Frederick Marryat

“ To digress no more. Although I was far from being even commonly virtuous, which is about tantamount to absolute wickedness, I was no longer the thoughtless mortal I had ever been since I left school. The society of Emily, and her image graven on my heart; the close confinement to the brig, and the narrow escape from death in the second attempt to save the poor sailor's life, had altogether contributed their share to a kind of temporary reformation, if not to a disgust to the coarser descriptions of vice. ”

“ The confusion of Babel did not surpass the present gabble of a West India market. The loud and everlasting chatter of the black women, old and young (for black ladies can talk as well as white ones) ; the screams of children, parrots, and monkeys; black boys and girls, clad à la Venus, white teeth, red lips, black skins, and elephant legs, formed altogether a scene well worth looking at ”

“ Where the union between the head and shoulders may be dissolved in a moment by the sword of a tyrant, life is not so valued, and death loses its terrors; hence the apathy and indifference with which men view their executioners in that state of society. ”

“ Scandal is a goddess who reigns paramount, not only in Great Britain, but also in all his Majesty's plantations; and her votaries very soon selected me as the target of their archery. My pretty Carlotta became jealous; she taxed me with inconstancy. I denied the charge; and as a proof of my innocence, she obtained from me a promise that I should go no more to the house of her rival ”

“ At length, the declining sun warned us that it was time to take our departure from the cave, when, at no great distance from us, we saw the back, or dorsal fin of a monstrous shark above the surface of the water, and his whole length visible beneath it. ”

“ I soon regained my strength, and was able to sit at the table, where I found thirty-five young officers, living for the day, careless of the morrow; and, beyond that never bestowing a thought. It is a singular fact, that where life is most precarious, men are most indifferent about its preservation; and, where death is constantly before our eyes, as in this country, eternity is seldom in our thoughts: but so it is ”

“ The beauty and coolness of the morning, the lovely sky, and the cheerfulness of the slaves, whom our morbid philanthropists wish to render happy, by making discontented, would altogether amply repay the trouble and expense of a voyage, to those who have leisure or money enough to enable them to visit the tropical islands. ”

“ One of these young ladies found sufficient allurement in my personal charms to surrender at discretion, and we lived in that sort of familiar intercourse which, in the West Indies, is looked upon as a matter of necessity between the parties, and of indifference by every one else. I lived on in this Epicurean style for some months; until, most unfortunately, my chère amie found a rival in the daughter of an officer, high in rank, on the island. ”

“ These ladies are too proud of the European blood in their veins to form an alliance with any male who has a suspicion of black in his genealogical table; consequently they seldom are married unless from interested motives, when, having acquired large property by will, they are sought in wedlock by the white settlers. ”

“ So circumstanced, these girls prefer an intercourse with the object of their choice to a legal marriage with a person of inferior birth; and, having once made their selection, an act of infidelity is of rare occurrence among them. Their affection and constancy will stand the test of time and of long separation ”

“ The delightful, and, indeed, indispensable amusement of bathing, is particularly dangerous in these countries. In the shallows you are liable to be struck by the stingray, a species of skate, with a sharp barb about the middle of its tail ”