yarrr, ye scurvy boy-king, halt ye whinin'

The men near Richard were grinning, but he did not know the common language of galleys, and so missed the cause of it. He could tell the orders, however, from the pitch of his brother's voice and watched, holding hard to the rail as lines of men came and went, in a rush of bare feet. Above his head, soles dangling, they were doing something to the brails on a yardarm. The sea hissed and the coast, grey in the drizzle, began, quickening, to unroll towards them.

The ship was trim in an hour, and then there was nothing to do. Richard said, "Chancellor. I had forgotten the voyage from Russia."

"Had you?" Lymond said. He had come in for food, his skin with colour in it, and his hair blowing and damp. "Oh, yes. Russia, and all the Levantine seas and Malta. And of course, my years at the oar."

"You prefer the sea to the land?" Richard said. The possibility had never struck him.

"Sometimes," Lymond said. He had eaten, but with no obvious appetite. "I don't like to see things done badly on either. At the moment, I am tired of journeys. It is time I arrived somewhere."

from Checkmate by Dorothy Dunnett