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- Claggart, and interrupting the other’s wonted ceremonious salutation
said, ‘Nay, tell me how it is with yonder man,’ directing his attention
to the prostrate one.
The surgeon looked, and for all his self-command, somewhat started at
the abrupt revelation. On Claggart’s always pallid complexion thick
black blood was now oozing from mouth and ear. To the gazer’s
professional eyes it was unmistakably no living man that he saw.
‘Is it so, then?’ said Captain Vere, intently watching him. ‘I thought
it. But verify it.’ Whereupon the customary tests confirmed the
surgeon’s first glance, who now looking up in unfeigned concern, cast a
look of intense inquisitiveness upon his superior. But Captain Vere,
with one hand to his brow, was standing motionless. Suddenly, catching
the surgeon’s arm convulsively, he exclaimed, pointing down to the body,
‘It is the divine judgment of Ananias! Look!’
Disturbed by the excited manner he had never before observed in the
_Indomitable’s_ captain, and as yet wholly ignorant of the affair, the
prudent surgeon nevertheless held his peace, only again looking an
earnest interrogation as to what it was that had resulted in such a
tragedy.
But Captain Vere was now again motionless, standing absorbed in thought.
But again starting, he vehemently exclaimed, ‘Struck dead by an angel of
God. Yet the angel must hang!’
At these interjections, incoherences to the listener as yet unapprised
of the antecedent events, the surgeon was profoundly discomforted. But
now, as recollecting himself, Captain Vere in less harsh tone briefly
related the circumstances leading up to the event.
‘But come; we must dispatch,’ he added; ‘help me to remove him (meaning
the body) to yonder compartment’--designating one opposite where the
foretopman remained immured. Anew disturbed by a request that as
implying a desire for secrecy seemed unaccountably strange to him, there
was nothing for the subordinate to do but comply.
‘Go now,’ said Captain Vere, with something of his wonted manner, ‘go
now. I shall presently call a drum-head court. Tell the lieutenants what
has happened, and tell Mr. Morton’--meaning the captain of marines. ‘And
charge them to keep the matter to themselves.’
Full of disquietude and misgivings, the surgeon left the cabin. Was
Captain Vere suddenly affected in his mind, or was it but a transient
excitement brought about by so strange and extraordinary a happening? As
to the drum-head court, it struck the surgeon as impolitic, if nothing
more. The thing to do, he thought, was to place Billy Budd in
confinement, and in a way dictated by usage, and postpone further action
in so extraordinary a case to such time as they should again join the
squadron, and then transfer it to the admiral. He recalled the unwonted
agitation of Captain Vere and his excited exclamations, so at variance
with his normal manner. Was he unhinged? But assuming that he was, it
were not so susceptible of proof. What then could he do? No more trying
situation is conceivable than that of an officer subordinated under a
captain whom he suspects to be, not mad indeed, but yet not quite
unaffected in his intellect. To argue his order to him would be
insolence. To resist him would be mutiny. In obedience to Captain Vere
he communicated to the lieutenants and captain of marines what had
happened, saying nothing as to the captain’s state. They stared at him
in surprise and concern. Like him, they seemed to think that such a
matter should be reported to the admiral.
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