-paw, a cat's-paw!« 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 Billy's 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 Dansker's pithy insistence as to the master-at-arms 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 Billy's 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 child-man. And yet a
child's 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 simple-mindedness remained for the most part
unaffected. Experience is a teacher indeed; yet did Billy's 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
old-fashioned sailor, the veritable man-before-the-mast, 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
