For some while Macmillan did not reply, being occupied with putting their pills, plaster, draughts and bandages away with his usual obsessive neatness, but when he did speak it was as though he had already made a comprehensive answer, his present words being a continuation. ‘I had thocht a wife was a pairson a mon could tell his dreams to; but then one day she flung the collops in my face straight from the skillet, cried “The Hell with your faukit dreamings,” whipped out of the door and locked it fast behind her.’ He closed the medicine-chest, making the same movement with the key, and said, ‘I never saw her more.’ They lived at the very top of a lofty house in Canongate, he added in parenthesis before going on in a different voice, ‘But I never was a good husband to a canty young woman like her. Even as a boy I had dreams of tall candles bending over in the sun, right down to touch the shelf; and when I was a man it was much the same – I would be there pointing a pistol with a certain triumph, you understand; and the barrel would droop, droop.’

• Jo Walton's re-read on tor dot com.
• So Google tells me "Kesegaran" means freshness, and it's in Fox's praise to the Sultan where the Nutmeg gets its name too. Listserv people were on it.
• This one is really full of Aubreyisms that seem to creep into the text itself from Jack's thoughts as e.g. he ponders that a wish can so easily be farther than the thought.
• There's a fair bit of rescuing/recovering in the book, and things being given new life. Also a 'plethory' of daughters, none of whom Stephen does especially well by.
• For other links see The Surgeon's Mate post.

The news from home is that Diana has given birth to a daughter and Stephen is not poor after all, neither of which he shares with anyone.

Many of the Dianes perish in the camp assault. Jack's clerk Elijah Butcher, given life and a name in the previous book, dies invisibly along with midshipman Harper in the charge. The other midshipman, Reade, loses his arm at the shoulder then becomes much caressed. The carpenter and his mate are killed and beheaded by the raiding party. Warren, the purser, dies of heart failure when a gun blows up near him. Bennet is nearly disemboweled but survives somehow. Lt. Fielding's leg is injured, I'm not sure how. Ahmed makes the wise choice to stay in Java and gives Stephen a box for his coca leaves and a new wig as a parting gift.

There is a mini-"story" of pimple-faced mids Oakes and Miller who were left behind at Java, and are brought back briefly before the mast before being made along with Conway on the Nutmeg. Miller is killed by a cannon ball while standing next to Aubrey the same ball killing the master and three others. Oakes becomes a lookout and transfers to the Surprirse. Conway stays on Nutmeg with Fielding.

Adams is back as the captain's clerk. Macmillan is a weird one as the quote above demonstrates. Above all Martin is back and he's been bit by a tapir and is bitten by a funereal cockatoo.

Killick has several good quotes and moments, like being very excited about getting to use Jack's silver, or the promise of getting an extra day's pay when they cross the date line. I can't make ALL the quotes Killick.

    ‘As for an end,’ said Martin, ‘are endings really so very important? Sterne did quite well without one; and often an unfinished picture is all the more interesting for the bare canvas. I remember Bourville’s definition of a novel as a work in which life flows in abundance, swirling without a pause: or as you might say without an end, an organized end. And there is at least one Mozart quartet that stops without the slightest ceremony: most satisfying when you get used to it.’
    Stephen said, ‘There is another Frenchman whose name escapes me but who is even more to the point: La bêtise c’est de vouloir conclure. The conventional ending, with virtue rewarded and loose ends tied up is often sadly chilling; and its platitude and falsity tend to infect what has gone before, however excellent. Many books would be far better without their last chapter: or at least with no more than a brief, cool, unemotional statement of the outcome.’