Jack smiled – he was very deeply attached to his friend – but after a couple of bars he said ‘Why Stephen should be so pleased with a baby I cannot tell. He was born to be a bachelor – no notion of domestic comforts, family life – quite unsuited for marriage, above all for marriage with Diana, a dashing brilliant creature to be sure, a fine horse-woman and a capital hand at billiards and whist, but given to high play and something of a rake – quite often shows her wine – in any case quite improper for Stephen – has nothing to say to books – much more concerned with breeding horses. Yet between them they have produced this baby; and a girl at that.’ The wake stretched away, as true as a taut line now, and after a while he said ‘He longed for a daughter, I know, and it is very well that he should have one; but I wish she may not prove a platypus to him.’

• Jo Walton's tor dot com reread.
• A 1993 NYT article published between this book that profiles PO'B a little bit, if one feels the need to go lifting rocks.
• Randomly learned about HMS Diamond Rock which I'm surprised I never heard of it in these books or elsewhere.

Unorganized Notes:
- Jack's hair is not grey, it is a very becoming buttercup-yellow.
- Martin, offered a choice of plums, gets them all.
- There's "particular" friends, then there's "casual mid-conversation enema" friends.
- Phillips and Owen competing in their sea-tales is hilarious.
- You'll never convince me that Pullings didn't kick the rat on Clarissa on purpose.
- Stephen thinks the two ugliest vegetables are the Norfolk pine and the monkey puzzle tree.
- "Jack Nastyface" is apparently the name for the office of assistant cook.
- Martin starts to show disregard towards Stephen and Stephen, in a very roundabout way via deconstructing a joking quote of Hobbes at Jack, is like, "I now understand the urge to fucking murder someone over a trifle."
- Martin seeing Clarissa in boy's clothes makes him understand pederasts. Martin, no.
- Jack's kids getting lessons in Latin, horsemanship, history, geography, French, dancing, drawing, and deportment.
- wtf is up with Diana.
- Jack sees naval wives as sacred -- except when they hint otherwise.
- Similarly Stephen pointing out to Clarissa that all of Jack's wounds are courageously on his front, except for those that are on his back.
- Stephen and Jack have exchanges like, "Jack, you're fat." "Fuck Catholics, oops did I say that."
- Martin has a little cat: a "stupid, persecuting animal".
- Sarah and Emily cheer for Guy Fawkes.
- Dark cloaks and spycraft belowdecks yes.
- General kind of continued English racism where tall/pale/fine is aristo/cultured/good and swarthy/short/hairy is barbaric/brutish/bad. PO'B feels compelled to tell us how brown the native nobility is. "No darker than an Italian," lol.
- Moahu is fake but Annamooka is real but that's not really it.
- In the last two books owls are theorized to be universal. Martin mocks Stephen's theory.
- Awkward Davies horrific visage peering in on the swordfish dinner.
- Plaice did no wrong in the shame.
- Bonden's beak broken by boxing, and Davies gets slammed.
- Pullings trying to communicate with Jack:

    ‘Well sir…some of the officers are sweet on Mrs Oakes.’
    ‘I dare say they are – a very amiable young woman.’
    ‘No, sir. I mean serious – bloody serious – cut-your-throat serious – fucking serious…’
    ‘Oh.’ Jack Aubrey was taken aback entirely. ‘But you surely do not mean that last word literally?’
    ‘No, sir. It is just my coarse way of speaking: I beg pardon. But so serious that if she were there at the table day after day…’
    After a silence Jack said, ‘The husband is always the last to know, they say. I am talking of myself, as being married to the barky, you understand. The sods.’

This confused me at first because there IS fucking going on, but I guess Jack thinks for a second Pullings means the officers are fucking each other and "The sods" is the punchline. (Don't think Pullings is being circumspect.)
- Jack's vicious burn by telling Reade he must take care, "we do not have so very many seamen aboard."
- Sequence where Stephen writes his letters is very good dream-like focus.
- William Hoskins, armourer's mate in Polychrest. "They cut capers over us something cruel, and spoke sarcastic."
- Boats' crew casually scragging the French coxswain.
- Clarissa, to flying squid: "Fly off, sir."
- Bone through nose, ear in soup.
- I don't think Clarissa literally threw a baby down a well? But I guess some people do. I don't remember what future books might say.

Clarissa explains: Children

'I was talking about children that have not been properly house-trained. Left to their own impulses and indulged by doting or careless parents almost all children are yahoos. Loud, selfish, cruel, unaffectionate, jealous, perpetually striving for attention, empty-headed, for ever prating or if words fail them simply bawling, their voices grown huge from daily practice: the very worst company in the world. But what I dislike even more than the natural child is the affected child, the hulking oaf of seven or eight that skips heavily about with her hands dangling in front of her – a little squirrel or a little bunny-rabbit – and prattling away in a baby’s voice. All the children I saw in New South Wales were yahoos.’

Reverend Martin's Adventures:

'While we were taking a short cut over a tumble of black rocks, Dr Falconer fell, twisted his ankle and broke his spy-glass. We could not go on, neither could we go back until the extreme pain had diminished, so we sat there on the rocks in the sun, talking about volcanoes; for this formation, it seems, was of recent igneous origin. Presently we decided to eat and above all to drink; but it was found that although we had collecting-bags, nets and specimen-cases in plenty, the knapsack and the bottles had been left behind. He desired me to go to some palms right down by the shore and bring back some coconuts; and when at last I came back empty-handed in spite of my most earnest endeavours to climb even the most oblique of the little grove, he was surprisingly impatient.’