Herman Melville
Billy Budd Sailor
Dedicated to JACK CHASE
Englishman
Wherever That Great Heart May Now Be
Here on Earth or Harboured in Paradise
Captain of the MainTop
In the Year 1843
In the US Frigate
»United States«
Preface
The year 1797 the year of this narrative belongs to a period which as every
thinker now feels involved a crisis for Christendom not exceeded in its
undetermined momentousness at the time by any other era whereof there is record
The opening proposition made by the Spirit of that Age involved a rectification
of the Old Worlds hereditary wrongs In France to some extent this was
bloodily effected But what then Straightway the Revolution itself became a
wrongdoer one more oppressive than the kings Under Napoleon it enthroned
upstart kings and initiated that prolonged agony of continual war whose final
throe was Waterloo During those years not the wisest could have foreseen that
the outcome of all would be what to some thinkers apparently it has since turned
out to be a political advance along nearly the whole line for Europeans
Now as elsewhere hinted it was something caught from the Revolutionary
Spirit that at Spithead emboldened the manofwars men to rise against real
abuses longstanding ones and afterwards at the Nore to make inordinate and
aggressive demands successful resistance to which was confirmed only when the
ringleaders were hung for an admonitory spectacle to the anchored fleet Yet in
a way analogous to the operation of the Revolution at large the Great Mutiny
though by Englishmen naturally deemed monstrous at the time doubtless gave the
first latent prompting to most important reforms in the British Navy
I
An inside Narrative
In the time before steamships or then more frequently than now a stroller
along the docks of any considerable seaport would occasionally have his
attention arrested by a group of bronzed marines manofwars men or merchant
sailors in holiday attire ashore on liberty In certain instances they would
flank or like a bodyguard quite surround some superior figure of their own
class moving along with them like Aldebaran among the lesser lights of his
constellation That signal object was the Handsome Sailor of the less prosaic
time alike of the military and merchant navies With no perceptible trace of the
vainglorious about him rather with the offhand unaffectedness of natural
regality he seemed to accept the spontaneous homage of his shipmates A
somewhat remarkable instance recurs to me In Liverpool now half a century ago
I saw under the shadow of the great dingy streetwall of Princes Dock an
obstruction long since removed a common sailor so intensely black that he must
needs have been a native African of the unadulterate blood of Ham A symmetric
figure much above the average height The two ends of a gay silk handkerchief
thrown loose about the neck danced upon the displayed ebony of his chest in his
ears were big hoops of gold and a Scotch Highland bonnet with a tartan band set
off his shapely head
It was a hot noon in July and his face lustrous with perspiration beamed
with barbaric goodhumour In jovial sallies right and left his white teeth
flashing into view he rollicked along the centre of a company of his
shipmates These were made up of such an assortment of tribes and complexions as
would have well fitted them to be marched up by Anacharsis Cloots before the bar
of the first French Assembly as Representatives of the Human Race At each
spontaneous tribute rendered by the wayfarers to this black pagod of a fellow
the tribute of a pause and stare and less frequent an exclamation the motley
retinue showed that they took that sort of pride in the evoker of it which the
Assyrian priests doubtless showed for their grand sculptured Bull when the
faithful prostrated themselves To return
If in some cases a bit of a nautical Murat in setting forth his person
ashore the Handsome Sailor of the period in question evinced nothing of the
dandified BillybeDam an amusing character all but extinct now but
occasionally to be encountered and in a form yet more amusing than the
original at the tiller of the boats on the tempestuous Erie Canal or more
likely vapouring in the groggeries along the towpath Invariably a proficient
in his perilous calling he was also more or less of a mighty boxer or wrestler
It was strength and beauty Tales of his prowess were recited Ashore he was the
champion afloat the spokesman on every suitable occasion always foremost
Closereefing topsails in a gale there he was astride the weather
yardarmend foot in stirrup both hands tugging at the earring as at a
bridle in very much the attitude of young Alexander curbing the fiery
Bucephalus A superb figure tossed up as by the horns of Taurus against the
thunderous sky cheerily ballooning to the strenuous file along the spar
The moral nature was seldom out of keeping with the physical make Indeed
except as toned by the former, the comeliness and power always attractive in
masculine conjunction hardly could have drawn the sort of homage the Handsome
Sailor in some examples received from his less gifted associates
Such a cynosure at least in aspect and something such too in nature,
though with important variations made apparent as the story proceeds was
welkineyed Billy Budd or Baby Budd as more familiarly under circumstances
hereafter to be given he at last came to be called aged twentyone a
foretopman of the fleet toward the close of the last decade of the eighteenth
century It was not very long prior to the time of the narration that follows
that he had entered the Kings Service having been impressed on the Narrow Seas
from a homewardbound English merchantman into a seventyfour outwardbound
HMS Indomitable which ship as was not unusual in those hurried days had
been obliged to put to sea short of her proper complement of men Plump upon
Billy at first sight in the gangway the boardingofficer Lieutenant Ratcliffe
pounced even before the merchantmans crew formally was mustered on the
quarterdeck for his deliberate inspection And him only he selected For
whether it was because the other men when ranged before him showed to ill
advantage after Billy or whether he had some scruples in view of the
merchantman being rather shorthanded however it might be the officer
contented himself with his first spontaneous choice To the surprise of the
ships company though much to the Lieutenants satisfaction Billy made no
demur But indeed any demur would have been as idle as the protest of a
goldfinch popped into a cage
Noting this uncomplaining acquiescence all but cheerful one might say the
shipmates turned a surprised glance of silent reproach at the sailor The
shipmaster was one of those worthy mortals found in every vocation even the
humbler ones the sort of person whom everybody agrees in calling a respectable
man And nor so strange to report as it may appear to be though a ploughman
of the troubled waters lifelong contending with the intractable elements
there was nothing this honest soul at heart loved better than simple peace and
quiet For the rest he was fifty or thereabouts a little inclined to
corpulence a prepossessing face unwhiskered and of an agreeable colour a
rather full face humanely intelligent in expression On a fair day with a fair
wind and all going well a certain musical chime in his voice seemed to be the
veritable unobstructed outcome of the innermost man He had much prudence much
conscientiousness and there were occasions when these virtues were the cause of
overmuch disquietude in him On a passage so long as his craft was in any
proximity to land no sleep for Captain Graveling He took to heart those
serious responsibilities not so heavily borne by some shipmasters
Now while Billy Budd was down in the forecastle getting his kit together
the Indomitables lieutenant burly and bluff nowise disconcerted by Captain
Gravelings omitting to proffer the customary hospitalities on an occasion so
unwelcome to him an omission simply caused by preoccupation of thought
unceremoniously invited himself into the cabin and also to a flask from the
spirit locker a receptacle which his experienced eye instantly discovered In
fact he was one of those seadogs in whom all the hardship and peril of naval
life in the great prolonged wars of his time never impaired the natural instinct
for sensuous enjoyment His duty he always faithfully did but duty is sometimes
a dry obligation and he was for irrigating its aridity whensoever possible with
a fertilising decoction of strong waters For the cabins proprietor there was
nothing left but to play the part of the enforced host with whatever grace and
alacrity were practicable As necessary adjuncts to the flask he silently
placed tumbler and waterjug before the irrepressible guest But excusing
himself from partaking just then dismally watched the unembarrassed officer
deliberately diluting his grog a little then tossing it off in three swallows
pushing the empty tumbler away yet not so far as to be beyond easy reach at
the same time settling himself in his seat and smacking his lips with high
satisfaction looking straight at the host
These proceedings over the Master broke the silence and there lurked a
rueful reproach in the tone of his voice »Lieutenant you are going to take my
best man from me the jewel of em«
»Yes I know« rejoined the other immediately drawing back the tumbler
preliminary to a replenishing »yes I know Sorry«
»Beg pardon but you dont understand Lieutenant See here now Before I
shipped that young fellow my forecastle was a ratpit of quarrels It was black
times I tell you aboard the Rights here I was worried to that degree my pipe
had no comfort for me But Billy came and it was like a Catholic priest
striking peace in an Irish shindy Not that he preached to them or said or did
anything in particular but a virtue went out of him sugaring the sour ones
They took to him like hornets to treacle all but the bluffer of the gang the
big shaggy chap with the firered whiskers He indeed out of envy perhaps of
the newcomer and thinking such a sweet and pleasant fellow as he mockingly
designated him to the others could hardly have the spirit of a gamecock must
needs bestir himself in trying to get up an ugly row with him Billy forbore
with him and reassured with him in a pleasant way he is something like
myself Lieutenant to whom aught like a quarrel is hateful but nothing
served So in the second dogwatch one day the Red Whiskers in presence of the
others under pretence of showing Billy just whence a sirloin steak was cut
for the fellow had once been a butcher insultingly gave him a dig under the
ribs Quick as lightning Billy let fly his arm I dare say he never meant to do
quite as much as he did but anyhow he gave the burly fool a terrible drubbing
It took about half a minute I should think And Lord bless you the lubber was
astonished at the celerity And will you believe it Lieutenant the Red
Whiskers now really loves Billy loves him or is the biggest hypocrite that
ever I heard of But they all love him Some of em do his washing darn old
trowsers for him the carpenter is at odd times making a pretty little chest of
drawers for him Anybody will do anything for Billy Budd and its the happy
family here Now Lieutenant if that young fellow goes I know how it will be
aboard the Rights Not again very soon shall I coming up from dinner lean over
the capstan smoking a quiet pipe no not very soon again I think Ay
Lieutenant you are going to take away the jewel of em you are going to take
away my peacemaker« And with that the good soul had really some ado in checking
a rising sob
»Well« said the Lieutenant who had listened with amused interest to all
this and now waxing merry with his tipple »well blessed are the peacemakers
especially the fighting peacemakers And such are the seventyfour beauties
some of which you see poking their noses out of the portholes of yonder warship
lyingto for me« pointing through the cabin windows at the Indomitable »But
courage dont look so downhearted man Why I pledge you in advance the royal
approbation Rest assured that His Majesty will be delighted to know that in a
time when his hardtack is not sought for by sailors with such avidity as should
be a time also when some shipmasters privily resent the borrowing from them of
a tar or two for the service His Majesty I say will be delighted to learn
that one shipmaster at least cheerfully surrenders to the King the flower of his
flock a sailor who with equal loyalty makes no dissent But wheres my Beauty
Ah« looking through the cabins open door »here he comes and by Jove
lugging along his chest Apollo with his portmanteau My man« stepping out to
him »you cant take that big box aboard a warship The boxes there are mostly
shotboxes Put your duds in a bag lad Boot and saddle for the cavalryman bag
and hammock for the manofwars man«
The transfer from chest to bag was made And after seeing his man into the
cutter and then following him down the Lieutenant pushed off from the
RightsofMan That was the merchant ships name though by her master and crew
abbreviated in sailor fashion into the Rights The hardheaded Dundee owner was
a staunch admirer of Thomas Paine whose book in rejoinder to Burkes
arraignment of the French Revolution had then been published for some time and
had gone everywhere In christening his vessel after the title of Paines
volume the man of Dundee was something like his contemporary shipowner Stephen
Girard of Philadelphia whose sympathies alike with his native land and its
liberal philosophies he evinced by naming his ships after Voltaire Diderot and
so forth
But now when the boat swept under the merchantmans stern and officer and
oarsmen were noting some bitterly and others with a grin the name emblazoned
there just then it was that the new recruit jumped up from the bow where the
coxswain had directed him to sit and waving his hat to his silent shipmates
sorrowfully looking over at him from the taffrail bade the lads a genial
goodbye Then making a salutation as to the ship herself »And goodbye to you
too old RightsofMan«
»Down sir« roared the Lieutenant instantly assuming all the rigour of his
rank though with difficulty repressing a smile
To be sure Billys action was a terrible breach of naval decorum But in
that decorum he had never been instructed in consideration of which the
Lieutenant would hardly have been so energetic in reproof but for the concluding
farewell to the ship This he rather took as meant to convey a covert sally on
the new recruits part a sly slur at impressment in general and that of
himself in especial And yet more likely if satire it was in effect it was
hardly so by intention for Billy though happily endowed with the gaiety of
high health youth and a free heart was yet by no means of a satirical turn
The will to it and the sinister dexterity were alike wanting To deal in double
meaning and insinuations of any sort was quite foreign to his nature
As to his enforced enlistment that he seemed to take pretty much as he was
wont to take any vicissitudes of weather Like the animals though no
philosopher he was without knowing it practically a fatalist And it may be
that he rather liked this adventurous turn in his affairs which promised an
opening into novel scenes and martial excitements
Aboard the Indomitable our merchantsailor was forthwith rated as an able
seaman and assigned to the starboard watch of the foretop He was soon at home
in the service not at all disliked for his unpretentious good looks and a sort
of genial happygolucky air No merrier man in his mess in marked contrast to
certain other individuals included like himself among the impressed portion of
the ships company for these when not actively employed were sometimes and
more particularly in the last dogwatch when the drawing near of twilight
induced revery apt to fall into a saddish mood which in some partook of
sullenness But they were not so young as our foretopman and no few of them
must have known a hearth of some sort others may have had wives and children
left too probably in uncertain circumstances and hardly any but must have
acknowledged kith and kin while for Billy as will shortly be seen his entire
family was practically invested in himself
II
Though our newmade foretopman was well received in the top and on the
gundecks hardly here was he that cynosure he had previously been among those
minor ships companies of the merchant marine with which companies only had he
hitherto consorted
He was young and despite his all but fully developed frame in aspect
looked even younger than he really was This was owing to a lingering adolescent
expression in the as yet smooth face all but feminine in purity of natural
complexion but where thanks to his seagoing the lily was quite suppressed
and the rose had some ado visibly to flush through the tan
To one essentially such a novice in the complexities of factitious life the
abrupt transition from his former and simpler sphere to the ampler and more
knowing world of a great warship this might well have abashed him had there
been any conceit or vanity in his composition Among her miscellaneous
multitude the Indomitable mustered several individuals who however inferior in
grade were of no common natural stamp sailors more signally susceptive of that
air which continuous martial discipline and repeated presence in battle can in
some degree impart even to the average man As the Handsome Sailor Billy Budds
position aboard the seventyfour was something analogous to that of a rustic
beauty transplanted from the provinces and brought into competition with the
highborn dames of the court But this change of circumstances he scarce noted
As little did he observe that something about him provoked an ambiguous smile in
one or two harder faces among the bluejackets Nor less unaware was he of the
peculiar favourable effect his person and demeanour had upon the more
intelligent gentlemen of the quarterdeck Nor could this well have been
otherwise Cast in a mould peculiar to the finest physical examples of those
Englishmen in whom the Saxon strain would seem not at all to partake of any
Norman or other admixture he showed in face that humane look of reposeful
goodnature which the Greek sculptor in some instances gave to his heroic strong
man Hercules But this again was subtly modified by another and pervasive
quality The ear small and shapely the arch of the foot the curve in mouth
and nostril even the indurated hand dyed to the orangetawny of the toucans
bill a hand telling of the halyards and tarbuckets but above all something
in the mobile expression and every chance attitude and movement something
suggestive of a mother eminently favoured by Love and the Graces all this
strangely indicated a lineage in direct contradiction to his lot The
mysteriousness here became less mysterious through a matter of fact elicited
when Billy at the capstan was being formally mustered into the service Asked by
the officer a small brisk little gentleman as it chanced among other
questions his place of birth he replied »Please sir I dont know«
»Dont know where you were born Who was your father«
»God knows sir«
Struck by the straightforward simplicity of these replies the officer next
asked »Do you know anything about your beginning«
»No sir But I have heard that I was found in a pretty silklined basket
hanging one morning from the knocker of a good mans door in Bristol«
»Found say you Well« throwing back his head and looking up and down the
new recruit »well it turns out to have been a pretty good find Hope theyll
find some more like you my man the fleet sadly needs them«
Yes Billy Budd was a foundling a presumable byblow and evidently no
ignoble one Noble descent was as evident in him as in a blood horse
For the rest with little or no sharpness of faculty or any trace of the
wisdom of the serpent nor yet quite a dove he possessed a certain degree of
intelligence along with the unconventional rectitude of a sound human creature
one to whom not yet has been proffered the questionable apple of knowledge. He
was illiterate he could not read but he could sing and like the illiterate
nightingale was sometimes the composer of his own song
Of self-consciousness he seemed to have little or none or about as much as
we may reasonably impute to a dog of St Bernards breed
Habitually being with the elements and knowing little more of the land than
as a beach or rather that portion of the terraqueous globe providentially set
apart for dancehouses doxies and tapsters in short what sailors call a
fiddlers green his simple nature remained unsophisticated by those moral
obliquities which are not in every case incomparable with that manufacturable
thing known as respectability But are sailor frequenters of fiddlers greens
without vices No but less often than with landsmen do their vices socalled
partake of crookedness of heart seeming less to proceed from viciousness than
exuberance of vitality after long restraint frank manifestations in accordance
with natural law By his original constitution aided by the cooperating
influences of his lot Billy in many respects was little more than a sort of
upright barbarian much such perhaps as Adam presumably might have been ere the
urbane Serpent wriggled himself into his company
And here be it submitted that apparently going to corroborate the doctrine
of mans fall a doctrine now popularly ignored it is observable that where
certain virtues pristine and unadulterate peculiarly characterise anybody in the
external uniform of civilisation they will upon scrutiny seem not to be derived
from custom or convention but rather to be out of keeping with these as if
indeed exceptionally transmitted from a period prior to Cains city and citified
man The character marked by such qualities has to an unvitiated taste an
untamperedwith flavour like that of berries while the man thoroughly
civilised even in a fair specimen of the breed has to the same moral palate a
questionable smack as of a compounded wine To any stray inheritor of these
primitive qualities found like Caspar Hauser wandering dazed in any Christian
capital of our time the poets famous invocation near two thousand years ago
of the good rustic out of his latitude in the Rome of the Cæsars still
appropriately holds
»Faithful in word and thought
What hast Thee Fabian to the city brought«
Though our Handsome Sailor had as much of masculine beauty as one can expect
anywhere to see nevertheless like the beautiful woman in one of Hawthornes
minor tales there was just one thing amiss in him No visible blemish indeed
as with the lady no but an occasional liability to a vocal defect Though in
the hour of elemental uproar or peril he was everything that a sailor should
be yet under sudden provocation of strong heartfeeling his voice otherwise
singularly musical as if expressive of the harmony within was apt to develop
an organic hesitancy in fact more or less of a stutter or even worse In
this particular Billy was a striking instance that the archinterpreter the
envious marplot of Eden still has more or less to do with every human
consignment to this planet of earth In every case one way or another he is
sure to slip in his little card as much as to remind us I too have a hand
here
The avowal of such an imperfection in the Handsome Sailor should be evidence
not alone that he is not presented as a conventional hero but also that the
story in which he is the main figure is no romance
III
At the time of Billy Budds arbitrary enlistment into the Indomitable that ship
was on her way to join the Mediterranean fleet No long time elapsed before the
junction was effected As one of that fleet the seventyfour participated in its
movements though at times on account of her superior sailing qualities in the
absence of frigates dispatched on separate duty as a scout and at times on
less temporary service But with all this the story has little concernment
restricted as it is to the inner life of one particular ship and the career of
an individual sailor
It was the summer of 1797 In the April of that year had occurred the
commotion at Spithead followed in May by a second and yet more serious outbreak
in the fleet at the Nore The latter is known and without exaggeration in the
epithet as the Great Mutiny It was indeed a demonstration more menacing to
England than the contemporary manifestos and conquering and proselytising armies
of the French Directory
To the Empire the Nore Mutiny was what a strike in the firebrigade would
be to London threatened by general arson In a crisis when the Kingdom might
well have anticipated the famous signal that some years later published along
the naval line of battle what it was that upon occasion England expected of
Englishmen that was the time when at the mastheads of the threedeckers and
seventyfours moored in her own roadstead a fleet the right arm of a Power
then all but the sole free conservative one of the Old World the bluejackets
to be numbered by thousands ran up with hurrahs the British colours with the
union and cross wiped out by that cancellation transmuting the flag of founded
law and freedom defined into the enemys red meteor of unbridled and unbounded
revolt Reasonable discontent growing out of practical grievances in the fleet
had been ignited into irrational combustion as by live cinders blown across the
Channel from France in flames
The event converted into irony for a time those spirited strains of Dibdin
as a songwriter no mean auxiliary to the English Government at this European
conjuncture strains celebrating among other things the patriotic devotion of
the British tar
»And as for my life tis the Kings«
Such an episode in the Islands grand naval story her naval historians naturally
abridge one of them GPR James candidly acknowledging that fain would he
pass it over did not impartiality forbid fastidiousness And yet his mention is
less a narration than a reference having to do hardly at all with details Nor
are these readily to be found in the libraries Like some other events in every
age befalling states everywhere including America the Great Mutiny was of such
character that national pride along with views of policy would fain shade it off
into the historical background Such events cannot be ignored but there is a
considerate way of historically treating them If a wellconstituted individual
refrains from blazoning aught amiss or calamitous in his family a nation in the
like circumstance may without reproach be equally discreet
Though after parleyings between Government and the ringleaders and
concessions by the former as to some glaring abuses the first uprising that
at Spithead with difficulty was put down or matters for a time pacified yet
at the Nore the unforeseen renewal of insurrection on a yet larger scale and
emphasised in the conferences that ensued by demands deemed by the authorities
not only inadmissible but aggressively insolent indicated if the red flag did
not sufficiently do so what was the spirit animating the men Final
suppression however there was but only made possible perhaps by the
unswerving loyalty of the marine corps and a voluntary resumption of loyalty
among influential sections of the crews To some extent the Nore Mutiny may be
regarded as analogous to the distempering irruption of contagious fever in a
frame constitutionally sound and which anon throws it off
At all events among these thousands of mutineers were some of the tars who
not so very long afterwards whether wholly prompted thereto by patriotism or
pugnacious instinct or by both helped to win a coronet for Nelson at the
Nile and the naval crown of crowns for him at Trafalgar To the mutineers those
battles and especially Trafalgar were a plenary absolution and a grand one
for that which goes to make up scenic naval display is heroic magnificence in
arms Those battles especially Trafalgar stand unmatched in human annals
IV
Concerning »The greatest sailor since the world began«
Tennyson
In this matter of writing resolve as one may to keep to the main road some
bypaths have an enticement not readily to be withstood Beckoned by the genius
of Nelson I am going to err into such a bypath If the reader will keep me
company I shall be glad At the least we can promise ourselves that pleasure
which is wickedly said to be in sinning for a literary sin the divergence will
be
Very likely it is no new remark that the inventions of our time have at last
brought about a change in sea warfare in degree corresponding to the revolution
in all warfare effected by the original introduction from China into Europe of
gunpowder The first European firearm a clumsy contrivance was as is well
known scouted by no few of the knights as a base implement good enough
peradventure for weavers too craven to stand up crossing steel with steel in
frank fight But as ashore knightly valour though shorn of its blazonry did
not cease with the knights neither on the seas though nowadays in encounters
there a certain kind of displayed gallantry be fallen out of date as hardly
applicable under changed circumstances did the nobler qualities of such naval
magnates as Don John of Austria Doria Van Tromp Jean Bart the long line of
British admirals and the American Decaturs of 1812 become obsolete with their
wooden walls
Nevertheless to anybody who can hold the Present at its worth without being
inappreciative of the Past it may be forgiven if to such an one the solitary
old hulk at Portsmouth Nelsons Victory seems to float there not alone as the
decaying monument of a fame incorruptible but also as a poetic reproach
softened by its picturesqueness to the Monitors and yet mightier hulls of the
European ironclads And this not altogether because such craft are unsightly
unavoidably lacking the symmetry and grand lines of the old battleships but
equally for other reasons
There are some perhaps who while not altogether inaccessible to that
poetic reproach just alluded to may yet on behalf of the new order be disposed
to parry it and this to the extent of iconoclasm if need be For example,
prompted by the sight of the star inserted in the Victorys deck designating the
spot where the Great Sailor fell these martial utilitarians may suggest
considerations implying that Nelsons ornate publication of his person in battle
was not only unnecessary but not military nay savoured of foolhardiness and
vanity They may add too that at Trafalgar it was in effect nothing less than
a challenge to death and death came and that but for his bravado the
victorious admiral might possibly have survived the battle and so instead of
having his sagacious dying injunctions overruled by his immediate successor in
command he himself when the contest was decided might have brought his
shattered fleet to anchor a proceeding which might have averted the deplorable
loss of life by shipwreck in the elemental tempest that followed the martial
one
Well should we set aside the more than disputable point whether for various
reasons it was possible to anchor the fleet then plausibly enough the
Bethamites of war may urge the above
But he might have been is but boggy ground to build on And certainly in
foresight as to the larger issue of an encounter and anxious preparations for
it buoying the deadly way and mapping it out as at Copenhagen few
commanders have been so painstakingly circumspect as this reckless declarer of
his person in fight
Personal prudence even when dictated by quite other than selfish
considerations is surely no special virtue in a military man while an
excessive love of glory exercising to the uttermost the honest heartfelt sense
of duty is the first If the name Wellington is not so much of a trumpet to the
blood as the simpler name Nelson the reason for this may perhaps be inferred
from the above Alfred in his funeral ode on the victor of Waterloo ventures not
to call him the greatest soldier of all time though in the same ode he invokes
Nelson as »the greatest sailor since the world began«
At Trafalgar Nelson on the brink of opening the fight sat down and wrote his
last brief will and testament If under the presentiment of the most magnificent
of all victories to be crowned by his own glorious death a sort of priestly
motive led him to dress his person in the jewelled vouchers of his own shining
deeds if thus to have adorned himself for the altar and the sacrifice were
indeed vainglory then affectation and fustian is each truly heroic line in the
great epics and dramas since in such lines the poet but embodies in verse those
exaltations of sentiment that a nature like Nelson the opportunity being given
vitalises into acts
V
The outbreak at the Nore was put down But not every grievance was redressed If
the contractors for example, were no longer permitted to ply some practices
peculiar to their tribe everywhere such as providing shoddy cloth rations not
sound or false in the measure not the less impressment for one thing went
on By custom sanctioned for centuries and judicially maintained by a Lord
Chancellor as late as Mansfield that mode of manning the fleet a mode now
fallen into a sort of abeyance but never formally renounced it was not
practicable to give up in those years Its abrogation would have crippled the
indispensable fleet one wholly under canvas no steampower its innumerable
sails and thousands of cannon everything in short worked by muscle alone a
fleet the more insatiate in demand for men because then multiplying its ships
of all grades against contingencies present and to come of the convulsed
Continent
Discontent foreran the Two Mutinies and more or less it lurkingly survived
them Hence it was not unreasonable to apprehend some return of trouble sporadic
or general One instance of such apprehensions In the same year with this
story Nelson then ViceAdmiral Sir Horatio being with the fleet on the
Spanish coast was directed by the admiral in command to shift his pennant from
the Captain to the Theseus and for this reason that the latter ship having
newly arrived in the station from home where it had taken part in the Great
Mutiny danger was apprehended from the temper of the men and it was thought
that an officer like Nelson was the one not indeed to terrorise the crew into
base subjection but to win them by force of his mere presence back to an
allegiance if not as enthusiastic as his own yet as true So it was that for
a time on more than one quarterdeck anxiety did exist At sea precautionary
vigilance was strained against relapse At short notice an engagement might come
on When it did the lieutenants assigned to batteries felt it incumbent on them
in some instances to stand with drawn swords behind the men working the guns
But on board the seventyfour in which Billy now swung his hammock very
little in the manner of the men and nothing obvious in the demeanour of the
officers would have suggested to an ordinary observer that the Great Mutiny was
a recent event In their general bearing and conduct the commissioned officers
of a warship naturally take their tone from the commander that is if he have
that ascendency of character that ought to be his
Captain the Honourable Edward Fairfax Vere to give his full title was a
bachelor of forty or thereabouts a sailor of distinction even in a time
prolific of renowned seamen Though allied to the higher nobility his
advancement had not been altogether owing to influences connected with that
circumstance He had seen much service been in various engagements always
acquitting himself as an officer mindful of the welfare of his men but never
tolerating an infraction of discipline thoroughly versed in the science of his
profession and intrepid to the verge of temerity though never injudiciously
so For his gallantry in the West Indian waters as flaglieutenant under Rodney
in that admirals crowning victory over De Grasse he was made a postcaptain
Ashore in the garb of a civilian scarce anyone would have taken him for a
sailor more especially that he never garnished unprofessional talk with
nautical terms and grave in his bearing evinced little appreciation of mere
humour It was not out of keeping with these traits that on a passage when
nothing demanded his paramount action he was the most undemonstrative of men
Any landsman observing this gentleman not conspicuous by his stature and
wearing no pronounced insignia emerging from his retreat to the open deck and
noting the silent deference of the officers retiring to leeward might have
taken him for the Kings guest a civilian aboard the Kings ship some highly
honourable discreet envoy on his way to an important post But in fact this
unobtrusiveness of demeanour may have proceeded from a certain unaffected
modesty of manhood sometimes accompanying a resolute nature a modesty evinced
at all times not calling for pronounced action and which shown in any rank of
life suggests a virtue aristocratic in kind
As with some others engaged in various departments of the worlds more
heroic activities Captain Vere though practical enough upon occasion would at
times betray a certain dreaminess of mood Standing alone on the weatherside of
the greater deck one hand holding by the rigging he would absently gaze off at
the black sea At the presentation to him then of some minor matter interrupting
the current of his thoughts he would show more or less irascibility but
instantly he would control it
In the Navy he was popularly known by the appellation Starry Vere How
such a designation happened to fall upon one who whatever his sturdy qualities
was without any brilliant ones was in this wise a favourite kinsman Lord
Denton a freehanded fellow had been the first to meet and congratulate him
upon his return to England from the West Indian cruise and but the day previous
turning over a copy of Andrew Marvells poems had lighted not for the first
time however upon the lines entitled »Appelton House« the name of one of the
seats of their common ancestor a hero in the German wars of the seventeenth
century in which poem occur the lines
»This tis to have been from the first
In a domestic heaven nursed
Under the discipline severe
Of Fairfax and the starry Vere«
And so upon embracing his cousin fresh from Rodneys victory wherein he had
played so gallant a part brimming over with just family pride in the sailor of
their house he exuberantly exclaimed »Give ye joy Ed give ye joy my starry
Vere« This got currency and the novel prefix serving in familiar parlance
readily to distinguish the Indomitables captain from another Vere his senior
a distant relative an officer of like rank in the Navy it remained permanently
attached to the surname
VI
In view of the part that the commander of the Indomitable plays in scenes
shortly to follow it may be well to fill out that sketch of him outlined in the
previous chapter Aside from his qualities as a seaofficer Captain Vere was an
exceptional character Unlike no few of Englands renowned sailors long and
arduous service with signal devotion to it had not resulted in absorbing and
salting the entire man He had a marked leaning toward everything intellectual
He loved books never going to sea without a newly replenished library compact
but of the best The isolated leisure in some cases so wearisome falling at
intervals to commanders even during a warcruise never was tedious to Captain
Vere With nothing of that literary taste which less heeds the thing conveyed
than the vehicle his bias was toward those books to which every serious mind of
superior order occupying any active post of authority in the world naturally
inclines books treating of actual men and events no matter of what era
history biography and unconventional writers who free from cant and
convention like Montaigne honestly and in the spirit of common sense
philosophise upon realities
In this love of reading he found confirmation of his own more reserved
thoughts confirmation which he had vainly sought in social converse so that
as touching most fundamental topics there had got to be established in him some
positive convictions which he felt would abide in him essentially unmodified so
long as his intelligent part remained unimpaired In view of the humbled period
in which his lot was cast this was well for him His settled convictions were
as a dyke against those invading waters of novel opinion social political and
otherwise which carried away as in a torrent no few minds in those days minds
by nature not inferior to his own While other members of that aristocracy to
which by birth he belonged were incensed at the innovators mainly because their
theories were inimical to the privileged classes Captain Vere disinterestedly
opposed them not alone because they seemed to him incapable of embodiment in
lasting institutions but at war with the world and the peace of mankind
With minds less stored than his and less earnest some officers of his rank
with whom at times he would necessarily consort found him lacking in the
companionable quality a dry and bookish gentleman as they deemed Upon any
chance withdrawal from their company one would be apt to say to another
something like this »Vere is a noble fellow Starry Vere Spite the Gazettes
Sir Horatio is at bottom scarce a better seaman or fighter But between you and
me now dont you think there is a queer streak of the pedantic running through
him Yes like the Kings yarn in a coil of navyrope«
Some apparent ground there was for this sort of confidential criticism
since not only did the captains discourse never fall into the jocosely
familiar but in illustrating any point touching the stirring personages and
events of the time he would cite some historical character or incident of
antiquity with the same easy air that he would cite from the moderns He seemed
unmindful of the circumstance that to his bluff company such allusions however
pertinent they might really be were altogether alien to men whose reading was
mainly confined to the journals But considerateness in such matters is not easy
in natures constituted like Captain Veres Their honesty prescribes to them
directness sometimes farreaching like that of a migratory fowl that in its
flight never heeds when it crosses a frontier
VII
The lieutenants and other commissioned gentlemen forming Captain Veres staff it
is not necessary here to particularise nor needs it to make mention of any of
the warrantofficers But among the petty officers was one who having much to
do with the story may as well be forthwith introduced This portrait I essay
but shall never hit it
This was John Claggart the masteratarms But that seatitle may to
landsmen seem somewhat equivocal Originally doubtless that petty officers
function was the instruction of the men in the use of arms sword or cutlass
But very long ago owing to the advance in gunnery making handtohand
encounters less frequent and giving to nitre and sulphur the preeminence over
steel that function ceased the masteratarms of a great warship becoming a
sort of chief of police charged among other matters with the duty of preserving
order on the populous lower gundecks
Claggart was a man of about fiveandthirty somewhat spare and tall yet of
no ill figure upon the whole His hand was too small and shapely to have been
accustomed to hard toil The face was a notable one the features all except
the chin cleanly cut as those on a Greek medallion yet the chin beardless as
Tecumsehs had something of the strange protuberant heaviness in its make that
recalled the prints of the Rev Dr Titus Oates the historical deponent with
the clerical drawl in the time of Charles II and the fraud of the alleged
Popish Plot It served Claggart in his office that his eye could cast a tutoring
glance His brow was of the sort phrenologically associated with more than
average intellect silken jet curls partly clustering over it making a foil to
the pallor below a pallor tinged with a faint shade of amber akin to the hue of
timetinted marbles of old
This complexion singularly contrasting with the red or deeply bronzed
visages of the sailors and in part the result of his official seclusion from
the sunlight though it was not exactly displeasing nevertheless seemed to hint
of something defective or abnormal in the constitution and blood But his
general aspect and manner were so suggestive of an education and career
incongruous with his naval function that when not actively engaged in it he
looked like a man of high quality social and moral who for reasons of his own
was keeping incognito Nothing was known of his former life It might be that he
was an Englishman and yet there lurked a bit of accent in his speech suggesting
that possibly he was not such by birth but through naturalisation in early
childhood Among certain grizzled seagossips of the gundecks and forecastle
went a rumour perdue that the masteratarms was a chevalier who had volunteered
into the Kings Navy by way of compounding for some mysterious swindle whereof
he had been arraigned at the Kings Bench The fact that nobody could
substantiate this report was of course nothing against its secret currency
Such a rumour once started on the gundecks in reference to almost anyone below
the rank of a commissioned officer would during the period assigned to this
narrative have seemed not altogether wanting in credibility to the tarry old
wiseacres of a manofwar crew And indeed a man of Claggarts accomplishments
without prior nautical experience entering the Navy at mature life as he did
and necessarily allotted at the start to the lowest grade in it a man too who
never made allusion to his previous life ashore these were circumstances which
in the dearth of exact knowledge as to his true antecedents opened to the
invidious a vague field for unfavourable surmise
But the sailors dogwatch gossip concerning him derived a vague
plausibility from the fact that now for some period the British Navy could so
little afford to be squeamish in the matter of keeping up the musterrolls that
not only were pressgangs notoriously abroad both afloat and ashore but there
was little or no secret about another matter namely that the London police
were at liberty to capture any ablebodied suspect and any questionable fellow
at large and summarily ship him to the dockyard or fleet Furthermore even
among voluntary enlistments there were instances where the motive thereto
partook neither of patriotic impulse nor yet of a random desire to experience a
bit of sealife and martial adventure Insolvent debtors of minor grade
together with the promiscuous lame ducks of morality found in the Navy a
convenient and secure refuge Secure because once enlisted aboard a Kings
ship they were as much in sanctuary as the transgressor of the Middle Ages
harbouring himself under the shadow of the altar Such sanctioned
irregularities which for obvious reasons the Government would hardly think to
parade at the time and which consequently and as affecting the least
influential class of mankind have all but dropped into oblivion lends colour
to something for the truth whereof I do not vouch and hence have some scruple
in stating something I remember having seen in print though the book I cannot
recall but the same thing was personally communicated to me now more than forty
years ago by an old pensioner in a cocked hat with whom I had a most
interesting talk on the terrace at Greenwich a Baltimore negro a Trafalgar
man It was to this effect In the case of a warship short of hands whose
speedy sailing was imperative the deficient quota in lack of any other way of
making it good would be eked out by drafts called direct from the jails For
reasons previously suggested it would not perhaps be easy at the present day
directly to prove or disprove the allegation But allowed as a verity how
significant would it be of Englands straits at the time confronted by these
wars which like a flight of harpies rose shrieking from the din and dust of the
fallen Bastille That era appears measurably clear to us who look back at it
and but read of it But to the grandfathers of us graybeards the thoughtful of
them the genius of it presented an aspect like that of Camoens »Spirit of the
Cape« an eclipsing menace mysterious and prodigious Not America was exempt
from apprehension At the height of Napoleons unexampled conquests there were
Americans who had fought at Bunker Hill who looked forward to the possibility
that the Atlantic might prove no barrier against the ultimate schemes of this
portentous upstart from the revolutionary chaos who seemed in act of fulfilling
judgment prefigured in the Apocalypse
But the less credence was to be given to the gundeck talk touching
Claggart seeing that no man holding his office in a manofwar can ever hope to
be popular with the crew Besides in derogatory comments upon one against whom
they have a grudge or for any reason or no reason mislike sailors are much
like landsmen they are apt to exaggerate or romance
About as much was really known to the Indomitables tars of the
masteratarms career before entering the service as an astronomer knows about
a comets travels prior to its first observable appearance in the sky The
verdict of the seaquidnuncs has been cited only by way of showing what sort of
moral impression the man made upon rude uncultivated natures whose conceptions
of human wickedness were necessarily of the narrowest limited to ideas of
vulgar rascality a thief among the swinging hammocks during a nightwatch or
the manbrokers and landsharks of the seaports
It was no gossip however but fact that though as before hinted Claggart
upon his entrance into the navy was as a novice assigned to the least
honourable section of a manofwars crew embracing the drudges he did not
long remain there
The superior capacity he immediately evinced his constitutional sobriety
ingratiating deference to superiors together with a peculiar ferreting genius
manifested on a singular occasion all this capped by a certain austere
patriotism abruptly advanced him to the position of masteratarms
Of this maritime chief of police the ships corporals so called were the
immediate subordinates and compliant ones and this as is to be noted in some
business departments ashore almost to a degree inconsistent with entire moral
volition His place put various converging wires of underground influence under
the chiefs control capable when astutely worked through his understrappers of
operating to the mysterious discomfort if nothing worse of any of the
seacommonalty
VIII
Life in the foretop well agreed with Billy Budd There when not actually
engaged on the yards yet higher aloft the topmen who as such had been picked
out for youth and activity constituted an aerial club lounging at ease against
the smaller stunsails rolled up into cushions spinning yarns like the lazy
gods and frequently amused with what was going on in the busy world of the
decks below No wonder then that a young fellow of Billys disposition was well
content in such society Giving no cause of offence to anybody he was always
alert at a call So in the merchant service it had been with him But now such
punctiliousness in duty was shown that his topmates would sometimes
goodnaturedly laugh at him for it This heightened alacrity had its cause
namely the impression made upon him by the first formal gangwaypunishment he
had ever witnessed which befell the day following his impressment It had been
incurred by a little fellow young a novice an afterguardsman absent from his
assigned post when the ship was being put about a dereliction resulting in a
rather serious hitch to that manoeuvre one demanding instantaneous promptitude
in letting go and making fast When Billy saw the culprits naked back under the
scourge gridironed with red welts and worse when he marked the dire expression
in the liberated mans face as with his woollen shirt flung over him by the
executioner he rushed forward from the spot to bury himself in the crowd Billy
was horrified He resolved that never through remissness would he make himself
liable to such a visitation or do or omit aught that might merit even verbal
reproof What then was his surprise and concern when ultimately he found himself
getting into petty trouble occasionally about such matters as the stowage of his
bag or something amiss in his hammock matters under the police oversight of
the ships corporals of the lower decks and which brought down on him a vague
threat from one of them
So heedful in all things as he was how could this be He could not
understand it and it more than vexed him When he spoke to his young topmates
about it they were either lightly incredulous or found something comical in
his unconcealed anxiety »Is it your bag Billy« said one »well sew yourself
up in it Billy boy and then youll be sure to know if anybody meddles with
it«
Now there was a veteran aboard who because his years began to disqualify
him for more active work had been recently assigned duty as mainmastman in his
watch looking to the gear belayed at the rail round about that great spar near
the deck At offtimes the foretopman had picked up some acquaintance with him
and now in his trouble it occurred to him that he might be the sort of person to
go to for wise counsel He was an old Dansker long anglicised in the service of
few words many wrinkles and some honourable scars His wizened face
timetinted and weatherstormed to the complexion of an antique parchment was
here and there peppered blue by the chance explosion of a guncartridge in
action He was an Agamemnon man some two years prior to the time of this story
having served under Nelson when but Sir Horatio in that ship immortal in naval
memory and which dismantled and in parts broken up to her bare ribs is seen a
grand skeleton in Haydons etching As one of a boardingparty from the
Agamemnon he had received a cut slantwise along one temple and cheek leaving a
long pale scar like a streak of dawns light falling athwart the dark visage It
was on account of that scar and the affair in which it was known that he had
received it as well as from his bluepeppered complexion that the Dansker went
among the Indomitables crew by the name of Boardherinthesmoke
Now the first time that his small weasel eyes happened to light on Billy
Budd a certain grim internal merriment set all his ancient wrinkles into antic
play Was it that his eccentric unsentimental old sapience primitive in its
kind saw or thought it saw something which in contrast with the warships
environment looked oddly incongruous in the Handsome Sailor But after slyly
studying him at intervals the old Merlins equivocal merriment was modified by
now For now when the twain would meet it would start in his face a quizzing
sort of look but it would be but momentary and sometimes replaced by an
expression of speculative query as to what might eventually befall a nature like
that dropped into a world not without some mantraps and against whose
subtleties simple courage lacking experience and address and without any touch
of defensive ugliness is of little avail and where such innocence as man is
capable of does yet in a moral emergency not always sharpen the faculties or
enlighten the will
However it was the Dansker in his ascetic way rather took to Billy Nor was
this only because of a certain philosophic interest in such a character There
was another cause While the old mans eccentricities sometimes bordering on
the ursine repelled the juniors Billy undeterred thereby would make
advances never passing the old Agamemnon man without a salutation marked by
that respect which is seldom lost on the aged however crabbed at times or
whatever their station in life There was a vein of dry humour or what not in
the mastman and whether in freak of patriarchal irony touching Billys youth
and athletic frame or for some other and more recondite reason from the first
in addressing him he always substituted Baby for Billy The Dansker in fact
being the originator of the name by which the foretopman eventually became known
aboard ship
Well then in his mysterious little difficulty going in quest of the
wrinkled one Billy found him off duty in a dogwatch ruminating by himself
seated on a shotbox of the upper gundeck now and then surveying with a
somewhat cynical regard certain of the more swaggering promenaders there Billy
recounted his trouble again wondering how it all happened The salt seer
attentively listened accompanying the foretopmans recitals with queer
twitchings of his wrinkles and problematical little sparkles of his small ferret
eyes Making an end of his story the foretopman asked »And now Dansker do
tell me what you think of it« The old man shoving up the front of his
tarpaulin and deliberately rubbing the long slant scar at the point where it
entered the thin hair laconically said »Baby Budd Jemmy Legs« meaning the
masteratarms »is down on you«
»Jemmy Legs« ejaculated Billy his welkin eyes expanding »what for Why
he calls me the sweet and pleasant young fellow they tell me«
»Does he so« grinned the grizzled one then said »Ay Baby lad a sweet
voice has Jemmy Legs«
»No not always But to me he has I seldom pass him but there comes a
pleasant word«
»And thats because hes down upon you Baby Budd«
Such reiteration along with the manner of it incomprehensible to a novice
disturbed Billy almost as much as the mystery for which he had sought
explanation Something less unpleasingly oracular he tried to extract but the
old seaChiron thinking perhaps that for the nonce he had sufficiently
instructed his young Achilles pursed his lips gathered all his wrinkles
together and would commit himself to nothing further
Years and these experiences which befall certain shrewder men subordinated
lifelong to the will of superiors all this had developed in the Dansker the
pithy guarded cynicism that was his leading characteristic
IX
The next day an incident served to confirm Billy Budd in his incredulity as to
the Danskers strange summingup of the case submitted
The ship at noon going large before the wind was rolling on her course and
he below at dinner and engaged in some sportful talk with the members of his
mess chanced in a sudden lurch to spill the entire contents of his souppan
upon the newscrubbed deck Claggart the masteratarms official ratan in
hand happened to be passing along the battery in a bay of which the mess was
lodged and the greasy liquid streamed just across his path Stepping over it
he was proceeding on his way without comment since the matter was nothing to
take notice of under the circumstances when he happened to observe who it was
that had done the spilling His countenance changed Pausing he was about to
ejaculate something hasty at the sailor but checked himself and pointing down
to the streaming soup playfully tapped him from behind with his ratan saying
in a low musical voice peculiar to him at times »Handsomely done my lad And
handsome is as handsome did it too« and with that passed on Not noted by
Billy as not coming within his view was the involuntary smile or rather
grimace that accompanied Claggarts equivocal words Aridly it drew down the
thin corners of his shapely mouth But everybody taking his remark as meant for
humorous and at which therefore as coming from a superior they were bound to
laugh with counterfeited glee acted accordingly and Billy tickled it may
be by the allusion to his being the Handsome Sailor merrily joined in then
addressing his messmates exclaimed »There now who says that Jemmy Legs is
down on me«
»And who said he was Beauty« demanded one Donald with some surprise
Whereat the foretopman looked a little foolish recalling that it was only one
person Boardherinthesmoke who had suggested what to him was the smoky idea
that this pleasant masteratarms was in any peculiar way hostile to him
Meantime that functionary resuming his path must have momentarily worn some
expression less guarded than that of the bitter smile and usurping the face
from the heart some distorting expression perhaps for a drummerboy heedlessly
frolicking along from the opposite direction and chancing to come into light
collision with his person was strangely disconcerted by his aspect Nor was the
impression lessened when the official impulsively giving him a sharp cut with
the ratan vehemently exclaimed »Look where you go«
X
What was the matter with the masteratarms And be the matter what it might
how could it have direct relation to Billy Budd with whom prior to the affair
of the spilled soup he had never come into any special contact official or
otherwise What indeed could the trouble have to do with one so little inclined
to give offence as the merchant ships peacemaker even him who in Claggarts
own phrase was »the sweet and pleasant young fellow« Yes why should Jemmy
Legs to borrow the Danskers expression be down on the Handsome Sailor
But at heart and not for nothing as the late chance encounter may indicate
to the discerning down on him secretly down on him he assuredly was
Now to invent something touching the more private career of Claggart
something involving Billy Budd of which something the latter should be wholly
ignorant some romantic incident implying that Claggarts knowledge of the young
bluejacket began at some period anterior to catching sight of him on board the
seventyfour all this not so difficult to do might avail in a way more or
less interesting to account for whatever enigma may appear to lurk in the case
But in fact there was nothing of the sort And yet the cause necessarily to
be assumed as the sole one assignable is in its very realism as much charged
with that prime element of Radcliffian romance the mysterious as any that the
ingenuity of the author of the Mysteries of Udolpho could devise For what can
more partake of the mysterious than an antipathy spontaneous and profound such
as is evoked in certain exceptional mortals by the mere aspect of some other
mortal however harmless he may be if not called forth by that very
harmlessness itself
Now there can exist no irritating juxtaposition of dissimilar personalities
comparable to that which is possible aboard a great warship fully manned and at
sea There every day among all ranks almost every man comes into more or less
of contact with almost every other man Wholly there to avoid even the sight of
an aggravating object one must needs give it Jonahs toss or jump overboard
himself Imagine how all this might eventually operate on some peculiar human
creature the direct reverse of a saint
But for the adequate comprehending of Claggart by a normal nature these
hints are insufficient To pass from a normal nature to him one must cross the
deadly space between and this is best done by indirection
Long ago an honest scholar my senior said to me in reference to one who
like himself is now no more a man so unimpeachably respectable that against him
nothing was ever openly said though among the few something was whispered
»Yes X is a nut not to be cracked by the tap of a ladys fan You are aware
that I am the adherent of no organised religion much less of any philosophy
built into a system Well for all that I think that to try and get into X
enter his labyrinth and get out again without a clue derived from some source
other than what is known as knowledge of the world that were hardly possible
at least for me«
»Why« said I »X however singular a study to some is yet human and
knowledge of the world assuredly implies the knowledge of human nature and in
most of its varieties«
»Yes but a superficial knowledge of it serving ordinary purposes But for
anything deeper I am not certain whether to know the world and to know human
nature be not two distinct branches of knowledge, which while they may coexist
in the same heart yet either may exist with little or nothing of the other
Nay in an average man of the world his constant rubbing with it blunts that
fine spiritual insight indispensable to the understanding of the essential in
certain exceptional characters whether evil ones or good In a matter of some
importance I have seen a girl wind an old lawyer about her little finger Nor
was it the dotage of senile love Nothing of the sort But he knew law better
than he knew the girls heart Coke and Blackstone hardly shed so much light
into obscure spiritual places as the Hebrew prophets And who were they Mostly
recluses«
At the time my inexperience was such that I did not quite see the drift of
all this It may be that I see it now And indeed if that lexicon which is
based on Holy Writ were any longer popular one might with less difficulty
define and denominate certain phenomenal men As it is one must turn to some
authority not liable to the charge of being tinctured with the Biblical element
In a list of definitions included in the authentic translation of Plato a
list attributed to him occurs this Natural Depravity a depravity according to
nature A definition which though savouring of Calvinism by no means involves
Calvins dogma as to total mankind Evidently its intent makes it applicable but
to individuals Not many are the examples of this depravity which the gallows
and jail supply At any rate for notable instances since these have no
vulgar alloy of the brute in them but invariably are dominated by
intellectuality one must go elsewhere Civilisation especially if of the
austerer sort is auspicious to it It folds itself in the mantle of
respectability It has its certain negative virtues serving as silent
auxiliaries It is not going too far to say that it is without vices or small
sins There is a phenomenal pride in it that excludes them from anything never
mercenary or avaricious In short the depravity here meant partakes nothing of
the sordid or sensual It is serious but free from acerbity Though no
flatterer of mankind it never speaks ill of it
But the thing which in eminent instances signalises so exceptional a nature
is this though the mans even temper and discreet bearing would seem to
intimate a mind peculiarly subject to the law of reason, not the less in his
souls recesses he would seem to riot in complete exemption from that law
having apparently little to do with reason further than to employ it as an
ambidexter implement for effecting the irrational That is to say toward the
accomplishment of an aim which in wantonness of malignity would seem to partake
of the insane he will direct a cool judgment sagacious and sound
These men are true madmen and of the most dangerous sort for their lunacy
is not continuous but occasional evoked by some special object it is
secretive and selfcontained so that when most active it is to the average mind
not distinguished from sanity and for the reason above suggested that whatever
its aim may be and the aim is never disclosed the method and the outward
proceeding is always perfectly rational
Now something such was Claggart in whom was the mania of an evil nature
not engendered by vicious training or corrupting books or licentious living but
born with him and innate in short a depravity according to nature
Can it be this phenomenon disowned or not acknowledged that in some
criminal cases puzzles the courts For this cause have our juries at times not
only to endure the prolonged contentions of lawyers with their fees but also
the yet more perplexing strife of the medical experts with theirs But why leave
it to them Why not subpoena as well the clerical proficients Their vocation
bringing them into peculiar contact with so many human beings and sometimes in
their least guarded hour in interviews very much more confidential than those
of physician and patient this would seem to qualify them to know something
about those intricacies involved in the question of moral responsibility
whether in a given case say the crime proceeded from mania in the brain or
rabies of the heart As to any differences among themselves these clerical
proficients might develop on the stand these could hardly be greater than the
direct contradictions exchanged between the remunerated medical experts
Dark sayings are these some will say But why It is because they somewhat
savour of Holy Writ in its phrase mysteries of iniquity
The point of the story turning on the hidden nature of the masteratarms
has necessitated this chapter With an added hint or two in connection with the
accident of the mess the resumed narrative must be left to vindicate as it may
its own credibility
XI
Pale ire envy and despair
That Claggarts figure was not amiss and his face save the chin well moulded
has already been said Of these favourable points he seemed not insensible for
he was not only neat but careful in his dress But the form of Billy Budd was
heroic and if his face was without the intellectual look of the pallid
Claggarts not the less was it lit like his from within though from a
different source The bonfire in his heart made luminous the rosetan in his
cheek
In view of the marked contrast between the persons of the twain it is more
than probable that when the masteratarms in the scene last given applied to
the sailor the proverb »Handsome is as handsome does« he there let escape an
ironic inkling not caught by the young sailors who heard it as to what it was
that had first moved him against Billy namely his significant personal beauty
Now envy and antipathy passions irreconcilable in reason nevertheless in
fact may spring conjoined like Chang and Eng in one birth Is envy then such a
monster Well though many an arraigned mortal has in hopes of mitigated penalty
pleaded guilty to horrible actions did ever anybody seriously confess to envy
Something there is in it universally felt to be more shameful than even
felonious crime And not only does everybody disown it but the better sort are
inclined to incredulity when it is in earnest imputed to an intelligent man But
since its lodgment is in the heart not the brain no degree of intellect
supplies a guarantee against it But Claggarts was no vulgar form of the
passion Nor as directed toward Billy Budd did it partake of that streak of
apprehensive jealousy that marred Sauls visage perturbedly brooding on the
comely young David Claggarts envy struck deeper If askance he eyed the good
looks cheery health and frank enjoyment of young life in Billy Budd it was
because these happened to go along with a nature that as Claggart magnetically
felt had in its simplicity never willed malice or experienced the reactionary
bite of that serpent To him the spirit lodged within Billy and looking out
from his welkin eyes as from windows that ineffability which made the dimple in
his dyed cheek suppled his joints and danced in his yellow curls made him
preeminently the Handsome Sailor One person excepted the masteratarms was
perhaps the only man in the ship intellectually capable of adequately
appreciating the moral phenomenon presented in Billy Budd and the insight but
intensified his passion which assuming various secret forms within him at
times assumed that of cynic disdain disdain of innocence To be nothing more
than innocent Yet in an æsthetic way he saw the charm of it the courageous
freeandeasy temper of it and fain would have shared it but he despaired of
it
With no power to annul the elemental evil in himself though he could hide
it readily enough apprehending the good but powerless to be it what recourse
is left to a nature like Claggarts surcharged with energy as such natures
almost invariably are but to recoil upon itself, and, like the scorpion for
which the Creator alone is responsible act out to the end its allotted part
Passion and passion in its profoundest is not a thing demanding a palatial
stage whereon to play its part Down among the groundlings among the beggars
and rakers of the garbage profound passion is enacted And the circumstances
that provoke it however trivial or mean are no measure of its power In the
present instance the stage is a scrubbed gundeck and one of the external
provocations a manofwars mans spilled soup
Now when the masteratarms noticed whence came that greasy fluid streaming
before his feet he must have taken it to some extent wilfully perhaps not
for the mere accident it assuredly was but for the sly escape of a spontaneous
feeling on Billys part more or less answering to the antipathy on his own In
effect a foolish demonstration he must have thought and very harmless like the
futile kick of a heifer which yet were the heifer a shod stallion would not be
so harmless Even so was it that into the gall of envy Claggart infused the
vitriol of his contempt But the incident confirmed to him certain telltale
reports purveyed to his ear by Squeak one of his more cunning corporals a
grizzled little man so nicknamed by the sailors on account of his squeaky voice
and sharp visage ferreting about the dark corners of the lower decks after
interlopers satirically suggesting to them the idea of a rat in a cellar
Now his chiefs employing him as an implicit tool in laying little traps for
the worriment of the foretopman for it was from the masteratarms that the
petty persecutions heretofore adverted to had proceeded the corporal having
naturally enough concluded that his master could have no love for the sailor
made it his business faithful understrapper that he was to ferment the ill
blood by perverting to his chief certain innocent frolics of the goodnatured
foretopman besides inventing for his mouth sundry contumelious epithets he
claimed to have overheard him let fall The masteratarms never suspected the
veracity of these reports more especially as to the epithets for he well knew
how secretly unpopular may become a masteratarms at least a masteratarms
in those days zealous in his function and how the bluejackets shoot at him
in private their raillery and wit the nickname by which he goes among them
Jemmy Legs implying under the form of merriment their cherished disrespect and
dislike
In view of the greediness of hate for provocation it hardly needed a
purveyor to feed Claggarts passion An uncommon prudence is habitual with the
subtler depravity for it has everything to hide And in case of any merely
suspected injury its secretiveness voluntarily cuts it off from enlightenment
or disillusion and not unreluctantly action is taken upon surmise as upon
certainty And the retaliation is apt to be in monstrous disproportion to the
supposed offence for when in anybody was revenge in its exactions aught else
but an inordinate usurer But how with Claggarts conscience For though
consciences are unlike as foreheads every intelligence not excluding the
Scriptural devils who believe and tremble has one But Claggarts conscience
being but the lawyer to his will made ogres of trifles probably arguing that
the motive imputed to Billy in spilling the soup just when he did together with
the epithets alleged these if nothing more made a strong case against him
nay justified animosity into a sort of retributive righteousness The Pharisee
is the Guy Fawkes prowling in the hid chambers underlying some natures like
Claggarts And they can really form no conception of an unreciprocated malice
Probably the masteratarms clandestine persecution of Billy was started to
try the temper of the man but it had not developed any quality in him that
enmity could make official use of or ever pervert into even plausible
selfjustification so that the occurrence at the mess petty if it were was a
welcome one to that peculiar conscience assigned to be the private mentor of
Claggart and for the rest not improbably it put him upon new experiments
XII
Not many days after the last incident narrated something befell Billy Budd that
more gravelled him than aught that had previously occurred
It was a warm night for the latitude and the foretopman whose watch at
the time was properly below was dozing on the uppermost deck whither he had
ascended from his hot hammock one of hundreds suspended so closely wedged
together over a lower gundeck that there was little or no swing to them He lay
as in the shadow of a hillside stretched under the lee of the booms a piled
ridge of spare spars and among which the ships largest boat the launch was
stowed Alongside of three other slumberers from below he lay near one end of
the booms which approached from the foremast his station aloft on duty as a
foretopman being just over the deck station of the forecastleman entitling him
according to usage to make himself more or less at home in that neighbourhood
Presently he was stirred into semiconsciousness by somebody who must have
previously sounded the sleep of the others touching his shoulder and then as
the foretopman raised his head breathing into his ear in a quick whisper »Slip
into the lee forechains Billy there is something in the wind Dont speak
Quick I will meet you there« and disappeared
Now Billy like sundry other essentially goodnatured ones had some of the
weaknesses inseparable from essential goodnature and among these was a
reluctance almost an incapacity of plumply saying no to an abrupt proposition
not obviously absurd on the face of it nor obviously unfriendly nor
iniquitous And being of warm blood had not the phlegm to negate any proposition
by unresponsive inaction Like his sense of fear his apprehension as to aught
outside of the honest and natural was seldom very quick Besides upon the
present occasion the drouse from his sleep still hung upon him
However it was he mechanically rose and sleepily wondering what could be
in the wind betook himself to the designated place a narrow platform one of
six outside of the high bulwarks and screened by the great deadeyes and
multiple columned lanyards of the shrouds and backstays and in a great
warship of that time of dimensions commensurate to the ample hulls magnitude
a tarry balcony in short overhanging the sea and so secluded that one mariner
of the Indomitable a nonconformist old tar of a serious turn made it even in
daytime his private oratory
In this retired nook the stranger soon joined Billy Budd There was no moon
as yet a haze obscured the starlight He could not distinctly see the
strangers face Yet from something in the outline and carriage Billy took him
to be and correctly one of the afterguard
»Hist Billy« said the man in the same quick cautionary whisper as
before »you were impressed werent you Well so was I« and he paused as to
mark the effect But Billy not knowing exactly what to make of this said
nothing Then the other »We are not the only impressed ones Billy Theres a
gang of us Couldnt you help at a pinch«
»What do you mean« demanded Billy here shaking off his drouse
»Hist hist« the hurried whisper now growing husky »see here« and the man
held up two small objects faintly twinkling in the night light »see they are
yours Billy if youll only «
But Billy broke in and in his resentful eagerness to deliver himself his
vocal infirmity somewhat intruded »DDDamme I dont know what you are
ddriving at or what you mean but you had better gggo where you belong« For
the moment the fellow as confounded did not stir and Billy springing to his
feet said »If you ddont start Ill tttoss you back over the rrail«
There was no mistaking this and the mysterious emissary decamped disappearing
in the direction of the mainmast in the shadow of the booms
»Hallo whats the matter« here came growling from a forecastleman awakened
from his deckdoze by Billys raised voice And as the foretopman reappeared
and was recognised by him »Ah Beauty is it you Well something must have
been the matter for you stststuttered«
»Oh« rejoined Billy now mastering the impediment »I found an
afterguardsman in our part of the ship here and I bid him be off where he
belongs«
»And is that all you did about it foretopman« gruffly demanded another an
irascible old fellow of brickcoloured visage and hair and who was known to his
associate forecastlemen as Red Pepper »Such sneaks I should like to marry to
the gunners daughter« by that expression meaning that he would like to subject
them to disciplinary castigation over a gun
However Billys rendering of the matter satisfactorily accounted to these
inquirers for the brief commotion since of all the sections of a ships company
the forecastlemen veterans for the most part and bigoted in their
seaprejudices are the most jealous in resenting territorial encroachments
especially on the part of any of the afterguard of whom they have but a sorry
opinion chiefly landsmen never going aloft except to reef or furl the
mainsail and in no wise competent to handle a marlingspike or turn in a
deadeye say
XIII
This incident sorely puzzled Billy Budd It was an entirely new experience the
first time in his life that he had ever been personally approached in underhand
intriguing fashion Prior to this encounter he had known nothing of the
afterguardsman the two men being stationed wide apart one forward and aloft
during his watch the other on deck and aft
What could it mean And could they really be guineas those two glittering
objects the interloper had held up to his Billys eyes Where could the fellow
get guineas Why even buttons spare buttons are not so plentiful at sea The
more he turned the matter over the more he was nonplussed and made uneasy and
discomforted In his disgustful recoil from an overture which though he but ill
comprehended he instinctively knew must involve evil of some sort Billy Budd
was like a young horse fresh from the pasture suddenly inhaling a vile whiff
from some chemical factory and by repeated snortings tries to get it out of his
nostrils and lungs This frame of mind barred all desire of holding further
parley with the fellow even were it but for the purpose of gaining some
enlightenment as to his design in approaching him And yet he was not without
natural curiosity to see how such a visitor in the dark would look in broad day
He espied him the following afternoon in his first dogwatch below one of
the smokers on that forward part of the upper gundeck allotted to the pipe He
recognised him by his general cut and build more than by his round freckled
face and glassy eyes of pale blue veiled with lashes all but white And yet
Billy was a bit uncertain whether indeed it were he yonder chap about his own
age chatting and laughing in freehearted way leaning against a gun a genial
young fellow enough to look at and something of a rattlebrain to all
appearance Rather chubby too for a sailor even an afterguardsman In short
the last man in the world one would think to be overburthened with thoughts
especially those perilous thoughts that must needs belong to a conspirator in
any serious project or even to the underling of such a conspirator
Although Billy was not aware of it the fellow with a sidelong watchful
glance had perceived Billy first and then noting that Billy was looking at him
thereupon nodded a familiar sort of friendly recognition as to an old
acquaintance without interrupting the talk he was engaged in with the group of
smokers A day or two afterwards chancing in the evening promenade on a
gundeck to pass Billy he offered a flying word of goodfellowship as it were
which by its unexpectedness and equivocalness under the circumstances so
embarrassed Billy that he knew not how to respond to it and let it go
unnoticed
Billy was now left more at a loss than before The ineffectual speculations
into which he was led were so disturbingly alien to him that he did his best to
smother them It never entered his mind that here was a matter which from its
extreme questionableness it was his duty as a loyal bluejacket to report in
the proper quarter And probably had such a step been suggested to him he
would have been deterred from taking it by the thought one of
novicemagnanimity that it would savour overmuch of the dirty work of a
telltale He kept the thing to himself Yet upon one occasion he could not
forbear a little disburthening himself to the old Dansker tempted thereto
perhaps by the influence of a balmy night when the ship lay becalmed the twain
silent for the most part sitting together on deck their heads propped against
the bulwarks But it was only a partial and anonymous account that Billy gave
the unfounded scruples above referred to preventing full disclosure to anybody
Upon hearing Billys version the sage Dansker seemed to divine more than he was
told and after a little meditation during which his wrinkles were pursed as
into a point quite effacing for the time that quizzing expression his face
sometimes wore »Didnt I say so Baby Budd«
»Say what« demanded Billy
»Why Jemmy Legs is down on you«
»And what« rejoined Billy in amazement »has Jemmy Legs to do with that
cracked afterguardsman«
»Ho it was an afterguardsman then A catspaw a catspaw« And with
that exclamation which whether it had reference to a light puff of air just
then coming over the calm sea or subtler relation to the afterguardsman there
is no telling The old Merlin gave a twisting wrench with his black teeth at his
plug of tobacco vouchsafing no reply to Billys impetuous question For it was
his wont to relapse into grim silence when interrogated in sceptical sort as to
any of his sententious oracles not always very clear ones rather partaking of
that obscurity which invests most Delphic deliverances from any quarter
XIV
Long experience had very likely brought this old man to that bitter prudence
which never interferes in aught and never gives advice
Yet despite the Danskers pithy insistence as to the masteratarms being
at the bottom of these strange experiences of Billy on board the Indomitable
the young sailor was ready to ascribe them to almost anybody but the man who to
use Billys own expression »always had a pleasant word for him« This is to be
wondered at Yet not so much to be wondered at In certain matters some sailors
even in mature life remain unsophisticated enough But a young seafarer of the
disposition of our athletic foretopman is much of a childman And yet a
childs utter innocence is but its blank ignorance and the innocence more or
less wanes as intelligence waxes But in Billy Budd intelligence such as it
was had advanced while yet his simplemindedness remained for the most part
unaffected Experience is a teacher indeed yet did Billys years make his
experience small Besides he had none of that intuitive knowledge of the bad
which in natures not good or incompletely so foreruns experience, and therefore
may pertain as in some instances it too clearly does pertain even to youth
And what could Billy know of man except of man as a mere sailor And the
oldfashioned sailor the veritable manbeforethemast the sailor from boyhood
up he though indeed of the same species as a landsman is in some respects
singularly distinct from him The sailor is frankness the landsman is finesse
Life is not a game with the sailor demanding the long head no intricate game
of chess where few moves are made in straightforwardness but ends are attained
by indirection an oblique tedious barren game hardly worth that poor candle
burnt out in playing it
Yes as a class sailors are in character a juvenile race Even their
deviations are marked by juvenility And this more especially holding true with
the sailors of Billys time Then too certain things which apply to all
sailors do more pointedly operate here and there upon the junior one Every
sailor too is accustomed to obey orders without debating them his life afloat
is externally ruled for him he is not brought into that promiscuous commerce
with mankind where unobstructed free agency on equal terms equal
superficially at least soon teaches one that unless upon occasion he
exercises a distrust keen in proportion to the fairness of the appearance some
foul turn may be served him A ruled undemonstrative distrustfulness is so
habitual not with businessmen so much as with men who know their kind in less
shallow relations than business namely certain men of the world that they come
at last to employ it all but unconsciously and some of them would very likely
feel real surprise at being charged with it as one of their general
characteristics
XV
But after the little matter at the mess Billy Budd no more found himself in
strange trouble at times about his hammock or his clothesbag or what not
While as to that smile that occasionally sunned him and the pleasant passing
word these were if not more frequent yet if anything more pronounced than
before
But for all that there were certain other demonstrations now When
Claggarts unobserved glance happened to light on belted Billy rolling along the
upper gundeck in the leisure of the second dogwatch exchanging passing
broadsides of fun with other young promenaders in the crowd that glance would
follow the cheerful seaHyperion with a settled meditative and melancholy
expression his eyes strangely suffused with incipient feverish tears Then
would Claggart look like the man of sorrows Yes and sometimes the melancholy
expression would have in it a touch of soft yearning as if Claggart could even
have loved Billy but for fate and ban But this was an evanescence and quickly
repented of as it were by an immitigable look pinching and shrivelling the
visage into the momentary semblance of a wrinkled walnut But sometimes catching
sight in advance of the foretopman coming in his direction he would upon their
nearing step aside a little to let him pass dwelling upon Billy for the moment
with the glittering dental satire of a guise But upon any abrupt unforeseen
encounter a red light would flash forth from his eye like a spark from an anvil
in a dusk smithy That quick fierce light was a strange one darted from orbs
which in repose were of a colour nearest approaching a deeper violet the
softest of shades
Though some of these caprices of the pit could not but be observed by their
object yet were they beyond the construing of such a nature And the thews of
Billy were hardly comparable with that sort of sensitive spiritual organisation
which in some cases instinctively conveys to ignorant innocence an admonition of
the proximity of the malign He thought the masteratarms acted in a manner
rather queer at times That was all But the occasional frank air and pleasant
word went for what they purported to be the young sailor never having heard as
yet of the too fairspoken man
Had the foretopman been conscious of having done or said anything to provoke
the illwill of the official it would have been different with him and his
sight might have been pursed if not sharpened
So was it with him in yet another matter Two minor officers the armourer
and captain of the hold with whom he had never exchanged a word his position
on the ship not bringing him into contact with them these men now for the first
time began to cast upon Billy when they chanced to encounter him that peculiar
glance which evidences that the man from whom it comes has been some way
tampered with and to the prejudice of him upon whom the glance lights Never
did it occur to Billy as a thing to be noted or a thing suspicious though he
well knew the fact that the armourer and captain of the hold with the ships
yeoman apothecary and others of that grade were by naval usage messmates of
the masteratarms men with ears convenient to his confidential tongue
Our Handsome Sailors manly forwardness upon occasion and irresistible
goodnature indicating no mental superiority tending to excite an invidious
feeling bred general popularity and this goodwill on the part of most of his
shipmates made him the less to concern himself about such mute aspects toward
him as those whereto allusion has just been made
As to the afterguardsman though Billy for reasons already given necessarily
saw little of him yet when the two did happen to meet invariably came the
fellows offhand cheerful recognition sometimes accompanied by a passing
pleasant word or two Whatever that equivocal young persons original design may
really have been or the design of which he might have been the deputy certain
it was from his manner upon these occasions that he had wholly dropped it
It was as if his precocity of crookedness and every vulgar villain is
precocious had for once deceived him and the man he had sought to entrap as a
simpleton had through his very simplicity baffled him
But shrewd ones may opine that it was hardly possible for Billy to refrain
from going up to the afterguardsman and bluntly demanding to know his purpose in
the initial interview so abruptly closed in the forechains Shrewd ones may
also think it but natural in Billy to set about sounding some of the other
impressed men of the ship in order to discover what basis if any there was for
the emissarys obscure suggestions as to plotting disaffection aboard Yes the
shrewd may so think But something more or rather something else than mere
shrewdness is perhaps needful for the due understanding of such a character as
Billy Budds
As to Claggart the monomania in the man if that indeed it were as
involuntarily disclosed by starts in the manifestations detailed yet in general
covered over by his selfcontained and rational demeanour this like a
subterranean fire was eating its way deeper and deeper in him Something
decisive must come of it
XVI
After the mysterious interview in the forechains the one so abruptly ended
there by Billy nothing especially germane to the story occurred until the
events now about to be narrated
Elsewhere it has been said that owing to the lack of frigates of course
better sailers than lineofbattle ships in the English squadron up the Straits
at that period the Indomitable seventyfour was occasionally employed not only
as an available substitute for a scout but at times on detached service of more
important kind This was not alone because of her sailing qualities not common
in a ship of her rate but quite as much probably that the character of her
commander it was thought specially adapted him for any duty where under
unforeseen difficulties a prompt initiative might have to be taken in some
matter demanding knowledge and ability in addition to those qualities employed
in good seamanship It was on an expedition of the latter sort a somewhat
distant one and when the Indomitable was almost at her furthest remove from the
fleet that in the latter part of an afternoonwatch she unexpectedly came in
sight of a ship of the enemy It proved to be a frigate The latter perceiving
through the glass that the weight of men and metal would be heavily against her
invoking her light heels crowded sail to get away After a chase urged almost
against hope and lasting until about the middle of the first dogwatch she
signally succeeded in effecting her escape
Not long after the pursuit had been given up and ere the excitement
incident thereto had altogether waned away the masteratarms ascending from
his cavernous sphere made his appearance cap in hand by the mainmast
respectfully waiting the notice of Captain Vere then solitary walking the
weatherside of the quarterdeck doubtless somewhat chafed at the failure of the
pursuit The spot where Claggart stood was the place allotted to men of lesser
grades seeking some more particular interview either with the officer of the
deck or the captain himself But from the latter it was not often that a sailor
or petty officer of those days would seek a hearing only some exceptional cause
would according to established custom have warranted that
Presently just as the commander absorbed in his reflections was on the
point of turning aft in his promenade he became sensible of Claggarts
presence and saw the doffed cap held in deferential expectancy Here be it said
that Captain Veres personal knowledge of this petty officer had only begun at
the time of the ships last sailing from home Claggart then for the first in
transfer from a ship detained for repairs supplying on board the Indomitable
the place of a previous masteratarms disabled and ashore
No sooner did the commander observe who it was that now so deferentially
stood awaiting his notice than a peculiar expression came over his face It was
not unlike that which uncontrollably will flit across the countenance of one at
unawares encountering a person who though known to him indeed has hardly been
long enough known for thorough knowledge but something in whose aspect
nevertheless now for the first provokes a vaguely repellent distaste But coming
to a stand and resuming much of his wonted official manner save that a sort of
impatience lurked in the intonation of the opening word he said »Well what is
it masteratarms«
With the air of a subordinate grieved at the necessity of being a messenger
of illtidings and while conscientiously determined to be frank yet equally
resolved upon shunning overstatement Claggart at this invitation or rather
summons to disburthen spoke up What he said conveyed in the language of no
uneducated man was to the effect following if not altogether in these words
namely That during the chase and preparations for the possible encounter he had
seen enough to convince him that at least one sailor aboard was a dangerous
character in a ship mustering some who not only had taken a guilty part in the
late serious trouble but others also who like the man in question had entered
His Majestys service under another form than enlistment
At this point Captain Vere with some impatience interrupted him
»Be direct man say impressed men«
Claggart made a gesture of subservience and proceeded Quite lately he
Claggart had begun to suspect that some sort of movement prompted by the
sailor in question was covertly going on but he had not thought himself
warranted in reporting the suspicion so long as it remained indistinct But from
what he had that afternoon observed in the man referred to the suspicion of
something clandestine going on had advanced to a point less removed from
certainty He deeply felt he added the serious responsibility assumed in
making a report involving such possible consequences to the individual mainly
concerned besides tending to augment those natural anxieties which every naval
commander must feel in view of extraordinary outbreaks so recent as those which,
he sorrowfully said it it needed not to name
Now at the first broaching of the matter Captain Vere taken by surprise
could not wholly dissemble his disquietude but as Claggart went on the
former's aspect changed into restiveness under something in the testifiers
manner in giving his testimony However he refrained from interrupting him And
Claggart continuing concluded with this
»God forbid your honour that the Indomitables should be the experience of
the «
»Never mind that« here peremptorily broke in the superior his face
altering with anger instantly divining the ship that the other was about to
name one in which the Nore Mutiny had assumed a singularly tragical character
that for a time jeopardised the life of its commander Under the circumstances
he was indignant at the purposed allusion When the commissioned officers
themselves were on all occasions very heedful how they referred to the recent
event for a petty officer unnecessarily to allude to it in the presence of his
captain this struck him as a most immodest presumption Besides to his quick
sense of self-respect it even looked under the circumstances something like an
attempt to alarm him Nor at that was he without some surprise that one who so
far as he had hitherto come under his notice had shown considerable tact in his
function should in this particular evince such lack of it
But these thoughts and kindred dubious ones flitting across his mind were
suddenly replaced by an intuitional surmise which though as yet obscure in
form served practically to affect his reception of the ill tidings Certain it
is that long versed in everything pertaining to the complicated gundeck life
which like every other form of life has its secret mines and dubious side the
side popularly disclaimed Captain Vere did not permit himself to be unduly
disturbed by the general tenor of his subordinates report Furthermore if in
view of recent events prompt action should be taken at the first palpable sign
of recurring insubordination for all that not judicious would it be he
thought to keep the idea of lingering disaffection alive by undue forwardness
in crediting an informer even if his own subordinate and charged among other
honours with police surveillance of the crew This feeling would not perhaps
have so prevailed with him were it not that upon a prior occasion the patriotic
zeal officially evinced by Claggart had somewhat irritated him as appearing
rather supersensitive and strained Furthermore something even in the
officials selfpossessed and somewhat ostentatious manner in making his
specifications strangely reminded him of a bandsman a perjured witness in a
capital case before a courtmartial ashore of which when a lieutenant he
Captain Vere had been a member
Now the peremptory check given to Claggart in the matter of the arrested
allusion was quickly followed up by this »You say that there is at least one
dangerous man aboard Name him«
»William Budd a foretopman your honour«
»William Budd« repeated Captain Vere with unfeigned astonishment »and mean
you the man that Lieutenant Ratcliffe took from the merchantman not very long
ago the young fellow who seems to be so popular with the men Billy the
Handsome Sailor as they call him«
»The same your honour but for all his youth and good looks a deep one
Not for nothing does he insinuate himself into the goodwill of his shipmates
since at the least they will at a pinch say a good word for him at all hazards
Did Lieutenant Ratcliffe happen to tell your honour of that adroit fling of
Budds jumping up in the cutters bow under the merchantmans stern when he was
being taken off That sort of goodhumoured air even masks that at heart he
resents his impressment You have but noted his fair cheek A mantrap may be
under his ruddytipped daisies«
Now the Handsome Sailor as a signal figure among the crew had naturally
enough attracted the captains attention from the first Though in general not
very demonstrative to his officers he had congratulated Lieutenant Ratcliffe
upon his good fortune in lighting on such a fine specimen of the genus homo who
in the nude might have passed for a statue of young Adam before the Fall
As to Billys adieu to the ship RightsofMan which the boarding
lieutenant in a deferential way had indeed reported to him Captain Vere more
as a good story than aught else having mistakenly understood it as a satiric
sally had but thought so much the better of the impressed man for it as a
military sailor admiring the spirit that could take an arbitrary enlistment so
merrily and sensibly The foretopmans conduct too so far as it had fallen
under the captains notice had confirmed the first happy augury while the new
recruits qualities as a sailorman seemed to be such that he had thought of
recommending him to the executive officer for promotion to a place that would
more frequently bring him under his own observation namely the captaincy of
the mizentop replacing there in the starboardwatch a man not so young whom
partly for that reason he deemed less fitted for the post Be it parenthesised
here that since the mizentopmen have not to handle such breadths of heavy
canvas as the lower sails on the mainmast and foremast a young man if of the
right stuff not only seems best adapted to duty there but in fact is
generally selected for the captaincy of that top and the company under him are
light hands and often but striplings In sum Captain Vere had from the
beginning deemed Billy Budd to be what in the naval parlance of the time was
called a Kings bargain that is to say for His Britannic Majestys Navy a
capital investment at small outlay or none at all
After a brief pause during which the reminiscences above mentioned passed
vividly through his mind he weighed the import of Claggarts last suggestion
conveyed in the phrase »a mantrap under his ruddytipped daisies« and the more
he weighed it the less reliance he felt in the informers good faith Suddenly
he turned upon him »Do you come to me masteratarms with so foggy a tale As
to Budd cite me an act or spoken word of his confirmatory of what you in
general charge against him Stay« drawing nearer to him »heed what you speak
Just now and in a case like this there is a yardarmend for the false
witness«
»Ah your honour« sighed Claggart mildly shaking his shapely head as in
sad deprecation of such unmerited severity of tone Then bridling erecting
himself as in virtuous selfassertion he circumstantially alleged certain words
and acts which collectively if credited led to presumptions mortally
inculpating Budd and for some of these averments he added substantiating
proof was not far
With gray eyes impatient and distrustful essaying to fathom to the bottom
Claggarts calm violet ones Captain Vere again heard him out then for the
moment stood ruminating The mood he evinced Claggart himself for the time
liberated from the others scrutiny steadily regarded with a look difficult to
render a look curious of the operation of his tactics a look such as might
have been that of the spokesman of the envious children of Jacob deceptively
imposing upon the troubled patriarch the blooddyed coat of young Joseph
Though something exceptional in the moral quality of Captain Vere made him
in earnest encounter with a fellowman a veritable touchstone of that mans
essential nature yet now as to Claggart and what was really going on in him
his feeling partook less of intuitional conviction than of strong suspicion
clogged by strange dubieties The perplexity he evinced proceeded less from
aught touching the man informed against as Claggart doubtless opined than
from considerations how best to act in regard to the informer At first indeed
he was naturally for summoning that substantiation of his allegations which
Claggart said was at hand But such a proceeding would result in the matter at
once getting abroad which in the present stage of it he thought might
undesirably affect the ships company If Claggart was a false witness that
closed the affair And therefore before trying the accusation he would first
practically test the accuser and he thought this could be done in a quiet
undemonstrative way
The measure he determined upon involved a shifting of the scene a transfer
to a place less exposed to observation than the broad quarterdeck For although
the few gunroom officers there at the time had in due observance of naval
etiquette withdrawn to leeward the moment Captain Vere had begun his promenade
on the decks weatherside and though during the colloquy with Claggart they of
course ventured not to diminish the distance and though throughout the
interview Captain Veres voice was far from high and Claggarts silvery and
low and the wind in the cordage and the wash of the sea helped the more to put
them beyond earshot nevertheless the interviews continuance already had
attracted observation from some topmen aloft and other sailors in the waist or
farther forward
Having determined upon his measures Captain Vere forthwith took action
Abruptly turning to Claggart he asked »Masteratarms is it now Budds watch
aloft«
»No your honour«
Whereupon »Mr Wilkes« summoning the nearest midshipman »tell Albert to
come to me« Albert was the captains hammockboy a sort of seavalet in whose
discretion and fidelity his master had much confidence The lad appeared »You
know Budd the foretopman«
»I do sir«
»Go find him It is his watch off Manage to tell him out of earshot that
he is wanted aft Contrive it that he speaks to nobody Keep him in talk
yourself And not till you get well aft here not till then let him know that
the place where he is wanted is my cabin You understand Go Masteratarms
show yourself on the decks below and when you think it time for Albert to be
coming with his man stand by quietly to follow the sailor in«
XVII
Now when the foretopman found himself closeted as it were in the cabin with
the captain and Claggart he was surprised enough But it was a surprise
unaccompanied by apprehension or distrust To an immature nature essentially
honest and humane forewarning intimations of subtler danger from ones kind
came tardily if at all The only thing that took shape in the young sailors
mind was this »Yes the captain I have always thought looks kindly upon me
Wonder if hes going to make me his coxswain I should like that And maybe now
he is going to ask the masteratarms about me«
»Shut the door there sentry« said the commander »Stand without and let
nobody come in Now masteratarms tell this man to his face what you told of
him to me« and stood prepared to scrutinise the mutually confronting visages
With the measured step and calm collected air of an asylum physician
approaching in the public hall some patient beginning to show indications of a
coming paroxysm Claggart deliberately advanced within short range of Billy and
mesmerically looking him in the eye briefly recapitulated the accusation
Not at first did Billy take it in When he did the rosetan of his cheek
looked struck as by white leprosy He stood like one impaled and gagged
Meanwhile the accusers eyes removing not as yet from the blue dilated ones
underwent a phenomenal change their wonted rich violet colour blurring into a
muddy purple Those lights of human intelligence losing human expression
gelidly protruding like the alien eyes of certain uncatalogued creatures of the
deep
The first mesmeric glance was one of surprised fascination the last was as
the hungry lurch of the torpedofish
»Speak man« said Captain Vere to the transfixed one struck by his aspect
even more than by Claggarts »Speak defend yourself« Which appeal caused but
a strange dumb gesturing and gurgling in Billy amazement at such an accusation
so suddenly sprung on inexperienced nonage this and it may be horror at the
accuser serving to bring out his lurking defect and in this instance for the
time intensifying it into a convulsed tonguetie while the intent head and
entire form straining forward in an agony of ineffectual eagerness to obey the
injunction to speak and defend himself gave an expression to the face like that
of a condemned vestal priestess in the moment of being buried alive and in the
first struggle against suffocation
Though at the time Captain Vere was quite ignorant of Billys liability to
vocal impediment he now immediately divined it since vividly Billys aspect
recalled to him that of a bright young schoolmate of his whom he had seen struck
by much the same startling impotence in the act of eagerly rising in the class
to be foremost in response to a testing question put to it by the master Going
close up to the young sailor and laying a soothing hand on his shoulder he
said »There is no hurry my boy Take your time take your time« Contrary to
the effect intended these words so fatherly in tone doubtless touching
Billys heart to the quick prompted yet more violent efforts at utterance
efforts soon ending for the time in confirming the paralysis and bringing to
the face an expression which was as a crucifixion to behold The next instant
quick as the flame from a discharged cannon at night his right arm shot out
and Claggart dropped to the deck Whether intentionally or but owing to the
young athletes superior height the blow had taken effect full upon the
forehead so shapely and intellectuallooking a feature in the masteratarms
so that the body fell over lengthwise like a heavy plank tilted from erectness
A gasp or two and he lay motionless
»Fated boy« breathed Captain Vere in tone so low as to be almost a
whisper »what have you done But here help me«
The twain raised the felled one from the loins up into a sitting position
The spare form flexibly acquiesced but inertly It was like handling a dead
snake They lowered it back Regaining erectness Captain Vere with one hand
covering his face stood to all appearance as impassive as the object at his
feet Was he absorbed in taking in all the bearings of the event and what was
best not only now at once to be done but also in the sequel Slowly he
uncovered his face and the effect was as if the moon emerging from eclipse
should reappear with quite another aspect than that which had gone into hiding
The father in him manifested towards Billy thus far in the scene was replaced
by the military disciplinarian In his official tone he bade the foretopman
retire to a stateroom aft pointing it out and there remain till thence
summoned This order Billy in silence mechanically obeyed Then going to the
cabin door where it opened on the quarterdeck Captain Vere said to the sentry
without »Tell somebody to send Albert here« When the lad appeared his master
so contrived it that he should not catch sight of the prone one »Albert« he
said to him »tell the surgeon I wish to see him You need not come back till
called«
When the surgeon entered a self-poised character of that grave sense and
experience that hardly anything could take him aback Captain Vere advanced to
meet him thus unconsciously interrupting his view of Claggart and interrupting
the others wonted ceremonious salutation said »Nay tell me how it is with
yonder man« directing his attention to the prostrate one
The surgeon looked and for all his selfcommand somewhat started at the
abrupt revelation On Claggarts always pallid complexion thick black blood was
now oozing from mouth and ear To the gazers professional eyes it was
unmistakably no living man that he saw
»Is it so then« said Captain Vere intently watching him »I thought it
But verify it« Whereupon the customary tests confirmed the surgeons first
glance who now looking up in unfeigned concern cast a look of intense
inquisitiveness upon his superior But Captain Vere with one hand to his brow
was standing motionless Suddenly catching the surgeons arm convulsively he
exclaimed pointing down to the body »It is the divine judgment of Ananias
Look«
Disturbed by the excited manner he had never before observed in the
Indomitables captain and as yet wholly ignorant of the affair the prudent
surgeon nevertheless held his peace only again looking an earnest interrogation
as to what it was that had resulted in such a tragedy
But Captain Vere was now again motionless standing absorbed in thought But
again starting he vehemently exclaimed »Struck dead by an angel of God Yet
the angel must hang«
At these interjections incoherences to the listener as yet unapprised of
the antecedent events the surgeon was profoundly discomforted But now as
recollecting himself Captain Vere in less harsh tone briefly related the
circumstances leading up to the event
»But come we must dispatch« he added »help me to remove him meaning the
body to yonder compartment« designating one opposite where the foretopman
remained immured Anew disturbed by a request that as implying a desire for
secrecy seemed unaccountably strange to him there was nothing for the
subordinate to do but comply
»Go now« said Captain Vere with something of his wonted manner »go now I
shall presently call a drumhead court Tell the lieutenants what has happened
and tell Mr Morton« meaning the captain of marines »And charge them to keep
the matter to themselves«
Full of disquietude and misgivings the surgeon left the cabin Was Captain
Vere suddenly affected in his mind or was it but a transient excitement brought
about by so strange and extraordinary a happening As to the drumhead court it
struck the surgeon as impolitic if nothing more The thing to do he thought
was to place Billy Budd in confinement and in a way dictated by usage and
postpone further action in so extraordinary a case to such time as they should
again join the squadron and then transfer it to the admiral He recalled the
unwonted agitation of Captain Vere and his excited exclamations so at variance
with his normal manner Was he unhinged But assuming that he was it were not
so susceptible of proof What then could he do No more trying situation is
conceivable than that of an officer subordinated under a captain whom he
suspects to be not mad indeed but yet not quite unaffected in his intellect
To argue his order to him would be insolence To resist him would be mutiny In
obedience to Captain Vere he communicated to the lieutenants and captain of
marines what had happened saying nothing as to the captains state They stared
at him in surprise and concern Like him they seemed to think that such a
matter should be reported to the admiral
Who in the rainbow can draw the line where the violet tint ends and the
orange tint begins Distinctly we see the difference of the colour but where
exactly does the first one visibly enter into the other So with sanity and
insanity In pronounced cases there is no question about them But in some
cases, in various degrees supposedly less pronounced to draw the line of
demarcation few will undertake though for a fee some professional experts will
There is nothing nameable but that some men will undertake to do for pay In
other words, there are instances where it is next to impossible to determine
whether a man is sane or beginning to be otherwise
Whether Captain Vere as the surgeon professionally surmised was really the
sudden victim of any degree of aberration one must determine for himself by
such light as this narrative may afford
XVIII
The unhappy event which has been narrated could not have happened at a worse
juncture For it was close on the heel of the suppressed insurrections an
aftertime very critical to naval authority demanding from every English
seacommander two qualities not readily interfusable prudence and rigour
Moreover there was something crucial in the case
In the jugglery of circumstances preceding and attending the event on board
the Indomitable and in the light of that martial code whereby it was formally
to be judged innocence and guilt personified in Claggart and Budd in effect
changed places
In the legal view the apparent victim of the tragedy was he who had sought
to victimise a man blameless and the indisputable deed of the latter navally
regarded constituted the most heinous of military crimes Yet more The
essential right and wrong involved m the matter the clearer that might be so
much the worse for the responsibility of a loyal seacommander inasmuch as he
was authorised to determine the matter on that primitive legal basis
Small wonder then that the Indomitables captain though in general a man of
rigid decision felt that circumspectness not less than promptitude was
necessary Until he could decide upon his course and in each detail and not
only so but until the concluding measure was upon the point of being enacted
he deemed it advisable in view of all the circumstances to guard as much as
possible against publicity Here he may or may not have erred Certain it is
however that subsequently in the confidential talk of more than one or two
gunrooms and cabins he was not a little criticised by some officers a fact
imputed by his friends and vehemently by his cousin Jack Denton to
professional jealousy of Starry Vere Some imaginative ground for invidious
comment there was The maintenance of secrecy in the matter the confining all
knowledge of it for a time to the place where the homicide occurred the
quarterdeck cabin in these particulars lurked some resemblance to the policy
adopted in those tragedies of the palace which have occurred more than once in
the capital founded by Peter the Barbarian great chiefly by his crimes
The case was such that fain would the Indomitables captain have deferred
taking any action whatever respecting it further than to keep the foretopman a
close prisoner till the ship rejoined the squadron and then submitting the
matter to the judgment of his admiral
But a true military officer is in one particular like a true monk Not with
more of self-abnegation will the latter keep his vows of monastic obedience than
the former his vows of allegiance to martial duty
Feeling that unless quick action was taken on it the deed of the
foretopman as soon as it should be known on the gundecks would tend to awaken
any slumbering embers of the Nore among the crew a sense of the urgency of the
case overruled in Captain Vere every other consideration But though a
conscientious disciplinarian he was no lover of authority for mere authoritys
sake Very far was he from embracing opportunities for monopolising to himself
the perils of moral responsibility none at least that could properly be
referred to an official superior or shared with him by his official equals or
even subordinates So thinking he was glad it would not be at variance with
usage to turn the matter over to a summary court of his own officers reserving
to himself as the one on whom the ultimate accountability would rest the right
of maintaining a supervision of it or formally or informally interposing at
need Accordingly a drumhead court was summarily convened he electing the
individuals composing it the first lieutenant the captain of marines and the
sailingmaster
In associating an officer of marines with the sealieutenant in a case
having to do with a sailor the commander perhaps deviated from general custom
He was prompted thereto by the circumstance that he took that soldier to be a
judicious person thoughtful and not altogether incapable of grappling with a
difficult case unprecedented in his prior experience Yet even as to him he was
not without some latent misgiving for withal he was an extremely goodnatured
man an enjoyer of his dinner a sound sleeper and inclined to obesity The
sort of man who though he would always maintain his manhood in battle might
not prove altogether reliable in a moral dilemma involving aught of the tragic
As to the first lieutenant and the sailingmaster Captain Vere could not but be
aware that though honest natures of approved gallantry upon occasion their
intelligence was mostly confined to the matter of active seamanship and the
fighting demands of their profession The court was held in the same cabin where
the unfortunate affair had taken place This cabin the commanders embraced
the entire area under the poopdeck Aft and on either side was a small
stateroom the one room temporarily a jail and the other a deadhouse and a
yet smaller compartment leaving a space between expanding forward into a goodly
oblong of length coinciding with the ships beam A skylight of moderate
dimensions was overhead and at each end of the oblong space were two sashed
porthole windows easily convertible back into embrasures for short carronades
All being quickly in readiness Billy Budd was arraigned Captain Vere
necessarily appearing as the sole witness in the case and as such temporarily
sinking his rank though singularly maintaining it in a matter apparently
trivial namely that he testified from the ships weatherside with that
object having caused the court to sit on the leeside Concisely he narrated all
that had led up to the catastrophe omitting nothing in Claggarts accusation
and deposing as to the manner in which the prisoner had received it At this
testimony the three officers glanced with no little surprise at Billy Budd the
last man they would have suspected either of mutinous design alleged by
Claggart or of the undeniable deed he himself had done The first lieutenant
taking judicial primary and turning toward the prisoner said »Captain Vere
has spoken Is it or is it not as Captain Vere says« In response came syllables
not so much impeded in the utterance as might have been anticipated They were
these
»Captain Vere tells the truth It is just as Captain Vere says but it is
not as the masteratarms said I have eaten the Kings bread and I am true to
the King«
»I believe you my man« said the witness his voice indicating a suppressed
emotion not otherwise betrayed
»God will bless you for that your honour« not without stammering said
Billy and all but broke down But immediately was recalled to selfcontrol by
another question to which with the same emotional difficulty of utterance he
said »No there was no malice between us I never bore malice against the
masteratarms I am sorry that he is dead I did not mean to kill him Could I
have used my tongue I would not have struck him But he foully lied to my face
and in the presence of my captain and I had to say something and I could only
say it with a blow God help me«
In the impulsive aboveboard manner of the frank one the court saw confirmed
all that was implied in words that just previously had perplexed them coming as
they did from the testifier to the tragedy and promptly following Billys
impassioned disclaimer of mutinous intent Captain Veres words »I believe
you my man«
Next it was asked of him whether he knew of or suspected aught savouring of
incipient trouble meaning mutiny though the explicit term was avoided going
on in any section of the ships company
The reply lingered This was naturally imputed by the court to the same
vocal embarrassment which had retarded or obstructed previous answers But in
main it was otherwise here the question immediately recalling to Billys mind
the interview with the afterguardsman in the forechains But an innate
repugnance to playing a part at all approaching that of an informer against
ones own shipmates the same erring sense of uninstructed honour which had
stood in the way of his reporting the matter at the time though as a loyal
manofwars man it was incumbent on him and failure so to do it charged
against him and proven would have subjected him to the heaviest of penalties
This with the blind feeling now his that nothing really was being hatched
prevailed with him When the answer came it was a negative
»One question more« said the officer of marines now first speaking and
with a troubled earnestness »You tell us that what the masteratarms said
against you was a lie Now why should he have so lied so maliciously lied
since you declare there was no malice between you«
At that question unintentionally touching on a spiritual sphere wholly
obscure to Billys thoughts he was nonplussed evincing a confusion indeed that
some observers such as can be imagined would have construed into involuntary
evidence of hidden guilt Nevertheless he strove some way to answer but all at
once relinquished the vain endeavour at the same time turning an appealing
glance towards Captain Vere as deeming him his best helper and friend Captain
Vere who had been seated for a time rose to his feet addressing the
interrogator »The question you put to him comes naturally enough But how can
he rightly answer it or anybody else unless indeed it be he who lies within
there« designating the compartment where lay the corpse »But the prone one
there will not rise to our summons In effect though as it seems to me the
point you make is hardly material Quite aside from any conceivable motive
actuating the masteratarms and irrespective of the provocation of the blow a
martial court must needs in the present case confine its attention to the blows
consequence which consequence is to be deemed not otherwise than as the
strikers deed«
This utterance the full significance of which it was not at all likely that
Billy took in nevertheless caused him to turn a wistful interrogative look
toward the speaker a look in its dumb expressiveness not unlike that which a
dog of generous breed might turn upon his master seeking in his face some
elucidation of a previous gesture ambiguous to the canine intelligence Nor was
the same utterance without marked effect upon the three officers more
especially the soldier Couched in it seemed to them a meaning unanticipated
involving a prejudgment on the speakers part It served to augment a mental
disturbance previously evident enough
The soldier once more spoke in a tone of suggestive dubiety addressing at
once his associates and Captain Vere »Nobody is present none of the ships
company I mean who might shed lateral light if any is to be had upon what
remains mysterious in this matter«
»That is thoughtfully put« said Captain Vere »I see your drift Ay there
is a mystery but to use a Scriptural phrase it is a mystery of iniquity a
matter for psychological theologians to discuss But what has a military court
to do with it Not to add that for us any possible investigation of it is cut
off by the lasting tonguetie of him in yonder« again designating the
mortuary stateroom »The prisoners deed With that alone we have to do«
To this and particularly the closing reiteration the marine soldier
knowing not how aptly to reply sadly abstained from saying aught The first
lieutenant who at the outset had not unnaturally assumed primacy in the court
now overrulingly instructed by a glance from Captain Vere a glance more
effective than words resumed that primacy Turning to the prisoner »Budd« he
said and scarce in equable tones »Budd if you have aught further to say for
yourself say it now«
Upon this the young sailor turned another quick glance toward Captain Vere
then as taking a hint from that aspect a hint confirming his own instinct that
silence was now best replied to the lieutenant »I have said all sir«
The marine the same who had been the sentinel without the cabindoor at
the time that the foretopman followed by the masteratarms entered it he
standing by the sailor throughout their judicial proceedings was now directed
to take him back to the aftercompartment originally assigned to the prisoner
and his custodian As the twain disappeared from view the three officers as
partially liberated from some inward constraint associated with Billys mere
presence simultaneously stirred in their seats They exchanged looks of
troubled indecision yet feeling that decide they must and without long delay
for Captain Vere was for the time sitting unconsciously with his back toward
them apparently in one of his absent fits gazing out from a sashed porthole to
windward upon the monotonous blank of the twilight sea But the courts silence
continuing broken only at moments by brief consultations in low earnest tones
this seemed to assure him and encourage him Turning he to and fro paced the
cabin athwart in the returning ascent to windward climbing the slant deck in
the ships lee roll without knowing it symbolising thus in his action a mind
resolute to surmount difficulties even if against primitive instincts strong as
the wind and the sea Presently he came to a stand before the three After
scanning their faces he stood less as mustering his thoughts for expression
than as one only deliberating how best to put them to wellmeaning men not
intellectually mature men with whom it was necessary to demonstrate certain
principles that were axioms to himself Similar impatience as to talking is
perhaps one reason that deters some minds from addressing any popular
assemblies under which head is to be classed most legislatures in a democracy
When speak he did something both in the substance of what he said and his
manner of saying it showed the influence of unshared studies modifying and
tempering the practical training of an active career This along with his
phraseology now and then was suggestive of the grounds whereon rested that
imputation of a certain pedantry socially alleged against him by certain naval
men of wholly practical cast captains who nevertheless would frankly concede
that His Majestys Navy mustered no more efficient officers of their grade than
Starry Vere
What he said was to this effect »Hitherto I have been but the witness
little more and I should hardly think now to take another tone that of your
coadjutor for the time did I not perceive in you at the crisis too a
troubled hesitancy proceeding I doubt not from the clashing of military duty
with moral scruple scruple vitalised by compassion For the compassion how
can I otherwise but share it But mindful of paramount obligation I strive
against scruples that may tend to enervate decision Not gentlemen that I hide
from myself that the case is an exceptional one Speculatively regarded it well
might be referred to a jury of casuists But for us here acting not as casuists
or moralists it is a case practical and under martial law practically to be
dealt with
But your scruples Do they move as in a dusk Challenge them Make them
advance and declare themselves Come now do they impart something like this
If mindless of palliating circumstances we are bound to regard the death of
the masteratarms as the prisoners deed then does that deed constitute a
capital crime whereof the penalty is a mortal one But in natural justice is
nothing but the prisoners overt act to be considered Now can we adjudge to
summary and shameful death a fellowcreature innocent before God and whom we
feel to be so Does that state it aright You sign sad assent Well I too
feel that the full force of that It is Nature But do these buttons that we
wear attest that our allegiance is to Nature No to the King Though the ocean
which is inviolate Nature primeval though this be the element where we move and
have our being as sailors yet as the Kings officers lies our duty in a sphere
correspondingly natural So little is that true that in receiving our
commissions we in the most important regards ceased to be natural free agents
When war is declared are we the commissioned fighters previously consulted We
fight at command If our judgments approve the war that is but coincidence So
in other particulars So now would it be so much we ourselves that would
condemn as it would be martial law operating through us For that law and the
rigour of it we are not responsible Our vowed responsibility is in this That
however pitilessly that law may operate we nevertheless adhere to it and
administer it
But the exceptional in the matter moves the heart within you Even so too
is mine moved But let not warm hearts betray heads that should be cool Ashore
in a criminal case will an upright judge allow himself off the bench to be
waylaid by some tender kinswoman of the accused seeking to touch him with her
tearful plea Well the heart here is as that piteous woman The heart is the
feminine in man and hard though it be she must here be ruled out«
He paused earnestly studying them for a moment then resumed
»But something in your aspect seems to urge that it is not solely that heart
that moves in you but also the conscience the private conscience But tell me
whether or not occupying the position we do private conscience should not
yield to that imperial one formulated in the code under which alone we
officially proceed«
Here the three men moved in their seats less convinced than agitated by the
course of an argument troubling but the more the spontaneous conflict within
Perceiving which the speaker paused for a moment then abruptly changing his
tone went on
»To steady us a bit let us recur to the facts In wartime at sea a
manofwars man strikes his superior in grade and the blow kills Apart from
its effect the blow itself is, according to the Articles of War a capital
crime Furthermore «
»Ay sir« emotionally broke in the officer of marines »in one sense it
was But surely Budd purposed neither mutiny nor homicide«
»Surely not my good man And before a court less arbitrary and more
merciful than a martial one that plea would largely extenuate At the Last
Assizes it snail acquit But bow here We proceed under the law of the Mutiny
Act In feature no child can resemble his father more than that Act resembles in
spirit the thing from which it derives War In His Majestys service in this
ship indeed there are Englishmen forced to fight for the King against their
will Against their conscience for aught we know Though as their
fellowcreatures some of us may appreciate their position yet as Navy officers
what reck we of it Still less recks the enemy Our impressed men he would fain
cut down in the same swath with our volunteers As regards the enemys naval
conscripts some of whom may even share our own abhorrence of the regicidal
French Directory it is the same on our side War looks but to the frontage the
appearance And the Mutiny Act Wars child takes after the father Budds
intent or nonintent is nothing to the purpose
But while put to it by those anxieties in you which I cannot but respect I
only repeat myself while thus strangely we prolong proceedings that should be
summary the enemy may be sighted and an engagement result We must do and one
of two things must we do condemn or let go«
»Can we not convict and yet mitigate the penalty« asked the junior
lieutenant here speaking and falteringly for the first
»Lieutenant were that clearly lawful for us under the circumstances
consider the consequences of such clemency The people« meaning the ships
company »have native sense most of them are familiar with our naval usage and
tradition and how would they take it Even could you explain to them which
our official position forbids they long moulded by arbitrary discipline have
not that kind of intelligent responsiveness that might qualify them to
comprehend and discriminate No to the people the foretopmans deed however it
be worded in the announcement will be plain homicide committed in a flagrant
act of mutiny What penalty for that should follow they know But it does not
follow Why they will ruminate You know what sailors are Will they not revert
to the recent outbreak at the Nore Ay they know the wellfounded alarm the
panic it struck throughout England Your clement sentence they would account
pusillanimous They would think that we flinch that we are afraid of them
afraid of practising a lawful rigour singularly demanded at this juncture lest
it should provoke new troubles What shame to us such a conjecture on their
part and how deadly to discipline You see then whither prompted by duty and
the law I steadfastly drive But I beseech you my friends do not take me
amiss I feel as you do for this unfortunate boy But did he know our hearts I
take him to be of that generous nature that he would feel even for us on whom in
this military necessity so heavy a compulsion is laid«
With that crossing the deck he resumed his place by the sashed porthole
tacitly leaving the three to come to a decision On the cabins opposite side
the troubled court sat silent Loyal lieges plain and practical though at
bottom they dissented from some points Captain Vere had put to them they were
without the faculty, hardly had the inclination to gainsay one whom they felt to
be an earnest man one too not less their superior in mind than in naval rank
But it is not improbable that even such of his words as were not without
influence over them came home to them less than his closing appeal to their
instinct as seaofficers He forecasted the practical consequences to discipline
considering the unconfirmed tone of the fleet at the time if violent killing
at sea by a manofwars man of a superior in grade were allowed to pass for
aught else than a capital crime and one demanding prompt infliction of the
penalty
Not unlikely they were brought to something more or less akin to that
harassed frame of mind which in the year 1842 actuated the commander of the US
brigofwar Somers to resolve under the socalled Articles of War Articles
modelled upon the English Mutiny Act to resolve upon the execution at sea of a
midshipman and two petty officers as mutineers designing the seizure of the
brig Which resolution was carried out though in a time of peace and within not
many days sail of home An act vindicated by a naval court of inquiry
subsequently convened ashore History and here cited without comment True the
circumstances on board the Somers were different from those on board the
Indomitable But the urgency felt well warranted or otherwise was much the
same
Says a writer whom few know »Forty years after a battle it is easy for a
noncombatant to reason about how it ought to have been fought It is another
thing personally and under fire to direct the fighting while involved in the
obscuring smoke of it Much so with respect to other emergencies involving
considerations both practical and moral and when it is imperative promptly to
act The greater the fog the more it imperils the steamer and speed is put on
though at the hazard of running somebody down Little ween the snug cardplayers
in the cabin of the responsibilities of the sleepless man on the bridge«
In brief Billy Budd was formally convicted and sentenced to be hung at the
yardarm in the early morningwatch it being now night Otherwise as is
customary in such cases the sentence would forthwith have been carried out In
wartime on the field or in the fleet a mortal punishment decreed by a
drumhead court on the field sometimes decreed by but a nod from the general
follows without delay on the heel of conviction without appeal
XIX
It was Captain Vere himself who of his own motion communicated the finding of
the court to the prisoner for that purpose going to the compartment where he
was in custody and bidding the marine there to withdraw for the time
Beyond the communication of the sentence what took place at this interview
was never known But in view of the character of the twain briefly closeted in
that stateroom each radically sharing in the rarer qualities of one nature so
rare indeed as to be all but incredible to average minds however much
cultivated some conjectures may be ventured
It would have been in consonance with the spirit of Captain Vere should he
on this occasion have concealed nothing from the condemned one should he indeed
have frankly disclosed to him the part he himself had played in bringing about
the decision at the same time revealing his actuating motives On Billys side
it is not improbable that such a confession would have been received in much the
same spirit that prompted it Not without a sort of joy indeed he might have
appreciated the brave opinion of him implied in his captain making such a
confidant of him Nor as to the sentence itself could he have been insensible
that it was imparted to him as to one not afraid to die Even more may have
been Captain Vere in the end may have developed the passion sometimes latent
under an exterior stoical or indifferent He was old enough to have been Billys
father The austere devotee of military duty letting himself melt back into
what remains primeval in our formalised humanity may in the end have caught
Billy to his heart even as Abraham may have caught young Isaac on the brink of
resolutely offering him up in obedience to the exacting behest But there is no
telling the sacrament seldom if in any case revealed to the gadding world
wherever under circumstances at all akin to those here attempted to be set forth
two of great Natures nobler order embrace There is privacy at the time
inviolable to the survivor and holy oblivion the sequel to each diviner
magnanimity providentially covers all at last
The first to encounter Captain Vere in the act of leaving the compartment
was the senior lieutenant The face he beheld for the moment one expressive of
the agony of the strong was to that officer though a man of fifty a startling
revelation That the condemned one suffered less than he who mainly had effected
the condemnation was apparently indicated by the former's exclamation in the
scene soon perforce to be touched upon
Of a series of incidents within a brief term rapidly following each other
the adequate narration may take up a term less brief especially if explanation
or comment here and there seem requisite to the better understanding of such
incidents Between the entrance into the cabin of him who never left it alive
and him who when he did leave it left it as one condemned to die between this
and the closeted interview just given less than an hour and a half had elapsed
It was an interval long enough however to awaken speculations among no few of
the ships company as to what it was that could be detaining in the cabin the
masteratarms and the sailor for it was rumoured that both of them had been
seen to enter it and neither of them had been seen to emerge This rumour had
got abroad upon the gundecks and in the tops the people of a great warship
being in one respect like villagers taking microscopic note of every untoward
movement or nonmovement going on When therefore in weather not at all
tempestuous all hands were called in the second dogwatch a summons under such
circumstances not usual in those hours the crew were not wholly unprepared for
some announcement extraordinary one having connection too with the continued
absence of the two men from their wonted haunts
There was a moderate sea at the time and the moon newly risen and near to
being at its full silvered the white spardeck wherever not blotted by the
clearcut shadows horizontally thrown of fixtures and moving men On either side
the quarterdeck the marine guard under arms was drawn up and Captain Vere
standing in his place surrounded by all the wardroom officers addressed his
men In so doing his manner showed neither more nor less than that properly
pertaining to his supreme position aboard his own ship In clear terms and
concise he told them what had taken place in the cabin that the masteratarms
was dead that he who had killed him had been already tried by a summary court
and condemned to death and that the execution would take place in the early
morning watch The word mutiny was not named in what he said He refrained too
from making the occasion an opportunity for any preachment as to the maintenance
of discipline thinking perhaps that under existing circumstances in the Navy
the consequence of violating discipline should be made to speak for itself.
Their captains announcement was listened to by the throng of standing
sailors in a dumbness like that of a seated congregation of believers in Hell
listening to their clergymans announcement of his Calvinistic text
At the close however a confused murmur went up It began to wax all but
instantly then at a sign was pierced and suppressed by shrill whistles of the
boatswain and his mates piping »Down one watch«
To be prepared for burial Claggarts body was delivered to certain petty
officers of his mess And here not to clog the sequel with lateral matters it
may be added that at a suitable hour the masteratarms was committed to the
sea with every funeral honour properly belonging to his naval grade
In this proceeding as in every public one growing out of the tragedy
strict adherence to usage was observed Nor in any point could it have been at
all deviated from either with respect to Claggart or Billy Budd without
begetting undesirable speculations in the ships company sailors and more
particularly manofwars men being of all men the greatest sticklers for
usage
For similar cause all communication between Captain Vere and the condemned
one ended with the closeted interview already given the latter being now
surrendered to the ordinary routine preliminary to the end This transfer under
guard from the captains quarters was effected without unusual precautions at
least no visible ones
If possible not to let the men so much as surmise that their officers
anticipate aught amiss from them is the tacit rule in a military ship And the
more that some sort of trouble should really be apprehended the more do the
officers keep that apprehension to themselves though not the less
unostentatious vigilance may be augmented
In the present instance the sentry placed over the prisoner had strict
orders to let no one have communication with him but the chaplain And certain
unobtrusive measures were taken absolutely to ensure this point
XX
In a seventyfour of the old order the deck known as the upper gundeck was the
one covered over by the spardeck which last though not without its armament
was for the most part exposed to the weather In general it was at all hours
free from hammocks those of the crew swinging on the lower gundeck and
berthdeck the latter being not only a dormitory but also the place for the
stowing of the sailors bags and on both sides lined with the large chests or
movable pantries of the many messes of the men
On the starboard side of the Indomitables upper gundecks behold Billy
Budd under sentry lying prone in irons in one of the bays formed by the regular
spacing of the guns comprising the batteries on either side All these pieces
were of the heavier calibre of that period Mounted on lumbering wooden
carriages they were hampered with cumbersome harness of breeching and strong
sidetackles for running them out Guns and carriages together with the long
rammers and shorter lintstocks lodged in loops overhead all these as
customary were painted black and the heavy hempen breechings tarred to the
same tint wore the like livery of the undertaker In contrast with the funereal
tone of these surroundings the prone sailors exterior apparel white jumper and
white duck trowsers each more or less soiled dimly glimmered in the obscure
light of the bay like a patch of discoloured snow in early April lingering at
some upland caves black mouth In effect he is already in his shroud or the
garments that shall serve him in lieu of one Over him but scarce illuminating
him two battlelanterns swing from two massive beams of the deck above Fed
with the oil supplied by the warcontractors whose gains honest or otherwise
are in every land an anticipated portion of the harvest of death with
flickering splashes of dirty yellow light they pollute the pale moonshine all
but ineffectually struggling in obstructed flecks through the open ports from
which the tompioned cannon protrude Other lanterns at intervals serve but to
bring out somewhat the obscurer bays which like small confessionals or
sidechapels in a cathedral branch from the long dimvistaed broad aisle
between the two batteries of that covered tier
Such was the deck where now lay the Handsome Sailor Through the rosetan of
his complexion no pallor could have shown It would have taken days of
sequestration from the winds and the sun to have brought about the effacement of
that But the skeleton in the cheekbone at the point of its angle was just
beginning delicately to be defined under the warmtinted skin In fervid hearts
selfcontained some brief experiences devour our human tissue as secret fire in
a ships hold consumes cotton in the bale
But now lying between the two guns as nipped in the vice of fate Billys
agony mainly proceeding from a generous young hearts virgin experience of the
diabolical incarnate and effective in some men the tension of that agony was
over now It survived not the something healing in the closeted interview with
Captain Vere Without movement he lay as in a trance that adolescent
expression previously noted as his taking on something akin to the look of a
slumbering child in the cradle when the warm hearthglow of the still chamber of
night plays on the dimples that at whiles mysteriously form in the cheek
silently coming and going there For now and then in the gyved ones trance a
serene happy light born of some wandering reminiscence or dream would diffuse
itself over his face and then wane away only anew to return
The chaplain coming to see him and finding him thus and perceiving no sign
that he was conscious of his presence attentively regarded him for a space
then slipping aside withdrew for the time peradventure feeling that even he
the minister of Christ though receiving his stipend from wars had no
consolation to proffer which could result in a peace transcending that which he
beheld But in the small hours he came again And the prisoner now awake to his
surroundings noticed his approach and civilly all but cheerfully welcomed
him But it was to little purpose that in the interview following the good man
sought to bring Billy Budd to some Godly understanding that he must die and at
dawn True Billy himself freely referred to his death as a thing close at hand
but it was something in the way that children will refer to death in general
who yet among their other sports will play a funeral with hearse and mourners
Not that like children Billy was incapable of conceiving what death really is
No but he was wholly without irrational fear of it a fear more prevalent in
highly civilised communities than those socalled barbarous ones which in all
respects stand nearer to unadulterate Nature And as elsewhere said a
barbarian Billy radically was quite as much so for all the costume as his
countrymen the British captives living trophies made to march in the Roman
triumph of Germanicus Quite as much so as those later barbarians young men
probably and picked specimens among the earlier British converts to
Christianity at least nominally such and taken to Rome as today converts
from lesser isles of the sea may be taken to London of whom the Pope of that
time admiring the strangeness of their personal beauty so unlike the Italian
stamp their clear ruddy complexions and curled flaxen locks exclaimed
»Angles« meaning English the modern derivative »Angles do you call them And
is it because they look so like Angels« Had it been later in time one would
think that the Pope had in mind Fra Angelicos seraphs some of whom plucking
apples in gardens of Hesperides have the faint rosebud complexion of the more
beautiful English girls
XXI
If in vain the good chaplain sought to impress the young barbarian with ideas of
death akin to those conveyed in the skull dial and crossbones on old
tombstones equally futile to all appearance were his efforts to bring home to
him the thought of salvation and a Saviour Billy listened but less out of awe
or reverence perhaps than from a certain natural politeness doubtless at
bottom regarding all that in much the same way that most mariners of his class
take any discourse abstract or out of the common tone of the workaday world
And this sailor way of taking clerical discourse is not wholly unlike the way in
which the pioneer of Christianity full of transcendent miracles was received
long ago on tropic isles by any superior savage so called a Tahitian say of
Captain Cooks time or shortly after that time Out of natural courtesy he
received but did not appreciate It was like a gift placed in the palm of an
outstretched hand upon which the fingers do not close
But the Indomitables chaplain was a discreet man possessing the good sense
of a good heart So he insisted not on his vocation here At the instance of
Captain Vere a lieutenant had apprised him of pretty much everything as to
Billy and since he felt that innocence was even a better thing than religion
wherewith to go to judgment he reluctantly withdrew but in his emotion not
without first performing an act strange enough in an Englishman and under the
circumstances yet more so in any regular priest Stooping over he kissed on the
fair cheek his fellowman a felon in martial law one who though in the
confines of death he felt he could never convert to a dogma nor for all that
did he fear for his future
Marvel not that having been made acquainted with the young sailors
essential innocence the worthy man lifted not a finger to avert the doom of
such a martyr to martial discipline So to do would not only have been as idle
as invoking the desert but would also have been an audacious transgression of
the bounds of his function one as exactly prescribed to him by military law as
that of the boatswain or any other naval officer Bluntly put a chaplain is the
minister of the Prince of Peace serving in the host of the God of War Mars As
such he is as incongruous as a musket would be on the altar at Christmas Why
then is he there Because he indirectly subserves the purpose attested by the
cannon because too he lends the sanction of the religion of the meek to that
which practically is the abrogation of everything but force
XXII
The night so luminous on the spardeck otherwise on the cavernous ones below
levels so like the tiered galleries in a coalmine passed away Like the
prophet in the chariot disappearing in heaven and dropping his mantle to Elisha
the withdrawing night transferred its pale robe to the peeping day A meek shy
light appeared in the east where stretched a diaphanous fleece of white
furrowed vapour That light slowly waxed Suddenly one bells was struck aft
responded to by one louder metallic stroke from forward It was four oclock in
the morning Instantly the silver whistles were heard summoning all hands to
witness punishment Up through the great hatchway rimmed with racks of heavy
shot the watchbelow came pouring overspreading with the watch already on deck
the space between the mainmast and foremast including that occupied by the
capacious launch and the black booms tiered on either side of it boat and booms
making a summit of observation for the powderboys and younger tars A different
group comprising one watch of topmen leaned over the side of the rail of that
seabalcony no small one in a seventyfour looking down on the crowd below
Man or boy none spake but in whispers and few spake at all Captain Vere as
before the central figure among the assembled commissioned officers stood
nigh the break of the poopdeck facing forward Just below him on the
quarterdeck the marines in full equipment were drawn up much as at the scene of
the promulgated sentence
At sea in the old time the execution by halter of a military sailor was
generally from the foreyard In the present instance for special reasons the
mainyard was assigned Under an arm of that yard the prisoner was presently
brought up the chaplain attending him It was noted at the time and remarked
upon afterwards that in this final scene the good man evinced little or nothing
of the perfunctory Brief speech indeed he had with the condemned one but the
genuine Gospel was less on his tongue than in his aspect and manner toward him
The final preparations personal to the latter being speedily brought to an end
by two boatswainsmates the consummation impended Billy stood facing aft At
the penultimate moment his words his only ones words wholly unobstructed in
the utterance were these »God bless Captain Vere« Syllables so unanticipated
coming from one with the ignominious hemp about his neck a conventional
felons benediction directed aft toward the quarters of honour syllables too
delivered in the clear melody of a singingbird on the point of launching from
the twig had a phenomenal effect not unenhanced by the rare personal beauty of
the young sailor spiritualised now through late experiences so poignantly
profound
Without volition as it were as if indeed the ships populace were the
vehicles of some vocal currentelectric with one voice from alow and aloft
came a resonant echo »God bless Captain Vere« And yet at that instant Billy
alone must have been in their hearts even as he was in their eyes
At the pronounced words and the spontaneous echo that voluminously rebounded
them Captain Vere either through stoic selfcontrol or a sort of momentary
paralysis induced by emotional shock stood erectly rigid as a musket in the
shiparmourers rack
The hull deliberately recovering from the periodic roll to leeward was
just regaining an even keel when the last signal the preconcerted dumb one
was given At the same moment it chanced that the vapoury fleece hanging low in
the east was shot through with a soft glory as of the fleece of the Lamb of God
seen in mystical vision and simultaneously therewith watched by the wedged
mass of upturned faces Billy ascended and ascending took the full rose of the
dawn
In the pinioned figure arrived at the yardend to the wonder of all no
motion was apparent save that created by the slow roll of the hull in moderate
weather so majestic in a great ship heavycannoned
A Digression
When some days afterwards in reference to the singularity just mentioned the
purser a rather ruddy rotund person more accurate as an accountant than
profound as a philosopher said at mess to the surgeon »What testimony to the
force lodged in willpower« the latter spare and tall one in whom a discreet
causticity went along with a manner less genial than polite replied »Your
pardon Mr Purser In a hanging scientifically conducted and under special
orders I myself directed how Budds was to be effected any movement following
the completed suspension and originating in the body suspended such movement
indicates mechanical spasm in the muscular system Hence the absence of that is
no more attributable to willpower as you call it than to horsepower
begging your pardon«
»But this muscular spasm you speak of is not that in a degree more or less
invariable in these cases«
»Assuredly so Mr Purser«
»How then my good sir do you account for its absence in this instance«
»Mr Purser it is clear that your sense of the singularity in this matter
equals not mine You account for it by what you call willpower a term not yet
included in the lexicon of science. For me I do not with my present knowledge
pretend to account for it at all Even should one assume the hypothesis that at
the first touch of the halyards the action of Budds heart intensified by
extraordinary emotion at its climax abruptly stopped much like a watch when
in carelessly winding it up you strain at the finish thus snapping the chain
even under that hypothesis how account for the phenomenon that followed«
»You admit then that the absence of spasmodic movement was phenomenal«
»It was phenomenal Mr Purser in the sense that it was an appearance the
cause of which is not immediately to be assigned«
»But tell me my dear sir« pertinaciously continued the other »was the
mans death effected by the halter or was it a species of euthanasia«
»Euthanasia Mr Purser is something like your willpower I doubt its
authenticity as a scientific term begging your pardon again It is at once
imaginative and metaphysical in short Greek But« abruptly changing his
tone »there is a case in the sickbay that I do not care to leave to my
assistants Beg your pardon but excuse me« And rising from the mess he
formally withdrew
XXIII
The silence at the moment of execution and for a moment or two continuing
thereafter but emphasised by the regular wash of the sea against the hull or
the flutter of a sail caused by the helmsmans eyes being tempted astray this
emphasised silence was gradually disturbed by a sound not easily to be verbally
rendered Whoever has heard the freshetwave of a torrent suddenly swelled by
pouring showers in tropical mountains showers not shared by the plain whoever
has heard the first muffled murmur of its sloping advance through precipitous
woods may form some conception of the sound now heard The seeming remoteness
of its source was because of its murmurous indistinctness since it came from
close by even from the men massed on the ships open deck Being inarticulate
it was dubious in significance further than it seemed to indicate some
capricious revulsion of thought or feeling such as mobs ashore are liable to in
the present instance possibly implying a sullen revocation on the mens part of
their involuntary echoing of Billys benediction But ere the murmur had time to
wax into clamour it was met by a strategic command the more telling that it
came with abrupt unexpectedness
»Pipe down the starboard watch boatswain and see that they go«
Shrill as the shriek of the seahawk the whistles of the boatswain and his
mates pierced that ominous low sound dissipating it and yielding to the
mechanism of discipline the throng was thinned by one half For the remainder
most of them were set to temporary employments connected with trimming the yards
and so forth business readily to be found upon occasion by any
officerofthedeck
Now each proceeding that follows a mortal sentence pronounced at sea by a
drumhead court is characterised by promptitude not perceptibly merging into
hurry though bordering that The hammock the one which had been Billys bed
when alive having already been ballasted with shot and otherwise prepared to
serve for his canvas coffin the last office of the seaundertakers the
sailmakers mates was now speedily completed When everything was in readiness
a second call for all hands made necessary by the strategic movement before
mentioned was sounded and now to witness burial
The details of this closing formality it needs not to give But when the
tilted plank let slide its freight into the sea a second strange human murmur
was heard blended now with another inarticulate sound proceeding from certain
larger seafowl who their attention having been attracted by the peculiar
commotion in the water resulting from the heavy sloped dive of the shotted
hammock into the sea flew screaming to the spot So near the hull did they
come that the stridor or bony creak of their gaunt doublejointed pinions was
audible As the ship under light airs passed on leaving the burial spot astern
they still kept circling it low down with the moving shadow of their
outstretched wings and the croaked requiem of their cries
Upon sailors as superstitious as those of the age preceding ours
manofwars men too who had just beheld the prodigy of repose in the form
suspended in air and now foundering in the deeps to such mariners the action of
the seafowl though dictated by mere animal greed for prey was big with no
prosaic significance An uncertain movement began among them in which some
encroachment was made It was tolerated but for a moment For suddenly the drum
beat to quarters which familiar sound happening at least twice every day had
upon the present occasion a signal peremptoriness in it True martial discipline
long continued superinduces in average man a sort of impulse of docility whose
operation at the official tone of command much resembles in its promptitude the
effect of an instinct
The drumbeat dissolved the multitude distributing most of them along the
batteries of the two covered gundecks There as wont the gun crews stood by
their respective cannon erect and silent In due course the first officer sword
under arm and standing in his place on the quarterdeck formally received the
successive reports of the sworded lieutenants commanding the sections of
batteries below the last of which reports being made the summed report he
delivered with the customary salute to the commander All this occupied time
which in the present case was the object of beating to quarters at an hour prior
to the customary one That such variance from usage was authorised by an officer
like Captain Vere a martinet as some deemed him was evidence of the necessity
for unusual action implied in what he deemed to be temporarily the mood of his
men »With mankind« he would say »forms measured forms are everything and
that is the import couched in the story of Orpheus with his lyre spellbinding
the wild denizens of the woods« And this he once applied to the disruption of
forms going on across the Channel and the consequences thereof
At this unwonted muster at quarters all proceeded as at the regular hour
The band on the quarterdeck played a sacred air After which the chaplain went
through the customary morning service That done the drum beat the retreat and
toned by music and religious rites subserving the discipline and purpose of war
the men in their wonted orderly manner dispersed to the places allotted them
when not at the guns
And now it was full day The fleece of lowhanging vapour had vanished
licked up by the sun that late had so glorified it And the circumambient air in
the clearness of its serenity was like smooth white marble in the polished block
not yet removed from the marbledealers yard
XXIV
The symmetry of form attainable in pure fiction cannot so readily be achieved in
a narration essentially having less to do with fable than with fact Truth
uncompromisingly told will always have its ragged edges hence the conclusion of
such a narration is apt to be less finished than an architectural finial
How it fared with the Handsome Sailor during the year of the Great Mutiny
has been faithfully given But though properly the story ends with his life
something in way of sequel will not be amiss Three brief chapters will suffice
In the general rechristening under the Directory of the craft originally
forming the navy of the French Monarchy the St Louis lineofbattle ship was
named the Athéiste Such a name like some other substituted ones in the
Revolutionary fleet while proclaiming the infidel audacity of the ruling power
was yet though not so intended to be the aptest name if one consider it ever
given to a warship far more so indeed than the Devastation the Erebus the
Hell and similar names bestowed upon fightingships
On the return passage to the English fleet from the detached cruise during
which occurred the events already recorded the Indomitable fell in with the
Athéiste An engagement ensued during which Captain Vere in the act of putting
his ship alongside the enemy with a view of throwing his boarders across the
bulwarks was hit by a musketball from a porthole of the enemys main cabin
More than disabled he dropped to the deck and was carried below to the same
cockpit where some of his men already lay The senior lieutenant took command
Under him the enemy was finally captured and though much crippled was by rare
good fortune successfully taken into Gibraltar an English port not very distant
from the scene of the fight There Captain Vere with the rest of the wounded was
put ashore He lingered for some days but the end came Unhappily he was cut
off too early for the Nile and Trafalgar The spirit that spite its philosophic
austerity may yet have indulged in the most secret of all passions ambition
never attained to the fulness of fame
Not long before death while lying under the influence of that magical drug
which soothing the physical frame mysteriously operates on the subtler element
in man he was heard to murmur words inexplicable to his attendant »Billy
Budd Billy Budd« That these were not the accents of remorse would seem clear
from what the attendant said to the Indomitables senior officer of marines
who as the most reluctant to condemn of the members of the drumhead court too
well knew though here he kept the knowledge to himself who Billy Budd was
XXV
Some few weeks after the execution among other matters under the head of News
from the Mediterranean there appeared in a naval chronicle of the time an
authorised weekly publication an account of the affair It was doubtless for
the most part written in good faith though the medium partly rumour through
which the facts must have reached the writer served to deflect and in part
falsify them Because it appeared in a publication now long ago superannuated
and forgotten and is all that hitherto has stood on human record to attest what
manner of men respectively were John Claggart and Billy Budd it is here
reproduced
»On the tenth of the last month a deplorable occurrence took place on
board HMS Indomitable John Claggart the ships masteratarms
discovering that some sort of plot was incipient among an inferior
section of the ships company and that the ringleader was one William
Budd he Claggart in the act of arraigning the man before the captain
was vindictively stabbed to the heart by the suddenly drawn sheathknife
of Budd
The deed and the implement employed sufficiently suggest that though
mustered into the service under an English name the assassin was no
Englishman but one of those aliens adopting an English cognomen whom
the present extraordinary necessities of the Service have caused to be
admitted into it in considerable numbers
The enormity of the crime and the extreme depravity of the criminal
appear the greater in view of the character of the victim a middle
aged man respectable and discreet belonging to that minor official
grade the petty officers upon whom as none know better than the
commissioned gentlemen the efficiency of His Majestys Navy so largely
depends His function was a responsible one at once onerous and
thankless and his fidelity in it the greater because of his strong
patriotic impulse In this instance as in so many other instances in
these days the character of the unfortunate man signally refutes if
refutation were needed that peevish saying attributed to Dr Johnson
that patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel
The criminal paid the penalty of his crime The promptitude of the
punishment has proved salutary Nothing amiss is now apprehended aboard
HMS Indomitable«
XXVI
Everything is for a season remarkable in navies Any tangible object associated
with some striking incident of the service is converted into a monument The
spar from which the foretopman was suspended was for some few years kept trace
of by the bluejackets Then knowledge followed it from ship to dockyard and
again from dockyard to ship still pursuing it even when at last reduced to a
mere dockyard boom To them a chip of it was as a piece of the Cross Ignorant
though they were of the real facts of the happening and not thinking but that
the penalty was unavoidably inflicted from the naval point of view for all that
they instinctively felt that Billy was a sort of man as incapable of mutiny as
of wilful murder They recalled the fresh young image of the Handsome Sailor
that face never deformed by a sneer or subtler vile freak of the heart within
This impression of him was doubtless deepened by the fact that he was gone and
in a measure mysteriously gone On the gundecks of the Indomitable the general
estimate of his nature and its unconscious simplicity eventually found rude
utterance from another foretopman one of his own watch gifted as some sailors
are with an artless poetic temperament The tarry hands made some lines which
after circulating among the shipboard crew for a while finally got rudely
printed at Portsmouth as a ballad The title given to it was the sailors
Billy in the Darbies
Good of the Chaplain to enter Lone Bay
And down on his marrowbones here and pray
For the likes just o me Billy Budd But look
Through the port comes the moonshine astray
It tips the guards cutlass and silvers this nook
But twill die in the dawning of Billys last day
A jewelblock theyll make of me tomorrow
Pendant pearl from the yardarmend
Like the eardrop I gave to BristolMolly
Oh tis me not the sentence theyll suspend
Ay ay all is up and I must up too
Early in the morning aloft from alow
On an empty stomach now never it would do
Theyll give me a nibble bit o biscuit ere I go
Sure a messmate will reach me the last parting cup
But turning heads away from the hoist and the belay
Heaven knows who will have the running of me up
No pipe to those halyards But arent it all sham
A blurs in my eyes it is dreaming that I am
A hatchet to my panzer all adrift to go
The drum roll to grog and Billy never know
But Donald he has promised to stand by the plank
So Ill shake a friendly hand ere I sink
But no It is dead then Ill be come to think
I remember Taff the Welshman when he sank
And his cheek it was like the budding pink
But me theyll lash me in hammock drop me deep
Fathoms down fathoms down how Ill dream fast asleep
I feel it stealing now Sentry are you there
Just ease these darbies at the wrist
And roll me over fair
I am sleepy and the oozy weeds about me twist
End of Book
April 19 1891