- end_line
- 1795
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T03:55:03.879Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 1724
- text
- an old acquaintance, without interrupting the talk he was engaged in
with the group of smokers. A day or two afterwards, chancing in the
evening promenade on a gun-deck to pass Billy, he offered a flying word
of good-fellowship, as it were, which by its unexpectedness, and
equivocalness under the circumstances, so embarrassed Billy, that he
knew not how to respond to it, and let it go unnoticed.
Billy was now left more at a loss than before. The ineffectual
speculations into which he was led were so disturbingly alien to him,
that he did his best to smother them. It never entered his mind that
here was a matter which, from its extreme questionableness, it was his
duty as a loyal blue-jacket to report in the proper quarter. And,
probably, had such a step been suggested to him, he would have been
deterred from taking it by the thought, one of novice-magnanimity, that
it would savour overmuch of the dirty work of a tell-tale. He kept the
thing to himself. Yet upon one occasion he could not forbear a little
disburthening himself to the old Dansker, tempted thereto perhaps by the
influence of a balmy night when the ship lay becalmed; the twain, silent
for the most part, sitting together on deck, their heads propped against
the bulwarks. But it was only a partial and anonymous account that Billy
gave, the unfounded scruples above referred to preventing full
disclosure to anybody. Upon hearing Billy’s version, the sage Dansker
seemed to divine more than he was told; and after a little meditation,
during which his wrinkles were pursed as into a point, quite effacing
for the time that quizzing expression his face sometimes wore--‘Didn’t I
say so, Baby Budd?’
‘Say what?’ demanded Billy.
‘Why, _Jemmy Legs_ is _down_ on you.’
‘And what,’ rejoined Billy in amazement, ‘has _Jemmy Legs_ to do with
that cracked afterguardsman?’
‘Ho, it was an afterguardsman, then. A cat’s-paw, a cat’s-paw!’ And with
that exclamation, which, whether it had reference to a light puff of air
just then coming over the calm sea, or subtler relation to the
afterguardsman, there is no telling. The old Merlin gave a twisting
wrench with his black teeth at his plug of tobacco, vouchsafing no reply
to Billy’s impetuous question. For it was his wont to relapse into grim
silence when interrogated in sceptical sort as to any of his sententious
oracles, not always very clear ones, rather partaking of that obscurity
which invests most Delphic deliverances from any quarter.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
XIV
Long experience had very likely brought this old man to that bitter
prudence which never interferes in aught, and never gives advice.
Yet, despite the Dansker’s pithy insistence as to the master-at-arms
being at the bottom of these strange experiences of Billy on board the
_Indomitable_, the young sailor was ready to ascribe them to almost
anybody but the man who, to use Billy’s own expression, ‘always had a
pleasant word for him.’ This is to be wondered at. Yet not so much to be
wondered at. In certain matters some sailors even in mature life remain
unsophisticated enough. But a young seafarer of the disposition of our
athletic foretopman, is much of a child-man. And yet a child’s utter
innocence is but its blank ignorance, and the innocence more or less
wanes as intelligence waxes. But in Billy Budd intelligence, such as it
was, had advanced, while yet his simple-mindedness remained for the most
part unaffected. Experience is a teacher indeed; yet did Billy’s years
make his experience small. Besides, he had none of that intuitive
knowledge of the bad which in natures not good or incompletely so,
foreruns experience, and therefore may pertain, as in some instances it
too clearly does pertain, even to youth.
- title
- Chunk 9