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 Claggart's knowledge of the young
blue-jacket began at some period anterior to catching sight of him on board the
seventy-four - 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 Jonah's 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 lady's 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,«