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- 2767
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- 2026-01-30T03:48:16.150Z
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- 2708
- text
- ‘But while, put to it by those anxieties in you which I cannot but
respect, I only repeat myself--while thus strangely we prolong
proceedings that should be summary, the enemy may be sighted and an
engagement result. We must do; and one of two things must we do--condemn
or let go.’
‘Can we not convict and yet mitigate the penalty?’ asked the junior
lieutenant, here speaking, and falteringly, for the first.
‘Lieutenant, were that clearly lawful for us under the circumstances,
consider the consequences of such clemency. The people’ (meaning the
ship’s company) ‘have native sense; most of them are familiar with our
naval usage and tradition; and how would they take it? Even could you
explain to them--which our official position forbids--they, long moulded
by arbitrary discipline, have not that kind of intelligent
responsiveness that might qualify them to comprehend and discriminate.
No, to the people the foretopman’s deed, however it be worded in the
announcement, will be plain homicide committed in a flagrant act of
mutiny. What penalty for that should follow, they know. But it does not
follow. _Why?_ they will ruminate. You know what sailors are. Will they
not revert to the recent outbreak at the Nore? Ay, they know the
well-founded alarm--the panic it struck throughout England. Your clement
sentence they would account pusillanimous. They would think that we
flinch, that we are afraid of them--afraid of practising a lawful rigour
singularly demanded at this juncture lest it should provoke new
troubles. What shame to us such a conjecture on their part, and how
deadly to discipline. You see then whither, prompted by duty and the
law, I steadfastly drive. But I beseech you, my friends, do not take me
amiss. I feel as you do for this unfortunate boy. But did he know our
hearts, I take him to be of that generous nature that he would feel even
for us on whom in this military necessity so heavy a compulsion is
laid.’
With that, crossing the deck, he resumed his place by the sashed
port-hole, tacitly leaving the three to come to a decision. On the
cabin’s opposite side the troubled court sat silent. Loyal lieges, plain
and practical, though at bottom they dissented from some points Captain
Vere had put to them, they were without the faculty, hardly had the
inclination to gainsay one whom they felt to be an earnest man, one,
too, not less their superior in mind than in naval rank. But it is not
improbable that even such of his words as were not without influence
over them, came home to them less than his closing appeal to their
instinct as sea-officers. He forecasted the practical consequences to
discipline (considering the unconfirmed tone of the fleet at the time),
if violent killing at sea by a man-of-war’s man of a superior in grade
were allowed to pass for aught else than a capital crime, and one
demanding prompt infliction of the penalty.
Not unlikely they were brought to something more or less akin to that
harassed frame of mind which in the year 1842 actuated the commander of
the U.S. brig-of-war _Somers_ to resolve, under the so-called Articles
of War, Articles modelled upon the English Mutiny Act, to resolve upon
the execution at sea of a midshipman and two petty officers as mutineers
designing the seizure of the brig. Which resolution was carried out
though in a time of peace and within not many days’ sail of home. An act
vindicated by a naval court of inquiry subsequently convened ashore.
History, and here cited without comment. True, the circumstances on
board the _Somers_ were different from those on board the _Indomitable_.
But the urgency felt, well warranted or otherwise, was much the same.
- title
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