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 Cain's city and citified
man. The character marked by such qualities has to an unvitiated taste an
untampered-with 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 poet's 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 Hawthorne's
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 heart-feeling 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 arch-interpreter, 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 Budd's 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 seventy-four 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