- description
- # Section IX
## Overview
This document is Section IX of a larger work, extracted from the file `billy_budd.txt`. It is part of the "Melville Complete Works" collection.
## Context
Section IX follows Section VIII and precedes Section X. It is contained within the larger Section V. The text details an incident involving Billy Budd, the master-at-arms Claggart, and a spilled soup-pan. This incident serves to confirm Billy Budd's disbelief in the Dansker's assessment of Claggart. The narrative highlights Claggart's complex and seemingly contradictory behavior towards Billy, particularly his use of veiled language and his reaction to a drummer-boy.
## Contents
The text of Section IX describes a specific event on board a ship. Billy Budd accidentally spills his soup, and the master-at-arms, Claggart, reacts with a comment that is perceived as both playful and menacing. The section also notes the reactions of other sailors and a drummer-boy to Claggart's demeanor, suggesting underlying tension and Claggart's volatile nature. The narrative focuses on the interactions between Billy and Claggart, emphasizing Claggart's "equivocal words" and the "bitter smile" that accompanies them.
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- description_title
- Section IX
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- 2026-01-30T20:48:05.323Z
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- text
- IX
The next day an incident served to confirm Billy Budd in his incredulity
as to the Dansker’s strange summing-up of the case submitted.
The ship at noon going large before the wind was rolling on her course,
and he, below at dinner and engaged in some sportful talk with the
members of his mess, chanced in a sudden lurch to spill the entire
contents of his soup-pan upon the new-scrubbed deck. Claggart, the
master-at-arms, official ratan in hand, happened to be passing along the
battery in a bay of which the mess was lodged, and the greasy liquid
streamed just across his path. Stepping over it, he was proceeding on
his way without comment, since the matter was nothing to take notice of
under the circumstances, when he happened to observe who it was that had
done the spilling. His countenance changed. Pausing, he was about to
ejaculate something hasty at the sailor, but checked himself, and
pointing down to the streaming soup, playfully tapped him from behind
with his ratan, saying, in a low musical voice, peculiar to him at
times, ‘Handsomely done, my lad! And handsome is as handsome did it,
too!’ and with that passed on. Not noted by Billy as not coming within
his view was the involuntary smile, or rather grimace, that accompanied
Claggart’s equivocal words. Aridly it drew down the thin corners of his
shapely mouth. But everybody taking his remark as meant for humorous,
and at which therefore as coming from a superior they were bound to
laugh, ‘with counterfeited glee,’ acted accordingly; and Billy, tickled,
it may be, by the allusion to his being the Handsome Sailor, merrily
joined in; then addressing his messmates exclaimed, ‘There, now, who
says that Jemmy Legs is down on me!’
‘And who said he was, Beauty?’ demanded one Donald with some surprise.
Whereat the foretopman looked a little foolish, recalling that it was
only one person, Board-her-in-the-smoke, who had suggested what to him
was the smoky idea that this pleasant master-at-arms was in any peculiar
way hostile to him. Meantime that functionary resuming his path must
have momentarily worn some expression less guarded than that of the
bitter smile and, usurping the face from the heart, some distorting
expression perhaps, for a drummer-boy heedlessly frolicking along from
the opposite direction, and chancing to come into light collision with
his person, was strangely disconcerted by his aspect. Nor was the
impression lessened when the official, impulsively giving him a sharp
cut with the ratan, vehemently exclaimed, ‘Look where you go!’
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- title
- IX