- end_line
- 1772
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:48:26.981Z
- 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.
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- title
- Chunk 2