knows about
a comet's travels prior to its first observable appearance in the sky. The
verdict of the sea-quidnuncs 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 night-watch, or
the man-brokers and land-sharks 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 man-of-war's 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 master-at-arms.
    Of this maritime chief of police the ship's 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 chief's control, capable when astutely worked through his understrappers of
operating to the mysterious discomfort, if nothing worse, of any of the
sea-commonalty.
 

                                      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 stun'-sails 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 Billy's 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 top-mates would sometimes
good-naturedly laugh at him for it. This heightened alacrity had its cause,
namely: the impression made upon him by the first formal gangway-punishment he
had ever witnessed, which befell the day following his impressment. It had been
incurred by a little fellow, young, a novice, an after-guardsman absent from his
assigned post when the ship was