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- 2337
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- 2026-01-30T03:48:16.150Z
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- 2269
- text
- intentionally, or but owing to the young athlete’s superior height, the
blow had taken effect full upon the forehead, so shapely and
intellectual-looking a feature in the master-at-arms; so that the body
fell over lengthwise, like a heavy plank tilted from erectness. A gasp
or two, and he lay motionless.
‘Fated boy,’ breathed Captain Vere, in tone so low as to be almost a
whisper, ‘what have you done! But here, help me.’
The twain raised the felled one from the loins up into a sitting
position. The spare form flexibly acquiesced, but inertly. It was like
handling a dead snake. They lowered it back. Regaining erectness,
Captain Vere with one hand covering his face stood to all appearance as
impassive as the object at his feet. Was he absorbed in taking in all
the bearings of the event, and what was best not only now at once to be
done, but also in the sequel? Slowly he uncovered his face; and the
effect was as if the moon emerging from eclipse should reappear with
quite another aspect than that which had gone into hiding. The father in
him, manifested towards Billy thus far in the scene, was replaced by the
military disciplinarian. In his official tone he bade the foretopman
retire to a state-room aft (pointing it out), and there remain till
thence summoned. This order Billy in silence mechanically obeyed. Then
going to the cabin door where it opened on the quarter-deck, Captain
Vere said to the sentry without, ‘Tell somebody to send Albert here.’
When the lad appeared his master so contrived it that he should not
catch sight of the prone one. ‘Albert,’ he said to him, ‘tell the
surgeon I wish to see him. You need not come back till called.’
When the surgeon entered--a self-poised character of that grave sense
and experience that hardly anything could take him aback--Captain Vere
advanced to meet him, thus unconsciously interrupting his view of
Claggart, and interrupting the other’s wonted ceremonious salutation
said, ‘Nay, tell me how it is with yonder man,’ directing his attention
to the prostrate one.
The surgeon looked, and for all his self-command, somewhat started at
the abrupt revelation. On Claggart’s always pallid complexion thick
black blood was now oozing from mouth and ear. To the gazer’s
professional eyes it was unmistakably no living man that he saw.
‘Is it so, then?’ said Captain Vere, intently watching him. ‘I thought
it. But verify it.’ Whereupon the customary tests confirmed the
surgeon’s first glance, who now looking up in unfeigned concern, cast a
look of intense inquisitiveness upon his superior. But Captain Vere,
with one hand to his brow, was standing motionless. Suddenly, catching
the surgeon’s arm convulsively, he exclaimed, pointing down to the body,
‘It is the divine judgment of Ananias! Look!’
Disturbed by the excited manner he had never before observed in the
_Indomitable’s_ captain, and as yet wholly ignorant of the affair, the
prudent surgeon nevertheless held his peace, only again looking an
earnest interrogation as to what it was that had resulted in such a
tragedy.
But Captain Vere was now again motionless, standing absorbed in thought.
But again starting, he vehemently exclaimed, ‘Struck dead by an angel of
God. Yet the angel must hang!’
At these interjections, incoherences to the listener as yet unapprised
of the antecedent events, the surgeon was profoundly discomforted. But
now, as recollecting himself, Captain Vere in less harsh tone briefly
related the circumstances leading up to the event.
‘But come; we must dispatch,’ he added; ‘help me to remove him (meaning
the body) to yonder compartment’--designating one opposite where the
foretopman remained immured. Anew disturbed by a request that as
implying a desire for secrecy seemed unaccountably strange to him, there
was nothing for the subordinate to do but comply.
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