in character a juvenile race. Even their
deviations are marked by juvenility. And this more especially holding true with
the sailors of Billy's 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 business-men 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 clothes-bag, 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
Claggart's unobserved glance happened to light on belted Billy rolling along the
upper gun-deck in the leisure of the second dog-watch, exchanging passing
broadsides of fun with other young promenaders in the crowd, that glance would
follow the cheerful sea-Hyperion 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