Mouth Of A Sailor Quotes

I muttered a swear word to myself. After I heard Angel cussing like a sailor when she stubbed her toe, my new resolution was to watch my language. All I needed was a six-year-old mutant with a potty mouth

All night I streched my arms across him, rivers of blood, the dark woods, singing with all my skin and bone ''Please keep him safe. Let him lay his head on my chest and we will be like sailors, swimming in the sound of it, dashed to pieces.'' Makes a cathedral, him pressing against me, his lips at my neck, and yes, I do believe his mouth is heaven, his kisses falling over me like stars.

Sometimes my mouth is a little too big and a little too open and sounds too much like a sailor.

Has anyone else . . ." "Hmm?" Grams walked the paper back across the room and took up her tray of hospital good again, settling it over me. "Has anyone else, what?: "Been by," I mumbled. "To visit." Grams gave me a knowing smile. "A charming young woman with a mouth that could give a sailor a heart attack? A sweet little one who brought you flowers? The one who spent half a day chasing doctors and nurses around, demanding answers about your condition? Or, by any chance are you referring to a very well - mannered Southern boy?

A song of despair The memory of you emerges from the night around me. The river mingles its stubborn lament with the sea. Deserted like the dwarves at dawn. It is the hour of departure, oh deserted one! Cold flower heads are raining over my heart. Oh pit of debris, fierce cave of the shipwrecked. In you the wars and the flights accumulated. From you the wings of the song birds rose. You swallowed everything, like distance. Like the sea, like time. In you everything sank! It was the happy hour of assault and the kiss. The hour of the spell that blazed like a lighthouse. Pilot's dread, fury of blind driver, turbulent drunkenness of love, in you everything sank! In the childhood of mist my soul, winged and wounded. Lost discoverer, in you everything sank! You girdled sorrow, you clung to desire, sadness stunned you, in you everything sank! I made the wall of shadow draw back, beyond desire and act, I walked on. Oh flesh, my own flesh, woman whom I loved and lost, I summon you in the moist hour, I raise my song to you. Like a jar you housed infinite tenderness. and the infinite oblivion shattered you like a jar. There was the black solitude of the islands, and there, woman of love, your arms took me in. There was thirst and hunger, and you were the fruit. There were grief and ruins, and you were the miracle. Ah woman, I do not know how you could contain me in the earth of your soul, in the cross of your arms! How terrible and brief my desire was to you! How difficult and drunken, how tensed and avid. Cemetery of kisses, there is still fire in your tombs, still the fruited boughs burn, pecked at by birds. Oh the bitten mouth, oh the kissed limbs, oh the hungering teeth, oh the entwined bodies. Oh the mad coupling of hope and force in which we merged and despaired. And the tenderness, light as water and as flour. And the word scarcely begun on the lips. This was my destiny and in it was my voyage of my longing, and in it my longing fell, in you everything sank! Oh pit of debris, everything fell into you, what sorrow did you not express, in what sorrow are you not drowned! From billow to billow you still called and sang. Standing like a sailor in the prow of a vessel. You still flowered in songs, you still brike the currents. Oh pit of debris, open and bitter well. Pale blind diver, luckless slinger, lost discoverer, in you everything sank! It is the hour of departure, the hard cold hour which the night fastens to all the timetables. The rustling belt of the sea girdles the shore. Cold stars heave up, black birds migrate. Deserted like the wharves at dawn. Only tremulous shadow twists in my hands. Oh farther than everything. Oh farther than everything. It is the hour of departure. Oh abandoned one!

A child of about eleven, garbed in a very short, very tight, very ugly dress of yellowish-gray wincey. She wore a faded brown sailor hat and beneath the hat, extending down her back, were two braids of very thick, decidedly red hair. Her face was small, white and thin, also much freckled; her mouth was large and so were her eyes, which looked green in some lights and moods and gray in others.

Whenever I hurt myself, my mother says it is the universe’s way of telling me to slow down. She also tells me to put some coconut oil on it. It doesn’t matter what it is. She often hides stones underneath my pillow when I come home for the weekend. The stones are a formula for sweet dreams and clarity. I dig them out from the streets, she tells me what each one is for. My throat hurts, so she grinds black pepper into a spoonful of honey, makes me eat the entire thing. My mother knows how to tie knots like a ship captain, but doesn’t know how I got that sailor mouth. She falls asleep in front of the TV only until I turn it off, shouts, I was watching that! The sourdough she bakes on Friday is older than I am. She sneaks it back and forth across the country when she flies by putting the starter in small containers next to a bag of carrots. They think it’s ranch dressing, she giggles. She makes tea by hand. Nettles, slippery elm, turmeric, cinnamon- my mother is a recipe for warm throats and belly laughs. Once she fell off of a ladder when I was three. She says all she was worried about was my face as I watched her fall.

None were good enough for her, so I held them in contempt and hated them. They in turn hated and feared me. But we were pleasant to each other. Always pleasant. It was a game of sorts. He would invite me to sit, and I would buy him a drink. The three of us would talk, and his eyes would slowly grow dark as he watched her smile toward me. His mouth would narrow as he listened to the laughter that leapt from her as I joked, spun stories, sang. . . . They would always react the same way, trying to prove ownership of her in small ways. Holding her hand, a kiss, a too-casual touch along her shoulder. They clung to her with desperate determination. Some of them merely resented my presence, saw me as a rival. But others had a frightened knowledge buried deep behind their eyes from the beginning. They knew she was leaving, and they didn't know why. So they clutched at her like shipwrecked sailors, clinging to the rocks despite the fact that they are being battered to death against them. I almost felt sorry for them. Almost. So they hated me, and it shone in their eyes when Denna wasn't looking. I would offer to buy another round of drinks, but he would insist, and I would graciously accept, and thank him, and smile. I have known her longer, my smile said. True, you have been inside the circle of her arms, tasted her mouth, felt the warmth of her, and that is something I have never had. But there is a part of her that is only for me. You cannot touch it, no matter how hard you might try. And after she has left you I will still be here, making her laugh. My light shining in her. I will still be here long after she has forgotten your name.

We didn't finish that dance." "Here?" "Why not?" Echo's high heel tapped against the sidewalk, the telltale sign of nerves. I took a deliberate step forward and caught her waist before she coud back away from me. My siren had sung to me for way too long, capturing my heart, tempting me with her body, driving me slowly insane. Now, I expected her to pay up. "Do you hear that?" I aked. Echo raised an eyebrow when she heard nothing but the sound of water trickling in the fountain. "Hear what?" I slid my right hand down her arm, cradled her hand against my chest and swayed us from side to side. "The music." Her eyes danced. "Maybe if you could tell me what i'm supposed to be hearing." "Slow drum beat." With one finger i tapped the beat into the small of her back. "Acoustic quitar." I leaned down and hummed my favorite song in her ear. Her sweet cinnamon smell intoxicated me. She relaxed, fitting perfectly into my body. In the crisp, cold February air, we swayed together, moving to our own personal beat. For one moment, we escaped hell. No teachers, no therapist, no well-meaning friends, no nightmares-just the two of us, dancing. My song ended, my finger stopped tapping the beat, and we ceased swaying from side to side. She held perfectly still, keeping her hand in mine, her head resting on my shoulder. I nuzzled into the warmth of her silky curls, tightening my hold on her. Echo was becoming essential, like air. I eased my hand to her chin, lifting her face toward me. My thumb caressed her warm, smooth cheek. My heart beat faster. A ghost of that siren smile graced her lips as she tilted her head closer to mine, creating the undeniable pull of the sailor lost to the sea to the beautiful goddess calling him home. I kissed her lips. Soft, full, warm-everything i'd fantasized it would be and more, so much more. Echo hesitantly pressed back, a curious question for which i had a response. I parted my lips and teased her bottom one, begging, praying, for permission. Her smooth hands inched up my neck and pulled at my hair, bringing me closer. She opened her mouth, her tongue seductively touching mine, almost bringing me to my knees. Flames licked through me as our kiss deepened. Her hands massaged my scalp and neck, only stoking the heat of the fire. Forgetting every rule i'd created for this moment, my hands wandered up her back, twining in her hair, bringing her closer to me. I wanted Echo. I needed Echo. Her eyes met mine again. "So what does this mean for us?" I lowered my forehead to hers. "It means you 're mine.

A ballsy killer with the body of a goddess and the mouth of a sailor - in his eyes, that was perfection.

...it was if another planet were calling. The call, embodied, issued in liquid syllables from the mouth of the Arab sailor who, on the prow of the Vestra each sun-up, looked toward the East and sang the Persian song: Hearken unto dawn, oh, my soul... Let good come unto the world.

ah yes I know them well who was the first person in the universe before there was anybody that made it all who ah that they dont know neither do I so there you are they might as well try to stop the sun from rising tomorrow the sun shines for you he said the day we were lying among the rhododendrons on Howth head in the grey tweed suit and his straw hat the day I got him to propose to me yes first I gave him the bit of seedcake out of my mouth and it was leapyear like now yes 16 years ago my God after that long kiss I near lost my breath yes he said I was a flower of the mountain yes so we are flowers all a womans body yes that was one true thing he said in his life and the sun shines for you today yes that was why I liked him because I saw he understood or felt what a woman is and I knew I could always get round him and I gave him all the pleasure I could leading him on till he asked me to say yes and I wouldnt answer first only looked out over the sea and the sky I was thinking of so many things he didnt know of Mulvey and Mr Stanhope and Hester and father and old captain Groves and the sailors playing all birds fly and I say stoop and washing up dishes they called it on the pier and the sentry in front of the governors house with the thing round his white helmet poor devil half roasted and the Spanish girls laughing in their shawls and their tall combs and the auctions in the morning the Greeks and the jews and the Arabs and the devil knows who else from all the ends of Europe and Duke street and the fowl market all clucking outside Larby Sharons and the poor donkeys slipping half asleep and the vague fellows in the cloaks asleep in the shade on the steps and the big wheels of the carts of the bulls and the old castle thousands of years old yes and those handsome Moors all in white and turbans like kings asking you to sit down in their little bit of a shop and Ronda with the old windows of the posadas glancing eyes a lattice hid for her lover to kiss the iron and the wineshops half open at night and the castanets and the night we missed the boat at Algeciras the watchman going about serene with his lamp and O that awful deepdown torrent O and the sea the sea crimson sometimes like fire and the glorious sunsets and the figtrees in the Alameda gardens yes and all the queer little streets and the pink and blue and yellow houses and the rosegardens and the jessamine and geraniums and cactuses and Gibraltar as a girl where I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.

My death..I mean..will it be quick,and with dignity? How will i know when the end is coming?" "When you vomit blood,sir," Tao Chi'en said sadly. That happened three weeks later,in the middle of Pacific,in the privacy of the captain's cabin. As soon as he could stand , the old seaman cleaned up the traces of his vomit, rinsed out his mouth , changed his bloody shirt, lighted his pipe, and went to the bow of his ship , where he stood and looked for the last time at the stars winking in a sky of black velvet. Several sailors saw him and waited at a distance, caps in hands. When he had smoked the last of his tobacco, Captain John Sommers put his legs over the rail and noiselessly dropped into the sea. -Portrait in Sepia by Isabel Allende.

Vasco bought a bottle of vodka to celebrate and they drank it in the old sailors' graveyard in Mangrove South. This was where the funeral business had first put down its roots. Over the wall, between two warehouses, Jed could just make out the Witch's Fingers, four long talons of sand that lay in the mouth of the river. Rumour had it that, on stormy nights a century ago, they used to reach out, gouge holes in passing ships, and drag them down. Hundreds of wrecks lay buried in that glistening silt. The city's black heart had beaten strongly even then. There was one funeral director, supposedly, who used to put lamps out on the Fingers and lure ships to their doom.

It doesn’t even—” one word “hurt ” was supposed to come out of my mouth. Instead, a string of obscenities to make a lifelong sailor proud shoot out. “What thefuck are you doing? Shit! You don’t pour it on like that, you fucking jackhole! Fuck!” I’m seething in pain, the sting agonizing. Ashton isn’t paying any heed, turning my hand this way and that to examine it closer. “Looks clean.” “Yeah, because you just bleached the shit out of it!” “Relax. It’ll stop stinging soon. Distract yourself by staring at me while we wait for this to settle down. That’s how you got yourself into this mess to begin with . . .

Call me Ishmael. Some years ago--never mind how long precisely--having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off--then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me.

The young sailor jumped into the skiff, and sat down in the stern sheets, with the order that he be put ashore at La Canebiere. The two oarsmen bent to their work, and the little boat glided away as rapidly as possible in the midst of the thousand vessels which choke up the narrow way which leads between the two rows of ships from the mouth of the harbor to the Quai d’Orleans.

He told Alyosha to work with the captain. Alyosha was a quiet man; anyone could order him about. "It's all hands on deck, sailor," the captain urged. "See how fast they're laying blocks?" Alyosha smiled meekly. "If we have to work faster then let's work faster. Anything you say." And tramped down for the next load. Thank God for the man who does his job and keeps his mouth shut!

He then said something in Arabic to Ali, who made a sign of obedience and withdrew, but not to any distance. As to Franz a strange transformation had taken place in him. All the bodily fatigue of the day, all the preoccupation of mind which the events of the evening had brought on, disappeared as they do at the first approach of sleep, when we are still sufficiently conscious to be aware of the coming of slumber. His body seemed to acquire an airy lightness, his perception brightened in a remarkable manner, his senses seemed to redouble their power, the horizon continued to expand; but it was not the gloomy horizon of vague alarms, and which he had seen before he slept, but a blue, transparent, unbounded horizon, with all the blue of the ocean, all the spangles of the sun, all the perfumes of the summer breeze; then, in the midst of the songs of his sailors, -- songs so clear and sonorous, that they would have made a divine harmony had their notes been taken down, -- he saw the Island of Monte Cristo, no longer as a threatening rock in the midst of the waves, but as an oasis in the desert; then, as his boat drew nearer, the songs became louder, for an enchanting and mysterious harmony rose to heaven, as if some Loreley had decreed to attract a soul thither, or Amphion, the enchanter, intended there to build a city. At length the boat touched the shore, but without effort, without shock, as lips touch lips; and he entered the grotto amidst continued strains of most delicious melody. He descended, or rather seemed to descend, several steps, inhaling the fresh and balmy air, like that which may be supposed to reign around the grotto of Circe, formed from such perfumes as set the mind a dreaming, and such fires as burn the very senses; and he saw again all he had seen before his sleep, from Sinbad, his singular host, to Ali, the mute attendant; then all seemed to fade away and become confused before his eyes, like the last shadows of the magic lantern before it is extinguished, and he was again in the chamber of statues, lighted only by one of those pale and antique lamps which watch in the dead of the night over the sleep of pleasure. They were the same statues, rich in form, in attraction, and poesy, with eyes of fascination, smiles of love, and bright and flowing hair. They were Phryne, Cleopatra, Messalina, those three celebrated courtesans. Then among them glided like a pure ray, like a Christian angel in the midst of Olympus, one of those chaste figures, those calm shadows, those soft visions, which seemed to veil its virgin brow before these marble wantons. Then the three statues advanced towards him with looks of love, and approached the couch on which he was reposing, their feet hidden in their long white tunics, their throats bare, hair flowing like waves, and assuming attitudes which the gods could not resist, but which saints withstood, and looks inflexible and ardent like those with which the serpent charms the bird; and then he gave way before looks that held him in a torturing grasp and delighted his senses as with a voluptuous kiss. It seemed to Franz that he closed his eyes, and in a last look about him saw the vision of modesty completely veiled; and then followed a dream of passion like that promised by the Prophet to the elect. Lips of stone turned to flame, breasts of ice became like heated lava, so that to Franz, yielding for the first time to the sway of the drug, love was a sorrow and voluptuousness a torture, as burning mouths were pressed to his thirsty lips, and he was held in cool serpent-like embraces. The more he strove against this unhallowed passion the more his senses yielded to its thrall, and at length, weary of a struggle that taxed his very soul, he gave way and sank back breathless and exhausted beneath the kisses of these marble goddesses, and the enchantment of his marvellous dream.

In a few minutes the Dawn Treader had come round and everyone could see the black blob in the water which was Reepicheep. He was chattering with the greatest excitement but as his mouth kept on getting filled with water nobody could understand what he was saying. “He’ll blurt the whole thing out if we don’t shut him up,” cried Drinian. To prevent this he rushed to the side and lowered a rope himself, shouting to the sailors, “All right, all right. Back to your places. I hope I can heave a mouse up without help.

Oh, hush your croaking, Parlay,” chided one of the captains. “It ain’t going to blow.” “If I was a strong man, I couldn’t get up hook and get out fast enough,” the old man retorted in the falsetto of age. “Not if I was a strong man with the taste for wine yet in my mouth. But not you. You’ll all stay, I wouldn’t advise you if I thought you’d go, You can’t drive buzzards away from the carrion. Have another drink, my brave sailor-men. Well, well, what men will dare for a few little oyster drops! There they are, the beauties! Auction to-morrow, at ten sharp.

Kestrel, what are you doing?” She had forgotten what she wore. “Nothing.” He lifted his dark brows. “It was a dare,” she said. “A senator’s daughter dared me to sneak out of the palace without an escort.” “Try harder, Kestrel.” She muttered, “I was tired of being closed up inside the palace.” “That I believe. But I doubt it’s the whole truth.” Arin’s eyes were narrow, inspecting her. His hand slid along the railing as he came close. He reached for the collar of the sailor’s coat. He drew it away from her neck. The world went luscious, and slow, and still. He bowed his head. Stitches scratched against her cheek. Arin buried his face in the hollow between her neck and the coat collar and breathed in. Warmth flooded her. Kestrel imagined: his mouth parting against her skin. The teeth of his smile. And she imagined more, she saw what she would do, how she would forget herself, how everything would slip and unloop, like rich ribbon off its spool. The dream of this held her. She couldn’t move. She felt him feel how she didn’t move. Arin hesitated. He lifted his head and looked down at her. The blacks of his eyes were huge.

The storm was borne on greenish winds. It began as a coppery taste in the back of one's mouth, a metallic ache that amplified as the clouds darkened and advanced, and when it struck, it was with the flat hand of a senseless fury. The seething deck, the strange whip of light and shadows cast by the sails that snapped and strained above it, the palpable fear of the sailors as they fought to hold the barque on her course -- it was the stuff of nightmare, and Moody had the nightmarish sense, as the vessel drew closer and closer to the goldfields, that she had somehow willed the infernal storm upon herself.

If you’re the cook,” he said between mouthfuls, “I’m your captain. You can’t continue speaking to me that way.” “You aren’t dressed like a captain.” Gray looked down at his homespun tunic and the loose-fitting trousers cinched with a knotted cord. The clothes of a common seaman,, borrowed from a sailor now dead. He hadn’t the luxury of fine attire on the Kestrel. With the ship so undermanned, he had to be everywhere-climbing the rigging, down in the hold. “Don’t look apologetic. They suit you.” Her gaze glanced off his shoulders, then dropped to the floor. “But I see you’ve kept the detested boots.” He shrugged, spooning up another bite of chowder. “I’ve broken them in now.” “And here I hoped you were keeping them for sentimental reasons.

Man overboard!” Then everyone was busy. Some of the sailors hurried aloft to take in the sail; others hurried below to get to the oars; and Rhince, who was on duty on the poop, began to put the helm hard over so as to come round and back to the man who had gone overboard. But by now everyone knew that it wasn’t strictly a man. It was Reepicheep. “Drat that mouse!” said Drinian. “It’s more trouble than all the rest of the ship’s company put together. If there is any scrape to be got into, in it will get! It ought to be put in irons--keelhauled--marooned--have its whiskers cut off. Can anyone see the little blighter?” All this didn’t mean that Drinian really disliked Reepicheep. On the contrary he liked him very much and was therefore frightened about him, and being frightened put him in a bad temper--just as your mother is much angrier with you for running out into the road in front of a car than a stranger would be. No one, of course, was afraid of Reepicheep’s drowning, for he was an excellent swimmer; but the three who knew what was going on below the water were afraid of those long, cruel spears in the hands of the Sea People. In a few minutes the Dawn Treader had come round and everyone could see the black blob in the water which was Reepicheep. He was chattering with the greatest excitement but as his mouth kept on getting filled with water nobody could understand what he was saying. “He’ll blurt the whole thing out if we don’t shut him up,” cried Drinian. To prevent this he rushed to the side and lowered a rope himself, shouting to the sailors, “All right, all right. Back to your places. I hope I can heave a mouse up without help.

Ahoy!” a seaman called out. “The English frigate Polaris, ten days out from Antigua, bound for Portsmouth.” “Ahoy, yerself!” It was O’Shea’s rough brogue. She’d never heard sweeter music. “This be the clipper Sophia, of no particular country at the moment. Seven days out from Tortola, bound for…well, bound for here. Captain requests permission to board.” Gray. It had to be Gray. The officers of the Polaris exchanged wary looks. “Oh, for Heaven’s sake.” Sophia pushed forward to the ship’s rail and cupped her hands around her mouth, calling, “Permission to board granted!” A cheer rose up from the other ship’s deck. “It’s her, all right!” a voice called. Stubb’s, Sophia thought. Oh, but she hardly cared who was on the other deck. She cared only for the strong figure swinging across the watery divide as the two ships came abreast. Turning back toward the center of the ship, she pushed her way through the sweaty throng of sailors, desperate to get to him. Her foot caught on a rope, and she tripped- But it didn’t matter. Gray was there to catch her. And he was still wearing those sea-weathered, fire-scarred boots. No doubt for sentimental reasons. “Steady there,” he murmured, catching her by the elbows. She looked up to meet his beautiful blue-green eyes. “I have you.” “Oh, Gray.” She launched herself into his arms, clinging to his neck as he laughed and spun her around. “You’re here.” “I’m here.” And he was. Every strong, solid, handsome inch of him. Sophia buried her face in his throat, breathing in his scent. Lord, how she’d missed him. She pulled away, bracing her hands on his shoulders to study his face. “I can’t believe you came after me.” “I can’t believe you actually left.” He lowered her to the deck, and her hands slid to his arms. “I thought you were bluffing with that bit. I’d have never allowed you to go.

I ran to Sailor’s hutch to see if he’d made it through alive. He was backed into the corner, shivering, and in the most wretched condition: he had become so malnourished that his fur had grown horribly long, his body’s attempt to compensate for his slow metabolism and low temperature. His claws were an inch long, and worse, his front teeth had curled over his lower lip so he could hardly open his mouth. Apparently, rabbits need to be chewing on hard things like carrots; otherwise their teeth will grow. Terrified, I opened the cage door to hug little Sailor, but, in a spastic fury, he started scratching my face and neck. I still have the scars. Without anyone attending to him, he had gone feral. That’s what’s happened to me, in Seattle. Come at me, even in love, and I’ll scratch the hell out of you. ’Tis a piteous fate to have befallen a MacArthur genius, wouldn’t you say? Poof. But I do love you, Bernadette TUESDAY, DECEMBER 14 From Paul Jellinek Bernadette, Are you done?

The tornadic bundle of legs and arms and feet and hands push farther into the kitchen until only the occasional flailing limb is visible from the living room, where I can’t believe I’m still standing. A spectator in my own life, I watch the supernova of my two worlds colliding: Mom and Galen. Human and Syrena. Poseidon and Triton. But what can I do? Who should I help? Mom, who lied to me for eighteen years, then tried to shank my boyfriend? Galen, who forgot this little thing called “tact” when he accused my mom of being a runaway fish-princess? Toraf, who…what the heck is Toraf doing, anyway? And did he really just sack my mom like an opposing quarterback? The urgency level for a quick decision elevates to right-freaking-now. I decide that screaming is still best for everyone-it’s nonviolent, distracting, and one of the things I’m very, very good at. I open my mouth, but Rayna beats me to it-only, her scream is much more valuable than mine would have been, because she includes words with it. “Stop it right now, or I’ll kill you all!” She pushed past me with a decrepit, rusty harpoon from God-knows-what century, probably pillaged from one of her shipwreck excursions. She waves it at the three of them like a crazed fisherman in a Jaws movie. I hope they don’t notice she’s got it pointed backward and that if she fires it, she’ll skewer our couch and Grandma’s first attempt at quilting. It works. The bare feet and tennis shoes stop scuffling-out of fear or shock, I’m not sure-and Toraf’s head appears at the top of the counter. “Princess,” he says, breathless. “I told you to stay outside.” “Emma, run!” Mom yells. Toraf disappears again, followed by a symphony of scraping and knocking and thumping and cussing. Rayna rolls her eyes at me, grumbling to herself as she stomps into the kitchen. She adjusts the harpoon to a more deadly position, scraping the popcorn ceiling and sending rust and Sheetrock and tetanus flaking onto the floor like dirty snow. Aiming it at the mound of struggling limbs, she says, “One of you is about to die, and right now I don’t really care who it is.” Thank God for Rayna. People like Rayna get things done. People like me watch people like Rayna get things done. Then people like me round the corner of the counter as if they helped, as if they didn’t stand there and let everyone they love beat the shizzle out of one another. I peer down at the three of them all tangled up. Crossing my arms, I try to mimic Rayna’s impressive rage, but I’m pretty sure my face is only capable of what-the-crap-was-that. Mom looks up at me, nostrils flaring like moth wings. “Emma, I told you to run,” she grinds out before elbowing Toraf in the mouth so hard I think he might swallow a tooth. Then she kicks Galen in the ribs. He groans, but catches her foot before she can re-up. Toraf spits blood on the linoleum beside him and grabs Mom’s arms. She writhes and wriggles, bristling like a trapped badger and cussing like sailor on crack. Mom has never been girlie. Finally she stops, her arms and legs slumping to the floor in defeat. Tears puddle in her eyes. “Let her go,” she sobs. “She’s got nothing to do with this. She doesn’t even know about us. Take me and leave her out of this. I’ll do anything.” Which reinforces, right here and now, that my mom is Nalia. Nalia is my mom. Also, holy crap.

Trey gave him a mockingly sympathetic look. “You might be an Alpha, but your family will always find a way to play you.” Nick just scowled at him. “I’m glad you find this amusing, Sailor Joe.” It seemed to take a few seconds for the words to sink in, but when they did, Trey spun to snarl at Taryn, “You told him?” She laughed awkwardly. “Of course I didn’t tell him.” In a low voice, she added, “I told Shaya.” While everyone else was doing their best to hide their amusement, Dante was outright laughing his ass off. “A sailor, huh? Didn’t think that role-play was your thing.” Trey glowered at him. “Something funny, Fireman Sam?” The laughing abruptly stopped, and Dante rounded on his mate. “You told him?” Jaime spluttered. “No!” She cleared her throat. “Although I did tell Taryn. And Shaya. And Roni. But I didn’t tell them about the time you—” A large hand clapped over her mouth. “About the time you . . . ?” prodded Nick, grinning. Wincing as Jaime bit into his palm, Dante shook his head. “Nothing.” Shaya snorted at Nick. “You’re not really one to judge, considering you—” Her words were cut off as he kissed her hard.

This Is Not an Elegy At sixteen, I was illegal and brilliant, my fingernails chewed to half-moons. I took off my clothes in a late March field. I had secret car wrecks, secret hysteria. I opened my mouth to swallow stars. In backseats I learned the alchemy of guilt, lust, and distance. I was unformed and total. I swore like a sailor. But slowly the cops stopped coming around. The heat lifted its palms. The radio lost some teeth. Now I see the landscape behind me as through a Claude glass— tinted deeper, framed just so, bits of gilt edging the best parts. I see my unlined face, a thousand film stars behind the eyes. I was every murderess, every whip- thin alcoholic, every heroine with the silver tongue. Always young Paul Newman’s best girl. Always a lightning sky behind each kiss. Some days I watch myself in the third person, speak to her in the second. I say: I will meet you in sleep. I will know you by your stillness and your shaking. By your second-hand gown. By your bruises left by mouths since forgotten. This is not an elegy because I cannot bear for it to be. It is only a tree branch against the window. It is only a cherry tomato slowly reddening in the garden. I will put it in my mouth. It will be sweet, and you will swallow.

It wasn’t until she had almost reached its lights that she heard another rider in the hills behind her. Ice slid down Kestrel’s spine. Fear, that the rider was Arin. Fear, at her sudden hope that it was. She pulled Javelin to a stop and swung to the ground. Better to go on foot through the narrow streets to the harbor. Stealth was more important now than speed. Beating hooves echoed in the hills. Closer. She hugged Javelin hard around the neck, then pushed him away while she still could bear to do it. She slapped his rump in an order to head home. Whether he’d go to her villa or Arin’s, she couldn’t say. But he left, and might draw the other rider after him if she was indeed being pursued. She slipped into the city shadows. And it was magic. It was as if the Herrani gods had turned on their own people. No one noticed Kestrel skulking along walls or heard her cracking the thin ice of a puddle. No late-night wanderer looked in her face and saw a Valorian. No one saw the general’s daughter. Kestrel made it to the harbor, down to the docks. Where Arin waited. His breath heaved white clouds into the air. His hair was black with sweat. It hadn’t mattered that Kestrel had been ahead of him on the horse path. Arin had been able to run openly through the city while she had crept through alleys. Their eyes met, and Kestrel felt utterly defenseless. But she had a weapon. He didn’t, not that she could see. Her hand instinctively fell to her knife’s jagged edge. Arin saw. Kestrel wasn’t sure what came first: his quick hurt, so plain and sharp, or her certainty--equally plain, equally sharp--that she could never draw a weapon on him. He straightened from his runner’s crouch. His expression changed. Until it did, Kestrel hadn’t perceived the desperate set of his mouth. She hadn’t recognized the wordless plea until it was gone, and his face aged with something sad. Resigned. Arin glanced away. When he looked back it was as if Kestrel were part of the pier beneath her feet. A sail stitched to a ship. A black current of water. As if she were not there at all. He turned away, walked into the illuminated house of the new Herrani harbormaster, and shut the door behind him. For a moment Kestrel couldn’t move. Then she ran for a fishing boat docked far enough from its fellows that she might cast off from shore unnoticed by an sailors on the other vessels. She leaped onto the deck and took rapid stock of the boat. The tiny cabin was bare of supplies. As she lifted the anchor and uncoiled the rope tethering the boat to its dock, she knew, even if she couldn’t see, that Arin was talking with the harbormaster, distracting him while Kestrel prepared to set sail.

me!” For Alexandra sitting beside him, unable to help, each cry seemed a sword thrust into the bottom of her heart. Almost worse for the Empress than the actual episodes of bleeding was the terrible Damoclean uncertainty of hemophilia. Other chronic diseases may handicap a child and dismay the mother, but in time both learn to adjust their lives to the medical facts. In hemophilia, however, there is no status quo. One minute Alexis could be playing happily and normally. The next, he might stumble, fall and begin a bleeding episode that would take him to the brink of death. It could strike at any time in any part of the body: the head, nose, mouth, kidneys, joints, or muscles. Like Queen Victoria’s, Alexandra’s natural reaction was to overprotect her child. The royal family of Spain put its hemophilic sons in padded suits and padded the trees in the park when they went out to play. Alexandra’s solution was to assign the two sailors to hover so closely over Alexis that they could reach out and catch him before he fell. Yet, as Gilliard pointed out to the Empress, this kind of protection can stifle the spirit, producing a dependent, warped and crippled mind. Alexandra responded gallantly, withdrawing the two guardians to permit her son to make his own mistakes, take his own steps and—if necessary—fall and bruise. But it was she who accepted the risk and who bore the additional burden of guilt when an accident followed. To

Ahab stood for a while leaning over the bulwarks; and then, as had been usual with him of late, calling a sailor of the watch, he sent him below for his ivory stool, and also his pipe. Lighting the pipe at the binnacle lamp and planting the stool on the weather side of the deck, he sat and smoked. In old Norse times, the thrones of the sea-loving Danish kings were fabricated, saith tradition, of the tusks of the Narwhale. How could one look at Ahab then, seated on that tripod of bones, without bethinking him of the royalty it symbolized? For a Khan of the plank, and a king of the sea, and a great lord of Leviathans was Ahab. Some moments passed, during which the thick vapor came from his mouth in quick and constant puffs, which blew back again into his face. "How now," he soliloquized at last, withdrawing the tube, "this smoking no longer soothes. Oh, my pipe! hard must it go with me if thy charm be gone! Here have I been unconsciously toiling, not pleasuring, aye, and ignorantly smoking to windward all the while; to windward, and with such nervous whiffs, as if, like the dying whale, my final jets were the strongest and fullest of trouble. What business have I with this pipe? This thing that is meant for sereneness, to send up mild white vapors among mild white hairs, not among torn iron-grey locks like mine. I'll smoke no more" He tossed the still lighted pipe into the sea. The fire hissed in the waves; the same instant the ship shot by the bubble the sinking pipe made. With slouched hat, Ahab lurchingly paced the planks.

Noboru managed, while following his own dreamy thoughts, to pay scrupulous attention to the details. The kitten's dead pupils were purple flecked with white; the gaping mouth was stuffed with congealed blood, the twisted tongue visible between the fangs. As the fat-yellowed scissors cut them, he heard the ribs creak. And he watched intently while the chief groped in the abdominal cavity, withdrew the small pericardium, and plucked from it the tiny oval heart. When he squeezed the heart between two fingers, the remaining blood gushed onto his rubber gloves, reddening them to the tips of the fingers. *What is really happening here?* Noboru had withstood the ordeal from beginning to end. Now his half-dazed brain envisioned the warmth of the scattered viscera and the pools of blood in the gutted belly finding wholeness and perfection in the rapture of the dead kitten's large languid soul. The liver, limp beside the corpse, became a soft peninsula the squashed heart a little sun, the reeled-out bowels a white atoll, and the blood in the belly the tepid waters of a tropical sea. Death had transfigured the kitten into a perfect, autonomous world. *I killed it all by myself* - a distant hand reached into Noboru's dream and awarded him a snow-white certificate of merit - *I can do anything, no matter how awful.* The Chief peeled off the squeaky rubber gloves and laid one beautiful white hand on Noboru's shoulder. 'You did a good job. I think we can say this finally made a real man of you - and isn't all this blood a sight for sore eyes!

Guilt. Torment. Sorrow. Shock. Which?” she asked against his chest. “I’m trying,” he murmured on a weary chuckle. “But all I can manage is pride,” he added softly. “I satisfied you completely, didn’t I?” “More than completely,” she murmured against his damp shoulder. Her hand traced his chest, feeling the coolness of his skin, the ripple of muscle. “Hold me close.” He wrapped both arms around her and drew her on top of him, holding her hungrily to him, their legs lazily entwined. “I seduced you.” She pressed a soft kiss to his collarbone. “Mmm-hmm.” He caught his breath as the tiny, insignificant movement produced a sudden, raging arousal. She lifted her head. “Did I do something wrong?” He lifted an eyebrow and nodded toward his flat stomach. She followed his amused glance and caught her breath. He drew her mouth down over his and kissed her ferociously before he sat up and moved off the bed. “Where are you going?” she asked, startled. He drew on his briefs and his slacks, glancing down at her with amused delight. “One of us has to be sensible,” he told her. “Colby’s probably on his way back right now.” “But he just left…” “Almost an hour ago,” he finished for her, nodding toward the clock on the bedside table. She sat up, her eyes wide with surprise. “I took a long time with you,” he said gently. “Didn’t you notice?” She laughed self-consciously. “Well, yes, but I didn’t realize it was that long.” He drew her off the bed and bent to kiss her tenderly, nuzzling her face with his. “Was I worth waiting for?” he asked. She smiled. “What a silly question.” He kissed her again, but when he lifted his head he wasn’t smiling. “I loved what we did together,” he said quietly. “But I should have been more responsible.” She knew what he was thinking. He hadn’t used anything, and he surely knew that she wasn’t. She flattened her hand against his bare chest. “There’s a morning-after pill. I’ll drive into the city tomorrow and get one,” she said, lying like a sailor. She had no intention of doing that, but it would comfort him. He found that he didn’t like that idea. It hurt something deeply primitive in him. He scowled. “That could be dangerous.” “No, it’s not. He traced her fingernails while he tried to think. It seemed like a fantasy, a dream. He’d never had such an experience with a woman in his life. She closed her eyes and moved closer to him. “I could never have done that with anyone else,” she whispered. “It was more beautiful than my dreams.” His heart jumped. That was how it felt to him, too. He tilted her face so that he could search her soft eyes. She was radiant; she almost glowed. “Kiss me,” he murmured softly. She did. But he wasn’t smiling. She could almost see the thoughts in his face. “You didn’t force me, Tate,” she said gently. “I made a conscious decision. I made a choice. I needed to know if what had happened to me had destroyed me as a woman. I found out in the most wonderful way that it hadn’t. I’m not ashamed of what we did together.” “Neither am I.” He turned, his face still tormented. “But it wasn’t my right.” “To be the first?” She smiled gently. “It would have been you eight years ago or eight years from now. I don’t want anyone else-not that way. I never did.” He actually winced. “Cecily…” “I’m not asking for declarations of undying love. I won’t cling. I’m not the type.

In a few minutes the Dawn Treader had come round and everyone could see the black blob in the water which was Reepicheep. He was chattering with the greatest excitement but as his mouth kept on getting filled with water nobody could understand what he was saying. “He’ll blurt the whole thing out if we don’t shut him up,” cried Drinian. To prevent this he rushed to the side and lowered a rope himself, shouting to the sailors, “All right, all right. Back to your places. I hope I can heave a mouse up without help.” And as Reepicheep began climbing up the rope--not very nimbly because his wet fur made him heavy--Drinian leaned over and whispered to him, “Don’t tell. Not a word.” But when the dripping Mouse had reached the deck it turned out not to be at all interested in the Sea People. “Sweet!” he cheeped. “Sweet, sweet!” “What are you talking about?” asked Drinian crossly. “And you needn’t shake yourself all over me, either.” “I tell you the water’s sweet,” said the Mouse. “Sweet, fresh. It isn’t salt.” For a moment no one quite took in the importance of this. But then Reepicheep once more repeated the old prophecy: “Where the waves grow sweet, Doubt not, Reepicheep, There is the utter East.” Then at last everyone understood. “Let me have a bucket, Rynelf,” said Drinian. It was handed him and he lowered it and up it came again. The water shone in it like glass. “Perhaps your Majesty would like to taste it first,” said Drinian to Caspian. The King took the bucket in both hands, raised it to his lips, sipped, then drank deeply and raised his head. His face was changed. Not only his eyes but everything about him seemed to be brighter. “Yes,” he said, “it is sweet. That’s real water, that. I’m not sure that it isn’t going to kill me. But it is the death I would have chosen--if I’d known about it till now.

Thai prostitution was a haven for the men and a nuisance for the women. The streets of Phuket were outlined with bars ready to nourish thirsty sailors with euphoric intoxication to smother their pinched nerves from their personal lives deteriorating in their six-month absence. Thailand truly lived up to its port reputation. Hundreds of bikini-clad prostitutes littered the strip. Slim and petite, their narrow hips and flat chests appeared to be the appropriate age for the pink plaid schoolgirl skirts, dress shirts, ties, and pigtails intended to entice pedophilic eroticism. They wore heavy coats of pastel liquid shadow that clashed against their yellow tinted tans. They awkwardly wiggled to a nauseating blend of techno and Reggaeton as cotton-haired granddaddies lustfully gawked at them. Any Caucasian male cannot trek a block without the treatment of a pop culture heartthrob with a trail of Thai teens at his heels. “Wan hunnet baaht!” they taunt in a nasal screech. “Wan hunnet baht and I suck yo cock!” The oriental beauties cup their fists and hold them to their mouths as they wiggle their tongues against their cheeks to provide a clear visual for their performance skills. It’s easy to dismiss the humanity in Thai prostitutes. Their splotchy, heavily accented English allows the language barrier to muffle signs of intellect. They’re overtly sexual in their crotch bearing ensembles, loud and vulgar invitations, and provocative dancing that makes even corner butcher shops feel like Vegas strip clubs. Swarms of them linger in front of bars holding cardboard signs scribbled with magic marker that offer a blow job with the first beer purchased. Their eyes burn into passing tourists, with acute radar for creamy, sun-flushed complexions and potbellies - signals of the deep pockets of white male privilege.

He wanted somebody to give him a chance of asserting himself. He wanted it so urgently that he fidgeted in his chair, looked at this person, then at that person, tried to break into their talk, opened his mouth and shut it again. They were talking about the fishing industry. Why did no one ask him his opinion? What did they know about the fishing industry? Lily Briscoe knew all that. Sitting opposite him, could she not see, as in an X-ray photograph, the ribs and thigh bones of the young man's desire to impress himself, lying dark in the mist of his flesh--that thin mist which convention had laid over his burning desire to break into the conversation? But, she thought, screwing up her Chinese eyes, and remembering how he sneered at women, "can't paint, can't write," why should I help him to relieve himself? There is a code of behaviour, she knew, whose seventh article (it may be) says that on occasions of this sort it behoves the woman, whatever her own occupation might be, to go to the help of the young man opposite so that he may expose and relieve the thigh bones, the ribs, of his vanity, of his urgent desire to assert himself; as indeed it is their duty, she reflected, in her old maidenly fairness, to help us, suppose the Tube97 were to burst into flames. Then, she thought, I should certainly expect Mr. Tansley to get me out. But how would it be, she thought, if neither of us did either of these things? So she sat there 96 Cheated or frustrated himself. 97 The London subway. 64 smiling. "You're not planning to go to the Lighthouse, are you, Lily," said Mrs. Ramsay. "Remember poor Mr. Langley; he had been round the world dozens of times, but he told me he never suffered as he did when my husband took him there. Are you a good sailor, Mr. Tansley?" she asked. Mr. Tansley raised a hammer: swung it high in air; but realising, as it descended, that he could not smite that butterfly with such an instrument as this, said only that he had never been sick in his life. But in that one sentence lay compact, like gunpowder, that his grandfather was a fisherman; his father a chemist; that he had worked his way up entirely himself; that he was proud of it; that he was Charles Tansley--a fact that nobody there seemed to realise; but one of these days every single person would know it. He scowled ahead of him. He could almost pity these mild cultivated people, who would be blown sky high, like bales of wool and barrels of apples, one of these days by the gunpowder that was in him. "Will you take me, Mr. Tansley?" said Lily, quickly, kindly, for, of course, if Mrs. Ramsay said to her, as in effect she did, "I am drowning, my dear, in seas of fire. Unless you apply some balm to the anguish of this hour and say something nice to that young man there, life will run upon the rocks--indeed I hear the grating and the growling at this minute. My nerves are taut as fiddle strings. Another touch and they will snap"--when Mrs. Ramsay said all this, as the glance in her eyes said it, of course for the hundred and fiftieth time Lily Briscoe had to renounce the experiment--what happens if one is not nice to that young man there--and be nice.

There's this sailor with a pet parrot. But the parrot swears like an old sea captain. He can swear for five minutes straight without repeating himself! Trouble is, the sailor who owns him is a quiet, conservative type, and this bird's foul mouth is driving him crazy. One day, it gets to be too much, so the sailor grabs the bird by the throat, shakes him really hard, and yells, "QUIT IT!" But this just makes the bird mad and he swears more than ever. Then the sailor locks the bird in a kitchen cabinet. This really aggravates the bird and he claws and scratches everything inside. Finally the sailor lets the bird out. The bird cuts loose with a stream of vulgarities that would make a veteran seaman blush. The sailor is so mad that he throws the bird into the freezer. For the first few seconds there is a terrible racket from inside. Then it suddenly gets very quiet. At first the sailor just waits, but then he starts to think that the bird may be hurt. He's opens up the freezer door. The bird calmly climbs onto the man's outstretched arm and says, "Awfully sorry about the trouble I gave you. I'll do my best to improve my vocabulary from now on." The man is astounded. He can't understand the transformation that has come over the parrot. The parrot speaks again, "By the way, what did the chicken do?

Get out of my bed.” “Why? I really am most comfortable. Not as comfortable, of course, as I would be if you were to drop anchor beside me. . .” Her skin tingled and flushed crimson. “I said, Get out of my bed!” He suckled the juice from his fingers. “What, would you prefer to do it on the floor?” “I’d prefer that you shut your mouth before I shut it for you!” “Now that, “ he said, wickedly, “could be interesting.” “Damn you, I’ve had it with your sly innuendos!” “Now, Majesty, “ he murmured, affecting a look of mock hurt. Putting the dagger down, he sat up, swung his handsomely muscled legs off the bed, and sat looking at her, charmingly boyish, alarmingly dangerous, and shamelessly naked. “Don’t go getting your guns all primed. I am just a sailor . . . and what sailor doesn’t lust and pant after a beautiful woman? I find you beautiful, and”—he let his gaze rake over her breasts, her hips, her bare ankles—“I want you.

The deck appeared to be nothing more than a jumble of ropes and lines. The vessel was filled with objects that seemed to have no discernible purpose. Even the sailors appeared like aliens. They dressed their scarred, often disfigured bodies in strange clothing, ran around the deck barefoot, or scampered aloft like monkeys as they mouthed words that might as well have been Greek:

Then there were the people the Virginia Company called the “naturals”—the roughly nine thousand Indians gathered into a loose-knit confederation of disparate groups ruled by the paramount chief, Wahunsonacock, who was known to the English as Powhatan. Trouble between the Indians and the settlers started on the first day the English stepped ashore on the banks of the Chesapeake. Late that day, as an exploring party of about two dozen armed settlers returned to the safety of the three ships anchored off a spot of land they called Point Comfort, a group of natives crept from the woods “like Beares,” in the words of settler George Percy, “with their Bowes in their mouths.” When the Indians—there were only five or six—got close enough, they loosed a volley of arrows. Gabriel Archer, one of the colonists, was wounded in the hands and a sailor, Matthew Morton, “in two places of the body very dangerously.”16 The English responded with a volley of musket fire that drove the Indians back into the woods.

Come in with us,” she called. The moist sea air caused her auburn locks to curl. The thought that there might be an opportunity to kiss that smiling pink mouth nearly prompted him to obey. The slim tights of her swimming costume showed off the shape of her legs, and he couldn’t take his eyes off her. She put Edward down, then stood with her hands on her hips. “Roll up your trousers. At least let the waves break at your ankles.” “I didn’t bring a swimsuit,” John said. He grinned. “Besides, don’t you know that sailors drown in an inch of water?” “Coward!” She staggered out of the sea, then paused to wring the water from her skirt.

He describes sailing across mountainous seas, lashed to the wheel the bare rigging overhead dancing with blue electricity, St Elmo's fire the sailors called it. His clothes so saturated with the salt water he can barely stand, would fall if he weren’t tied up. The ship heaves in the heavy swells and the waves crash endlessly over the deck. Anything that wasn't tied down has long slid into the churning maelstrom including three crewmembers that didn’t lash themselves up in time. He holds the wheel and steers so the prow is climbing the huge wave that has blotted out the storm clouds, so tall the ship is almost vertical as it crests the wave and slides down into the next tumultuous surge. He tells how he screams into the storm knowing that the sound will be snatched away almost before it escapes his mouth and will become lost in the turmoil. ‘There is no skill in manning your ship through seas that can smash it as though it were nothing but brittle planks of wood.’ Andre says, ‘Captains will boast of their prowess in a storm but you survive purely by the capricious will of the sea. She decides if you live or die, and in that situation all you can do is hold on for the ride and feel privileged that she has allowed you to see her at her most powerful.

After she swore herself to secrecy and did her best to seem trustworthy and closemouthed, Mr. Nobley revealed that those two had been more than fond acquaintances. In fact, last year he’d proposed and she’d accepted. “Her mother disapproved, as he was merely a sailor. Mr. Heartwright, her brother, informed East that he was dismissed from being her suitor, and Miss Heartwright never had an opportunity to explain that it hadn’t been her wish. She fears it is too late now, but I don’t believe her heart ever let go of the man.” “Ah,” Jane said, now fitting their story into the correct Austen novel context--Persuasion, more or less. And that was a real bummer. Captain East had offered Jane the best shot at curative love. Oh well. Two down…one to go? She studied Mr. Nobley and wondered why she had the impression that he was dangerous--or would be if he didn’t so often look tired or bored. Was he a sleeping tiger? Or a sack of potatoes? “And how do you feel about this, Mr. Nobley?” she asked. “It does not matter how I feel about Miss Heartwright.” He nudged his horse forward, and hers followed. She hadn’t been talking about Miss Heartwright, but, okay. “Wait, are you heartbroken?” She knew Miss Erstwhile shouldn’t ask the question, but Jane couldn’t help it. “No, of course not.” “Not about Miss Heartwright, anyway.” Jane watched Mr. Nobley’s face closely for signs of Henry Jenkins. His mouth was still, unrevealing, but his eyes were sad. She’d never noticed before. “Maybe you’re not heartbroken anymore, maybe you’ve passed that part, and now you’re just lonely.” Mr. Nobley smiled, but with just half of his mouth. “You are very good at nettling me, Miss Erstwhile. As I said, it does not matter how I feel. We are speaking of Miss Heartwright and Captain East. I think it nonsense how they have kept silent about it these past days. They should speak their minds.” “You approve of speaking one’s mind? So, do you approve of me?” As it appeared Mr. Nobley had no intention of answering the question, and Jane was stumped at how to restart the conversation, they rode on in silence. Of course just at that moment, she would see Martin by a line of trees, looking her way. Why couldn’t she be chatting and laughing and having a wonderful time? She smiled generously at the world around her and hoped that Martin would think she was enthralled with Mr. Nobley’s company and perfectly happy. Mr. Nobley turned to ask her a question, but when he saw her grinning without apparent cause, the words hung in his mouth. His eyes widened. “What? You are laughing at me again. What have I done now?” Jane did laugh. “I’m sorry, but I can’t seem to help myself around you. You are so teas-able.” Which was precisely not true, and yet saying it somehow made it so. Mr. Nobley looked over his shoulder just as the line of trees hid Martin from view. Jane wasn’t sure if he saw him. “I’m sorry I annoy you so much,” said Jane. “I’ll stop. I really will.” “Hm,” said Mr. Nobley as if he doubted it. He looked at his hands thoughtfully, not speaking again for several moments. In the silence, Jane became aware of her heart beating. Why was that?

Slowly, as though touching it might destroy the image, he reached up and put trembling fingers to her forehead . . . her cheek . . . her nose . . . her lips.  The image did not go away.  It did not waver.  And as he stared in wonder and a sort of frozen disbelief, he saw the shyness and joy in the face that stared back at him. A face that he was, after two long months, seeing for the very first time. He saw a square jaw and high, prominent cheekbones that lent her a look of gauntness and strength; dark, velvety-brown eyes fringed by long black lashes; a shy and smiling mouth; full, dusky lips; and glossy hair the color of strong coffee, tightly braided and pinned in a coronet around her head.  She was beautiful, even if not in the conventional sense, striking, slightly exotic, with flawlessly smooth skin of a slightly bronzed tone, not unlike that of a sailor who's spent his life in the sun. It was a lovely color. A warm, toasted, caramel-color that made him want to put his lips to it and kiss her all over. "Amy," he repeated, in a disbelieving whisper.  "I can see you."  He swallowed hard, and traced the shape of her mouth with his fingers.  "I can see you." And he could also see something else.  Mist in those huge, soft eyes — and a sort of awkwardness, if not fear, about his first visual impression of her. "And just what is it you see, Charles?" "I see a beautiful young woman — " he grinned — "garbed in the most singularly hideous gown imaginable." "Oh, Charles," she cried, impulsively flinging her arms around him.  He embraced her in turn.  They remained like that, holding each other, both of them laughing and rejoicing and rocking back and forth in the straw. "It was that damned horse!" he managed, setting her back to gaze into her rapt, mobile face.  "The blow must've done something, must've jarred something loose inside my head.  Don't you think?" "Either that, or your sight was just plain destined to return anyhow.  Maybe God simply decided that the time had come for you to have it back again." "So that I could see you!" "So you could write your own letters!" "So I could find my way without a cane!" Laughing with joy, he hugged her once more, then set her back, trailing his finger down her cheek, the edge of her jaw.  Gently, he tipped her chin up so that her luminous gaze held his.  "And look into the eyes of the woman who has become my dearest and very best friend." And look he did; then, before he even knew what he was about, he closed his eyes and kissed her. Unlike

Whoopee!” Michael said as his barbecued fish arrived. “Look at that! Amazing.” A meal was never just a meal; with Michael Foot it was a celebration. Nearly every mouthful got its own cry of satisfaction. I remembered, though, that on the boat he had been excited about the fishing and then sobered by seeing the fish pulled on board. He was going to eat it, but for that moment he did not like staring death in the face. Now, even with the whole fish—head and all on his plate, he devoured his delicacy without a qualm. While we talked, Michael put his head down and dug in. All he managed to utter, again and again, was “now, now, delicious.” Later I questioned him, “You’re not really against fishing, are you Michael?” “Well, not really, but every now and again I’m shaken.” Even after what I told you about Benjamin Franklin?” “Yes,” he insisted. I had told Michael the story from Franklin’s autobiography. Although he was a vegetarian, Franklin had been lured by the wonderful smell of sailors cooking fish aboard ship and had forsaken his principles, pointing out that he had watched the fish opened up and saw inside them smaller fish. He reasoned that if the bigger fish could eat the smaller fish, he could eat the bigger fish. “Good excuse that is,” Michael conceded, but he had read Brigid Brophy’s brief in favour of vegetarianism and been persuaded (mostly). “My father was a seaman,” I said to Michael gravely, “and it would be hard to convince me.

When they enter a church, they are known and marked as sailors; they attract the notice of no small part of the congregation; and most of them would sooner face the cannon’s mouth than that thoughtless, supercilious gaze.” Stafford assured his readers that, based on his many conversations with both sailors and sea captains, this undisguised distaste for American mariners was almost universal.

Among the scribes was Pyle, wearing a beret that made him resemble Montgomery; also Hemingway, credentialed to Collier’s magazine but commanding various French cutthroats whom he had ostensibly supplied with tommy guns and pistols and who called him Colonel or “le grand capitaine.” These irregulars, wrote Robert Capa, could be seen “copying his sailor bear walk, spitting short sentences from the corners of their mouths,” while Papa nipped from a canteen of calvados and patted the grenade tucked inside his field jacket, “just in case.

What passes for patriotism is now largely measured by the flag pins in our lapels and the mouthing of pride and faith in our soldiers, sailors, and aviators. Having long since lost track of the precepts of American democracy, we've devolved into a cult of military, with its own blind faith and liturgy...

one woman was heard excusing herself loudly for bringing her son, a small, mischievous, peevish-looking boy of about eight, dressed in a sailor suit, which he had outgrown. He was holding a whistle, fastened round his neck by a lanyard, and from time to time blew a blast on it. Whereupon, his mother tore the instrument from his mouth with a fury suggesting that she wished to extract whistle and all his teeth as well in one sweep and shook him violently until he fell into a form of stupor.

I'm not going to Wichita,' Vladimir said, the word 'Wichita' rendered by his accent as the most foreign word imaginable in the English language. 'I’m going to live with Fran and it’s going to be all right. You’re going to make it all right.' But even as he was laying down the law, his hands were shaking to the point where it was hard to keep the shabby pay-phone receiver properly positioned between his mouth and ear. Teardrops were blurring the corners of his eyes and he felt the need to have Baobab hear him burst out in a series of long, convulsive sobs, Roberta-style. All he had wanted was twenty thousand lousy dollars. It wasn’t a million. It was how much Dr. Girshkin made on average from two of his nervous gold-toothed patients. 'Okay,' Baobab said. 'Here’s how we’re going to do it. These are the new rules. Memorize them or write them down. Do you have a pen? Hello? Okay, Rule One: you can’t visit anyone—friends, relatives, work, nothing. You can only call me from a pay phone and we can’t talk for more than three minutes.' He paused. Vladimir imagined him reading this from a little scrap of paper. Suddenly Baobab said, under his breath: 'Tree, nine-thirty, tomorrow.' 'The two of us can never meet in person,' he was saying loudly now. 'We will keep in touch only by phone. If you check into a hotel, make sure you pay cash. Never pay by credit card. Once more: Tree, nine-thirty, tomorrow.' Tree. Their Tree? The Tree? And nine-thirty? Did he mean in the morning? It was hard to imagine Baobab up at that unholy hour. 'Rule Five: I want you to keep moving at all times, or at least try to keep moving. Which brings us to…' But just as Rule Six was about to come over the transom, there was a tussle for the phone and Roberta came on the line in her favorite Bowery harlot voice, the kind that smelled like gin nine hundred miles away. 'Vladimir, dear, hi!' Well, at least someone was enjoying Vladimir’s downfall. 'Say, I was thinking, do you have any ties with the Russian underworld, honey?' Vladimir thought of hanging up, but the way things were going even Roberta’s voice was a distinctly human one. He thought of Mr. Rybakov’s son, the Groundhog. 'Prava,' he muttered, unable to articulate any further. An uptown train rumbled beneath him to underscore the underlying shakiness of his life. Two blocks downtown, a screaming professional was being tossed back and forth between two joyful muggers. 'Prava, how very now!' Roberta said. 'Laszlo’s thinking of opening up an Academy of Acting and the Plastic Arts there. Did you know that there are thirty thousand Americans in Prava? At least a half dozen certified Hemingways among them, wouldn’t you agree?' 'Thank you for your concern, Roberta. It’s touching. But right now I have other… There are problems. Besides, getting to Prava… What can I do?… There’s an old Russian sailor… An old lunatic… He needs to be naturalized.' There was a long pause at this point and Vladimir realized that in his haste he wasn’t making much sense. 'It’s a long story…' he began, 'but essentially… I need to… Oh God, what’s wrong with me?' 'Talk to me, you big bear!' Roberta encouraged him. 'Essentially, if I get this old lunatic his citizenship, he’ll set me up with his son in Prava.' 'Okay, then,' Roberta said. 'I definitely can’t get him his citizenship.' 'No,' Vladimir concurred. 'No, you can’t.' What was he doing talking to a sixteen-year-old? 'But,' Roberta said, 'I can get him the next best thing…

Her mouth offered itself to me, and that item of consolation unhinged me! I have never kissed it, but in that hour of ostensibly my lowest humiliation, I could have become someone else, another man in pomp and glory! Yes, if I had lain down at her side then - I could have become a sailor or a revolutionary, a folk hero, a flag-bearer for definite, and the cynosure of all eyes, because, since I didn't become any of these things, I feet that if I had gone to her, I would have had to have become radiant for all eternity. I didn't, and I'm gray, an uninteresting traveler carrying a suitcase whose colorful labels are merely the evidence of meaningless journeys.

After blowing out the candle in one puff once the song was over, she took a careful bite. He waited for her to spit it back out, but she actually swallowed, then took a second bite. "Try it," she said around the mouthful. "It's pretty good." Sailor figured she was pulling his leg, but it was her birthday after all. He took a bite. And felt his eyes widen. "I'm a culinary genius." Actually, the cake was chewy and dense, but there was no salt instead of sugar, which, in his book made this a win. But even better was seeing Ísa smile with open happiness.

Jefferson and Becky and I step onto the rickety dock, which feels more solid under my feet than I expect. I can’t help gawking at the ships as we go. Jefferson, never one for shyness, cups his hands to his mouth. “The Charlotte!” he hollers. “We’re looking for the Charlotte!” Sailors shake their heads. One rakish fellow leans over the side of his ship and shouts in an Australian accent. “Oi! If you find Charlotte, tell her I’m looking for her, too!” “Rude humor is a mark of low character,” Becky shouts back. “Of course I’ve got low character,” the sailor responds. “I come from down under!” His crewmates laugh. Jefferson looks to me as if to share a grin, but I shake my head. Becky Joyner is on a mission, and this is no time to cross her. The sailor wisely returns to work. We pass another ship and reach the end of the dock. Still no Charlotte. “Maybe this is the wrong place,” Jefferson says. “I’m sure this is it,” Becky says. “I reread the letter and checked the directions with people at the mission before we came down to the waterfront.” If Becky says she’s sure, she’s sure. “Maybe they left already?” “I made inquiries,” Becky says. “The Charlotte was expected to remain in port.” Her knowledge doesn’t surprise me one bit. Thanks to her restaurant regulars, Becky now has more connections and better information than anyone I know. “We must have missed it,” I say. “We just need to head back and start over.

Kimmy’s got a mouth like a sailor fucking a trucker,

I dropped an F-bomb in her kitchen. “Matthew’s not even back from daycare yet.” I reached into my pocket for loose change but came up with a twenty instead. “I’m trying to teach the men in my life to lose their sailor mouths so my son doesn’t copy them.” Samantha made a come-hither motion with her hand. I laughed. “Fair enough. Here.” I said goodbye to the bill a girl had stuffed into my pocket as a tip an hour ago. Her name and number were scribbled on it in black ink. “Consider this an advance. I don’t have high hopes I’ll change.

Sailors huddled in the skulls on the beach, using the carapace as cover, clutching spears and cowering before the monster. It was as tall as a building, swarming with arrowhead luckspren. Lopen pulled to a stop in the air, holding Huio. The cousins met one another’s eyes. Then Huio groaned. “I’m never going to hear the end of this, am I?” “Ha!” Lopen said. “You were going to get eaten! You were going to be swallowed by a giant monster that looks like something you’d step on during worming season!” “Can we focus on the fight?” “Hey, have you heard about the time I saved Huio from being swallowed? Oh yes. He was going to get eaten. By a monster uglier than the women he courts. And I flew into the thing’s mouth to save him. Off the tongue. Then I was very humble about having done such a heroic deed.

Hey, sister sailor-mouth,

I found the spot where the gap was smallest. I was about to go across to them when an arm in the darkness grabbed me from behind. It belonged to a man. He covered my mouth and dragged me into the shadows behind the staircase that lead to the ships wheel. I struggled against him for a moment, then I felt the cold steel of a knife press into my esophagus. “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t slit your throat,

later became so popular that many British sailors walked around with limes in their mouths, resulting in the nickname limeys.

There you were one day, all five-foot-two of you. A girl with the looks of a goddess depicted in hundred-year-old paintings with the mouth of a sailor.

The flames swallowed the foremast where we were. As they shot through the two openings of the enclosure, we shielded ourselves by taking shelter under some of the equipment, our hands covering our mouths and eyes. But the flames found us, catching us all on fire, burning off our clothes, our hair, our skin.

She had long dark hair like me and had a mouth on her that would make sailors blush.

Despite the fact that Mrs. Moretta went to church every other Sunday, she had the mouth of a sailor who retired and started a new career trucking.

The sea claimed her, welcoming Nalia as a mother would her daughter. Its cold embrace drove away all thought until there was nothing left in her consciousness but a dim remembrance of death, despair, desire. Fish swam through the bottoms of her feet and the sun shone through her face as its rays pierced the water’s surface. Nalia spread her arms, opened her mouth, and gave herself over to Lathor, goddess of water. If she weren’t a slave, Nalia could stay here forever—dash herself against the rocks and kiss a surfer’s neck as he rode the waves of her, or bathe in creamy moonlight and dance with jellyfish. Sailors would look on her with longing, and lightning would strike through her heart, causing no pain, when storms raged above the sea. Here there was no Haran or Raif or Malek. No invisible humans or memories of the past. Just the endless rhythm of ancient waters and the low rumble of beasts in its blackened depths. She was the current that carried boats on its back and the foam that slept on sandcastles. She was the roar and the whisper and the stillness. She was nothing. She was everything.

Are you going to take me to him, then? Or should we just keep standing here while I’m freezing my fucking tits off?” I slide the gun back into my pocket, because I would be stupid to even try to shoot him. He chuckles. “Oh, mo chreach bheag... That filthy mouth of yours must be the greatest thing I’ve ever heard. You’d think you grew up on a ship with a bunch of sailors, not with a fancy family like yours.” “Yeah, well, I’m nothing like those pretentious snobs I get to call family. You’d come to know that about me.” “I already do know that, sweetheart. You’re like no one else in the world. You’re a rare woman. One of a fucking kind.