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- 3440
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T03:47:28.078Z
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- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 3380
- text
- XXV
Some few weeks after the execution, among other matters under the head
of _News from the Mediterranean_, there appeared in a naval chronicle of
the time, an authorised weekly publication, an account of the affair. It
was doubtless for the most part written in good faith, though the
medium, partly rumour, through which the facts must have reached the
writer, served to deflect, and in part falsify them. Because it appeared
in a publication now long ago superannuated and forgotten, and is all
that hitherto has stood on human record to attest what manner of men
respectively were John Claggart and Billy Budd, it is here reproduced.
‘On the tenth of the last month a deplorable occurrence took place
on board H.M.S. _Indomitable_. John Claggart, the ship’s
master-at-arms, discovering that some sort of plot was incipient
among an inferior section of the ship’s company, and that the
ringleader was one William Budd, he, Claggart, in the act of
arraigning the man before the captain was vindictively stabbed to
the heart by the suddenly drawn sheath-knife of Budd.
‘The deed and the implement employed sufficiently suggest that
though mustered into the service under an English name the
assassin was no Englishman, but one of those aliens adopting an
English cognomen whom the present extraordinary necessities of the
Service have caused to be admitted into it in considerable
numbers.
‘The enormity of the crime and the extreme depravity of the
criminal, appear the greater in view of the character of the
victim, a middle-aged man, respectable and discreet, belonging to
that minor official grade, the petty officers, upon whom, as none
know better than the commissioned gentlemen, the efficiency of His
Majesty’s Navy so largely depends. His function was a responsible
one; at once onerous and thankless, and his fidelity in it the
greater because of his strong patriotic impulse. In this instance,
as in so many other instances in these days, the character of the
unfortunate man signally refutes, if refutation were needed, that
peevish saying attributed to Dr. Johnson, that patriotism is the
last refuge of a scoundrel.
‘The criminal paid the penalty of his crime. The promptitude of
the punishment has proved salutary. Nothing amiss is now
apprehended aboard H.M.S. _Indomitable_.’[11]
-----
Footnote 11:
An author’s note, crossed out, here appears in the original MS. It
reads:--Here ends a story not unwarranted by what happens in this
incongruous world of ours--innocence and infirmary, spiritual
depravity and fair respite.
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- title
- XXV