- end_line
- 1604
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T03:55:03.879Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 1542
- text
- reports, more especially as to the epithets, for he well knew how
secretly unpopular may become a master-at-arms--at least, a
master-at-arms in those days, zealous in his function--and how the
blue-jackets shoot at him in private their raillery and wit; the
nickname by which he goes among them (_Jemmy Legs_) implying under the
form of merriment their cherished disrespect and dislike.
In view of the greediness of hate for provocation, it hardly needed a
purveyor to feed Claggart’s passion. An uncommon prudence is habitual
with the subtler depravity, for it has everything to hide. And in case
of any merely suspected injury, its secretiveness voluntarily cuts it
off from enlightenment or disillusion; and not unreluctantly, action is
taken upon surmise as upon certainty. And the retaliation is apt to be
in monstrous disproportion to the supposed offence; for when in anybody
was revenge in its exactions aught else but an inordinate usurer. But
how with Claggart’s conscience? For though consciences are unlike as
foreheads, every intelligence, not excluding the Scriptural devils who
‘believe and tremble,’ has one. But Claggart’s conscience being but the
lawyer to his will, made ogres of trifles, probably arguing that the
motive imputed to Billy in spilling the soup just when he did, together
with the epithets alleged, these, if nothing more, made a strong case
against him; nay, justified animosity into a sort of retributive
righteousness. The Pharisee is the Guy Fawkes prowling in the hid
chambers underlying some natures like Claggart’s. And they can really
form no conception of an unreciprocated malice. Probably, the
master-at-arms’ clandestine persecution of Billy was started to try the
temper of the man; but it had not developed any quality in him that
enmity could make official use of, or ever pervert into even plausible
self-justification; so that the occurrence at the mess, petty if it
were, was a welcome one to that peculiar conscience assigned to be the
private mentor of Claggart; and for the rest, not improbably, it put him
upon new experiments.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
XII
Not many days after the last incident narrated, something befell Billy
Budd that more gravelled him than aught that had previously occurred.
It was a warm night for the latitude; and the foretopman, whose watch at
the time was properly below, was dozing on the uppermost deck whither he
had ascended from his hot hammock--one of hundreds suspended so closely
wedged together over a lower gun-deck that there was little or no swing
to them. He lay as in the shadow of a hillside stretched under the lee
of the _booms_, a piled ridge of spare spars, and among which the ship’s
largest boat, the launch, was stowed. Alongside of three other
slumberers from below, he lay near one end of the booms which approached
from the foremast; his station aloft on duty as a foretopman being just
over the deck station of the forecastleman, entitling him according to
usage to make himself more or less at home in that neighbourhood.
Presently he was stirred into semi-consciousness by somebody, who must
have previously sounded the sleep of the others, touching his shoulder,
and then, as the foretopman raised his head, breathing into his ear in a
quick whisper, ‘Slip into the lee fore-chains, Billy; there is something
in the wind. Don’t speak. Quick. I will meet you there’; and
disappeared.
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