknesses, whom men call Jack London, and who himself thinks he is all right and quite a superior being.

And what about your brother, Agus? Will he be entertaining us with his pipes?” “Agg,” Shanks rasped, wrinkling his nose. “I didn’t tell you? He ain’t with us no more.” A heavy fist slammed on the arm of the Viidun’s chair as he growled, “The idiot went off and got himself killed!” “What?” Derian and Eena replied in unison, both horrified by the news. “You heard me!” Shanks bellowed. “The crazy fool should’ve known when to duck. He died in a bloody challenge with some brainless Deramptium! A downright disgraceful way to die! I’m ashamed to say he was my brother!” “That’s a little harsh, isn’t it?” Eena muttered, mostly speaking to Derian. “What was that?” the Viidun demanded. Derian whispered a hush to Eena. Addressing Shanks, he expressed their condolences. “We are truly sorry for your loss. Your brother will be sorely missed. On the other hand, we look forward to welcoming you and your crew aboard the Kemeniroc.” Derian held up his right hand, extending his thumb and two adjoining fingers. “Strength, truth, and honor, friend,” he said, ending their conversation. “Strength, truth, and honor,” Shanks repeated. The screen went black. The captain turned to Eena who was still in shock. “You have to understand,” he explained, “the Viiduns are a fiercely competitive people with proud, warring ways. Their culture doesn’t call for much sympathy, especially when it appears one of their own has failed to live up to expectations.” Eena was still disturbed by the lack of compassion. “But that was his brother.” “I know. I can hardly believe it myself. Shanks and Agus were very close. They traveled everywhere together. All I can figure is it’s easier for Shanks to express his anger than his anguish.” “After all that, I’m not sure I want to meet him in person. He scares me,” she admitted. Derian laughed. “He scares everyone. That’s why you want to keep him as an ally and not make him an enemy.

During World War II, there had been a project to sabotage the Nazi nuclear weapons program. Years earlier, Leo Szilard, the first person to realize the possibility of a fission chain reaction, had convinced Fermi not to publish the discovery that purified graphite was a cheap and effective neutron moderator. Fermi had wanted to publish, for the sake of the great international project of science, which was above nationalism. But Szilard had persuaded Rabi, and Fermi had abided by the majority vote of their tiny three-person conspiracy. And so, years later, the only neutron moderator the Nazis had known about was deuterium. The only deuterium source under Nazi control had been a captured facility in occupied Norway, which had been knocked out by bombs and sabotage, causing a total of twenty-four civilian deaths. The Nazis had tried to ship the deuterium already refined to Germany, aboard a civilian Norwegian ferry, the SS Hydro. Knut Haukelid and his assistants had been discovered by the night watchman of the civilian ferry while they were sneaking on board to sabotage it. Haukelid had told the watchman that they were escaping the Gestapo, and the watchman had let them go. Haukelid had considered warning the night watchman, but that would have endangered the mission, so Haukelid had only shaken his hand. And the civilian ship had sunk in the deepest part of the lake, with eight dead Germans, seven dead crew, and three dead civilian bystanders. Some of the Norwegian rescuers of the ship had thought the German soldiers present should be left to drown, but this view had not prevailed, and the German survivors had been rescued. And that had been the end of the Nazi nuclear weapons program. Which was to say that Knut Haukelid had killed innocent people. One of whom, the night watchman of the ship, had been a good person. Someone who'd gone out of his way to help Haukelid, at risk to himself; from the kindness of his heart, for the highest moral reasons; and been sent to drown in turn. Afterward, in the cold light of history, it had looked like the Nazis had never been close to getting nuclear weapons after all. And Harry had never read anything suggesting that Haukelid had acted wrongly.

With one final flip the quarter flew high into the air and came down on the mattress with a light bounce. It jumped several inches off the bed, high enough for the instructor to catch it in his hand. Swinging around to face me, the instructor looked me in the eye and nodded. He never said a word. Making my bed correctly was not going to be an opportunity for praise. It was expected of me. It was my first task of the day, and doing it right was important. It demonstrated my discipline. It showed my attention to detail, and at the end of the day it would be a reminder that I had done something well, something to be proud of, no matter how small the task. Throughout my life in the Navy, making my bed was the one constant that I could count on every day. As a young SEAL ensign aboard the USS Grayback, a special operation submarine, I was berthed in sick bay, where the beds were stacked four high. The salty old doctor who ran sick bay insisted that I make my rack every morning. He often remarked that if the beds were not made and the room was not clean, how could the sailors expect the best medical care? As I later found out, this sentiment of cleanliness and order applied to every aspect of military life. Thirty years later, the Twin Towers came down in New York City. The Pentagon was struck, and brave Americans died in an airplane over Pennsylvania. At the time of the attacks, I was recuperating in my home from a serious parachute accident. A hospital bed had been wheeled into my government quarters, and I spent most of the day lying on my back, trying to recover. I wanted out of that bed more than anything else. Like every SEAL I longed to be with my fellow warriors in the fight. When I was finally well enough to lift myself unaided from the bed, the first thing I did was pull the sheets up tight, adjust the pillow, and make sure the hospital bed looked presentable to all those who entered my home. It was my way of showing that I had conquered the injury and was moving forward with my life. Within four weeks of 9/11, I was transferred to the White House, where I spent the next two years in the newly formed Office of Combatting Terrorism. By October 2003, I was in Iraq at our makeshift headquarters on the Baghdad airfield. For the first few months we slept on Army cots. Nevertheless, I would wake every morning, roll up my sleeping bag, place the pillow at the head of the cot, and get ready for the day.

The last man crossed the deck: the clinking ship’s company was dismissed, and Jack said to the signal-midshipman, ‘To Dryad: Captain repair aboard at once.’ He then turned to Rowan and said, ‘You may part company as soon as I hear from Captain Babbington whether the transports are in Cephalonia or not; then you will not lose a moment of this beautiful leading breeze. Here he is. Captain Babbington, good day to you. Are the transports in Cephalonia? Is all well?’ ‘Yes, sir.’ ‘Mr Rowan, report to the Commander-in-Chief, with my duty, that the transports are in Cephalonia, and that all is well. You need not mention the fact that you saw one of the squadron crammed with women from head to stern; you need not report this open and I may say shameless violation of the Articles of War, for that disagreeable task falls to your superiors; nor need you make any observations about floating brothels or the relaxation of discipline in the warmer eastern waters, for these observations will naturally occur to the Commander-in-Chief without your help. Now pray go aboard our prize and proceed to Malta without the loss of a minute: not all of us can spare the time to dally with the sex.’ ‘Oh sir,’ cried Babbington, as Rowan darted over the side, ‘I really must be allowed to protest – to deny – ’ ‘You will not deny that they are women, surely? I can tell the difference between Adam and Eve as quick as the next man, even if you cannot; just as I can tell the difference between an active zealous officer and a lubber that lies in port indulging his whims. It is of no use trying to impose upon me.’ ‘No, sir. But these are all respectable women.’ ‘Then why are they leering over the side like that, and making gestures?’ ‘It is only their way, sir. They are all Lesbians – ’ ‘And no doubt they are all parsons’ daughters, your cousins in the third degree, like that wench in Ceylon.’ ‘– and Lesbians always join their hands like that, to show respect.’ ‘You are becoming an authority on the motions of Greek women, it appears.’ ‘Oh sir,’ cried Babbington, his voice growing shriller still. ‘I know you do not like women aboard – ’ ‘I believe I have had occasion to mention it to you some fifty or sixty times in the last ten years.’ ‘But if you will allow me to explain – ’ ‘It would be interesting to hear how the presence of thirty-seven, no, thirty-eight young women in one of His Majesty’s sloops can be explained; but since I like some decency to be preserved on my quarterdeck, perhaps the explanation had better take place in the cabin.’ And in the cabin he said, ‘Upon my word, William, this is coming it pretty high. Thirty-eight wenches at a time is coming it pretty high.

The essence of Roosevelt’s leadership, I soon became convinced, lay in his enterprising use of the “bully pulpit,” a phrase he himself coined to describe the national platform the presidency provides to shape public sentiment and mobilize action. Early in Roosevelt’s tenure, Lyman Abbott, editor of The Outlook, joined a small group of friends in the president’s library to offer advice and criticism on a draft of his upcoming message to Congress. “He had just finished a paragraph of a distinctly ethical character,” Abbott recalled, “when he suddenly stopped, swung round in his swivel chair, and said, ‘I suppose my critics will call that preaching, but I have got such a bully pulpit.’ ” From this bully pulpit, Roosevelt would focus the charge of a national movement to apply an ethical framework, through government action, to the untrammeled growth of modern America. Roosevelt understood from the outset that this task hinged upon the need to develop powerfully reciprocal relationships with members of the national press. He called them by their first names, invited them to meals, took questions during his midday shave, welcomed their company at day’s end while he signed correspondence, and designated, for the first time, a special room for them in the West Wing. He brought them aboard his private railroad car during his regular swings around the country. At every village station, he reached the hearts of the gathered crowds with homespun language, aphorisms, and direct moral appeals. Accompanying reporters then extended the reach of Roosevelt’s words in national publications. Such extraordinary rapport with the press did not stem from calculation alone. Long before and after he was president, Roosevelt was an author and historian. From an early age, he read as he breathed. He knew and revered writers, and his relationship with journalists was authentically collegial. In a sense, he was one of them. While exploring Roosevelt’s relationship with the press, I was especially drawn to the remarkably rich connections he developed with a team of journalists—including Ida Tarbell, Ray Stannard Baker, Lincoln Steffens, and William Allen White—all working at McClure’s magazine, the most influential contemporary progressive publication. The restless enthusiasm and manic energy of their publisher and editor, S. S. McClure, infused the magazine with “a spark of genius,” even as he suffered from periodic nervous breakdowns. “The story is the thing,” Sam McClure responded when asked to account for the methodology behind his publication. He wanted his writers to begin their research without preconceived notions, to carry their readers through their own process of discovery. As they educated themselves about the social and economic inequities rampant in the wake of teeming industrialization, so they educated the entire country. Together, these investigative journalists, who would later appropriate Roosevelt’s derogatory term “muckraker” as “a badge of honor,” produced a series of exposés that uncovered the invisible web of corruption linking politics to business. McClure’s formula—giving his writers the time and resources they needed to produce extended, intensively researched articles—was soon adopted by rival magazines, creating what many considered a golden age of journalism. Collectively, this generation of gifted writers ushered in a new mode of investigative reporting that provided the necessary conditions to make a genuine bully pulpit of the American presidency. “It is hardly an exaggeration to say that the progressive mind was characteristically a journalistic mind,” the historian Richard Hofstadter observed, “and that its characteristic contribution was that of the socially responsible reporter-reformer.