"Master Thady Boy Ballagh, ollave, poet, professor, the fifteenth and the nippiest, climbed straight to the yardarm, made his way to the peak, and sixty feet up over a listing deck, knife in hand, probed the lashings."
Silent in the Boat, p. 10

"[M]ust behave to the King and and his Court...as if she had come merely to visit her child...and as if she would not have smashed the gilded bubble of dance and laughter with a blow, so that these damned lackadaisical, self-important, rich, preening men would be hurled by circumstance round the conference table, where she would have them, to discuss with all the gifts in their power, the future policies of France and Scotland."
Rouen: Fine, Scientific Works Without Warning, pp. 44-45

"On the arch over the bridge, something moved. Plump, nimble, fluttering black, light as leaf on lind, a man dropped from...