be mutiny. In
obedience to Captain Vere he communicated to the lieutenants and captain of
marines what had happened, saying nothing as to the captain's state. They stared
at him in surprise and concern. Like him, they seemed to think that such a
matter should be reported to the admiral.
    Who in the rainbow can draw the line where the violet tint ends and the
orange tint begins? Distinctly we see the difference of the colour, but where
exactly does the first one visibly enter into the other? So with sanity and
insanity. In pronounced cases there is no question about them. But in some
cases, in various degrees supposedly less pronounced, to draw the line of
demarcation few will undertake, though for a fee some professional experts will.
There is nothing nameable but that some men will undertake to do for pay. In
other words, there are instances where it is next to impossible to determine
whether a man is sane or beginning to be otherwise.
    Whether Captain Vere, as the surgeon professionally surmised, was really the
sudden victim of any degree of aberration, one must determine for himself by
such light as this narrative may afford.
 

                                     XVIII

The unhappy event which has been narrated could not have happened at a worse
juncture. For it was close on the heel of the suppressed insurrections, an
after-time very critical to naval authority, demanding from every English
sea-commander two qualities not readily interfusable - prudence and rigour.
Moreover, there was something crucial in the case.
    In the jugglery of circumstances preceding and attending the event on board
the Indomitable, and in the light of that martial code whereby it was formally
to be judged, innocence and guilt, personified in Claggart and Budd, in effect
changed places.
    In the legal view, the apparent victim of the tragedy was he who had sought
to victimise a man blameless; and the indisputable deed of the latter, navally
regarded, constituted the most heinous of military crimes. Yet more. The
essential right and wrong involved m the matter, the clearer that might be, so
much the worse for the responsibility of a loyal sea-commander, inasmuch as he
was authorised to determine the matter on that primitive legal basis.
    Small wonder then that the Indomitable's captain, though in general a man of
rigid decision, felt that circumspectness not less than promptitude was
necessary. Until he could decide upon his course, and in each detail, and not
only so, but until the concluding measure was upon the point of being enacted,
he deemed it advisable, in view of all the circumstances, to guard as much as