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- A superb figure, tossed up as by the horns of Taurus against the
thunderous sky, cheerily ballooning to the strenuous file along the
spar.
The moral nature was seldom out of keeping with the physical make.
Indeed, except as toned by the former, the comeliness and power, always
attractive in masculine conjunction, hardly could have drawn the sort of
homage the Handsome Sailor in some examples received from his less
gifted associates.
Such a cynosure, at least in aspect, and something such too in nature,
though with important variations made apparent as the story proceeds,
was welkin-eyed Billy Budd, or Baby Budd, as more familiarly, under
circumstances hereafter to be given, he at last came to be called, aged
twenty-one, a foretopman of the fleet toward the close of the last
decade of the eighteenth century. It was not very long prior to the time
of the narration that follows that he had entered the King’s Service,
having been impressed on the Narrow Seas from a homeward-bound English
merchantman into a seventy-four outward-bound, H.M.S. _Indomitable_;
which ship, as was not unusual in those hurried days, had been obliged
to put to sea short of her proper complement of men. Plump upon Billy at
first sight in the gangway the boarding-officer, Lieutenant Ratcliffe,
pounced, even before the merchantman’s crew formally was mustered on the
quarter-deck for his deliberate inspection. And him only he selected.
For whether it was because the other men when ranged before him showed
to ill advantage after Billy, or whether he had some scruples in view of
the merchantman being rather short-handed; however it might be, the
officer contented himself with his first spontaneous choice. To the
surprise of the ship’s company, though much to the Lieutenant’s
satisfaction, Billy made no demur. But indeed any demur would have been
as idle as the protest of a goldfinch popped into a cage.
Noting this uncomplaining acquiescence, all but cheerful one might say,
the shipmates turned a surprised glance of silent reproach at the
sailor. The shipmaster was one of those worthy mortals found in every
vocation, even the humbler ones--the sort of person whom everybody
agrees in calling ‘a respectable man.’ And--nor so strange to report as
it may appear to be--though a ploughman of the troubled waters,
life-long contending with the intractable elements, there was nothing
this honest soul at heart loved better than simple peace and quiet. For
the rest, he was fifty or thereabouts, a little inclined to corpulence,
a prepossessing face, unwhiskered, and of an agreeable colour, a rather
full face, humanely intelligent in expression. On a fair day with a fair
wind and all going well, a certain musical chime in his voice seemed to
be the veritable unobstructed outcome of the innermost man. He had much
prudence, much conscientiousness, and there were occasions when these
virtues were the cause of overmuch disquietude in him. On a passage, so
long as his craft was in any proximity to land, no sleep for Captain
Graveling. He took to heart those serious responsibilities not so
heavily borne by some shipmasters.
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