Quotation from: A Set of Six

Written by: Joseph Conrad

"Dear old dad! He was a wonderful father. What would you have done? The
mere notion of going back (and as an officer, too), to be worried and
bothered, and kept on the jump night and day by that brute, made me feel
sick. But she wasn't a ship you could afford to fight shy of. Besides,
the most genuine excuse could not be given without mortally offending
Apse & Sons. The firm, and I believe the whole family down to the old
unmarried aunts in Lancashire, had grown desperately touchy about that
accursed ship's character. This was the case for answering 'Ready now'
from your very death-bed if you wished to die in their good graces. And
that's precisely what I did answer--by wire, to have it over and done
with at once.