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- 3316
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- 2026-01-30T03:48:16.150Z
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- start_line
- 3274
- text
- for a moment. For suddenly the drum beat to quarters, which familiar
sound happening at least twice every day, had upon the present occasion
a signal peremptoriness in it. True martial discipline long continued
superinduces in average man a sort of impulse of docility whose
operation at the official tone of command much resembles in its
promptitude the effect of an instinct.
The drum-beat dissolved the multitude, distributing most of them along
the batteries of the two covered gun-decks. There, as wont, the gun
crews stood by their respective cannon erect and silent. In due course
the first officer, sword under arm and standing in his place on the
quarter-deck, formally received the successive reports of the sworded
lieutenants commanding the sections of batteries below; the last of
which reports being made, the summed report he delivered with the
customary salute to the commander. All this occupied time, which in the
present case was the object of beating to quarters at an hour prior to
the customary one. That such variance from usage was authorised by an
officer like Captain Vere, a martinet as some deemed him, was evidence
of the necessity for unusual action implied in what he deemed to be
temporarily the mood of his men. ‘With mankind,’ he would say, ‘forms,
measured forms, are everything; and that is the import couched in the
story of Orpheus with his lyre spell-binding the wild denizens of the
woods.’ And this he once applied to the disruption of forms going on
across the Channel and the consequences thereof.
At this unwonted muster at quarters all proceeded as at the regular
hour. The band on the quarter-deck played a sacred air. After which the
chaplain went through the customary morning service. That done, the drum
beat the retreat, and toned by music and religious rites subserving the
discipline and purpose of war, the men in their wonted orderly manner
dispersed to the places allotted them when not at the guns.
And now it was full day. The fleece of low-hanging vapour had vanished,
licked up by the sun that late had so glorified it. And the
circumambient air in the clearness of its serenity was like smooth white
marble in the polished block not yet removed from the marble-dealer’s
yard.
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- title
- Chunk 2