(no subject)
Well, I tried to come up with something new for the Boat Challenge, but to no avail. So, given that the option to "repost vintage creative endeavours" was available, I blew the dust off this one, originally posted in 2010 for the letter S in lokei's Horatio Hornblower Alphabet Soup ficathon. The boat in question is a steam tug, as it appears in a scene from Admiral Hornblower.
TITLE: Steam and Sterling
AUTHOR: Idler
CHARACTERS: Hornblower
RATING: G, Gen
DISCLAIMER: Not mine, not for profit
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Book canon, spoilers from Lord Hornblower forward. Obsessive book canonistas might find a second theme embedded within the first, perhaps making it more appropriate than it first seems for the day.
Steam and Sterling
Admiral Lord Hornblower stood on the deck of Crab, studying the steam tug as though forseeing the future. He felt a queer twinge, almost of conscience, as he watched her. To be no more at the mercies of wind and weather: it seemed a miracle, opening oceans of possibility to his fertile imagination...and yet....
And yet, this lumbering beast belching sparks and ash heralded the death of the superb seaman, the capable sailor who by virtue of his strong arm might conquer tide and tempest. She fortold a world where iron ships would supplant the iron constitution of men, a world where sterling good qualities would tarnish, leaving rust to triumph.
It was a world in which the ridiculous pleasure of sails well set, of a ship running free before the wind would vanish, consumed by fire and a column of smoke. The tug spat her black cinders upon the deck, incongruous upon the pristine whiteness; once a flogging offence, yet now, a harbinger of things to come.
He felt, somehow, bereft.
"It is not right, my lord."
Hornblower regarded Crab's first lieutenant quizzically.
"It is not right," Harcourt stubbornly repeated. "To give her such a name... Temeraire, by God."
"Ha--h'm", Hornblower said, vaguely. "I had not noticed."
*********
Light troubles speak; the weighty are struck dumb. Seneca
TITLE: Steam and Sterling
AUTHOR: Idler
CHARACTERS: Hornblower
RATING: G, Gen
DISCLAIMER: Not mine, not for profit
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Book canon, spoilers from Lord Hornblower forward. Obsessive book canonistas might find a second theme embedded within the first, perhaps making it more appropriate than it first seems for the day.
Steam and Sterling
Admiral Lord Hornblower stood on the deck of Crab, studying the steam tug as though forseeing the future. He felt a queer twinge, almost of conscience, as he watched her. To be no more at the mercies of wind and weather: it seemed a miracle, opening oceans of possibility to his fertile imagination...and yet....
And yet, this lumbering beast belching sparks and ash heralded the death of the superb seaman, the capable sailor who by virtue of his strong arm might conquer tide and tempest. She fortold a world where iron ships would supplant the iron constitution of men, a world where sterling good qualities would tarnish, leaving rust to triumph.
It was a world in which the ridiculous pleasure of sails well set, of a ship running free before the wind would vanish, consumed by fire and a column of smoke. The tug spat her black cinders upon the deck, incongruous upon the pristine whiteness; once a flogging offence, yet now, a harbinger of things to come.
He felt, somehow, bereft.
"It is not right, my lord."
Hornblower regarded Crab's first lieutenant quizzically.
"It is not right," Harcourt stubbornly repeated. "To give her such a name... Temeraire, by God."
"Ha--h'm", Hornblower said, vaguely. "I had not noticed."
*********
Light troubles speak; the weighty are struck dumb. Seneca