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- VIII
Life in the foretop well agreed with Billy Budd. There, when not
actually engaged on the yards yet higher aloft, the topmen, who as such
had been picked out for youth and activity, constituted an aerial club,
lounging at ease against the smaller stun’-sails rolled up into
cushions, spinning yarns like the lazy gods, and frequently amused with
what was going on in the busy world of the decks below. No wonder then
that a young fellow of Billy’s disposition was well content in such
society. Giving no cause of offence to anybody, he was always alert at a
call. So in the merchant service it had been with him. But now such
punctiliousness in duty was shown that his topmates would sometimes
good-naturedly laugh at him for it. This heightened alacrity had its
cause, namely: the impression made upon him by the first formal
gangway-punishment he had ever witnessed, which befell the day following
his impressment. It had been incurred by a little fellow, young, a
novice, an afterguardsman absent from his assigned post when the ship
was being put about, a dereliction resulting in a rather serious hitch
to that manœuvre, one demanding instantaneous promptitude in letting go
and making fast. When Billy saw the culprit’s naked back under the
scourge gridironed with red welts, and worse; when he marked the dire
expression in the liberated man’s face, as with his woollen shirt flung
over him by the executioner he rushed forward from the spot to bury
himself in the crowd, Billy was horrified. He resolved that never
through remissness would he make himself liable to such a visitation, or
do or omit aught that might merit even verbal reproof. What then was his
surprise and concern when ultimately he found himself getting into petty
trouble occasionally about such matters as the stowage of his bag, or
something amiss in his hammock, matters under the police oversight of
the ship’s corporals of the lower decks, and which brought down on him a
vague threat from one of them.
So heedful in all things as he was, how could this be? He could not
understand it, and it more than vexed him. When he spoke to his young
topmates about it, they were either lightly incredulous, or found
something comical in his unconcealed anxiety. ‘Is it your bag, Billy?’
said one; ‘well, sew yourself up in it, Billy boy, and then you’ll be
sure to know if anybody meddles with it.’
Now there was a veteran aboard who, because his years began to
disqualify him for more active work, had been recently assigned duty as
mainmast-man in his watch, looking to the gear belayed at the rail round
about that great spar near the deck. At off-times the foretopman had
picked up some acquaintance with him, and now in his trouble it occurred
to him that he might be the sort of person to go to for wise counsel. He
was an old Dansker long anglicised in the service, of few words, many
wrinkles and some honourable scars. His wizened face, time-tinted and
weather-stormed to the complexion of an antique parchment, was here and
there peppered blue by the chance explosion of a gun-cartridge in
action. He was an _Agamemnon_ man; some two years prior to the time of
this story having served under Nelson, when but Sir Horatio, in that
ship immortal in naval memory, and which, dismantled and in parts broken
up to her bare ribs, is seen a grand skeleton in Haydon’s etching. As
one of a boarding-party from the _Agamemnon_ he had received a cut
slantwise along one temple and cheek, leaving a long pale scar like a
streak of dawn’s light falling athwart the dark visage. It was on
account of that scar and the affair in which it was known that he had
received it, as well as from his blue-peppered complexion, that the
Dansker went among the _Indomitable’s_ crew by the name of
‘Board-her-in-the-smoke.’
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