Word: maturin
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...pages; $22) is the 16th installment of what devotees call the Aubrey/Maturin novels. All are set in the early 19th century, during the period of the Napoleonic Wars, and all feature the same two heroes: Jack Aubrey, a blunt, brave captain in the British Royal Navy, and Stephen Maturin, a ship's surgeon, amateur naturalist and sometimes spy for His Majesty's government...
...trees, heel-pieces, side-fishes, cheeks, front-fish and cant-pieces, all scarfed, coaked, bolted, hooped and woolded together." But such passages are there for atmospherics rather than information, and they sometimes seem to be delivered with an authorial wink. In one of the running jokes in the series, Maturin, far more comfortable on land than on sea, frequently doesn't understand what his shipmates are saying. Occasionally he feigns ignorance. When Aubrey uses the term "shaped the mast," Maturin replies, "Before this it was amorphous, I collect? Shapeless?" Aubrey misses the tease in the question: "What a fellow...
This time out, these two old friends are sailing east across the Pacific Ocean toward the coast of South America. In his role as an undercover agent, Maturin hopes to encourage nascent nationalists in Peru and Chile to declare independence from Spain. Success in this mission would achieve two goals that Maturin, half-Irish, half-Catalan, passionately desires: a blow to the Spanish oppressors of Catalonia and a setback for Napoleon, since the newly liberated countries would presumably owe allegiance to Britain rather than France for their freedom...
...capture the Franklin, a privateer sailing under American colors and carrying a Frenchman who may be a spy for Napoleon. Next comes a full-fledged pirate ship, then a whaler ripe for the taking, and then a particularly nasty storm called a wind- gall. Aubrey sustains some serious injuries. Maturin is kept busy cleaning up after various forms of carnage; the duty includes performing amputations without anesthesia. "This will hurt for a moment," he tells one patient, "but it will not last. Hold steady...