*"Are you indeed?" Jack said. "Are you sure you wouldn't rather be a sailor's wife?"

"Like your father," Killick said, sotto voce, then dropped his bucket of potato peels as a distraction.*

:D That last line just makes this whole fic, I swear. I'm always so wary of writing in the Master and Commander fandom because the originals have such a distinctive voice, but your prose seems just effortless.