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- troubles. What shame to us such a conjecture on their part, and how
deadly to discipline. You see then whither, prompted by duty and the
law, I steadfastly drive. But I beseech you, my friends, do not take me
amiss. I feel as you do for this unfortunate boy. But did he know our
hearts, I take him to be of that generous nature that he would feel even
for us on whom in this military necessity so heavy a compulsion is
laid.’
With that, crossing the deck, he resumed his place by the sashed
port-hole, tacitly leaving the three to come to a decision. On the
cabin’s opposite side the troubled court sat silent. Loyal lieges, plain
and practical, though at bottom they dissented from some points Captain
Vere had put to them, they were without the faculty, hardly had the
inclination to gainsay one whom they felt to be an earnest man, one,
too, not less their superior in mind than in naval rank. But it is not
improbable that even such of his words as were not without influence
over them, came home to them less than his closing appeal to their
instinct as sea-officers. He forecasted the practical consequences to
discipline (considering the unconfirmed tone of the fleet at the time),
if violent killing at sea by a man-of-war’s man of a superior in grade
were allowed to pass for aught else than a capital crime, and one
demanding prompt infliction of the penalty.
Not unlikely they were brought to something more or less akin to that
harassed frame of mind which in the year 1842 actuated the commander of
the U.S. brig-of-war _Somers_ to resolve, under the so-called Articles
of War, Articles modelled upon the English Mutiny Act, to resolve upon
the execution at sea of a midshipman and two petty officers as mutineers
designing the seizure of the brig. Which resolution was carried out
though in a time of peace and within not many days’ sail of home. An act
vindicated by a naval court of inquiry subsequently convened ashore.
History, and here cited without comment. True, the circumstances on
board the _Somers_ were different from those on board the _Indomitable_.
But the urgency felt, well warranted or otherwise, was much the same.
Says a writer whom few know, ‘Forty years after a battle it is easy for
a non-combatant to reason about how it ought to have been fought. It is
another thing personally and under fire to direct the fighting while
involved in the obscuring smoke of it. Much so with respect to other
emergencies involving considerations both practical and moral, and when
it is imperative promptly to act. The greater the fog the more it
imperils the steamer, and speed is put on though at the hazard of
running somebody down. Little ween the snug card-players in the cabin of
the responsibilities of the sleepless man on the bridge.’
In brief, Billy Budd was formally convicted and sentenced to be hung at
the yard-arm in the early morning-watch, it being now night. Otherwise,
as is customary in such cases, the sentence would forthwith have been
carried out. In war-time on the field or in the fleet, a mortal
punishment decreed by a drum-head court--on the field sometimes decreed
by but a nod from the general--follows without delay on the heel of
conviction without appeal.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
XIX
It was Captain Vere himself who of his own motion communicated the
finding of the court to the prisoner; for that purpose going to the
compartment where he was in custody, and bidding the marine there to
withdraw for the time.
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