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Footnote 5:
Melville’s MS. contains at this point the words ‘Jonathan Edwards’ in
brackets. Clearly Melville had in mind the great New England Calvinist
preacher and theologian when he was writing this sentence.
Footnote 6:
There is an author’s note in the margin of the MS. reading:--_Another
order to be given here in place of this one._
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XX
In a seventy-four of the old order the deck known as the upper gun-deck
was the one covered over by the spar-deck, which last, though not
without its armament, was for the most part exposed to the weather. In
general it was at all hours free from hammocks; those of the crew
swinging on the lower gun-deck and berth-deck, the latter being not only
a dormitory but also the place for the stowing of the sailors’ bags, and
on both sides lined with the large chests or movable pantries of the
many messes of the men.
On the starboard side of the _Indomitable’s_ upper gun-deck, behold
Billy Budd under sentry lying prone in irons in one of the bays formed
by the regular spacing of the guns comprising the batteries on either
side. All these pieces were of the heavier calibre of that period.
Mounted on lumbering wooden carriages, they were hampered with
cumbersome harness of breeching and strong side-tackles for running them
out. Guns and carriages, together with the long rammers and shorter
lintstocks lodged in loops overhead--all these, as customary, were
painted black; and the heavy hempen breechings tarred to the same tint,
wore the like livery of the undertaker. In contrast with the funereal
tone of these surroundings the prone sailor’s exterior apparel, white
_jumper_ and white duck trowsers, each more or less soiled, dimly
glimmered in the obscure light of the bay like a patch of discoloured
snow in early April lingering at some upland cave’s black mouth. In
effect he is already in his shroud or the garments that shall serve him
in lieu of one. Over him, but scarce illuminating him, two
battle-lanterns swing from two massive beams of the deck above. Fed with
the oil supplied by the war-contractors (whose gains, honest or
otherwise, are in every land an anticipated portion of the harvest of
death) with flickering splashes of dirty yellow light they pollute the
pale moonshine all but ineffectually struggling in obstructed flecks
through the open ports from which the tompioned cannon protrude. Other
lanterns at intervals serve but to bring out somewhat the obscurer bays
which, like small confessionals or side-chapels in a cathedral, branch
from the long, dim-vistaed, broad aisle, between the two batteries of
that covered tier.
Such was the deck where now lay the Handsome Sailor. Through the
rose-tan of his complexion, no pallor could have shown. It would have
taken days of sequestration from the winds and the sun to have brought
about the effacement of that. But the skeleton in the cheek-bone at the
point of its angle was just beginning delicately to be defined under the
warm-tinted skin. In fervid hearts self-contained some brief experiences
devour our human tissue as secret fire in a ship’s hold consumes cotton
in the bale.
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