- description
- # Segment XX
## Overview
This segment, labeled "XX," is a portion of the novel [Billy Budd and Other Prose Pieces](arke:01KG6GJKJ0PQQH41HGQ3BBMH23). It was extracted from the file [billy_budd.txt](arke:01KG6FXSCNX5F3D880P3YP3PKR) and is part of the [Test Collection](arke:01KG2T49K0H5GDRB0G4YDTPG8H). The segment spans lines 3029 to 3084 of the source text.
## Context
This segment is situated between segment "XIX" (arke:01KG6GK8EG6MVE25EJYRF4QYK2) and segment "XXI" (arke:01KG6GK8EMPNA6APV4YRFZ8ZHM) within the larger work. The text details a conversation between a chaplain and the young sailor Billy Budd. The chaplain's attempts to impart religious concepts of salvation and a savior are met with Billy's natural politeness rather than deep understanding. The chaplain, recognizing Billy's innocence, refrains from further attempts at conversion, seeing innocence as more valuable than dogma in the face of judgment. The narrative reflects on the chaplain's role within the military, comparing it to a "musket on the altar at Christmas," serving the "God of War" while representing the "Prince of Peace."
## Contents
The text of segment XX focuses on the interaction between the chaplain and Billy Budd. It describes the chaplain's unsuccessful efforts to convey religious ideas to Billy, highlighting Billy's simple, uncomprehending reception of the discourse. The segment emphasizes the chaplain's discretion and his ultimate decision not to interfere with Billy's fate, viewing him as a martyr to martial discipline. The passage concludes with a philosophical reflection on the inherent contradiction of a chaplain's presence in a military context, serving both peace and war. A marginal note by the author indicates an "irruption of heretic thought hard to suppress."
- description_generated_at
- 2026-01-30T03:56:00.251Z
- description_model
- gemini-2.5-flash-lite
- description_title
- Segment XX
- end_line
- 3084
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T03:54:18.704Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 3029
- text
- XXI
If in vain the good chaplain sought to impress the young barbarian with
ideas of death akin to those conveyed in the skull, dial, and
cross-bones on old tombstones; equally futile to all appearance were his
efforts to bring home to him the thought of salvation and a Saviour.
Billy listened, but less out of awe or reverence, perhaps, than from a
certain natural politeness; doubtless at bottom regarding all that in
much the same way that most mariners of his class take any discourse,
abstract or out of the common tone of the workaday world. And this
sailor way of taking clerical discourse is not wholly unlike the way in
which the pioneer of Christianity, full of transcendent miracles, was
received long ago on tropic isles by any superior _savage_ so called--a
Tahitian, say, of Captain Cook’s time or shortly after that time. Out of
natural courtesy he received but did not appreciate. It was like a gift
placed in the palm of an outstretched hand upon which the fingers do not
close.
But the _Indomitable’s_ chaplain was a discreet man possessing the good
sense of a good heart. So he insisted not on his vocation here. At the
instance of Captain Vere, a lieutenant had apprised him of pretty much
everything as to Billy; and since he felt that innocence was even a
better thing than religion wherewith to go to judgment, he reluctantly
withdrew; but in his emotion not without first performing an act strange
enough in an Englishman, and under the circumstances yet more so in any
regular priest. Stooping over, he kissed on the fair cheek his
fellow-man, a felon in martial law, one who, though in the confines of
death, he felt he could never convert to a dogma; nor for all that did
he fear for his future.
Marvel not that having been made acquainted with the young sailor’s
essential innocence, the worthy man lifted not a finger to avert the
doom of such a martyr to martial discipline. So to do would not only
have been as idle as invoking the desert, but would also have been an
audacious transgression of the bounds of his function, one as exactly
prescribed to him by military law as that of the boatswain or any other
naval officer. Bluntly put, a chaplain is the minister of the Prince of
Peace serving in the host of the God of War--Mars. As such, he is as
incongruous as a musket would be on the altar at Christmas. Why, then,
is he there? Because he indirectly subserves the purpose attested by the
cannon; because, too, he lends the sanction of the religion of the meek
to that which practically is the abrogation of everything but force.[7]
-----
Footnote 7:
There is an author’s note in the margin of the MS. reading:--_An
irruption of heretic thought hard to suppress._
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- title
- XX