- end_line
- 1927
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:48:26.981Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 1882
- text
- confidential tongue.
Our Handsome Sailor’s manly forwardness upon occasion, and irresistible
good-nature, indicating no mental superiority tending to excite an
invidious feeling, bred general popularity, and this good-will on the
part of most of his shipmates made him the less to concern himself about
such mute aspects toward him as those whereto allusion has just been
made.
As to the afterguardsman, though Billy for reasons already given
necessarily saw little of him, yet when the two did happen to meet,
invariably came the fellow’s off-hand cheerful recognition, sometimes
accompanied by a passing pleasant word or two. Whatever that equivocal
young person’s original design may really have been, or the design of
which he might have been the deputy, certain it was from his manner upon
these occasions, that he had wholly dropped it.
It was as if his precocity of crookedness (and every vulgar villain is
precocious) had for once deceived him, and the man he had sought to
entrap as a simpleton had, through his very simplicity, baffled him.
But shrewd ones may opine that it was hardly possible for Billy to
refrain from going up to the afterguardsman and bluntly demanding to
know his purpose in the initial interview, so abruptly closed in the
fore-chains. Shrewd ones may also think it but natural in Billy to set
about sounding some of the other impressed men of the ship in order to
discover what basis, if any, there was for the emissary’s obscure
suggestions as to plotting disaffection aboard. Yes, the shrewd may so
think. But something more, or rather, something else than mere
shrewdness is perhaps needful for the due understanding of such a
character as Billy Budd’s.
As to Claggart, the monomania in the man--if that indeed it were--as
involuntarily disclosed by starts in the manifestations detailed, yet in
general covered over by his self-contained and rational demeanour; this,
like a subterranean fire, was eating its way deeper and deeper in him.
Something decisive must come of it.
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XVI
- title
- Chunk 3