of the sleepless man on the bridge.«
    In brief, Billy Budd was formally convicted and sentenced to be hung at the
yard-arm in the early morning-watch, it being now night. Otherwise, as is
customary in such cases, the sentence would forthwith have been carried out. In
war-time on the field or in the fleet, a mortal punishment decreed by a
drum-head court - on the field sometimes decreed by but a nod from the general -
follows without delay on the heel of conviction without appeal.
 

                                      XIX

It was Captain Vere himself who of his own motion communicated the finding of
the court to the prisoner; for that purpose going to the compartment where he
was in custody, and bidding the marine there to withdraw for the time.
    Beyond the communication of the sentence what took place at this interview
was never known. But, in view of the character of the twain briefly closeted in
that stateroom, each radically sharing in the rarer qualities of one nature - so
rare, indeed, as to be all but incredible to average minds, however much
cultivated - some conjectures may be ventured.
    It would have been in consonance with the spirit of Captain Vere should he
on this occasion have concealed nothing from the condemned one; should he indeed
have frankly disclosed to him the part he himself had played in bringing about
the decision, at the same time revealing his actuating motives. On Billy's side
it is not improbable that such a confession would have been received in much the
same spirit that prompted it. Not without a sort of joy indeed he might have
appreciated the brave opinion of him implied in his captain making such a
confidant of him. Nor as to the sentence itself could he have been insensible
that it was imparted to him as to one not afraid to die. Even more may have
been. Captain Vere in the end may have developed the passion sometimes latent
under an exterior stoical or indifferent. He was old enough to have been Billy's
father. The austere devotee of military duty, letting himself melt back into
what remains primeval in our formalised humanity, may in the end have caught
Billy to his heart, even as Abraham may have caught young Isaac on the brink of
resolutely offering him up in obedience to the exacting behest. But there is no
telling the sacrament - seldom if in any case revealed to the gadding world
wherever under circumstances at all akin to those here attempted to be set forth
- two of great Nature's nobler order embrace. There is privacy at the time,
inviolable to the survivor, and holy oblivion, the