Benito Cereno and Billy Budd...........................................................................................................................1

Herman Melville......................................................................................................................................1

IN THE year 1799, Captain Amasa Delano, of Duxbury, in Massachusetts, commanding a large sealer and

general trader, lay at anchor, with a valuable cargo, in the harbour of St. Maria a small, desert, uninhabited

island towards the southern extremity of the long coast of Chili. There he had touched for water.

On the second day, not long after dawn, while lying in his berth, his mate came below, informing him that a

strange sail was coming into the bay. Ships were then not so plenty in those waters as now. He rose, dressed,

The morning was one peculiar to that coast. Everything was mute and calm; everything grey. The sea, though

undulated into long roods of swells, seemed fixed, and was sleeked at the surface like waved lead that has

cooled and set in the smelter's mould. The sky seemed a grey mantle. Flights of troubled grey fowl, kith and

kin with flights of troubled grey vapours among which they were mixed, skimmed low and fitfully over the

waters, as swallows over meadows before storms. Shadows present, foreshadowing deeper shadows to come.

To Captain Delano's surprise, the stranger, viewed through the glass, showed no colours; though to do so

upon entering a haven, however uninhabited in its shores, where but a single other ship might be lying, was

the custom among peaceful seamen of all nations. Considering the lawlessness and loneliness of the spot, and

the sort of stories, at that day, associated with those seas, Captain Delano's surprise might have deepened into

some uneasiness had he not been a person of a singularly undistrustful good nature, not liable, except on

extraordinary and repeated excitement, and hardly then, to indulge in personal alarms, any way involving the

imputation of malign evil in man. Whether, in view of what humanity is capable, such a trait implies, along

with a benevolent heart, more than ordinary quickness and accuracy of intellectual perception, may be left to

But whatever misgivings might have obtruded on first seeing the stranger would almost, in any seaman's

mind, have been dissipated by observing that the ship, in navigating into the harbour, was drawing too near

the land, for her own safety's sake, owing to a sunken reef making out off her bow. This seemed to prove her

a stranger, indeed, not only to the sealer, but the island; consequently, she could be no wonted freebooter on

that ocean. With no small interest, Captain Delano continued to watch her a proceeding not much facilitated

by the vapours partly mantling the hull, through which the far matin light from her cabin streamed

equivocally enough; much like the sun by this time crescented on the rim of the horizon, and apparently, in

company with the strange ship, entering the harbour which, wimpled by the same low, creeping clouds,

showed not unlike a Lima intriguante's one sinister eye peering across the Plaza from the Indian loophole of

It might have been but a deception of the vapours, but, the longer the stranger was watched, the more singular

appeared her manoeuvres. Ere long it seemed hard to decide whether she meant to come in or no what she

wanted, or what she was about. The wind, which had breezed up a little during the night, was now extremely

light and baffling, which the more increased the apparent uncertainty of her movements.

Surmising, at last, that it might be a ship in distress, Captain Delano ordered his whaleboat to be dropped,

and, much to the wary opposition of his mate, prepared to board her, and, at the least, pilot her in. On the

night previous, a fishingparty of the seamen had gone a long distance to some detached rocks out of sight

from the sealer, and, an hour or two before daybreak, had returned, having met with no small success.

Presuming that the stranger might have been long off soundings, the good captain put several baskets of the

fish, for presents, into his boat, and so pulled away. From her continuing too near the sunken reef, deeming

her in danger, calling to his men, he made all haste to apprise those on board of their situation. But, some

time ere the boat came up, the wind, light though it was, having shifted, had headed the vessel off, as well as

Upon gaining a less remote view, the ship, when made signally visible on the verge of the leadenhued

swells, with the shreds of fog here and there raggedly furring her, appeared like a whitewashed monastery

after a thunderstorm, seen perched upon some dun cliff among the Pyrenees. But it was no purely fanciful

resemblance which now, for a moment, almost led Captain Delano to think that nothing less than a shipload

of monks was before him. Peering over the bulwarks were what really seemed, in the hazy distance, throngs

of dark cowls; while, fitfully revealed through the open portholes, other dark moving figures were dimly

Upon a still nigher approach, this appearance was modified, and the true character of the vessel was plain a

Spanish merchantman of the first class; carrying Negro slaves, amongst other valuable freight, from one

colonial port to another. A very large, and, in its time, a very fine vessel, such as in those days were at

intervals encountered along that main; sometimes superseded Acapulco treasureships, or retired frigates of

the Spanish king's navy, which, like superannuated Italian palaces, still, under a decline of masters, preserved

As the whaleboat drew more and more nigh, the cause of the peculiar pipeclayed aspect of the stranger

was seen in the slovenly neglect pervading her. The spars, ropes, and great part of the bulwarks looked

woolly, from long unacquaintance with the scraper, tar, and the brush. Her keel seemed laid, her ribs put

In the present business in which she was engaged, the ship's general model and rig appeared to have

undergone no material change from their original warlike and Froissart pattern. However, no guns were seen.

The tops were large, and were railed about with what had once been octagonal network, all now in sad

disrepair. These tops hung overhead like three ruinous aviaries, in one of which was seen perched, on a ratlin,

a white noddy, a strange fowl, so called from its lethargic somnambulistic character, being frequently caught

by hand at sea. Battered and mouldy, the castellated forecastle seemed some ancient turret, long ago taken by

assault, and then left to decay. Towards the stern, two highraised quarter galleries the balustrades here and

there covered with dry, tindery seamoss opening out from the unoccupied statecabin, whose dead lights,

for all the mild weather, were hermetically closed and caulked these tenantless balconies hung over the sea

as if it were the grand Venetian canal. But the principal relic of faded grandeur was the ample oval of the

shieldlike sternpiece, intricately carved with the arms of Castile and Leon, medallioned about by groups of

mythological or symbolical devices; uppermost and central of which was a dark satyr in a mask, holding his

Whether the ship had a figurehead, or only a plain beak, was not quite certain, owing to canvas wrapped

about that part, either to protect it while undergoing a refurbishing, or else decently to hide its decay. Rudely

painted or chalked, as in a sailor freak, along the forward side of a sort of pedestal below the canvas, was the

sentence, "Seguid vuestro jefe" (follow your leader); while upon the tarnished headboards, near by,

appeared, in stately capitals, once gilt, the ship's name, "SAN DOMINICK," each letter streakingly corroded

with tricklings of copperspike rust; while, like mourning weeds, dark festoons of seagrass slimily swept to

As at last the boat was hooked from the bow along toward the gangway amidship, its keel, while yet some

inches separated from the hull, harshly grated as on a sunken coral reef. It proved a huge bunch of

conglobated barnacles adhering below the water to the side like a wen; a token of baffling airs and long calms

Climbing the side, the visitor was at once surrounded by a clamorous throng of whites and blacks, but the

latter outnumbering the former more than could have been expected, Negro transportationship as the

stranger in port was. But, in one language, and as with one voice, all poured out a common tale of suffering;

in which the Negresses, of whom there were not a few, exceeded the others in their dolorous vehemence. The

scurvy, together with a fever, had swept off a great part of their number, more especially the Spaniards. Off

Cape Horn, they had narrowly escaped shipwreck; then, for days together, they had lain tranced without

wind; their provisions were low; their water next to none; their lips that moment were baked.

While Captain Delano was thus made the mark of all eager tongues, his one eager glance took in all the faces,

Always upon first boarding a large and populous ship at sea, especially a foreign one, with a nondescript

crew such as Lascars or Manilla men, the impression varies in a peculiar way from that produced by first

entering a strange house with strange inmates in a strange land. Both house and ship, the one by its walls and

blinds, the other by its high bulwarks like ramparts, hoard from view their interiors till the last moment; but

in the case of the ship there is this addition: that the living spectacle it contains, upon its sudden and complete

disclosure, has, in contrast with the blank ocean which zones it, something of the effect of enchantment. The

ship seems unreal; these strange costumes, gestures, and faces, but a shadowy tableau just emerged from the

Perhaps it was some such influence as above is attempted to be described which, in Captain Delano's mind,

heightened whatever, upon a staid scrutiny, might have seemed unusual; especially the conspicuous figures of

four elderly grizzled Negroes, their heads like black, doddered willow tops, who, in venerable contrast to the

tumult below them, were couched sphynxlike, one on the starboard cathead, another on the larboard, and

the remaining pair face to face on the opposite bulwarks above the mainchains. They each had bits of

unstranded old junk in their hands, and, with a sort of stoical selfcontent, were picking the junk into oakum,

a small heap of which lay by their sides. They accompanied the task with a continuous, low, monotonous

chant; droning and drooling away like so many greyheaded bagpipers playing a funeral march.

The quarterdeck rose into an ample elevated poop, upon the forward verge of which, lifted, like the

oakumpickers, some eight feet above the general throng, sat along in a row, separated by regular spaces, the

crosslegged figures of six other blacks; each with a rusty hatchet in his hand, which, with a bit of brick and

a rag, he was engaged like a scullion in scouring; while between each two was a small stack of hatchets, their

rusted edges turned forward awaiting a like operation. Though occasionally the four oakumpickers would

briefly address some person or persons in the crowd below, yet the six hatchetpolishers neither spoke to

others, nor breathed a whisper among themselves, but sat intent upon their task, except at intervals, when,

with the peculiar love in Negroes of uniting industry with pastime, twoandtwo they sideways clashed their

hatchets together, like cymbals, with a barbarous din. All six, unlike the generality, had the raw aspect of

But the first comprehensive glance which took in those ten figures, with scores less conspicuous, rested but

an instant upon them, as, impatient of the hubbub of voices, the visitor turned in quest of whomsoever it

But as if not unwilling to let nature make known her own case among his suffering charge, or else in despair

of restraining it for the time, the Spanish captain, a gentlemanly, reservedlooking, and rather young man to a

stranger's eye, dressed with singular richness, but bearing plain traces of recent sleepless cares and

disquietudes, stood passively by, leaning against the mainmast, at one moment casting a dreary, spiritless

look upon his excited people, at the next an unhappy glance toward his visitor. By his side stood a black of

small stature, in whose rude face, as occasionally, like a shepherd's dog, he mutely turned it up into the

Struggling through the throng, the American advanced to the Spaniard, assuring him of his sympathies, and

offering to render whatever assistance might be in his power. To which the Spaniard returned, for the present,

but grave and ceremonious acknowledgments, his national formality dusked by the saturnine mood of ill

But losing no time in mere compliments, Captain Delano returning to the gangway, had his baskets of fish

brought up; and as the wind still continued light, so that some hours at least must elapse ere the ship could be

brought to the anchorage, he bade his men return to the sealer, and fetch back as much water as the whaleboat

could carry, with whatever soft bread the steward might have, all the remaining pumpkins on board, with a

Not many minutes after the boat's pushing off, to the vexation of all, the wind entirely died away, and the tide

turning, began drifting back the ship helplessly seaward. But trusting this would not last, Captain Delano

sought with good hopes to cheer up the strangers, feeling no small satisfaction that, with persons in their

condition he could thanks to his frequent voyages along the Spanish main converse with some freedom in

While left alone with them, he was not long in observing some things tending to heighten his first

impressions; but surprise was lost in pity, both for the Spaniards and blacks, alike evidently reduced from

scarcity of water and provisions; while longcontinued suffering seemed to have brought out the less

goodnatured qualities of the Negroes, besides, at the same time, impairing the Spaniard's authority over

them. But, under the circumstances, precisely this condition of things was to have been anticipated. In armies,

navies, cities, or families in nature herself nothing more relaxes good order than misery. Still, Captain

Delano was not without the idea, that had Benito Cereno been a man of greater energy, misrule would hardly

have come to the present pass. But the debility, constitutional or induced by the hardships, bodily and mental,

of the Spanish captain, was too obvious to be overlooked. A prey to settled dejection, as if long mocked with

hope he would not now indulge it, even when it had ceased to be a mock, the prospect of that day or evening

at furthest, lying at anchor, with plenty of water for his people, and a brother captain to counsel and befriend,

seemed in no perceptible degree to encourage him. His mind appeared unstrung, if not still more seriously

affected. Shut up in these oaken walls, chained to one dull round of command, whose unconditionality cloyed

him, like some hypochondriac abbot he moved slowly about, at times suddenly pausing, starting, or staring,

biting his lip, biting his fingernail, flushing, paling, twitching his beard, with other symptoms of an absent

or moody mind. This distempered spirit was lodged, as before hinted, in as distempered a frame. He was

rather tall, but seemed never to have been robust, and now with nervous suffering was almost worn to a

skeleton. A tendency to some pulmonary complaint appeared to have been lately confirmed. His voice was

like that of one with lungs half gone, hoarsely suppressed, a husky whisper. No wonder that, as in this state

he tottered about, his private servant apprehensively followed him. Sometimes the Negro gave his master his

arm, or took his handkerchief out of his pocket for him; performing these and similar offices with that

affectionate zeal which transmutes into something filial or fraternal acts in themselves but menial; and which

has gained for the Negro the repute of making the most pleasing bodyservant in the world; one, too, whom a

master need be on no stiffly superior terms with, but may treat with familiar trust; less a servant than a

Marking the noisy indocility of the blacks in general, as well as what seemed the sullen inefficiency of the

whites, it was not without humane satisfaction that Captain Delano witnessed the steady good conduct of

But the good conduct of Babo, hardly more than the illbehaviour of others, seemed to withdraw the

halflunatic Don Benito from his cloudy languor. Not that such precisely was the impression made by the

Spaniard on the mind of his visitor. The Spaniard's individual unrest was, for the present, but noted as a

conspicuous feature in the ship's general affliction. Still, Captain Delano was not a little concerned at what he

could not help taking for the time to be Don Benito's unfriendly indifference toward himself. The Spaniard's

manner, too, conveyed a sort of sour and gloomy disdain, which he seemed at no pains to disguise. But this

the American in charity ascribed to the harassing effects of sickness, since, in former instances, he had noted

that there are peculiar natures on whom prolonged physical suffering seems to cancel every social instinct of

kindness; as if forced to black bread themselves, they deemed it but equity that each person coming nigh

them should, indirectly, by some slight or affront, be made to partake of their fare.

But ere long Captain Delano bethought him that, indulgent as he was at the first, in judging the Spaniard, he

might not, after all, have exercised charity enough. At bottom it was Don Benito's reserve which displeased

him; but the same reserve was shown toward all but his personal attendant. Even the formal reports which,

according to seausage, were at stated times made to him by some petty underling (either a white, mulatto or

black), he hardly had patience enough to listen to, without betraying contemptuous aversion. His manner

upon such occasions was, in its degree, not unlike that which might be supposed to have been his imperial

countryman's, Charles V., just previous to the anchoritish retirement of that monarch from the throne.

This splenetic disrelish of his place was evinced in almost every function pertaining to it. Proud as he was

moody, he condescended to no personal mandate. Whatever special orders were necessary, their delivery was

delegated to his bodyservant, who in turn transferred them to their ultimate destination, through runners,

alert Spanish boys or slave boys, like pages or pilotfish within easy call continually hovering round Don

Benito. So that to have beheld this undemonstrative invalid gliding about, apathetic and mute, no landsman

could have dreamed that in him was lodged a dictatorship beyond which, while at sea, there was no earthly

Thus, the Spaniard, regarded in his reserve, seemed as the involuntary victim of mental disorder. But, in fact,

his reserve might, in some degree, have proceeded from design. If so, then in Don Benito was evinced the

unhealthy climax of that icy though conscientious policy, more or less adopted by all commanders of large

ships, which, except in signal emergencies, obliterates alike the manifestation of sway with every trace of

sociality; transforming the man into a block, or rather into a loaded cannon, which, until there is call for

Viewing him in this light, it seemed but a natural token of the perverse habit induced by a long course of such

hard selfrestraint, that, notwithstanding the present condition of his ship, the Spaniard should still persist in

a demeanour, which, however harmless or it may be, appropriate in a wellappointed vessel, such as the

San Dominick might have been at the outset of the voyage, was anything but judicious now. But the Spaniard

perhaps thought that it was with captains as with gods: reserve, under all events, must still be their cue. But

more probably this appearance of slumbering dominion might have been but an attempted disguise to

conscious imbecility not deep policy, but shallow device. But be all this as it might, whether Don Benito's

manner was designed or not, the more Captain Delano noted its pervading reserve, the less he felt uneasiness

Neither were his thoughts taken up by the captain alone. Wonted to the quiet orderliness of the sealer's

comfortable family of a crew, the noisy confusion of the San Dominick's suffering host repeatedly challenged

his eye. Some prominent breaches not only of discipline but of decency were observed. These Captain

Delano could not but ascribe, in the main, to the absence of those subordinate deckofficers to whom, along

with higher duties, is entrusted what may be styled the police department of a populous ship. True, the old

oakumpickers appeared at times to act the part of monitorial constables to their countrymen, the blacks; but

though occasionally succeeding in allaying trifling outbreaks now and then between man and man, they could

do little or nothing toward establishing general quiet. The San Dominick was in the condition of a

transatlantic emigrant ship, among whose multitude of living freight are some individuals, doubtless, as little

troublesome as crates and bales; but the friendly remonstrances of such with their ruder companions are of

not so much avail as the unfriendly arm of the mate. What the San Dominick wanted was, what the emigrant

ship has, stern superior officers. But on these decks not so much as a fourth mate was to be seen.

The visitor's curiosity was roused to learn the particulars of those mishaps which had brought about such

absenteeism, with its consequences; because, though deriving some inkling of the voyage from the wails

which at the first moment had greeted him, yet of the details no clear understanding had been had. The best

account would, doubtless, be given by the captain. Yet at first the visitor was loth to ask it, unwilling to

provoke some distant rebuff. But plucking up courage, he at last accosted Don Benito, renewing the

expression of his benevolent interest, adding, that did he (Captain Delano) but know the particulars of the

ship's misfortunes, he would, perhaps, be better able in the end to relieve them. Would Don Benito favour

Don Benito faltered; then, like some somnambulist suddenly interfered with, vacantly stared at his visitor,

and ended by looking down on the deck. He maintained this posture so long, that Captain Delano, almost

equally disconcerted, and involuntarily almost as rude, turned suddenly from him, walking forward to accost

one of the Spanish seamen for the desired information. But he had hardly gone five paces, when with a sort of

eagerness Don Benito invited him back, regretting his momentary absence of mind, and professing readiness

While most part of the story was being given, the two captains stood on the after part of the maindeck, a

"It is now a hundred and ninety days," began the Spaniard, in his husky whisper, "that this ship, well

officered and well manned, with several cabin passengers some fifty Spaniards in all sailed from Buenos

Ayres bound to Lima, with a general cargo, Paraguay tea and the like and," pointing forward, "that parcel of

Negroes, now not more than a hundred and fifty, as you see, but then numbering over three hundred souls.

Off Cape Horn we had heavy gales. In one moment, by night, three of my best officers, with fifteen sailors,

were lost, with the mainyard; the spar snapping under them in the slings, as they sought, with heavers, to

beat down the icy sail. To lighten the hull, the heavier sacks of mata were thrown into the sea, with most of

the waterpipes lashed on deck at the time. And this last necessity it was, combined with the prolonged

detentions afterwards experienced, which eventually brought about our chief causes of suffering. When"

Here there was a sudden fainting attack of his cough, brought on, no doubt, by his mental distress. His servant

sustained him, and drawing a cordial from his pocket placed it to his lips. He a little revived. But unwilling to

leave him unsupported while yet imperfectly restored, the black with one arm still encircled his master, at the

same time keeping his eye fixed on his face, as if to watch for the first sign of complete restoration, or

"Oh, my God! rather than pass through what I have, with joy I would have hailed the most terrible gales;

His cough returned and with increased violence; this subsiding, with reddened lips and closed eyes he fell

"His mind wanders. He was thinking of the plague that followed the gales," plaintively sighed the servant;

"my poor, poor master!" wringing one hand, and with the other wiping the mouth. "But be patient, Senor,"

again turning to Captain Delano, "these fits do not last long; master will soon be himself."

Don Benito reviving, went on; but as this portion of the story was very brokenly delivered, the substance only

It appeared that after the ship had been many days tossed in storms off the Cape, the scurvy broke out,

carrying off numbers of the whites and blacks. When at last they had worked round into the Pacific, their

spars and sails were so damaged, and so inadequately handled by the surviving mariners, most of whom were

become invalids, that, unable to lay her northerly course by the wind, which was powerful, the unmanageable

ship for successive days and nights was blown northwestward, where the breeze suddenly deserted her, in

unknown waters, to sultry calms. The absence of the waterpipes now proved as fatal to life as before their

presence had menaced it. Induced, or at least aggravated, by the more than scanty allowance of water, a

malignant fever followed the scurvy; with the excessive heat of the lengthened calm, making such short work

of it as to sweep away, as by billows, whole families of the Africans, and a yet larger number, proportionally,

of the Spaniards, including, by a luckless fatality, every officer on board. Consequently, in the smart west

winds eventually following the calm, the already rent sails having to be simply dropped, not furled, at need,

had been gradually reduced to the beggar's rags they were now. To procure substitutes for his lost sailors, as

well as supplies of water and sails, the captain at the earliest opportunity had made for Baldivia, the

southermost civilized port of Chili and South America; but upon nearing the coast the thick weather had

prevented him from so much as sighting that harbour. Since which period, almost without a crew, and almost

without canvas and almost without water, and at intervals giving its added dead to the sea, the San Dominick

had been battledored about by contrary winds, inveigled by currents, or grown weedy in calms. Like a man

"But throughout these calamities," huskily continued Don Benito, painfully turning in the half embrace of his

servant, "I have to thank those Negroes you see, who, though to your inexperienced eyes appearing unruly,

have, indeed, conducted themselves with less of restlessness than even their owner could have thought

Here he again fell faintly back. Again his mind wandered: but he rallied, and less obscurely proceeded.

"Yes, their owner was quite right in assuring me that no fetters would be needed with his blacks; so that

while, as is wont in this transportation, those Negroes have always remained upon deck not thrust below, as

in the Guineamen they have, also, from the beginning, been freely permitted to range within given bounds at

"But it is Babo here to whom, under God, I owe not only my own preservation, but likewise to him, chiefly,

the merit is due, of pacifying his more ignorant brethren, when at intervals tempted to murmurings."

"Ah, master," sighed the black, bowing his face, "don't speak of me; Babo is nothing; what Babo has done

"Faithful fellow!" cried Captain Delano. "Don Benito, I envy you such a friend; slave I cannot call him."

As master and man stood before him, the black upholding the white, Captain Delano could not but bethink

him of the beauty of that relationship which could present such a spectacle of fidelity on the one hand and

confidence on the other. The scene was heightened by the contrast in dress, denoting their relative positions.

The Spaniard wore a loose Chili jacket of dark velvet; white small clothes and stockings, with silver buckles

at the knee and instep; a highcrowned sombrero, of fine grass; a slender sword, silver mounted, hung from a

knot in his sash; the last being an almost invariable adjunct, more for utility than ornament, of a South

American gentleman's dress to this hour. Excepting when his occasional nervous contortions brought about

disarray, there was a certain precision in his attire, curiously at variance with the unsightly disorder around;

especially in the belittered Ghetto, forward of the mainmast, wholly occupied by the blacks.

The servant wore nothing but wide trousers, apparently, from their coarseness and patches, made out of some

old topsail; they were clean, and confined at the waist by a bit of unstranded rope, which, with his

composed, deprecatory air at times, made him look something like a begging friar of St. Francis.

However unsuitable for the time and place, at least in the blunt thinking American's eyes, and however

strangely surviving in the midst of all his afflictions, the toilette of Don Benito might not, in fashion at least,

have gone beyond the style of the day among South Americans of his class. Though on the present voyage

sailing from Buenos Ayres, he had avowed himself a native and resident of Chili, whose inhabitants had not

so generally adopted the plain coat and once plebeian pantaloons; but, with a becoming modification, adhered

to their provincial costume, picturesque as any in the world. Still, relatively to the pale history of the voyage,

and his own pale face, there seemed something so incongruous in the Spaniard's apparel, as almost to suggest

the image of an invalid courtier tottering about London streets in the time of the plague.

The portion of the narrative which, perhaps, most excited interest, as well as some surprise, considering the

latitudes in question, was the long calms spoken of, and more particularly the ship's so long drifting about.

Without communicating the opinion, of course, the American could not but impute at least part of the

detentions both to clumsy seamanship and faulty navigation. Eyeing Don Benito's small, yellow hands, he

easily inferred that the young captain had not got into command at the hawsehole but the cabinwindow,

and if so, why wonder at incompetence, in youth, sickness, and aristocracy united? Such was his democratic

But drowning criticism in compassion, after a fresh repetition of his sympathies, Captain Delano having

heard out his story, not only engaged, as in the first place, to see Don Benito and his people supplied in their

immediate bodily needs, but, also, now further promised to assist him in procuring a large permanent supply

of water, as well as some sails and rigging; and, though it would involve no small embarrassment to himself,

yet he would spare three of his best seamen for temporary deck officers; so that without delay the ship might

Such generosity was not without its effect, even upon the invalid. His face lighted up; eager and hectic, he

"This excitement is bad for master," whispered the servant, taking his arm, and with soothing words gently

When Don Benito returned, the American was pained to observe that his hopefulness, like the sudden

Ere long, with a joyless mien, looking up toward the poop, the host invited his guest to accompany him there,

As during the telling of the story, Captain Delano had once or twice started at the occasional cymballing of

the hatchetpolishers, wondering why such an interruption should be allowed, especially in that part of the

ship, and in the ears of an invalid; and, moreover, as the hatchets had anything but an attractive look, and the

handlers of them still less so, it was, therefore, to tell the truth, not without some lurking reluctance, or even

shrinking, it may be, that Captain Delano, with apparent complaisance, acquiesced in his host's invitation.

The more so, since with an untimely caprice of punctilio, rendered distressing by his cadaverous aspect, Don

Benito, with Castilian bows, solemnly insisted upon his guest's preceding him up the ladder leading to the

elevation; where, one on each side of the last step, sat four armorial supporters and sentries, two of the

ominous file. Gingerly enough stepped good Captain Delano between them, and in the instant of leaving

them behind, like one running the gauntlet, he felt an apprehensive twitch in the calves of his legs.

But when, facing about, he saw the whole file, like so many organgrinders, still stupidly intent on their

work, unmindful of everything beside, he could not but smile at his late fidgeting panic.

Presently, while standing with Don Benito, looking forward upon the decks below, he was struck by one of

those instances of insubordination previously alluded to. Three black boys, with two Spanish boys, were

sitting together on the hatches, scraping a rude wooden platter, in which some scanty mess had recently been

cooked. Suddenly, one of the black boys, enraged at a word dropped by one of his white companions, seized

a knife, and though called to forbear by one of the oakumpickers, struck the lad over the head, inflicting a

In amazement, Captain Delano inquired what this meant. To which the pale Benito dully muttered, that it was

"Pretty serious sport, truly," rejoined Captain Delano. "Had such a thing happened on board the Bachelor's

At these words the Spaniard turned upon the American one of his sudden, staring, halflunatic looks; then,

Is it, thought Captain Delano, that this helpless man is one of those paper captains I've known, who by policy

wink at what by power they cannot put down? I know no sadder sight than a commander who has little of

"I should think, Don Benito," he now said, glancing toward the oakumpicker who had sought to interfere

with the boys, "that you would find it advantageous to keep all your blacks employed, especially the younger

ones, no matter at what useless task, and no matter what happens to the ship. Why, even with my little band, I

find such a course indispensable. I once kept a crew on my quarterdeck thrumming mats for my cabin, when,

for three days, I had given up my ship mats, men, and all for a speedy loss, owing to the violence of a gale

"But," continued Captain Delano, again glancing upon the oakumpickers and then at the hatchetpolishers,

"Those old men there, shaking their pows from their pulpits," continued Captain Delano, pointing to the

oakumpickers, "seem to act the part of old dominies to the rest, little heeded as their admonitions are at

times. Is this voluntary on their part, Don Benito, or have you appointed them shepherds to your flock of

"What posts they fill, I appointed them," rejoined the Spaniard in an acrid tone, as if resenting some supposed

"And these others, these Ashantee conjurors here," continued Captain Delano, rather uneasily eyeing the

brandished steel of the hatchetpolishers, where in spots it had been brought to a shine, "this seems a curious

"In the gales we met," answered the Spaniard, "what of our general cargo was not thrown overboard was

much damaged by the brine. Since coming into calm weather, I have had several cases of knives and hatchets

"A prudent idea, Don Benito. You are part owner of ship and cargo, I presume; but not of the slaves,

"I am owner of all you see," impatiently returned Don Benito, "except the main company of blacks, who

As he mentioned this name, his air was heartbroken, his knees shook; his servant supported him.

Thinking he divined the cause of such unusual emotion, to confirm his surmise, Captain Delano, after a

pause, said, "And may I ask, Don Benito, whether since awhile ago you spoke of some cabin passengers

the friend, whose loss so afflicts you, at the outset of the voyage accompanied his blacks?"

"Pardon me," said Captain Delano slowly, "but I think that, by a sympathetic experience, I conjecture, Don

Benito, what it is that gives the keener edge to your grief. It was once my hard fortune to lose at sea a dear

friend, my own brother, then supercargo. Assured of the welfare of his spirit, its departure I could have borne

like a man; but that honest eye, that honest hand both of which had so often met mine and that warm heart;

all, all like scraps to the dogs to throw all to the sharks! It was then I vowed never to have for

fellowvoyager a man I loved, unless, unbeknown to him, I had provided every requisite, in case of a fatality,

for embalming his mortal part for interment on shore. Were your friend's remains now on board this ship,

"On board this ship?" echoed the Spaniard. Then, with horrified gestures, as directed against some spectre, he

unconsciously fell into the ready arms of his attendant, who, with a silent appeal toward Captain Delano,

seemed beseeching him not again to broach a theme so unspeakably distressing to his master.

This poor fellow now, thought the pained American, is the victim of that sad superstition which associates

goblins with the deserted body of man, as ghosts with an abandoned house. How unlike are we made! What

to me, in like case, would have been a solemn satisfaction, the bare suggestion, even, terrifies the Spaniard

into this trance. Poor Alexandro Aranda! what would you say could you see your friend who, on former

voyages, when you for months were left behind, has, I dare say, often longed, and longed, for one peep at

you now transported with terror at the least thought of having you anyway nigh him.

At this moment, with a dreary graveyard toll, betokening a flaw, the ship's forecastle bell, smote by one of the

grizzled oakumpickers, proclaimed ten o'clock through the leaden calm; when Captain Delano's attention

was caught by the moving figure of a gigantic black, emerging from the general crowd below, and slowly

advancing toward the elevated poop. An iron collar was about his neck, from which depended a chain, thrice

wound round his body; the terminating links padlocked together at a broad band of iron, his girdle.

The black mounted the steps of the poop, and, like a brave prisoner, brought up to receive sentence, stood in

At the first glimpse of his approach, Don Benito had started, a resentful shadow swept over his face; and, as

This is some mulish mutineer, thought Captain Delano, surveying, not without a mixture of admiration, the

Thus reminded, Don Benito, nervously averting his glance, as if shunning, by anticipation, some rebellious

"Again, master," murmured the servant, with bitter upbraiding eyeing his countryman. "Again, master; he

"Answer," said Don Benito, still averting his glance, "say but the one word pardon, and your chains shall be

Upon this, the black, slowly raising both arms, let them lifelessly fall, his links clanking, his head bowed; as

"Excuse me, Don Benito," said Captain Delano, "but this scene surprises me; what means it, pray?"

"It means that that Negro alone, of all the band, has given me peculiar cause of offence. I have put him in

Here he paused; his hand to his head, as if there were a swimming there, or a sudden bewilderment of

memory had come over him; but meeting his servant's kindly glance seemed reassured, and proceeded:

"I could not scourge such a form. But I told him he must ask my pardon. As yet he has not. At my command,

"Upon my conscience, then," exclaimed Captain Delano, impulsively, "he has a royal spirit in him, this

"He may have some right to it," bitterly returned Don Benito; "he says he was king in his own land."

"Yes," said the servant, entering a word, "those slits in Atufal's ears once held wedges of gold; but poor Babo

here, in his own land, was only a poor slave; a black man's slave was Babo, who now is the white's."

Somewhat annoyed by these conversational familiarities, Captain Delano turned curiously upon the attendant,

then glanced inquiringly at his master; but, as if long wonted to these little informalities, neither master nor

"What, pray, was Atufal's offence, Don Benito?" asked Captain Delano; "if it was not something very serious,

take a fool's advice, and, in view of his general docility, as well as in some natural respect for his spirit, remit

"No, no, master never will do that," here murmured the servant to himself, "proud Atufal must first ask

master's pardon. The slave there carries the padlock, but master here carries the key."

His attention thus directed, Captain Delano now noticed for the first time that, suspended by a slender silken

cord, from Don Benito's neck hung a key. At once, from the servant's muttered syllables divining the key's

purpose, he smiled and said: "So, Don Benito padlock and key significant symbols, truly."

Though the remark of Captain Delano, a man of such native simplicity as to be incapable of satire or irony,

had been dropped in playful allusion to the Spaniard's singularly evidenced lordship over the black; yet the

hypochondriac seemed in some way to have taken it as a malicious reflection upon his confessed inability

thus far to break down, at least, on a verbal summons, the entrenched will of the slave. Deploring this

supposed misconception, yet despairing of correcting it, Captain Delano shifted the subject; but finding his

companion more than ever withdrawn, as if still slowly digesting the lees of the presumed affront

abovementioned, byandby Captain Delano likewise became less talkative, oppressed, against his own

will, by what seemed the secret vindictiveness of the morbidly sensitive Spaniard. But the good sailor

himself, of a quite contrary disposition, refrained, on his part, alike from the appearance as from the feeling

Presently the Spaniard, assisted by his servant, somewhat discourteously crossed over from Captain Delano; a

procedure which, sensibly enough, might have been allowed to pass for idle caprice of illhumour, had not

master and man, lingering round the corner of the elevated skylight, begun whispering together in low voices.

This was unpleasing. And more: the moody air of the Spaniard, which at times had not been without a sort of

valetudinarian stateliness, now seemed anything but dignified; while the menial familiarity of the servant lost

In his embarrassment, the visitor turned his face to the other side of the ship. By so doing, his glance

accidentally fell on a young Spanish sailor, a coil of rope in his hand, just stepped from the deck to the first

round of the mizzenrigging. Perhaps the man would not have been particularly noticed, were it not that,

during his ascent to one of the yards, he, with a sort of covert intentness, kept his eye fixed on Captain

Delano, from whom, presently, it passed, as if by a natural sequence, to the two whisperers.

His own attention thus redirected to that quarter, Captain Delano gave a slight start. From something in Don

Benito's manner just then, it seemed as if the visitor had, at least partly, been the subject of the withdrawn

consultation going on a conjecture as little agreeable to the guest as it was little flattering to the host.

The singular alternations of courtesy and illbreeding in the Spanish captain were unaccountable, except on

But the first idea, though it might naturally have occurred to an indifferent observer, and, in some respects,

had not hitherto been wholly a stranger to Captain Delano's mind, yet, now that, in an incipient way, he began

to regard the stranger's conduct something in the light of an intentional affront, of course the idea of lunacy

was virtually vacated. But if not a lunatic, what then? Under the circumstances, would a gentleman, nay, any

honest boor, act the part now acted by his host? The man was an impostor. Some lowborn adventurer,

masquerading as an oceanic grandee; yet so ignorant of the first requisites of mere gentlemanhood as to be

betrayed into the present remarkable indecorum. That strange ceremoniousness, too, at other times evinced,

seemed not uncharacteristic of one playing a part above his real level. Benito Cereno Don Benito Cereno a

sounding name. One, too, at that period, not unknown, in the surname, to supercargoes and sea captains

trading along the Spanish Main, as belonging to one of the most enterprising and extensive mercantile

families in all those provinces; several members of it having titles; a sort of Castilian Rothschild, with a noble

brother, or cousin, in every great trading town of South America. The alleged Don Benito was in early

manhood, about twentynine or thirty. To assume a sort of roving cadetship in the maritime affairs of such a

house, what more likely scheme for a young knave of talent and spirit? But the Spaniard was a pale invalid.

Never mind. For even to the degree of simulating mortal disease, the craft of some tricksters had been known

to attain. To think that, under the aspect of infantile weakness, the most savage energies might be couched

From no train of thought did these fancies come; not from within, but from without; suddenly, too, and in one

throng, like hoar frost; yet as soon to vanish as the mild sun of Captain Delano's goodnature regained its

Glancing over once again toward Don Benito whose sideface, revealed above the skylight, was now turned

toward him Captain Delano was struck by the profile, whose clearness of cut was refined by the thinness

incident to illhealth, as well as ennobled about the chin by the beard. Away with suspicion. He was a true

Relieved by these and other better thoughts, the visitor, lightly humming a tune, now began indifferently

pacing the poop, so as not to betray to Don Benito that be had at all mistrusted incivility, much less duplicity;

for such mistrust would yet be proved illusory, and by the event; though, for the present, the circumstance

which had provoked that distrust remained unexplained. But when that little mystery should have been

cleared up, Captain Delano thought he might extremely regret it, did he allow Don Benito to become aware

that he had indulged in ungenerous surmises. In short, to the Spaniard's blackletter text, it was best, for a

Presently, his pale face twitching and overcast, the Spaniard, still supported by his attendant, moved over

toward his guest, when, with even more than usual embarrassment, and a strange sort of intriguing intonation

"And there, Senor, you exchanged your sealskins for teas and silks, I think you said?"

At this last question, following so many pertinacious ones, for the soul of him Captain Delano could not but

look very earnestly at the questioner, who, instead of meeting the glance, with every token of craven

discomposure dropped his eyes to the deck; presenting an unworthy contrast to his servant, who, just then,

was kneeling at his feet adjusting a loose shoebuckle; his disengaged face meantime, with humble curiosity,

"Yes, for aught I know," returned Captain Delano, "but nay," rallying himself into fearless truth, "some of

"Oh, a sixpounder or two, in case of emergency," was the intrepidly indifferent reply, "with a small stock of

As he thus responded, Captain Delano again glanced at Don Benito, but the latter's eyes were averted; while

abruptly and awkwardly shifting the subject, he made some peevish allusion to the calm, and then, without

apology, once more, with his attendant, withdrew to the opposite bulwarks, where the whispering was

At this moment, and ere Captain Delano could cast a cool thought upon what had just passed, the young

Spanish sailor before mentioned was seen descending from the rigging. In act of stooping over to spring

inboard to the deck, his voluminous, unconfined frock, or shirt, of coarse woollen, much spotted with tar,

opened out far down the chest, revealing a soiled undergarment of what seemed the finest linen, edged,

about the neck, with a narrow blue ribbon, sadly faded and worn. At this moment the young sailor's eye was

again fixed on the whisperers, and Captain Delano thought he observed a lurking significance in it, as if silent

This once more impelled his own glance in the direction of Don Benito, and, as before, he could not but infer

that himself formed the subject of the conference. He paused. The sound of the hatchetpolishing fell on his

ears. He cast another swift sidelook at the two. They had the air of conspirators. In connection with the late

questionings, and the incident of the young sailor, these things now begat such return of involuntary

suspicion, that the singular guilelessness of the American could not endure it. Plucking up a gay and

humorous expression, he crossed over to the two rapidly, saying: "Ha, Don Benito, your black here seems

Upon this, the servant looked up with a goodnatured grin, but the master started as from a venomous bite. It

was a moment or two before the Spaniard sufficiently recovered himself to reply; which he did, at last, with

Here Babo, changing his previous grin of mere animal humour into an intelligent smile, not ungratefully eyed

Finding that the Spaniard now stood silent and reserved, as if involuntarily, or purposely giving hint that his

guest's proximity was inconvenient just then, Captain Delano, unwilling to appear uncivil even to incivility

itself, made some trivial remark and moved off; again and again turning over in his mind the mysterious

He had descended from the poop, and, wrapped in thought, was passing near a dark hatchway, leading down

into the steerage, when, perceiving motion there, he looked to see what moved. The same instant there was a

sparkle in the shadowy hatchway, and he saw one of the Spanish sailors, prowling there, hurriedly placing his

hand in the bosom of his frock, as if hiding something. Before the man could have been certain who it was

that was passing, he slunk below out of sight. But enough was seen of him to make it sure that he was the

What was that which so sparkled? thought Captain Delano. It was no lamp no match no live coal. Could it

have been a jewel? But how come sailors with jewels? or with silktrimmed undershirts either? Has he been

robbing the trunks of the dead cabin passengers? But if so, he would hardly wear one of the stolen articles on

board ship here. Ah, ah if now that was, indeed, a secret sign I saw passing between this suspicious fellow

and his captain awhile since; if I could only be certain that in my uneasiness my senses did not deceive me,

Here, passing from one suspicious thing to another, his mind revolved the point of the strange questions put

By a curious coincidence, as each point was recalled, the black wizards of Ashantee would strike up with

their hatchets, as in ominous comment on the white stranger's thoughts. Pressed by such enigmas and

portents, it would have been almost against nature, had not, even into the least distrustful heart, some ugly

Observing the ship now helplessly fallen into a current, with enchanted sails, drifting with increased rapidity

seaward; and noting that, from a lately intercepted projection of the land, the sealer was hidden, the stout

mariner began to quake at thoughts which he barely durst confess to himself. Above all, he began to feel a

ghostly dread of Don Benito. And yet when he roused himself, dilated his chest, felt himself strong on his

Had the Spaniard any sinister scheme, it must have reference not so much to him (Captain Delano) as to his

ship (the Bachelor's Delight). Hence the present drifting away of the one ship from the other, instead of

favouring any such possible scheme, was, for the time at least, opposed to it. Clearly any suspicion,

combining such contradictions, must need be delusive. Beside, was it not absurd to think of a vessel in

distress a vessel by sickness almost dismanned of her crew a vessel whose inmates were parched for

water was it not a thousand times absurd that such a craft should, at present, be of a piratical character; or

her commander, either for himself or those under him, cherish any desire but for speedy relief and

refreshment? But then, might not general distress, and thirst in particular, be affected? And might not that

same undiminished Spanish crew, alleged to have perished off to a remnant, be at that very moment lurking

in the hold? On heartbroken pretence of entreating a cup of cold water, fiends in human form had got into

lonely dwellings, nor retired until a dark deed had been done. And among the Malay pirates, it was no

unusual thing to lure ships after them into their treacherous harbours, or entice boarders from a declared

enemy at sea, by the spectacle of thinly manned or vacant decks, beneath which prowled a hundred spears

with yellow arms ready to upthrust them through the mats. Not that Captain Delano had entirely credited such

things. He had heard of them and now, as stories, they recurred. The present destination of the ship was the

anchorage. There she would be near his own vessel. Upon gaining that vicinity, might not the San Dominick,

He recalled the Spaniard's manner while telling his story. There was a gloomy hesitancy and subterfuge about

it. It was just the manner of one making up his tale for evil purposes, as he goes. But if that story was not

true, what was the truth? That the ship had unlawfully come into the Spaniard's possession? But in many of

its details, especially in reference to the more calamitous parts, such as the fatalities among the seamen, the

consequent prolonged beating about, the past sufferings from obstinate calms, and still continued suffering

from thirst; in all these points, as well as others, Don Benito's story had been corroborated not only by the

wailing ejaculations of the indiscriminate multitude, white and black, but likewise what seemed impossible

to be counterfeit by the very expression and play of every human feature, which Captain Delano saw. If Don

Benito's story was throughout an invention, then every soul on board, down to the youngest Negress, was his

carefully drilled recruit in the plot: an incredible inference. And yet, if there was ground for mistrusting the

In short, scarce an uneasiness entered the honest sailor's mind but, by a subsequent spontaneous act of good

sense, it was ejected. At last he began to laugh at these forebodings; and laugh at the strange ship for, in its

aspect someway siding with them, as it were; and laugh, too, at the oddlooking blacks, particularly those old

scissorsgrinders, the Ashantees; and those bedridden old knittingwomen, the oakumpickers; and, in a

human way, he almost began to laugh at the dark Spaniard himself, the central hobgoblin of all.

For the rest, whatever in a serious way seemed enigmatical, was now goodnaturedly explained away by the

thought that, for the most part, the poor invalid scarcely knew what he was about; either sulking in black

vapours, or putting random questions without sense or object. Evidently, for the present, the man was not fit

to be entrusted with the ship. On some benevolent plea withdrawing the command from him, Captain Delano

would yet have to send her to Concepcion in charge of his second mate, a worthy person and good navigator

a plan which would prove no wiser for the San Dominick than for Don Benito; for relieved from all anxiety,

keeping wholly to his cabin the sick man, under the good nursing of his servant, would probably, by the end

of the passage, be in a measure restored to health and with that he should also be restored to authority.

Such were the American's thoughts. They were tranquillizing. There was a difference between the idea of

Don Benito's darkly preordaining Captain Delano's fate, and Captain Delano's lightly arranging Don Benito's.

Nevertheless, it was not without something of relief that the good seaman presently perceived his whaleboat

in the distance. Its absence had been prolonged by unexpected detention at the sealer's side, as well as its

The advancing speck was observed by the blacks. Their shouts attracted the attention of Don Benito, who,

with a return of courtesy, approaching Captain Delano, expressed satisfaction at the coming of some supplies,

Captain Delano responded; but while doing so, his attention was drawn to something passing on the deck

below: among the crowd climbing the landward bulwarks, anxiously watching the coming boat, two blacks,

to all appearances accidentally incommoded by one of the sailors, flew out against him with horrible curses,

which the sailor someway resenting, the two blacks dashed him to the deck and jumped upon him, despite the

"Don Benito," said Captain Delano quickly, "do you see what is going on there? Look!"

But, seized by his cough, the Spaniard staggered, with both hands to his face, on the point of falling. Captain

Delano would have supported him, but the servant was more alert, who, with one hand sustaining his master,

with the other applied the cordial. Don Benito, restored, the black withdrew his support, slipping aside a little,

but dutifully remaining within call of a whisper. Such discretion was here evinced as quite wiped away, in the

visitor's eyes, any blemish of impropriety which might have attached to the attendant, from the indecorous

conferences before mentioned; showing, too, that if the servant were to blame, it might be more the master's

His glance thus called away from the spectacle of disorder to the more pleasing one before him, Captain

Delano could not avoid again congratulating Don Benito upon possessing such a servant, who, though

perhaps a little too forward now and then, must upon the whole be invaluable to one in the invalid's situation.

"Tell me, Don Benito," he added, with a smile "I should like to have your man here myself what will you

"Master wouldn't part with Babo for a thousand doubloons," murmured the black, overhearing the offer, and

taking it in earnest, and, with the strange vanity of a faithful slave appreciated by his master, scorning to hear

so paltry a valuation put upon him by a stranger. But Don Benito, apparently hardly yet completely restored,

Soon his physical distress became so great, affecting his mind, tool apparently, that, as if to screen the sad

Left to himself, the American, to while away the time till his boat should arrive, would have pleasantly

accosted some one of the few Spanish seamen he saw; but recalling something that Don Benito had said

touching their ill conduct, he refrained, as a shipmaster indisposed to countenance cowardice or

While, with these thoughts, standing with eye directed forward toward that handful of sailors suddenly he

thought that some of them returned the glance and with a sort of meaning. He rubbed his eyes, and looked

again; but again seemed to see the same thing. Under a new form, but more obscure than any previous one,

the old suspicions recurred, but, in the absence of Don Benito, with less of panic than before. Despite the bad

account given of the sailors, Captain Delano resolved forthwith to accost one of them. Descending the poop,

he made his way through the blacks, his movement drawing a queer cry from the oakumpickers, prompted

by whom the Negroes, twitching each other aside, divided before him; but, as if curious to see what was the

object of this deliberate visit to their Ghetto, closing in behind, in tolerable order, followed the white stranger

up. His progress thus proclaimed as by mounted kingsatarms, and escorted as by a Caffre guard of honour,

Captain Delano, assuming a goodhumoured, offhand air, continued to advance; now and then saying a

blithe word to the Negroes, and his eye curiously surveying the white faces, here and there sparsely mixed in

with the blacks, like stray white pawns venturously involved in the ranks of the chessmen opposed.

While thinking which of them to select for his purpose, he chanced to observe a sailor seated on the deck

engaged in tarring the strap of a large block, with a circle of blacks squatted round him inquisitively eyeing

The mean employment of the man was in contrast with something superior in his figure. His hand, black with

continually thrusting it into the tarpot held for him by a Negro, seemed not naturally allied to his face, a face

which would have been a very fine one but for its haggardness. Whether this haggardness had aught to do

with criminality could not be determined; since, as intense heat and cold, though unlike, produce like

sensations, so innocence and guilt, when, through casual association with mental pain, stamping any visible

Not again that this reflection occurred to Captain Delano at the time, charitable man as he was. Rather

another idea. Because observing so singular a haggardness to be combined with a dark eye, averted as in

trouble and shame, and then, however illogically, uniting in his mind his own private suspicions of the crew

with the confessed illopinion on the part of their captain, he was insensibly operated upon by certain general

notions, which, while disconnecting pain and abashment from virtue, as invariably link them with vice.

If, indeed, there be any wickedness on board this ship, thought Captain Delano, be sure that man there has

fouled his hand in it, even as now he fouls it in the pitch. I don't like to accost him. I will speak to this other,

He advanced to an old Barcelona tar, in ragged red breeches and dirty nightcap, cheeks trenched and

bronzed, whiskers dense as thorn hedges. Seated between two sleepylooking Africans, this mariner, like his

younger shipmate, was employed upon some rigging splicing a cable the sleepylooking blacks

performing the inferior function of holding the outer parts of the ropes for him.

Upon Captain Delano's approach, the man at once hung his head below its previous level; the one necessary

for business. It appeared as if he desired to be thought absorbed, with more than common fidelity, in his task.

Being addressed, he glanced up, but with what seemed a furtive, diffident air, which sat strangely enough on

his weatherbeaten visage, much as if a grizzly bear, instead of growling and biting, should simper and cast

sheep's eyes. He was asked several questions concerning the voyage questions purposely referring to several

particulars in Don Benito's narrative not previously corroborated by those impulsive cries greeting the

visitor on first coming on board. The questions were briefly answered, confirming all that remained to be

confirmed of the story. The Negroes about the windlass joined in with the old sailor, but, as they became

talkative, he by degrees became mute, and at length quite glum, seemed morosely unwilling to answer more

questions, and yet, all the while, this ursine air was somehow mixed with his sheepish one.

Despairing of getting into unembarrassed talk with such a centaur, Captain Delano, after glancing round for a

more promising countenance, but seeing none, spoke pleasantly to the blacks to make way for him; and so,

amid various grins and grimaces, returned to the poop, feeling a little strange at first, he could hardly tell

How plainly, thought he, did that old whiskerando yonder betray a consciousness of illdesert. No doubt,

when he saw me coming, he dreaded lest I, apprised by his captain of the crew's general misbehaviour, came

with sharp words for him, and so down with his head. And yet and yet, now that I think of it, that very old

fellow, if I err not, was one of those who seemed so earnestly eyeing me here awhile since. Ah, these currents

spin one's head round almost as much as they do the ship. Ha, there now's a pleasant sort of sunny sight; quite

His attention had been drawn to a slumbering Negress, partly disclosed through the lacework of some

rigging, lying, with youthful limbs carelessly disposed, under the lee of the bulwarks, like a doe in the shade

of a woodland rock. Sprawling at her lapped breasts was her wideawake fawn, stark naked, its black little

body half lifted from the deck, crosswise with its dam's; its hands, like two paws, clambering upon her; its

mouth and nose ineffectually rooting to get at the mark; and meantime giving a vexatious halfgrunt,

The uncommon vigour of the child at length roused the mother. She started up, at distance facing Captain

Delano. But, as if not at all concerned at the attitude in which she had been caught, delightedly she caught the

There's naked nature, now; pure tenderness and love, thought Captain Delano, well pleased.

This incident prompted him to remark the other Negresses more particularly than before. He was gratified

with their manners; like most uncivilized women, they seemed at once tender of heart and tough of

constitution; equally ready to die for their infants or fight for them. Unsophisticated as leopardesses; loving

as doves. Ah! thought Captain Delano, these perhaps are some of the very women whom Mungo Park saw in

These natural sights somehow insensibly deepened his confidence and ease. At last he looked to see how his

boat was getting on; but it was still pretty remote. He turned to see if Don Benito had returned; but he had

To change the scene, as well as to please himself with a leisurely observation of the coming boat, stepping

over into the mizzenchains he clambered his way into the starboard quartergalley; one of those abandoned

Venetianlooking waterbalconies previously mentioned; retreats cut off from the deck. As his foot pressed

the halfdamp, halfdry seamosses matting the place, and a chance phantom cat'spaw an islet of breeze,

unheralded, unfollowed as this ghostly cat'spaw came fanning his cheek, his glance fell upon the row of

small, round deadlights, all closed like coppered eyes of the coffined, and the statecabin door, once

connecting with the gallery, even as the deadlights had once looked out upon it, but now caulked fast like a

sarcophagus lid, to a purpleblack, tarredover panel, threshold, and post; and he bethought him of the time,

when that statecabin and this statebalcony had heard the voices of the Spanish king's officers, and the

forms of the Lima viceroy's daughters had perhaps leaned where he stood as these and other images flitted

through his mind, as the cat'spaw through the calm, gradually he felt rising a dreamy inquietude, like that of

He leaned against the carved balustrade, again looking off toward his boat; but found his eye falling upon the

ribboned grass, trailing along the ship's waterline, straight as a border of green box; and parterres of

seaweed, broad ovals and crescents, floating nigh and far, with what seemed long formal alleys between,

crossing the terraces of swells, and sweeping round as if leading to the grottoes below. And overhanging all

was the balustrade by his arm, which, partly stained with pitch and partly embossed with moss, seemed the

Trying to break one charm, he was but becharmed anew. Though upon the wide sea, he seemed in some far

inland country; prisoner in some deserted chateau, left to stare at empty grounds, and peer out at vague roads,

But these enchantments were a little disenchanted as his eye fell on the corroded mainchains. Of an ancient

style, massy and rusty in link, shackle and bolt, they seemed even more fit for the ship's present business than

Presently he thought something moved nigh the chains. He rubbed his eyes, and looked hard. Groves of

rigging were about the chains; and there, peering from behind a great stay, like an Indian from behind a

hemlock, a Spanish sailor, a marlingspike in his hand, was seen, who made what seemed an imperfect gesture

toward the balcony but immediately, as if alarmed by some advancing step along the deck within, vanished

What meant this? Something the man had sought to communicate, unbeknown to any one, even to his

captain? Did the secret involve aught unfavourable to his captain? Were those previous misgivings of Captain

Delano's about to be verified? Or, in his haunted mood at the moment, had some random, unintentional

motion of the man, while busy with the stay, as if repairing it, been mistaken for a significant beckoning?

Not unbewildered, again he gazed off for his boat. But it was temporarily hidden by a rocky spur of the isle.

As with some eagerness he bent forward, watching for the first shooting view of its beak, the balustrade gave

way before him like charcoal. Had he not clutched an outreaching rope he would have fallen into the sea. The

crash, though feeble, and the fall, though hollow, of the rotten fragments, must have been overheard. He

glanced up. With sober curiosity peering down upon him was one of the old oakumpickers, slipped from his

perch to an outside boom; while below the old Negro and, invisible to him, reconnoitring from a porthole

like a fox from the mouth of its den crouched the Spanish sailor again. From something suddenly suggested

by the man's air, the mad idea now darted into Captain Delano's mind: that Don Benito's plea of indisposition,

in withdrawing below, was but a pretence: that he was engaged there maturing some plot, of which the sailor,

by some means gaining an inkling, had a mind to warn the stranger against; incited, it may be, by gratitude

for a kind word on first boarding the ship. Was it from foreseeing some possible interference like this, that

Don Benito had, beforehand, given such a bad character of his sailors, while praising the Negroes; though,

indeed, the former seemed as docile as the latter the contrary? The whites, too, by nature, were the shrewder

race. A man with some evil design, would not he be likely to speak well of that stupidity which was blind to

his depravity, and malign that intelligence from which it might not be hidden? Not unlikely, perhaps. But if

the whites had dark secrets concerning Don Benito, could then Don Benito be any way in complicity with the

blacks? But they were too stupid. Besides, who ever heard of a white so far a renegade as to apostatize from

his very species almost, by leaguing in against it with Negroes? These difficulties recalled former ones. Lost

in their mazes, Captain Delano, who had now regained the deck, was uneasily advancing along it, when he

observed a new face: an aged sailor seated crosslegged near the main hatchway. His skin was shrunk up

with wrinkles like a pelican's empty pouch; his hair frosted; his countenance grave and composed. His hands

were full of ropes, which he was working into a large knot. Some blacks were about him obligingly dipping

the strands for him, here and there, as the exigencies of the operation demanded.

Captain Delano crossed over to him, and stood in silence surveying the knot; his mind, by a not uncongenial

transition, passing from its own entanglements to those of the hemp. For intricacy such a knot he had never

seen in an American ship, or indeed any other. The old man looked like an Egyptian priest, making Gordian

knots for the temple of Ammon. The knot seemed a combination of doublebowlineknot,

At last, puzzled to comprehend the meaning of such a knot, Captain Delano, addressed the knotter:

"For some one else to undo," muttered back the old man, plying his fingers harder than ever, the knot being

While Captain Delano stood watching him, suddenly the old man threw the knot toward him, and said in

broken English, the first heard in the ship, something to this effect "Undo it, cut it, quick." It was said

lowly, but with such condensation of rapidity, that the long, slow words in Spanish, which had preceded and

For a moment, knot in hand, and knot in head, Captain Delano stood mute; while, without further heeding

him, the old man was now intent upon other ropes. Presently there was a slight stir behind Captain Delano.

Turning, he saw the chained Negro, Atufal, standing quietly there. The next moment the old sailor rose,

muttering, and, followed by his subordinate Negroes, removed to the forward part of the ship, where in the

An elderly Negro, in a clout like an infant's, and with a pepper and salt head, and a kind of attorney air, now

approached Captain Delano. In tolerable Spanish, and with a goodnatured, knowing wink, he informed him

that the old knotter was simplewitted, but harmless; often playing his old tricks. The Negro concluded by

begging the knot, for of course the stranger would not care to be troubled with it. Unconsciously, it was

handed to him. With a sort of conge, the Negro received it, and turning his back ferreted into it like a

detective Custom House officer after smuggled laces. Soon, with some African word, equivalent to pshaw, he

All this is very queer now, thought Captain Delano, with a qualmish sort of emotion; but as one feeling

incipient seasickness, he strove, by ignoring the symptoms, to get rid of the malady. Once more he looked off

for his boat. To his delight, it was now again in view, leaving the rocky spur astern.

The sensation here experienced, after at first relieving his uneasiness, with unforeseen efficiency, soon began

to remove it. The less distant sight of that wellknown boat showing it, not as before, half blended with the

haze, but with outline defined, so that its individuality, like a man's, was manifest; that boat, Rover by name,

which, though now in strange seas, had often pressed the beach of Captain Delano's home, and, brought to its

threshold for repairs, had familiarly lain there, as a Newfoundland dog; the sight of that household boat

evoked a thousand trustful associations, which, contrasted with previous suspicions, filled Him not only with

lightsome confidence, but somehow with half humorous selfreproaches at his former lack of it.

"What, I, Amasa Delano Jack of the Beach, as they called me when a lad I, Amasa; the same that,

ducksatchel in hand, used to paddle along the waterside to the schoolhouse made from the old hulk; I, little

Jack of the Beach, that used to go berrying with cousin Nat and the rest; I to be murdered here at the ends of

the earth, on board a haunted pirateship by a horrible Spaniard? Too nonsensical to think of! Who would

murder Amasa Delano? His conscience is clean. There is some one above. Fie, fie, Jack of the Beach! you are

a child indeed; a child of the second childhood, old boy; you are beginning to dote and drool, I'm afraid."

Light of heart and foot, he stepped aft, and there was met by Don Benito's servant, who, with a pleasing

expression, responsive to his own present feelings, informed him that his master had recovered from the

effects of his coughing fit, and had just ordered him to go present his compliments to his good guest, Don

Amasa, and say that he (Don Benito) would soon have the happiness to rejoin him.

There now, do you mark that? again thought Captain Delano, walking the poop. What a donkey I was. This

kind gentleman who here sends me his kind compliments, he, but ten minutes ago, darklantern in hand, was

dodging round some old grindstone in the hold, sharpening a hatchet for me, I thought. Well, well; these

long calms have a morbid effect on the mind, I've often heard, though I never believed it before. Ha! glancing

toward the boat; there's Rover; a good dog; a white bone in her mouth. A pretty big bone though, seems to

me. What? Yes, she has fallen afoul of the bubbling tiderip there. It sets her the other way, too, for the

It was now about noon, though, from the greyness of everything, it seemed to be getting toward dusk.

The calm was confirmed. In the far distance, away from the influence of land, the leaden ocean seemed laid

out and leaded up, its course finished, soul gone, defunct. But the current from landward, where the ship was,

increased; silently sweeping her further and further toward the tranced waters beyond.

Still, from his knowledge of those latitudes, cherishing hopes of a breeze, and a fair and fresh one, at any

moment, Captain Delano, despite present prospects, buoyantly counted upon bringing the San Dominick

safely to anchor ere night. The distance swept over was nothing; since, with a good wind, ten minutes' sailing

would retrace more than sixty minutes' drifting. Meantime, one moment turning to mark Rover fighting the

tiderip, and the next to see Don Benito approaching, he continued walking the poop.

Gradually he felt a vexation arising from the delay of his boat; this soon merged into uneasiness; and at last,

his eye falling continually, as from a stagebox into the pit, upon the strange crowd before and below him,

and byandby recognizing there the face now composed to indifference of the Spanish sailor who had

seemed to beckon from the mainchains, something of his old trepidations returned.

Ah, thought he gravely enough this is like the ague: because it went off, it follows not that it won't come

Though ashamed of the relapse, he could not altogether subdue it; and so, exerting his good nature to the

Yes, this is a strange craft; a strange history, too, and strange folks on board. But nothing more.

By way of keeping his mind out of mischief till the boat should arrive, he tried to occupy it with turning over

and over, in a purely speculative sort of way, some lesser peculiarities of the captain and crew. Among

First, the affair of the Spanish lad assailed with a knife by the slave boy; an act winked at by Don Benito.

Second, the tyranny in Don Benito's treatment of Atufal, the black; as if a child should lead a bull of the Nile

by the ring in his nose. Third, the trampling of the sailor by the two Negroes; a piece of insolence passed over

without so much as a reprimand. Fourth, the cringing submission to their master of all the ship's underlings,

mostly blacks; as if by the least inadvertence they feared to draw down his despotic displeasure.

Coupling these points, they seemed somewhat contradictory. But what then, thought Captain Delano,

glancing toward his now nearing boat, what then? Why, this Don Benito is a very capricious commander.

But he is not the first of the sort I have seen; though it's true he rather exceeds any other. But as a nation

continued he in his reveries these Spaniards are all an odd set; the very word Spaniard has a curious,

conspirator, GuyFawkish twang to it. And yet, I dare say, Spaniards in the main are as good folks as any in

As, with its welcome freight, the boat touched the side, the oakumpickers, with venerable gestures, sought

to restrain the blacks, who, at the sight of three gurried watercasks in its bottom, and a pile of wilted

Don Benito with his servant now appeared; his coming, perhaps, hastened by hearing the noise. Of him

Captain Delano sought permission to serve out the water, so that all might share alike, and none injure

themselves by unfair excess. But sensible, and, on Don Benito's account, kind as this offer was, it was

received with what seemed impatience; as if aware that he lacked energy as a commander, Don Benito, with

the true jealousy of weakness, resented as an affront any interference. So, at least, Captain Delano inferred.

In another moment the casks were being hoisted in, when some of the eager Negroes accidentally jostled

Captain Delano, where he stood by the gangway; so that, unmindful of Don Benito, yielding to the impulse of

the moment, with goodnatured authority he bade the blacks stand back; to enforce his words making use of

a halfmirthful, halfmenacing gesture. Instantly the blacks paused, just where they were, each Negro and

Negress suspended in his or her posture, exactly as the word had found them for a few seconds continuing

so while, as between the responsive posts of a telegraph, an unknown syllable ran from man to man among

the perched oakumpickers. While Captain Delano's attention was fixed by this scene, suddenly the

Thinking that at the signal of the Spaniard he was about to be massacred, Captain Delano would have sprung

for his boat, but paused, as the oakumpickers, dropping down into the crowd with earnest exclamations,

forced every white and every Negro back, at the same moment, with gestures friendly and familiar, almost

jocose, bidding him, in substance, not be a fool. Simultaneously the hatchetpolishers resumed their seats,

quietly as so many tailors, and at once, as if nothing had happened, the work of hoisting in the casks was

Captain Delano glanced toward Don Benito. As he saw his meagre form in the act of recovering itself from

reclining in the servant's arms, into which the agitated invalid had fallen, he could not but marvel at the panic

by which himself had been surprised on the darting supposition that such a commander, who upon a

legitimate occasion, so trivial, too, as it now appeared, could lose all selfcommand, was, with energetic

The casks being on deck, Captain Delano was handed a number of jars and cups by one of the steward's

aides, who, in the name of Don Benito, entreated him to do as he had proposed: dole out the water. He

complied, with republican impartiality as to this republican element, which always seeks one level, serving

the oldest white no better than the youngest black; excepting, indeed, poor Don Benito, whose condition, if

not rank, demanded an extra allowance. To him, in the first place, Captain Delano presented a fair pitcher of

the fluid; but, thirsting as he was for fresh water, Don Benito quaffed not a drop until after several grave

bows and salutes: a reciprocation of courtesies which the sightloving Africans hailed with clapping of

Two of the less wilted pumpkins being reserved for the cabin table, the residue were minced up on the spot

for the general regalement. But the soft bread, sugar, and bottled cider, Captain Delano would have given the

Spaniards alone, and in chief Don Benito; but the latter objected; which disinterestedness, on his part, not a

little pleased the American; and so mouthfuls all around were given alike to whites and blacks; excepting one

Here it may be observed that as, on the first visit of the boat, the American had not permitted his men to

board the ship, neither did he now; being unwilling to add to the confusion of the decks.

Not uninfluenced by the peculiar good humour at present prevailing, and for the time oblivious of any but

benevolent thoughts, Captain Delano, who from recent indications counted upon a breeze within an hour or

two at furthest, despatched the boat back to the sealer with orders for all the hands that could be spared

immediately to set about rafting casks to the wateringplace and filling them. Likewise he bade word be

carried to his chief officer, that if against present expectation the ship was not brought to anchor by sunset, he

need be under no concern, for as there was to be a full moon that night, he (Captain Delano) would remain on

As the two captains stood together, observing the departing boat the servant as it happened having just spied

a spot on his master's velvet sleeve, and silently engaged rubbing it out the American expressed his regrets

that the San Dominick had no boats; none, at least, but the unseaworthy old hulk of the longboat, which,

warped as a camel's skeleton in the desert, and almost as bleached, lay potwise inverted amidships, one side

a little tipped, furnishing a subterraneous sort of den for family groups of the blacks, mostly women and

small children; who, squatting on old mats below, or perched above in the dark dome, on the elevated seats,

were descried, some distance within, like a social circle of bats, sheltering in some friendly cave; at intervals,

ebon flights of naked boys and girls, three or four years old, darting in and out of the den's mouth.

"Had you three or four boats now, Don Benito," said Captain Delano, "I think that, by tugging at the oars,

your Negroes here might help along matters some. Did you sail from port without boats, Don Benito?"

"That was bad. Many men, too, you lost then. Boats and men. Those must have been hard gales, Don

"Tell me, Don Benito," continued his companion with increased interest, "tell me, were these gales

"Yourself did, when giving me an account of your voyage," answered Captain Delano with almost equal

astonishment at this eating of his own words, even as he ever seemed eating his own heart, on the part of the

Spaniard. "You yourself, Don Benito, spoke of Cape Horn," he emphatically repeated.

The Spaniard turned, in a sort of stooping posture, pausing an instant, as one about to make a plunging

At this moment a messengerboy, a white, hurried by, in the regular performance of his function carrying the

last expired halfhour forward to the forecastle, from the cabin timepiece, to have it struck at the ship's large

"Master," said the servant, discontinuing his work on the coat sleeve, and addressing the rapt Spaniard with a

sort of timid apprehensiveness, as one charged with a duty, the discharge of which, it was foreseen, would

prove irksome to the very person who had imposed it, and for whose benefit it was intended, "master told me

never mind where he was, or how engaged, always to remind him, to a minute, when shavingtime comes.

Miguel has gone to strike the halfhour after noon. It is now, master. Will master go into the cuddy?"

"Ah yes," answered the Spaniard, starting, somewhat as from dreams into realities; then turning upon

"Then if master means to talk more to Don Amasa," said the servant, "why not let Don Amasa sit by master

in the cuddy, and master can talk, and Don Amasa can listen, while Babo here lathers and strops."

"Yes," said Captain Delano, not unpleased with this sociable plan, "yes, Don Benito, unless you had rather

As the three passed aft, the American could not but think it another strange instance of his host's

capriciousness, this being shaved with such uncommon punctuality in the middle of the day. But he deemed it

more than likely that the servant's anxious fidelity had something to do with the matter; inasmuch as the

timely interruption served to rally his master from the mood which had evidently been coming upon him.

The place called the cuddy was a light deckcabin formed by the poop, a sort of attic to the large cabin

below. Part of it had formerly been the quarters of the officers; but since their death all the partitionings had

been thrown down, and the whole interior converted into one spacious and airy marine hall; for absence of

fine furniture and picturesque disarray, of odd appurtenances, somewhat answering to the wide, cluttered hall

of some eccentric bachelor squire in the country, who hangs his shootingjacket and tobaccopouch on deer

The similitude was heightened, if not originally suggested, by glimpses of the surrounding sea; since, in one

The floor of the cuddy was matted. Overhead, four or five old muskets were stuck into horizontal holes along

the beams. On one side was a clawfooted old table lashed to the deck; a thumbed missal on it, and over it a

small, meagre crucifix attached to the bulkhead. Under the table lay a dented cutlass or two, with a hacked

harpoon, among some melancholy old rigging, like a heap of poor friar's girdles. There were also two long,

sharpribbed settees of malacca cane, black with age, and uncomfortable to look at as inquisitors' racks, with

a large, misshapen armchair, which, furnished with a rude barber's crutch at the back, working with a screw,

seemed some grotesque Middle Age engine of torment. A flag locker was in one corner, exposing various

coloured bunting, some rolled up, others half unrolled, still others tumbled. Opposite was a cumbrous

washstand, of black mahogany, all of one block, with a pedestal, like a font, and over it a railed shelf,

containing combs, brushes, and other implements of the toilet. A tom hammock of stained grass swung near;

the sheets tossed, and the pillow wrinkled up like a brow, as if whoever slept here slept but illy, with alternate

The further extremity of the cuddy, overhanging the ship's stern, was pierced with three openings, windows

or portholes, according as men or cannon might peer, socially or unsocially, out of them. At present neither

men nor cannon were seen, though huge ringbolts and other rusty iron fixtures of the woodwork hinted of

Glancing toward the hammock as he entered, Captain Delano said, "You sleep here, Don Benito?"

"This seems a sort of dormitory, sittingroom, sailloft, chapel, armoury, and private closet together, Don

Here the servant, napkin on arm, made a motion as if waiting his master's good pleasure. Don Benito

signified his readiness, when, seating him in the malacca armchair, and for the guest's convenience drawing

opposite it one of the settees, the servant commenced operations by throwing back his master's collar and

There is something in the Negro which, in a peculiar way, fits him for avocations about one's person. Most

Negroes are natural valets and hairdressers; taking to the comb and brush congenially as to the castanets,

and flourishing them apparently with almost equal satisfaction. There is, too, a smooth tact about them in this

employment, with a marvellous, noiseless, gliding briskness, not ungraceful in its way, singularly pleasing to

behold, and still more so to be the manipulated subject of. And above all is the great gift of good humour. Not

the mere grin or laugh is here meant. Those were unsuitable. But a certain easy cheerfulness, harmonious in

every glance and gesture; as though God had set the whole Negro to some pleasant tune.

When to all this is added the docility arising from the unaspiring contentment of a limited mind, and that

susceptibility of blind attachment sometimes inhering in indisputable inferiors, one readily perceives why

those hypochondriacs, Johnson and Byron it may be something like the hypochondriac, Benito Cereno

took to their hearts, almost to the exclusion of the entire white race, their serving men, the Negroes, Barber

and Fletcher. But if there be that in the Negro which exempts him from the inflicted sourness of the morbid or

cynical mind, how, in his most prepossessing aspects, must he appear to a benevolent one? When at ease with

respect to exterior things, Captain Delano's nature was not only benign, but familiarly and humorously so. At

home, he had often taken rare satisfaction in sitting in his door, watching some free man of colour at his work

or play. If on a voyage he chanced to have a black sailor, invariably he was on chatty, and halfgamesome

terms with him. In fact, like most men of a good, blithe heart, Captain Delano took to Negroes, not

Hitherto the circumstances in which he found the San Dominick had repressed the tendency. But in the

cuddy, relieved from his former uneasiness, and, for various reasons, more sociably inclined than at any

previous period of the day, and seeing the coloured servant, napkin on arm, so debonair about his master, in a

business so familiar as that of shaving, too, all his old weakness for Negroes returned.

Among other things, he was amused with an odd instance of the African love of bright colours and fine

shows, in the black's informally taking from the flaglocker a great piece of bunting of all hues, and lavishly

The mode of shaving among the Spaniards is a little different from what it is with other nations. They have a

basin, specially called a barber's basin, which on one side is scooped out, so as accurately to receive the chin,

against which it is closely held in lathering; which is done, not with a brush, but with soap dipped in the

In the present instance saltwater was used for lack of better; and the parts lathered were only the upper lip,

These preliminaries being somewhat novel to Captain Delano he sat curiously eyeing them, so that no

conversation took place, nor for the present did Don Benito appear disposed to renew any.

Setting down his basin, the Negro searched among the razors, as for the sharpest, and having found it, gave it

an additional edge by expertly stropping it on the firm, smooth, oily skin of his open palm; he then made a

gesture as if to begin, but midway stood suspended for an instant, one hand elevating the razor, the other

professionally dabbling among the bubbling suds on the Spaniard's lank neck. Not unaffected by the close

sight of the gleaming steel, Don Benito nervously shuddered, his usual ghastliness was heightened by the

lather, which lather, again, was intensified in its hue by the sootiness of the Negro's body. Altogether the

scene was somewhat peculiar, at least to Captain Delano, nor, as he saw the two thus postured, could he resist

the vagary, that in the black he saw a headsman, and in the white, a man at the block. But this was one of

those antic conceits, appearing and vanishing in a breath, from which, perhaps, the best regulated mind is not

Meantime the agitation of the Spaniard had a little loosened the bunting from around him, so that one broad

fold swept curtainlike over the chairarm to the floor, revealing, amid a profusion of armorial bars and

groundcolours black, blue and yellow a closed castle in a bloodred field diagonal with a lion rampant in

"The castle and the lion," exclaimed Captain Delano "why, Don Benito, this is the flag of Spain you use

here. It's well it's only I, and not the King, that sees this," he added with a smile, "but" turning toward the

black, "it's all one, I suppose, so the colours be gay," which playful remark did not fail somewhat to tickle

"Now, master," he said, readjusting the flag, and pressing the head gently further back into the crotch of the

"You must not shake so, master. See, Don Amasa, master always shakes when I shave him. And yet master

knows I never yet have drawn blood, though it's true, if master will shake so, I may some of these times.

Now, master," he continued. "And now, Don Amasa, please go on with your talk about the gale, and all that,

"Ah yes, these gales," said Captain Delano; "but the more I think of your voyage, Don Benito, the more I

wonder, not at the gales, terrible as they must have been, but at the disastrous interval following them. For

here, by your account, have you been these two months and more getting from Cape Horn to St. Maria, a

distance which I myself, with a good wind, have sailed in a few days. True, you had calms, and long ones, but

to be becalmed for two months, that is, at least, unusual. Why, Don Benito, had almost any other gentleman

told me such a story, I should have been half disposed to a little incredulity."

Here an involuntary expression came over the Spaniard, similar to that just before on the deck, and whether it

was the start he gave, or a sudden gawky roll of the hull in the calm, or a momentary unsteadiness of the

servant's hand; however it was, just then the razor drew blood, spots of which stained the creamy lather under

the throat; immediately the black barber drew back his steel, and remaining in his professional attitude, back

to Captain Delano, and face to Don Benito, held up the trickling razor, saying, with a sort of half humorous

No sword drawn before James the First of England, no assassination in that timid King's presence, could have

Poor fellow, thought Captain Delano, so nervous he can't even bear the sight of barber's blood; and this

unstrung, sick man, is it credible that I should have imagined he meant to spill all my blood, who can't endure

the sight of one little drop of his own? Surely, Amasa Delano, you have been beside yourself this day. Tell it

not when you get home, sappy Amasa. Well, well, he looks like a murderer, doesn't he? More like as if

himself were to be done for. Well, well, this day's experience shall be a good lesson.

Meantime, while these things were running through the honest seaman's mind, the servant had taken the

napkin from his arm, and to Don Benito had said: "But answer Don Amasa, please, master, while I wipe this

As he said the words, his face was turned half round, so as to be alike visible to the Spaniard and the

American, and seemed by its expression to hint, that he was desirous, by getting his master to go on with the

conversation, considerately to withdraw his attention from the recent annoying accident. As if glad to snatch

the offered relief, Don Benito resumed, rehearsing to Captain Delano, that not only were the calms of unusual

duration, but the ship had fallen in with obstinate currents and other things he added, some of which were but

repetitions of former statements, to explain how it came to pass that the passage from Cape Horn to St. Maria

had been so exceedingly long, now and then mingling with his words, incidental praises, less qualified than

These particulars were not given consecutively, the servant now and then using his razor, and so, between the

intervals of shaving, the story and panegyric went on with more than usual huskiness.

To Captain Delano's imagination, now again not wholly at rest, there was something so hollow in the

Spaniard's manner, with apparently some reciprocal hollowness in the servant's dusky comment of silence,

that the idea flashed across him, that possibly master and man, for some unknown purpose, were acting out,

both in word and deed, nay, to the very tremor of Don Benito's limbs, some juggling play before him. Neither

did the suspicion of collusion lack apparent support, from the fact of those whispered conferences before

mentioned. But then, what could be the object of enacting this play of the barber before him? At last,

regarding the notion as a whimsy, insensibly suggested, perhaps, by the theatrical aspect of Don Benito in his

The shaving over, the servant bestirred himself with a small bottle of scented waters, pouring a few drops on

the head, and then diligently rubbing; the vehemence of the exercise causing the muscles of his face to twitch

His next operation was with comb, scissors and brush; going round and round, smoothing a curl here,

clipping an unruly whiskerhair there, giving a graceful sweep to the templelock, with other impromptu

touches evincing the hand of a master; while, like any resigned gentleman in barber's hands, Don Benito bore

all, much less uneasily, at least, than he had done the razoring; indeed, he sat so pale and rigid now, that the

All being over at last, the standard of Spain removed, tumbled up, and tossed back into the flaglocker, the

Negro's warm breath blowing away any stray hair which might have lodged down his master's neck; collar

and cravat readjusted; a speck of lint whisked off the velvet lapel; all this being done; backing off a little

space, and pausing with an expression of subdued selfcomplacency, the servant for a moment surveyed his

Captain Delano playfully complimented him upon his achievement; at the same time congratulating Don

But neither sweet waters, nor shampooing, nor fidelity, nor sociality, delighted the Spaniard. Seeing him

relapsing into forbidding gloom, and still remaining seated, Captain Delano, thinking that his presence was

undesired just then, withdrew, on pretence of seeing whether, as he had prophesied, any signs of a breeze

Walking forward to the mainmast, he stood awhile thinking over the scene, and not without some undefined

misgivings, when he heard a noise near the cuddy, and turning, saw the Negro, his hand to his cheek.

Advancing, Captain Delano perceived that the cheek was bleeding. He was about to ask the cause, when the

"Ah, when will master get better from his sickness; only the sour heart that sour sickness breeds made him

serve Babo so; cutting Babo with the razor, because, only by accident, Babo had given master one little

scratch; and for the first time in so many a day, too. Ah, ah, ah," holding his hand to his face.

Is it possible, thought Captain Delano; was it to wreak in private his Spanish spite against this poor friend of

his, that Don Benito, by his sullen manner, impelled me to withdraw? Ah, this slavery breeds ugly passions in

He was about to speak in sympathy to the Negro, but with a timid reluctance he now reentered the cuddy.

Presently master and man came forth; Don Benito leaning on his servant as if nothing had happened.

He accosted Don Benito, and they slowly walked together. They had gone but a few paces, when the

stewarda tall, rajahlooking mulatto, orientally set off with a pagoda turban formed by three or four Madras

handkerchiefs wound about his head, tier on tier approaching with a salaam, announced lunch in the cabin.

On their way thither, the two captains were preceded by the mulatto, who, turning round as he advanced, with

continual smiles and bows, ushered them in, a display of elegance which quite completed the insignificance

of the small bareheaded Babo, who, as if not unconscious of inferiority, eyed askance the graceful steward.

But in part, Captain Delano imputed his jealous watchfulness to that peculiar feeling which the fullblooded

African entertains for the adulterated one. As for the steward, his manner, if not bespeaking much dignity of

selfrespect, yet evidenced his extreme desire to please; which is doubly meritorious, as at once Christian and

Captain Delano observed with interest that while the complexion of the mulatto was hybrid, his physiognomy

"Don Benito," whispered he, "I am glad to see this usherofthegoldenrod of yours; the sight refutes an

ugly remark once made to me by a Barbados planter that when a mulatto has a regular European face, look

out for him; he is a devil. But see, your steward here has features more regular than King George's of

England; and yet there he nods, and bows, and smiles; a king, indeed the king of kind hearts and polite

"But, tell me, has he not, so far as you have known him, always proved a good, worthy fellow?" said Captain

Delano, pausing, while with a final genuflexion the steward disappeared into the cabin; "come, for the reason

"Francesco is a good man," rather sluggishly responded Don Benito, like a phlegmatic appreciator, who

"Ah, I thought so. For it were strange indeed, and not very creditable to us whiteskins, if a little of our blood

mixed with the African's, should, far from improving the latter's quality, have the sad effect of pouring

vitriolic acid into black broth; improving the hue, perhaps, but not the wholesomeness."

"Doubtless, doubtless, Senor, but" glancing at Babo "not to speak of Negroes, your planter's remark I have

heard applied to the Spanish and Indian intermixtures in our provinces. But I know nothing about the matter,"

The lunch was a frugal one. Some of Captain Delano's fresh fish and pumpkins, biscuit and salt beef, the

As they entered, Francesco, with two or three coloured aides, was hovering over the table giving the last

adjustments. Upon perceiving their master they withdrew, Francesco making a smiling conge, and the

Spaniard, without condescending to notice it, fastidiously remarking to his companion that he relished not

Without companions, host and guest sat down, like a childless married couple, at opposite ends of the table,

Don Benito waving Captain Delano to his place, and, weak as he was, insisting upon that gentleman being

The Negro placed a rug under Don Benito's feet, and a cushion behind his back, and then stood behind, not

his master's chair, but Captain Delano's. At first, this a little surprised the latter. But it was soon evident that,

in taking his position, the black was still true to his master; since by facing him he could the more readily

"This is an uncommonly intelligent fellow of yours, Don Benito," whispered Captain Delano across the table.

During the repast, the guest again reverted to parts of Don Benito's story, begging further particulars here and

there. He inquired how it was that the scurvy and fever should have committed such wholesale havoc upon

the whites, while destroying less than half of the blacks. As if this question reproduced the whole scene of

plague before the Spaniard's eyes, miserably reminding him of his solitude in a cabin where before he had

had so many friends and officers round him, his hand shook, his face became hueless, broken words escaped;

but directly the sane memory of the past seemed replaced by insane terrors of the present. With starting eyes

he stared before him at vacancy. For nothing was to be seen but the hand of his servant pushing the Canary

over towards him. At length a few sips served partially to restore him. He made random reference to the

different constitutions of races, enabling one to offer more resistance to certain maladies than another. The

Presently Captain Delano, intending to say something to his host concerning the pecuniary part of the

business he had undertaken for him, especially since he was strictly accountable to his owners with

reference to the new suit of sails, and other things of that sort; and naturally preferring to conduct such affairs

in private, was desirous that the servant should withdraw; imagining that Don Benito for a few minutes could

dispense with his attendance. He, however, waited awhile; thinking that, as the conversation proceeded, Don

But it was otherwise. At last catching his host's eye, Captain Delano, with a slight backward gesture of his

thumb, whispered, "Don Benito, pardon me, but there is an interference with the full expression of what I

Upon this the Spaniard changed countenance; which was imputed to his resenting the hint, as in some way a

reflection upon his servant. After a moment's pause, he assured his guest that the black's remaining with them

could be of no disservice; because since losing his officers he had made Babo (whose original office, it now

appeared, had been captain of the slaves) not only his constant attendant and companion, but in all things his

After this, nothing more could be said; though, indeed, Captain Delano could hardly avoid some little tinge of

irritation upon being left ungratified in so inconsiderable a wish, by one, too, for whom he intended such

solid services. But it is only his querulousness, thought he; and so filling his glass he proceeded to business.

The price of the sails and other matters was fixed upon. But while this was being done, the American

observed that, though his original offer of assistance had been hailed with hectic animation, yet now when it

was reduced to a business transaction, indifference and apathy were betrayed. Don Benito, in fact, appeared

to submit to hearing the details more out of regard to common propriety, than from any impression that

Soon, his manner became still more reserved. The effort was vain to seek to draw him into social talk.

Gnawed by his splenetic mood, he sat twitching his beard, while to little purpose the hand of his servant,

Lunch being over, they sat down on the cushioned transom; the servant placing a pillow behind his master.

The long continuance of the calm had now affected the atmosphere. Don Benito sighed heavily, as if for

"Why not adjourn to the cuddy," said Captain Delano; "there is more air there." But the host sat silent and

Meantime his servant knelt before him, with a large fan of feathers. And Francesco, coming in on tiptoes,

handed the Negro a little cup of aromatic waters, with which at intervals he chafed his master's brow,

smoothing the hair along the temples as a nurse does a child's. He spoke no word. He only rested his eye on

his master's, as if, amid all Don Benito's distress, a little to refresh his spirit by the silent sight of fidelity.

Presently the ship's bell sounded two o'clock; and through the cabinwindows a slight rippling of the sea was

He had risen to his feet, speaking in a very animated tone, with a view the more to rouse his companion. But

though the crimson curtain of the sternwindow near him that moment fluttered against his pale cheek, Don

Poor fellow, thought Captain Delano, bitter experience has taught him that one ripple does not make a wind,

any more than one swallow a summer. But he is mistaken for once. I will get his ship in for him, and prove it.

Briefly alluding to his weak condition, he urged his host to remain quietly where he was, since he (Captain

Delano) would with pleasure take upon himself the responsibility of making the best use of the wind.

Upon gaining the deck, Captain Delano started at the unexpected figure of Atufal, monumentally fixed at the

threshold, like one of those sculptured porters of black marble guarding the porches of Egyptian tombs.

But this time the start was, perhaps, purely physical. Atufal's presence, singularly attesting docility even in

sullenness, was contrasted with that of the hatchetpolishers, who in patience evinced their industry; while

both spectacles showed, that lax as Don Benito's general authority might be, still, whenever he chose to exert

Snatching a trumpet which hung from the bulwarks, with a free step Captain Delano advanced to the forward

edge of the poop, issuing his orders in his best Spanish. The few sailors and many Negroes, all equally

While giving some directions about setting a lower stu'n'sail, suddenly Captain Delano heard a voice

faithfully repeating his orders. Turning, he saw Babo, now for the time acting, under the pilot, his original

part of captain of the slaves. This assistance proved valuable. Tattered sails and warped yards were soon

brought into some trim. And no brace or halyard was pulled but to the blithe songs of the inspirited Negroes.

Good fellows, thought Captain Delano, a little training would make fine sailors of them. Why see, the very

women pull and sing, too. These must be some of those Ashantee Negresses that make such capital soldiers,

The San Dominick steered with a cumbrous tiller, with large horizontal pulleys attached. At each pulleyend

stood a subordinate black, and between them, at the tillerhead, the responsible post, a Spanish seaman,

whose countenance evinced his due share in the general hopefulness and confidence at the coming of the

He proved the same man who had behaved with so shamefaced an air on the windlass.

"Ah, it is you, my man," exclaimed Captain Delano "well, no more sheep'seyes now; look straight

forward and keep the ship so. Good hand, I trust? And want to get into the harbour, don't you?"

"Si Senor," assented the man with an inward chuckle, grasping the tillerhead firmly. Upon this, unperceived

Finding all right at the helm, the pilot went forward to the forecastle, to see how matters stood there.

The ship now had way enough to breast the current. With the approach of evening, the breeze would be sure

Having done all that was needed for the present, Captain Delano, giving his last orders to the sailors, turned

aft to report affairs to Don Benito in the cabin; perhaps additionally incited to rejoin him by the hope of

From opposite sides, there were, beneath the poop, two approaches to the cabin; one further forward than the

other, and consequently communicating with a longer passage. Marking the servant still above, Captain

Delano, taking the nighest entrance the one last named, and at whose porch Atufal still stood hurried on his

way, till, arrived at the cabin threshold, he paused an instant, a little to recover from his eagerness. Then, with

the words of his intended business upon his lips, he entered. As he advanced toward the Spaniard, on the

transom, he heard another footstep, keeping time with his. From the opposite door, a salver in hand, the

"Confound the faithful fellow," thought Captain Delano; "what a vexatious coincidence."

Possibly, the vexation might have been something different, were it not for the buoyant confidence inspired

by the breeze. But even as it was, he felt a slight twinge, from a sudden involuntary association in his mind of

"Don Benito," said he, "I give you joy; the breeze will hold, and will increase. By the way, your tall man and

Don Benito recoiled, as if at some bland satirical touch, delivered with such adroit garnish of apparent

He is like one flayed alive, thought Captain Delano; where may one touch him without causing a shrink?

The servant moved before his master, adjusting a cushion; recalled to civility, the Spaniard stiffly replied:

"You are right. The slave appears where you saw him, according to my command; which is, that if at the

"Ah now, pardon me, but that is treating the poor fellow like an exking denied. Ah, Don Benito," smiling,

"for all the license you permit in some things, I fear lest, at bottom, you are a bitter hard master."

Again Don Benito shrank; and this time, as the good sailor thought, from a genuine twinge of his conscience.

Conversation now became constrained. In vain Captain Delano called attention to the now perceptible motion

of the keel gently cleaving the sea; with lacklustre eye, Don Benito returned words few and reserved.

Byandby, the wind having steadily risen, and still blowing right into the harbour, bore the San Dominick

swiftly on. Rounding a point of land, the sealer at distance came into open view.

Meantime Captain Delano had again repaired to the deck, remaining there some time. Having at last altered

the ship's course, so as to give the reef a wide berth, he returned for a few moments below.

"Better and better, Don Benito," he cried as he blithely reentered; "there will soon be an end to your cares,

at least for awhile. For when, after a long, sad voyage, you know, the anchor drops into the haven, all its vast

weight seems lifted from the captain's heart. We are getting on famously, Don Benito. My ship is in sight.

Look through this sidelight here; there she is; all ataunto! The Bachelor's Delight, my good friend. Ah,

how this wind braces one up. Come, you must take a cup of coffee with me this evening. My old steward will

give you as fine a cup as ever any sultan tasted. What say you, Don Benito, will you?"

At first, the Spaniard glanced feverishly up, casting a longing look toward the sealer, while with mute

concern his servant gazed into his face. Suddenly the old ague of coldness returned, and dropping back to his

"You do not answer. Come, all day you have been my host; would you have hospitality all on one side?"

"What? it will not fatigue you. The ships will lie together as near as they can, without swinging foul. It will

be little more than stepping from deck to deck; which is but as from room to room. Come, come, you must

Renouncing all but the last appearance of courtesy, with a sort of cadaverous sullenness, and biting his thin

nails to the quick, he glanced, almost glared, at his guest; as if impatient that a stranger's presence should

interfere with the full indulgence of his morbid hour. Meantime the sound of the parted waters came more

and more gurglingly and merrily in at the windows; as reproaching him for his dark spleen; as telling him

that, sulk as he might, and go mad with it, nature cared not a jot; since, whose fault was it, pray? But the foul

There was something in the man so far beyond any mere unsociality or sourness previously evinced, that

even the forbearing goodnature of his guest could no longer endure it. Wholly at a loss to account for such

demeanour, and deeming sickness with eccentricity, however extreme, no adequate excuse, well satisfied,

too, that nothing in his own conduct could justify it, Captain Delano's pride began to be roused. Himself

became reserved. But all seemed one to the Spaniard. Quitting him, therefore, Captain Delano once more

The ship was now within less than two miles of the sealer. The whaleboat was seen darting over the

To be brief, the two vessels, thanks to the pilot's skill, ere long in neighbourly style lay anchored together.

Before returning to his own vessel, Captain Delano had intended communicating to Don Benito the practical

details of the proposed services to be rendered. But, as it was, unwilling anew to subject himself to rebuffs, he

resolved, now that he had seen the San Dominick safely moored, immediately to quit her, without further

allusion to hospitality or business. Indefinitely postponing his ulterior plans, he would regulate his future

actions according to future circumstances. His boat was ready to receive him; but his host still tarried below.

Well, thought Captain Delano, if he has little breeding, the more need to show mine. He descended to the

cabin to bid a ceremonious, and, it may be, tacitly rebukeful adieu. But to his great satisfaction, Don Benito,

as if he began to feel the weight of that treatment with which his slighted guest had, not indecorously,

retaliated upon him, now supported by his servant, rose to his feet, and grasping Captain Delano's hand, stood

tremulous; too much agitated to speak. But the good augury hence drawn was suddenly dashed, by his

resuming all his previous reserve, with augmented gloom, as, with halfaverted eyes, he silently reseated

himself on his cushions. With a corresponding return of his own chilled feelings, Captain Delano bowed and

He was hardly midway in the narrow corridor, dim as a tunnel, leading from the cabin to the stairs, when a

sound, as of the tolling for execution in some jailyard, fell on his ears. It was the echo of the ship's flawed

bell, striking the hour, drearily reverberated in this subterranean vault. Instantly, by a fatality not to be

withstood, his mind, responsive to the portent, swarmed with superstitious suspicions. He paused. In images

far swifter than these sentences, the minutest details of all his former distrusts swept through him.

Hitherto, credulous goodnature had been too ready to furnish excuses for reasonable fears. Why was the

Spaniard, so superfluously punctilious at times, now heedless of common propriety in not accompanying to

the side his departing guest? Did indisposition forbid? Indisposition had not forbidden more irksome exertion

that day. His last equivocal demeanour recurred. He had risen to his feet, grasped his guest's hand, motioned

toward his hat; then, in an instant, all was eclipsed in sinister muteness and gloom. Did this imply one brief,

repentant relenting at the final moment, from some iniquitous plot, followed by remorseless return to it? His

last glance seemed to express a calamitous, yet acquiescent farewell to Captain Delano for ever. Why decline

the invitation to visit the sealer that evening? Or was the Spaniard less hardened than the Jew, who refrained

not from supping at the board of him whom the same night he meant to betray? What imported all those

daylong enigmas and contradictions, except they were intended to mystify, preliminary to some stealthy

blow? Atufal, the pretended rebel, but punctual shadow, that moment lurked by the threshold without. He

seemed a sentry, and more. Who, by his own confession, had stationed him there? Was the Negro now lying

The Spaniard behind his creature before: to rush from darkness to light was the involuntary choice.

The next moment, with clenched jaw and hand, he passed Atufal, and stood unarmed in the light. As he saw

his trim ship lying peacefully at her anchor, and almost within ordinary call; as he saw his household boat,

with familiar faces in it, patiently rising and falling on the short waves by the San Dominick's side; and then,

glancing about the decks where he stood, saw the oakumpickers still gravely plying their fingers; and heard

the low, buzzing whistle and industrious hum of the hatchetpolishers, still bestirring themselves over their

endless occupation; and more than all, as he saw the benign aspect of Nature, taking her innocent repose in

the evening; the screened sun in the quiet camp of the west shining out like the mild light from Abraham's

tent; as his charmed eye and ear took in all these, with the chained figure of the black, the clenched jaw and

hand relaxed. Once again he smiled at the phantoms which had mocked him, and felt something like a tinge

of remorse, that, by indulging them even for a moment, he should, by implication, have betrayed an almost

There was a few minutes' delay, while, in obedience to his orders, the boat was being hooked along to the

gangway. During this interval, a sort of saddened satisfaction stole over Captain Delano, at thinking of the

kindly offices he had that day discharged for a stranger. Ah, thought he, after good actions one's conscience is

Presently, his foot, in the first act of descent into the boat, pressed the first round of the sideladder, his face

presented inward upon the deck. In the same moment, he heard his name courteously sounded; and, to his

pleased surprise, saw Don Benito advancing an unwonted energy in his air, as if, at the last moment, intent

upon making amends for his recent discourtesy. With instinctive good feeling, Captain Delano, revoking his

foot, turned and reciprocally advanced. As he did so, the Spaniard's nervous eagerness increased, but his vital

energy failed; so that, the better to support him, the servant, placing his master's hand on his naked shoulder,

When the two captains met, the Spaniard again fervently took the hand of the American, at the same time

casting an earnest glance into his eyes, but, as before, too much overcome to speak.

I have done him wrong, selfreproachfully thought Captain Delano; his apparent coldness has deceived me;

Meantime, as if fearful that the continuance of the scene might too much unstring his master, the servant

seemed anxious to terminate it. And so, still presenting himself as a crutch, and walking between the two

captains, he advanced with them toward the gangway; while still, as if full of kindly contrition, Don Benito

would not let go the hand of Captain Delano, but retained it in his, across the black's body.

Soon they were standing by the side, looking over into the boat, whose crew turned up their curious eyes.

Waiting a moment for the Spaniard to relinquish his hold, the now embarrassed Captain Delano lifted his

foot, to overstep the threshold of the open gangway; but still Don Benito would not let go his hand. And yet,

with an agitated tone, he said, "I can go no further; here I must bid you adieu. Adieu, my dear, dear Don

Amasa. Go go!" suddenly tearing his hand loose, "go, and God guard you better than me, my best friend."

Not unaffected, Captain Delano would now have lingered; but catching the meekly admonitory eye of the

servant, with a hasty farewell he descended into his boat, followed by the continual adieus of Don Benito,

Seating himself in the stern, Captain Delano, making a last salute, ordered the boat shoved off. The crew had

their oars on end. The bowsman pushed the boat a sufficient distance for the oars to be lengthwise dropped.

The instant that was done, Don Benito sprang over the bulwarks, falling at the feet of Captain Delano; at the

same time, calling towards his ship, but in tones so frenzied, that none in the boat could understand him. But,

as if not equally obtuse, three Spanish sailors, from three different and distant parts of the ship, splashed into

The dismayed officer of the boat eagerly asked what this meant. To which, Captain Delano, turning a

disdainful smile upon the unaccountable Benito Cereno, answered that, for his part, he neither knew nor

cared; but it seemed as if the Spaniard had taken it into his head to produce the impression among his people

that the boat wanted to kidnap him. "Or else give way for your lives," he wildly added, starting at a

clattering hubbub in the ship, above which rang the tocsin of the hatchetpolishers; and seizing Don Benito

by the throat he added, "this plotting pirate means murder!" Here, in apparent verification of the words, the

servant, a dagger in his hand, was seen on the rail overhead, poised, in the act of leaping, as if with desperate

fidelity to befriend his master to the last; while, seemingly to aid the black, the three Spanish sailors were

trying to clamber into the hampered bow. Meantime, the whole host of Negroes, as if inflamed at the sight of

All this, with what preceded, and what followed, occurred with such involutions of rapidity, that past,

Seeing the Negro coming, Captain Delano had flung the Spaniard aside, almost in the very act of clutching

him, and, by the unconscious recoil, shifting his place, with arms thrown up, so promptly grappled the servant

in his descent, that with dagger presented at Captain Delano's heart, the black seemed of purpose to have

leaped there as to his mark. But the weapon was wrenched away, and the assailant dashed down into the

bottom of the boat, which now, with disentangled oars, began to speed through the sea.

At this juncture, the left hand of Captain Delano, on one side, again clutched the halfreclined Don Benito,

heedless that he was in a speechless faint, while his right foot, on the other side, ground the prostrate Negro;

and his right arm pressed for added speed on the after oar, his eye bent forward, encouraging his men to their

But here, the officer of the boat, who had at last succeeded in beating off the towing Spanish sailors, and was

now, with face turned aft, assisting the bowsman at his oar, suddenly called to Captain Delano, to see what

the black was about; while a Portuguese oarsman shouted to him to give heed to what the Spaniard was

Glancing down at his feet, Captain Delano saw the freed hand of the servant aiming with a second dagger a

small one, before concealed in his wool with this he was snakishly writhing up from the boat's bottom, at

the heart of his master, his countenance lividly vindictive, expressing the centred purpose of his soul; while

the Spaniard, halfchoked, was vainly shrinking away, with husky words, incoherent to all but the

That moment, across the long benighted mind of Captain Delano, a flash of revelation swept, illuminating in

unanticipated clearness Benito Cereno's whole mysterious demeanour, with every enigmatic event of the day,

as well as the entire past voyage of the San Dominick. He smote Babo's hand down, but his own heart smote

him harder. With infinite pity he withdrew his hold from Don Benito. Not Captain Delano, but Don Benito,

Both the black's hands were held, as, glancing up toward the San Dominick, Captain Delano, now with the

scales dropped from his eyes, saw the Negroes, not in misrule, not in tumult, not as if frantically concerned

for Don Benito, but with mask tom away, flourishing hatchets and knives, in ferocious piratical revolt. Like

delirious black dervishes, the six Ashantees danced on the poop. Prevented by their foes from springing into

the water, the Spanish boys were hurrying up to the topmost spars, while such of the few Spanish sailors, not

already in the sea, less alert, were descried, helplessly mixed in, on deck, with the blacks.

Meantime Captain Delano hailed his own vessel, ordering the ports up, and the guns run out. But by this time

the cable of the San Dominick had been cut; and the fagend, in lashing out, whipped away the canvas

shroud about the beak, suddenly revealing, as the bleached hull swung round toward the open ocean, death

for the figurehead, in a human skeleton; chalky comment on the chalked words below, "Follow your leader."

At the sight, Don Benito, covering his face, wailed out: "'Tis he, Aranda! my murdered, unburied friend!"

Upon reaching the sealer, calling for ropes, Captain Delano bound the Negro, who made no resistance, and

had him hoisted to the deck. He would then have assisted the now almost helpless Don Benito up the side;

but Don Benito, wan as he was, refused to move, or be moved, until the Negro should have been first put

below out of view. When, presently assured that it was done, he no more shrank from the ascent.

The boat was immediately despatched back to pick up the three swimming sailors. Meantime, the guns were

in readiness, though, owing to the San Dominick having glided somewhat astern of the sealer, only the

aftermost one could be brought to bear. With this, they fired six times; thinking to cripple the fugitive ship by

bringing down her spars. But only a few inconsiderable ropes were shot away. Soon the ship was beyond the

guns' range, steering broad out of the bay; the blacks thickly clustering round the bowsprit, one moment with

taunting cries toward the whites, the next with upthrown gestures hailing the now dusky expanse of ocean

The first impulse was to slip the cables and give chase. But, upon second thought, to pursue with whaleboat

Upon inquiring of Don Benito what firearms they had on board the San Dominick, Captain Delano was

answered that they had none that could be used; because, in the earlier stages of the mutiny, a

cabinpassenger, since dead, had secretly put out of order the locks of what few muskets there were. But with

all his remaining strength, Don Benito entreated the American not to give chase, either with ship or boat; for

the Negroes had already proved themselves such desperadoes, that, in case of a present assault, nothing but a

total massacre of the whites could be looked for. But, regarding this warning as coming from one whose spirit

The boats were got ready and armed. Captain Delano ordered twentyfive men into them. He was going

himself when Don Benito grasped his arm. "What! have you saved my life, Senor, and are you now going to

The officers also, for reasons connected with their interests and those of the voyage, and a duty owing to the

owners, strongly objected against their commander's going. Weighing their remonstrances a moment, Captain

Delano felt bound to remain; appointing his chief mate an athletic and resolute man, who had been a

privateer's man, and, as his enemies whispered, a pirate to head the party. The more to encourage the sailors,

they were told, that the Spanish captain considered his ship as good as lost; that she and her cargo, including

some gold and silver, were worth upwards of ten thousand doubloons. Take her, and no small part should be

The fugitives had now almost gained an offing. It was nearly night; but the moon was rising. After hard,

prolonged pulling, the boats came up on the ship's quarters, at a suitable distance laying upon their oars to

discharge their muskets. Having no bullets to return, the Negroes sent their yells. But, upon the second

volley, Indianlike, they hurtled their hatchets. One took off a sailor's fingers. Another struck the

whaleboat's bow, cutting off the rope there, and remaining stuck in the gunwale, like a woodman's axe.

Snatching it, quivering from its lodgment, the mate hurled it back. The returned gauntlet now stuck in the

The Negroes giving too hot a reception, the whites kept a more respectful distance. Hovering now just out of

reach of the hurtling hatchets, they, with a view to the close encounter which must soon come, sought to

decoy the blacks into entirely disarming themselves of their most murderous weapons in a handtohand

fight, by foolishly flinging them, as missiles, short of the mark, into the sea. But ere long perceiving the

stratagem, the Negroes desisted, though not before many of them had to replace their lost hatchets with

handspikes; an exchange which, as counted upon, proved in the end favourable to the assailants.

Meantime, with a strong wind, the ship still clove the water; the boats alternately falling behind, and pulling

The fire was mostly directed toward the stern, since there, chiefly, the Negroes, at present, were clustering.

But to kill or maim the Negroes was not the object. To take them, with the ship, was the object. To do it, the

ship must be boarded; which could not be done by boats while she was sailing so fast.

A thought now struck the mate. Observing the Spanish boys still aloft, high as they could get, he called to

them to descend to the yards, and cut adrift the sails. It was done. About this time, owing to causes hereafter

to be shown, two Spaniards, in the dress of sailors and conspicuously showing themselves, were killed; not

by volleys, but by deliberate marksman's shots; while, as it afterwards appeared, during one of the general

discharges, Atufal, the black, and the Spaniard at the helm likewise were killed. What now, with the loss of

With creaking masts she came heavily round to the wind; the prow slowly swinging into view of the boats, its

skeleton gleaming in the horizontal moonlight, and casting a gigantic ribbed shadow upon the water. One

"Follow your leader!" cried the mate; and, one on each bow, the boats boarded. Sealingspears and cutlasses

crossed hatchets and handspikes. Huddled upon the longboat amidships, the Negresses raised a wailing

For a time, the attack wavered; the Negroes wedging themselves to beat it back; the halfrepelled sailors, as

yet unable to gain a footing, fighting as troopers in the saddle, one leg sideways flung over the bulwarks, and

one without, plying their cutlasses like carters' whips. But in vain. They were almost overborne, when,

rallying themselves into a squad as one man, with a huzza, they sprang inboard; where, entangled, they

involuntarily separated again. For a few breaths' space there was a vague, muffled, inner sound as of

submerged swordfish rushing hither and thither through shoals of blackfish. Soon, in a reunited band, and

joined by the Spanish seamen, the whites came to the surface, irresistibly driving the Negroes toward the

stern. But a barricade of casks and sacks, from side to side, had been thrown up by the mainmast. Here the

Negroes faced about, and though scorning peace or truce, yet fain would have had a respite. But, without

pause, overleaping the barrier, the unflagging sailors again closed. Exhausted, the blacks now fought in

despair. Their red tongues lolled, wolflike, from their black mouths. But the pale sailors' teeth were set; not

Nearly a score of the Negroes were killed. Exclusive of those by the balls, many were mangled; their

wounds mostly inflicted by the longedged sealingspears resembling those shaven ones of the English at

Preston Pans, made by the poled scythes of the Highlanders. On the other side, none were killed, though

several were wounded; some severely, including the mate. The surviving Negroes were temporarily secured,

Omitting the incidents and arrangements ensuing, suffice it that, after two days spent in refitting, the two

ships sailed in company for Concepcion in Chili, and thence for Lima in Peru; where, before the viceregal

Though, midway on the passage, the illfated Spaniard, relaxed from constraint, showed some signs of

regaining health with freewill; yet, agreeably to his own foreboding, shortly before arriving at Lima, he

relapsed, finally becoming so reduced as to be carried ashore in arms. Hearing of his story and plight, one of

the many religious institutions of the City of Kings opened an hospitable refuge to him, where both physician

and priest were his nurses, and a member of the order volunteered to be his one special guardian and

The following extracts, translated from one of the official Spanish documents, will, it is hoped, shed light on

the preceding narrative, as well as, in the first place, reveal the true port of departure and true history of the

San Dominick's voyage, down to the time of her touching at the island of Santa Maria.

The document selected, from among many others, for partial translation, contains the deposition of Benito

Cereno; the first taken in the case. Some disclosures therein were, at the time, held dubious for both learned

and natural reasons. The tribunal inclined to the opinion that the deponent, not undisturbed in his mind by

recent events, raved of some things which could never have happened. But subsequent depositions of the

surviving sailors, bearing out the revelations of their captain in several of the strangest particulars, gave

credence to the rest. So that the tribunal, in its final decision, rested its capital sentences upon statements

which, had they lacked confirmation, it would have deemed it but duty to reject.

I, DON JOSE DE ABOS AND PADILLA, His Majesty's Notary for the Royal Revenue, and Register of this

Do certify and declare, as much as is requisite in law, that, in the criminal cause commenced the

twentyfourth of the month of September, in the year seventeen hundred and ninetynine, against the

Senegal Negroes of the ship San Dominick, the following declaration before me was made.

The same day, and month, and year, His Honour, Doctor Juan Martinez de Dozas, Councillor of the Royal

Audience of this Kingdom, and learned in the law of this Intendancy, ordered the captain of the ship San

Dominick, Don Benito Cereno, to appear; which he did in his litter, attended by the monk Infelez; of whom

he received, before Don Jose de Abos and Padilla, Notary Public of the Holy Crusade, the oath, which he

took by God, our Lord, and a sign of the Cross; under which he promised to tell the truth of whatever he

should know and should be asked; and being interrogated agreeably to the tenor of the act commencing the

process, he said, that on the twentieth of May last, he set sail with his ship from the port of Valparaiso, bound

to that of Callao; loaded with the produce of the country and one hundred and sixty blacks, of both sexes,

mostly belonging to Don Alexandro Aranda, gentleman, of the city of Mendoza; that the crew of the ship

consisted of thirtysix men, beside the persons who went as passengers; that the Negroes were in part as

[Here, in the original, follows a list of some fifty names, descriptions, and ages, compiled from certain

recovered documents of Aranda's, and also from recollections of the deponent, from which portions only are

One, from about eighteen to nineteen years, named Jose, and this was the man that waited upon his master,

Don Alexandro, and who speaks well the Spanish, having served him four or five years;... a mulatto, named

Francesco, the cabin steward, of a good person and voice, having sung in the Valparaiso churches, native of

the province of Buenos Ayres, aged about thirtyfive years.... A smart Negro, named Dago, who had been for

many years a gravedigger among the Spaniards, aged fortysix years.... Four old Negroes, born in Africa,

from sixty to seventy, but sound, caulkers by trade, whose names are as follows: the first was named Muri,

and he was killed (as was also his son named Diamelo); the second, Nacta; the third, Yola, likewise killed;

the fourth, Ghofan; and six fullgrown Negroes, aged from thirty to fortyfive, all raw, and born among the

Ashantees Martinqui, Yan, Lecbe, Mapenda, Yambaio, Akim; four of whom were killed;... a powerful

Negro named Atufal, who, being supposed to have been a chief in Africa, his owners set great store by him....

And a small Negro of Senegal, but some years among the Spaniards, aged about thirty, which Negro's name

was Babo;... that he does not remember the names of the others, but that still expecting the residue of Don

Alexandro's papers will be found, will then take due account of them all, and remit to the court;... and

[After the catalogue, the deposition goes on as follows:] ...That all the Negroes slept upon deck, as is

customary in this navigation, and none wore fetters, because the owner, his friend Aranda, told him that they

were all tractable;... that on the seventh day after leaving port, at three o'clock in the morning, all the

Spaniards being asleep except the two officers on the watch, who were the boatswain, Juan Robles, and the

carpenter, Juan Bautista Gayete, and the helmsman and his boy, the Negroes revolted suddenly, wounded

dangerously the boatswain and the carpenter, and successively killed eighteen men of those who were

sleeping upon deck, some with handspikes and hatchets, and others by throwing them alive overboard, after

tying them; that of the Spaniards upon deck, they left about seven, as he thinks, alive and tied, to manoeuvre

the ship, and three or four more who hid themselves remained also alive. Although in the act of revolt the

Negroes made themselves masters of the hatchway, six or seven wounded went through it to the cockpit,

without any hindrance on their part; that in the act of revolt, the mate and another person, whose name he

does not recollect, attempted to come up through the hatchway, but having been wounded at the onset, they

were obliged to return to the cabin; that the deponent resolved at break of day to come up the companionway,

where the Negro Babo was, being the ringleader, and Atufal, who assisted him, and having spoken to them,

exhorted them to cease committing such atrocities, asking them, at the same time, what they wanted and

intended to do, offering, himself, to obey their commands; that, notwithstanding this, they threw, in his

presence, three men, alive and tied, overboard; that they told the deponent to come up, and that they would

not kill him; which having done, the Negro Babo asked him whether there were in those seas any Negro

countries where they might be carried, and he answered them, No, that the Negro Babo afterwards told him to

carry them to Senegal, or to the neighbouring islands of St. Nicholas; and he answered, that this was

impossible, on account of the great distance, the necessity involved of rounding Cape Horn, the bad condition

of the vessel, the want of provisions, sails, and water; but that the Negro Babo replied to him he must carry

them in any way; that they would do and conform themselves to everything the deponent should require as to

eating and drinking; that after a long conference, being absolutely compelled to please them, for they

threatened him to kill all the whites if they were not, at all events, carried to Senegal, he told them that what

was most wanting for the voyage was water; that they would go near the coast to take it, and hence they

would proceed on their course; that the Negro Babo agreed to it; and the deponent steered toward the

intermediate ports, hoping to meet some Spanish or foreign vessel that would save them; that within ten or

eleven days they saw the land, and continued their course by it in the vicinity of Nasca; that the deponent

observed that the Negroes were now restless and mutinous, because he did not effect the taking in of water,

the Negro Babo having required, with threats, that it should be done, without fail, the following day; he told

him he saw plainly that the coast was steep, and the rivers designated in the maps were not be found, with

other reasons suitable to the circumstances; that the best way would be to go to the island of Santa Maria,

where they might water and victual easily, it being a desert island, as the foreigners did; that the deponent did

not go to Pisco, that was near, nor make any other port of the coast, because the Negro Babo had intimated to

him several times, that he would kill all the whites the very moment he should perceive any city, town, or

settlement of any kind on the shores to which they should be carried; that having determined to go to the

island of Santa Maria, as the deponent had planned, for the purpose of trying whether, in the passage or in the

island itself, they could find any vessel that should favour them, or whether he could escape from it in a boat

to the neighbouring coast of Arruco; to adopt the necessary means he immediately changed his course,

steering for the island; that the Negroes Babo and Atufal held daily conferences, in which they discussed

what was necessary for their design of returning to Senegal, whether they were to kill all the Spaniards, and

particularly the deponent; that eight days after parting from the coast of Nasca, the deponent being on the

watch a little after daybreak, and soon after the Negroes had their meeting, the Negro Babo came to the

place where the deponent was, and told him that he had determined to kill his master, Don Alexandro Aranda,

both because he and his companions could not otherwise be sure of their liberty, and that, to keep the seamen

in subjection, he wanted to prepare a warning of what road they should be made to take did they or any of

them oppose him; and that, by means of the death of Don Alexandro, that warning would best be given; but,

that what this last meant, the deponent did not at the time comprehend, nor could not, further than that the

death of Don Alexandro was intended; and moreover, the Negro Babo proposed to the deponent to call the

mate Raneds, who was sleeping in the cabin, before the thing was done, for fear, as the deponent understood

it, that the mate, who was a good navigator, should be killed with Don Alexandro and the rest; that the

deponent, who was the friend, from youth of Don Alexandro, prayed and conjured, but all was useless; for

the Negro Babo answered him that the thing could not be prevented, and that all the Spaniards risked their

death if they should attempt to frustrate his will in this matter, or any other; that, in this conflict, the deponent

called the mate, Raneds, who was forced to go apart, and immediately the Negro Babo commanded the

Ashantee Martinqui and the Ashantee Lecbe to go and commit the murder; that those two went down with

hatchets to the berth of Don Alexandro; that, yet half alive and mangled, they dragged him on deck; that they

were going to throw him overboard in that state, but the Negro Babo stopped them, bidding the murder be

completed on the deck before him, which was done, when, by his orders, the body was carried below,

forward; that nothing more was seen of it by the deponent for three days;... that Don Alonzo Sidonia, an old

man, long resident at Valparaiso, and lately appointed to a civil office in Peru, whither he had taken passage,

was at the time sleeping in the berth opposite Don Alexandro's; that, awakening at his cries, surprised by

them, and at the sight of the Negroes with their bloody hatchets in their hands, he threw himself into the sea

through a window which was near him, and was drowned, without it being in the power of the deponent to

assist or take him up;... that, a short time after killing Aranda, they brought upon deck his germancousin, of

middleage, Don Francisco Masa, of Mendoza, and the young Don Joaquin, Marques de Aramboalaza, then

lately from Spain, with his Spanish servant Ponce, and the three young clerks of Aranda, Jose Mozairi,

Lorenzo Bargas, and Hermenegildo Gandix, all of Cadiz; that Don Joaquin and Hermenegildo Gandix, the

Negro Babo for purposes hereafter to appear, preserved alive; but Don Francisco Masa, Jose Mozairi, and

Lorenzo Bargas, with Ponce, the servant, beside the boatswain, Juan Robles, the boatswain's mates, Manuel

Viscaya and Roderigo Hurta, and, four of the sailors, the Negro Babo ordered to be thrown alive into the sea,

although they made no resistance, nor begged for anything else but mercy; that the boatswain, Juan Robles,

who knew how to swim, kept the longest above water, making acts of contrition, and, in the last words he

uttered, charged this deponent to cause mass to be said for his soul to our Lady of Succour;... that, during the

three days which followed, the deponent, uncertain what fate had befallen the remains of Don Alexandro,

frequently asked the Negro Babo where they were, and, if still on board, whether they were to be preserved

for interment ashore, entreating him so to order it; that the Negro Babo answered nothing till the fourth day,

when at sunrise, the deponent coming on deck, the Negro Babo showed him a skeleton, which had been

substituted for the ship's proper figurehead, the image of Christopher Colon, the discoverer of the New

World; that the Negro Babo asked him whose skeleton that was, and whether, from its whiteness, he should

not think it a white's; that, upon his covering his face, the Negro Babo, coming close, said words to this

effect: "Keep faith with the blacks from here to Senegal, or you shall in spirit, as now in body, follow your

leader," pointing to the prow;... that the same morning the Negro Babo took by succession each Spaniard

forward, and asked him whose skeleton that was, and whether, from its whiteness, he should not think it a

white's; that each Spaniard covered his face; that then to each the Negro Babo repeated the words in the first

place said to the deponent;... that they (the Spaniards), being then assembled aft, the Negro Babo harangued

them, saying that he had now done all; that the deponent (as navigator for the Negroes) might pursue his

course, warning him and all of them that they should, soul and body, go the way of Don Alexandro if he saw

them (the Spaniards) speak or plot anything against them (the Negroes) a threat which was repeated every

day; that, before the events last mentioned, they had tied the cook to throw him overboard, for it is not known

what thing they heard him speak, but finally the Negro Babo spared his life, at the request of the deponent;

that a few days after, the deponent, endeavouring not to omit any means to preserve the lives of the remaining

whites, spoke to the Negroes peace and tranquillity, and agreed to draw up a paper, signed by the deponent

and the sailors who could write, as also by the Negro Babo, for himself and all the blacks, in which the

deponent obliged himself to carry them to Senegal, and they not to kill any more, and he formally to make

over to them the ship, with the cargo, with which they were for that time satisfied and quieted.... But the next

day, the more surely to guard against the sailors' escape, the Negro Babo commanded all the boats to be

destroyed but the longboat, which was unseaworthy, and another, a cutter in good condition, which,

knowing it would yet be wanted for lowering the water casks, he had it lowered down into the hold.

[Various particulars of the prolonged and perplexed navigation ensuing here follow, with incidents of a

That on the fifth day of the calm, all on board suffering much from the heat, and want of water, and five

having died in fits, and mad, the Negroes became irritable, and for a chance gesture, which they deemed

suspicious though it was harmless made by the mate, Raneds, to the deponent, in the act of handing a

quadrant, they killed him; but that for this they afterwards were sorry, the mate being the only remaining

That omitting other events, which daily happened, and which can only serve uselessly to recall past

misfortunes and conflicts, after seventythree days' navigation, reckoned from the time they sailed from

Nasca, during which they navigated under a scanty allowance of water, and were afflicted with the calms

before mentioned, they at last arrived at the island of Santa Maria, on the seventeenth of the month of August,

at about six o'clock in the afternoon, at which hour they cast anchor very near the American ship, Bachelor's

Delight, which lay in the same bay, commanded by the generous Captain Amasa Delano; but at six o'clock in

the morning, they had already descried the port, and the Negroes became uneasy, as soon as at distance they

saw the ship, not having expected to see one there; that the Negro Babo pacified them, assuring them that no

fear need be had; that straightway he ordered the figure on the bow to be covered with canvas, as for repairs,

and had the decks a little set in order; that for a time the Negro Babo and the Negro Atufal conferred; that the

Negro Atufal was for sailing away, but the Negro Babo would not, and, by himself, cast about what to do;

that at last he came to the deponent, proposing to him to say and do all that the deponent declares to have said

and done to the American captain;... that the Negro Babo warned him that if he varied in the least, or uttered

any word, or gave any look that should give the least intimation of the past events or present state, he would

instantly kill him, with all his companions, showing a dagger, which he carried hid, saying something which,

as he understood it, meant that that dagger would be alert as his eye; that the Negro Babo then announced the

plan to all his companions, which pleased them; that he then, the better to disguise the truth, devised many

expedients, in some of them uniting deceit and defence; that of this sort was the device of the six Ashantees

before named, who were his bravos; that them he stationed on the break of the poop, as if to clean certain

hatchets (in cases, which were part of the cargo), but in reality to use them, and distribute them at need, and at

a given word he told them that, among other devices, was the device of presenting Atufal, his righthand

man, as chained, though in a moment the chains could be dropped; that in every particular he informed the

deponent what part he was expected to enact in every device, and what story he was to tell on every occasion,

always threatening him with instant death if he varied in the least; that, conscious that many of the Negroes

would be turbulent, the Negro Babo appointed the four aged Negroes, who were caulkers, to keep what

domestic order they could on the decks; that again and again he harangued the Spaniards and his companions,

informing them of his intent, and of his devices, and of the invented story that this deponent was to tell,

charging them lest any of them varied from that story; that these arrangements were made and matured during

the interval of two or three hours, between their first sighting the ship and the arrival on board of Captain

Amasa Delano; that this happened at about halfpast seven in the morning, Captain Amasa Delano coming in

his boat, and all gladly receiving him; that the deponent, as well as he could force himself, acting then the

part of principal owner, and a free captain of the ship, told Captain Amasa Delano, when called upon, that he

came from Buenos Ayres, bound to Lima, with three hundred Negroes; that off Cape Horn, and in a

subsequent fever, many Negroes had died; that also, by similar casualties, all the sea officers and the greatest

[And so the deposition goes on, circumstantially recounting the fictitious story dictated to the deponent by

Babo, and through the deponent imposed upon Captain Delano; and also recounting the friendly offers of

Captain Delano, with other things, but all of which is here omitted. After the fictitious, strange story, etc., the

That the generous Captain Amasa Delano remained on board all the day, till he left the ship anchored at six

o'clock in the evening, deponent speaking to him always of his pretended misfortunes, under the

forementioned principles, without having had it in his power to tell a single word, or give him the least hint,

that he might know the truth and state of things; because the Negro Babo, performing the office of an

officious servant with all the appearance of submission of the humble slave, did not leave the deponent one

moment; that this was in order to observe the deponent's actions and words, for the Negro Babo understands

well the Spanish; and besides, there were thereabout some others who were constantly on the watch, and

likewise understood the Spanish;... that upon one occasion, while deponent was standing on the deck

conversing with Amasa Delano, by a secret sign the Negro Babo drew him (the deponent) aside, the act

appearing as if originating with the deponent; that then, he being drawn aside, the Negro Babo proposed to

him to gain from Amasa Delano full particulars about his ship, and crew, and arms; that the deponent asked

"For what?" that the Negro Babo answered he might conceive; that, grieved at the prospect of what might

overtake the generous Captain Amasa Delano, the deponent at first refused to ask the desired questions, and

used every argument to induce the Negro Babo to give up this new design; that the Negro Babo showed the

point of his dagger; that, after the information had been obtained, the Negro Babo again drew him aside,

telling him that that very night he (the deponent) would be captain of two ships instead of one, for that, great

part of the American's ship's crew being to be absent fishing, the six Ashantees, without any one else, would

easily take it; that at this time he said other things to the same purpose; that no entreaties availed; that before

Amasa Delano's coming on board, no hint had been given touching the capture of the American ship; that to

prevent this project the deponent was powerless;... that in some things his memory is confused, he cannot

distinctly recall every event;... that as soon as they had cast anchor at six of the clock in the evening, as has

before been stated, the American captain took leave to return to his vessel; that upon a sudden impulse, which

the deponent believes to have come from God and his angels, he, after the farewell had been said, followed

the generous Captain Amasa Delano as far as the gunwale, where he stayed, under the pretence of taking

leave, until Amasa Delano should have been seated in his boat; that on shoving off, the deponent sprang from

the gunwale, into the boat, and fell into it, he knows not how, God guarding him; that

[Here, in the original, follows the account of what further happened at the escape, and how the "San

Dominick" was retaken, and of the passage to the coast; including in the recital many expressions of "eternal

gratitude" to the "generous Captain Amasa Delano." The deposition then proceeds with recapitulatory

remarks, and a partial renumeration of the Negroes, making record of their individual part in the past events,

with a view to furnishing, according to command of the court, the data whereon to found the criminal

That he believes that all the Negroes, though not in the first place knowing to the design of revolt, when it

was accomplished, approved it.... That the Negro, Jose, eighteen years old, and in the personal service of Don

Alexandro, was the one who communicated the information to the Negro Babo, about the state of things in

the cabin, before the revolt; that this is known, because, in the preceding midnight, lie used to come from his

berth, which was under his master's, in the cabin, to the deck where the ringleader and his associates were,

and had secret conversations with the Negro Babo, in which he was several times seen by the mate; that, one

night, the mate drove him away twice;... that this same Negro Jose, was the one who, without being

commanded to do so by the Negro Babo, as Lecbe and Martinqui were, stabbed his master, Don Alexandro,

after he had been dragged halflifeless to the deck;... that the mulatto steward, Francesco, was of the first

band of revolters, that he was, in all things, the creature and tool of the Negro Babo; that, to make his court,

he, just before a repast in the cabin, proposed, to the Negro Babo, poisoning a dish for the generous Captain

Amasa Delano; this is known and believed, because the Negroes have said it; but that the Negro Babo, having

another design, forbade Francesco;... that the Ashantee Lecbe was one of the worst of them; for that, on the

day the ship was retaken, he assisted in the defence of her, with a hatchet in each hand, with one of which he

wounded, in the breast, the chief mate of Amasa Delano, in the first act of boarding; this all knew; that, in

sight of the deponent, Lecbe struck, with a hatchet, Don Francisco Masa when, by the Negro Babo's orders,

he was carrying him to throw him overboard, alive; beside participating in the murder, before mentioned, of

Don Alexandro Aranda, and others of the cabinpassengers; that, owing to the fury with which the Ashantees

fought in the engagement with the boats, but this Lecbe and Yan survived; that Yan was bad as Lecbe; that

Yan was the man who, by Babo's command, willingly prepared the skeleton of Don Alexandro, in a way the

Negroes afterwards told the deponent, but which he, so long as reason is left him, can never divulge; that Yan

and Lecbe were the two who, in a calm by night, riveted the skeleton to the bow; this also the Negroes told

him; that the Negro Babo was he who traced the inscription below it; that the Negro Babo was the plotter

from first to last; he ordered every murder, and was the helm and keel of the revolt; that Atufal was his

lieutenant in all; but Atufal, with his own hand, committed no murder; nor did the Negro Babo;... that Atufal

was shot, being killed in the fight with the boats, ere boarding;... that the Negresses, of age, were knowing to

the revolt, and testified themselves satisfied at the death of their master, Don Alexandro; that, had the

Negroes not restrained them, they would have tortured to death, instead of simply killing, the Spaniards slain

by command of the Negro Babo; that the Negresses used their utmost influence to have the deponent made

away with; that, in the various acts of murder, they sang songs and danced not gaily, but solemnly; and

before the engagement with the boats, as well as during the action, they sang melancholy songs to the

Negroes, and that this melancholy tone was more inflaming than a different one would have been, and was so

That of the thirtysix men of the crew exclusive of the passengers (all of whom are now dead), which the

deponent had knowledge of six only remained alive, with four cabinboys and shipboys, not included with

the crew;.... that the Negroes broke an arm of one of the cabinboys and gave him strokes with hatchets.

[Then follow various random disclosures referring to various periods of time. The following are extracted:]

That during the presence of Captain Amasa Delano on board, some attempts were made by the sailors, and

one by Hermenegildo Gandix, to convey hints to him of the true state of affairs; but that these attempts were

ineffectual, owing to fear of incurring death, and furthermore owing to the devices which offered

contradictions to the true state of affairs; as well as owing to the generosity and piety of Amasa Delano,

incapable of sounding such wickedness;... that Luys Galgo, a sailor about sixty years of age, and formerly of

the king's navy, was one of those who sought to convey tokens to Captain Amasa Delano; but his intent,

though undiscovered, being suspected, he was, on a pretence, made to retire out of sight, and at last into the

hold, and there was made away with. This the Negroes have since said;... that one of the shipboys feeling,

from Captain Amasa Delano's presence, some hopes of release, and not having enough prudence, dropped

some chanceword respecting his expectations, which being overheard and understood by a slaveboy with

whom he was eating at the time, the latter struck him on the head with a knife, inflicting a bad wound, but of

which the boy is now healing; that likewise, not long before the ship was brought to anchor, one of the

seamen, steering at the time, endangered himself by letting the blacks remark a certain unconscious hopeful

expression in his countenance, arising from some cause similar to the above; but this sailor, by his heedful

after conduct, escaped;... that these statements are made to show the court that from the beginning to the end

of the revolt, it was impossible for the deponent and his men to act otherwise than they did;... that the third

clerk, Hermenegildo Gandix, who before had been forced to live among the seamen, wearing a seaman's

habit, and in all respects appearing to be one for the time; he, Gandix, was killed by a musketball fired

through a mistake from the American boats before boarding; having in his fright ran up the mizzenrigging,

calling to the boats "don't board," lest upon their boarding the Negroes should kill him; that this inducing

the Americans to believe he some way favoured the cause of the Negroes, they fired two balls at him, so that

he fell wounded from the rigging, and was drowned in the sea;... that the young Don Joaquin, Marques de

Aramboalaza, like Hermenegildo Gandix, the third clerk, was degraded to the office and appearance of a

common seaman; that upon one occasion, when Don Joaquin shrank, the Negro Babo commanded the

Ashantee Lecbe to take tar and heat it, and pour it upon Don Joaquin's hands;... that Don Joaquin was killed

owing to another mistake of the Americans, but one impossible to be avoided, as upon the approach of the

boats, Don Joaquin, with a hatchet tied edge out and upright to his hand, was made by the Negroes to appear

on the bulwarks; whereupon, seen with arms in his hands and in a questionable attitude, he was shot for a

renegade seaman;... that on the person of Don Joaquin was found secreted a jewel, which, by papers that

were discovered, proved to have been meant for the shrine of our Lady of Mercy in Lima; a votive offering,

beforehand prepared and guarded, to attest his gratitude, when he should have landed in Peru, his last

destination, for the safe conclusion of his entire voyage from Spain;... that the jewel, with the other effects

of the late Don Joaquin, is in the custody of the brethren of the Hospital de Sacerdotes, awaiting the decision

of the honourable court;... that, owing to the condition of the deponent, as well as the haste in which the

boats departed for the attack, the Americans were not forewarned that there were, among the apparent crew, a

passenger and one of the clerks disguised by the Negro Babo;... that, beside the Negroes killed in the action,

some were killed after the capture and reanchoring at night, when shackled to the ringbolts on deck; that

these deaths were committed by the sailors, ere they could be prevented. That so soon as informed of it,

Captain Amasa Delano used all his authority, and, in particular with his own hand, struck down Martinez

Gola, who, having found a razor in the pocket of an old jacket of his, which one of the shackled Negroes had

on, was aiming it at the Negro's throat; that the noble Captain Amasa Delano also wrenched from the hand of

Bartholomew Barlo, a dagger secreted at the time of the massacre of the whites, with which he was in the act

of stabbing a shackled Negro, who, the same day, with another Negro, had thrown him down and jumped

upon him;... that, for all the events, befalling through so long a time, during which the ship was in the hands

of the Negro Babo, he cannot here give account; but that, what he has said is the most substantial of what

occurs to him at present, and is the truth under the oath which he has taken; which declaration he affirmed

He said that he is twentynine years of age, and broken in body and mind; that when finally dismissed by the

court, he shall not return home to Chili, but betake himself to the monastery on Mount Agonia without; and

signed with his honour, and crossed himself, and, for the time, departed as he came, in his litter, with the

If the deposition of Benito Cereno has served as the key to fit into the lock of the complications which

preceded it, then, as a vault whose door has been flung back, the San Dominick's hull lies open today.

Hitherto the nature of this narrative, besides rendering the intricacies in the beginning unavoidable, has more

or less required that many things, instead of being set down in the order of occurrence, should be

retrospectively, or irregularly given; this last is the case with the following passages, which will conclude the

During the long, mild voyage to Lima, there was, as before hinted, a period during which Don Benito a little

recovered his health, or, at least in some degree, his tranquillity. Ere the decided relapse which came, the two

captains had many cordial conversations their fraternal unreserve in singular contrast with former

Again and again, it was repeated, how hard it had been to enact the part forced on the Spaniard by Babo.

"Ah, my dear Don Amasa," Don Benito once said, "at those very times when you thought me so morose and

ungrateful nay when, as you now admit, you half thought me plotting your murder at those very times my

heart was frozen; I could not look at you, thinking of what, both on board this ship and your own, hung, from

other hands, over my kind benefactor. And as God lives, Don Amasa, I know not whether desire for my own

safety alone could have nerved me to that leap into your boat, had it not been for the thought that, did you,

unenlightened, return to your ship, you, my best friend, with all who might be with you, stolen upon, that

night, in your hammocks, would never in this world have wakened again. Do but think how you walked this

deck, how you sat in this cabin, every inch of ground mined into honeycombs under you. Had I dropped the

least hint, made the least advance toward an understanding between us, death, explosive death yours as

"True, true," cried Captain Delano, starting, "you saved my life, Don Benito, more than I yours; saved it, too,

"Nay, my friend," rejoined the Spaniard, courteous even to the point of religion, "God charmed your life, but

you saved mine. To think of some things you did those smilings and chattings, rash pointings and

gesturings. For less than these, they slew my mate, Raneds; but you had the Prince of Heaven's safe conduct

"Yes, all is owing to Providence, I know; but the temper of my mind that morning was more than commonly

pleasant, while the sight of so much suffering more apparent than real added to my good nature,

compassion, and charity, happily interweaving the three. Had it been otherwise, doubtless, as you hint, some

of my interferences with the blacks might have ended unhappily enough. Besides that, those feelings I spoke

of enabled me to get the better of momentary distrust, at times when acuteness might have cost me my life,

without saving another's. Only at the end did my suspicions get the better of me, and you know how wide of

"Wide, indeed," said Don Benito, sadly; "you were with me all day; stood with me, sat with me, talked with

me, looked at me, ate with me, drank with me; and yet, your last act was to clutch for a villain, not only an

innocent man, but the most pitiable of all men. To such degree may malign machinations and deceptions

impose. So far may even the best men err, in judging the conduct of one with the recesses of whose condition

he is not acquainted. But you were forced to it; and you were in time undeceived. Would that, in both

"I think I understand you; you generalize, Don Benito; and mournfully enough. But the past is passed; why

moralize upon it? Forget it. See, yon bright sun has forgotten it all, and the blue sea, and the blue sky; these

"Because they have no memory," he dejectedly replied; "because they are not human."

"But these mild trades that now fan your cheek, Don Benito, do they not come with a humanlike healing to

"With their steadfastness they but waft me to my tomb, Senor," was the foreboding response.

"You are saved, Don Benito," cried Captain Delano, more and more astonished and pained; "you are saved;

There was silence, while the moody man sat, slowly and unconsciously gathering his mantle about him, as if

But if the Spaniard's melancholy sometimes ended in muteness upon topics like the above, there were others

upon which he never spoke at all; on which, indeed, all his old reserves were piled. Pass over the worst and,

only to elucidate, let an item or two of these be cited. The dress so precise and costly, worn by him on the day

whose events have been narrated, had not willingly been put on. And that silvermounted sword, apparent

symbol of despotic command, was not, indeed, a sword, but the ghost of one. The scabbard, artificially

As for the black whose brain, not body, had schemed and led the revolt, with the plot his slight frame,

inadequate to that which it held, had at once yielded to the superior muscular strength of his captor, in the

boat. Seeing all was over, he uttered no sound, and could not be forced to. His aspect seemed to say: since I

cannot do deeds, I will not speak words. Put in irons in the hold, with the rest, he was carried to Lima. During

the passage Don Benito did not visit him. Nor then, nor at any time after, would he look at him. Before the

tribunal he refused. When pressed by the judges he fainted. On the testimony of the sailors alone rested the

legal identity of Babo. And yet the Spaniard would, upon occasion, verbally refer to the Negro, as has been

Some months after, dragged to the gibbet at the tail of a mule, the black met his voiceless end. The body was

burned to ashes; but for many days, the head, that hive of subtlety, fixed on a pole in the Plaza, met,

unabashed, the gaze of the whites; and across the Plaza looked toward St. Bartholomew's church, in whose

vaults slept then, as now, the recovered bones of Aranda; and across the Rimac bridge looked toward the

monastery, on Mount Agonia without; where, three months after being dismissed by the court, Benito

IN THE time before steamships, or then more frequently than now, a stroller along the docks of any

considerable seaport would occasionally have his attention arrested by a group of bronzed mariners,

manofwar's men or merchantsailors in holiday attire ashore on liberty. In certain instances they would

flank, or, like a bodyguard quite surround some superior figure of their own class, moving along with them

like Aldebaran among the lesser lights of his constellation. That signal object was the "Handsome Sailor" of

the less prosaic time alike of the military and merchant navies. With no perceptible trace of the vainglorious

about him, rather with the offhand unaffectedness of natural regality, he seemed to accept the spontaneous

homage of his shipmates. A somewhat remarkable instance recurs to me. In Liverpool, now half a century

ago, I saw under the shadow of the great dingy streetwall of Prince's Dock (an obstruction long since

removed) a common sailor, so intensely black that he must needs have been a native African of the

unadulterate blood of Ham. A symmetric figure much above the average height. The two ends of a gay silk

handkerchief thrown loose about the neck danced upon the displayed ebony of his chest; in his ears were big

hoops of gold, and a Scotch Highland bonnet with a tartan band set off his shapely head.

It was a hot noon in July; and his face, lustrous with perspiration, beamed with barbaric good humor. In jovial

sallies right and left, his white teeth flashing into he rollicked along, the centre of a company of his

shipmates. These were made up of such an assortment of tribes and complexions as would have well fitted

them to be marched up by Anacharsis Cloots before the bar of the first French Assembly as Representatives

of the Human Race. At each spontaneous tribute rendered by the wayfarers to this black pagod of a fellow

the tribute of a pause and stare, and less frequent an exclamation, the motley retinue showed that they took

that sort of pride in the evoker of it which the Assyrian priests doubtless showed for their grand sculptured

If in some cases a bit of a nautical Murat in setting forth his person ashore, the Handsome Sailor of the period

in question evinced nothing of the dandified BillybeDamn, an amusing character all but extinct now, but

occasionally to be encountered, and in a form yet more amusing than the original, at the tiller of the boats on

the tempestuous Erie Canal or, more likely, vaporing in the groggeries along the towpath. Invariably a

proficient in his perilous calling, he was also more or less of a mighty boxer or wrestler. It was strength and

beauty. Tales of his prowess were recited. Ashore he was the champion; afloat the spokesman; on every

suitable occasion always foremost. Closereefing topsails in a gale, there he was, astride the weather

yardarmend, foot in the Flemish horse as "stirrup," both hands tugging at the "earring" as at a bridle, in

very much the attitude of young Alexander curbing the fiery Bucephalus. A superb figure, tossed up as by the

horns of Taurus against the thunderous sky, cheerily hallooing 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

honest 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 welkineyed Billy Budd, or Baby Budd, as more familiarly under

circumstances hereafter to be given he at last came to be called, aged twentyone, a foretopman of the British

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 homewardbound English merchantman into a seventyfour outwardbound, H.M.S. Indomitable; which

ship, as was not unusual in those hurried days, having 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 Ratcliff

pounced, even before the merchantman's crew was formally mustered on the quarterdeck for his deliberate

inspection. And him only he elected. 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

shorthanded, 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, lifelong

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 color 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

Now while Billy Budd was down in the forecastle getting his kit together, the Indomitable's Lieutenant, burly

and bluff, nowise disconcerted by Captain Graveling's omitting to proffer the customary hospitalities on an

occasion so unwelcome to him, an omission simply caused by preoccupation of thought, unceremoniously

invited himself into the cabin, and also to a flask from the spiritlocker, a receptacle which his experienced

eye instantly discovered. In fact he was one of those seadogs in whom all the hardship and peril of naval life

in the great prolonged wars of his time never impaired the natural instinct for sensuous enjoyment. His duty

he always faithfully did; but duty is sometimes a dry obligation, and he was for irrigating its aridity,

whensoever possible, with a fertilizing decoction of strong waters. For the cabin's proprietor there was

nothing left but to play the part of the enforced host with whatever grace and alacrity were practicable. As

necessary adjuncts to the flask, he silently placed tumbler and waterjug before the irrepressible guest. But

excusing himself from partaking just then, he dismally watched the unembarrassed officer deliberately

diluting his grog a little, then tossing it off in three swallows, pushing the empty tumbler away, yet not so far

as to be beyond easy reach, at the same time settling himself in his seat and smacking his lips with high

These proceedings over, the Master broke the silence; and there lurked a rueful reproach in the tone of his

voice: "Lieutenant, you are going to take my best man from me, the jewel of 'em."

"Yes, I know," rejoined the other, immediately drawing back the tumbler preliminary to a replenishing; "Yes,

"Beg pardon, but you don't understand, Lieutenant. See here now. Before I shipped that young fellow, my

forecastle was a ratpit of quarrels. It was black times, I tell you, aboard the Rights here. I was worried to

that degree my pipe had no comfort for me. But Billy came; and it was like a Catholic priest striking peace in

an Irish shindy. Not that he preached to them or said or did anything in particular; but a virtue went out of

him, sugaring the sour ones. They took to him like hornets to treacle; all but the buffer of the gang, the big

shaggy chap with the firered whiskers. He indeed out of envy, perhaps, of the newcomer, and thinking such

a 'sweet and pleasant fellow,' as he mockingly designated him to the others, could hardly have the spirit of a

gamecock, must needs bestir himself in trying to get up an ugly row with him. Billy forebore with him and

reasoned with him in a pleasant way he is something like myself, Lieutenant, to whom aught like a quarrel

is hateful but nothing served. So, in the second dogwatch one day the Red Whiskers in presence of the

others, under pretence of showing Billy just whence a sirloin steak was cut for the fellow had once been a

butcher insultingly gave him a dig under the ribs. Quick as lightning Billy let fly his arm. I dare say he

never meant to do quite as much as he did, but anyhow he gave the burly fool a terrible drubbing. It took

about half a minute, I should think. And, lord bless you, the lubber was astonished at the celerity. And will

you believe it, Lieutenant, the Red Whiskers now really loves Billy loves him, or is the biggest hypocrite

that ever I heard of. But they all love him. Some of 'em do his washing, darn his old trousers for him; the

carpenter is at odd times making a pretty little chest of drawers for him. Anybody will do anything for Billy

Budd; and it's the happy family here. But now, Lieutenant, if that young fellow goes I know how it will be

aboard the Rights. Not again very soon shall I, coming up from dinner, lean over the capstan smoking a quiet

pipe no, not very soon again, I think. Ay, Lieutenant, you are going to take away the jewel of 'em; you are

going to take away my peacemaker!" And with that the good soul had really some ado in checking a rising

"Well," said the officer who had listened with amused interest to all this, and now waxing merry with his

tipple; "Well, blessed are the peacemakers, especially the fighting peacemakers! And such are the

seventyfour beauties some of which you see poking their noses out of the portholes of yonder warship

lyingto for me," pointing thro' the cabin window at the Indomitable. "But courage! don't look so

downhearted, man. Why, I pledge you in advance the royal approbation. Rest assured that His Majesty will

be delighted to know that in a time when his hard tack is not sought for by sailors with such avidity as should

be; a time also when some shipmasters privily resent the borrowing from them a tar or two for the service;

His Majesty, I say, will be delighted to learn that one shipmaster at least cheerfully surrenders to the King,

the flower of his flock, a sailor who with equal loyalty makes no dissent. But where's my beauty? Ah,"

looking through the cabin's open door, "Here he comes; and, by Jove lugging along his chest Apollo with

his portmanteau! My man," stepping out to him, "you can't take that big box aboard a warship. The boxes

there are mostly shotboxes. Put your duds in a bag, lad. Boot and saddle for the cavalryman, bag and

The transfer from chest to bag was made. And, after seeing his man into the cutter and then following him

down, the Lieutenant pushed off from the RightsofMan. That was the merchantship's name; tho' by her

master and crew abbreviated in sailor fashion into The Rights. The hardheaded Dundee owner was a

staunch admirer of Thomas Paine whose book in rejoinder to Burke's arraignment of the French Revolution

had then been published for some time and had gone everywhere. In christening his vessel after the title of

Paine's volume, the man of Dundee was something like his contemporary shipowner, Stephen Girard of

Philadelphia, whose sympathies, alike with his native land and its liberal philosophers, he evinced by naming

But now, when the boat swept under the merchantman's stern, and officer and oarsmen were noting some

bitterly and others with a grin, the name emblazoned there; just then it was that the new recruit jumped up

from the bow where the coxswain had directed him to sit, and waving his hat to his silent shipmates

sorrowfully looking over at him from the taffrail, bade the lads a genial goodbye. Then, making a salutation

"Down, Sir!" roared the Lieutenant, instantly assuming all the rigour of his rank, though with difficulty

To be sure, Billy's action was a terrible breach of naval decorum. But in that decorum he had never been

instructed; in consideration of which the Lieutenant would hardly have been so energetic in reproof but for

the concluding farewell to the ship. This he rather took as meant to convey a covert sally on the new recruit's

part, a sly slur at impressment in general, and that of himself in especial. And yet, more likely, if satire it was

in effect, it was hardly so by intention, for Billy, tho' happily endowed with the gayety of high health, youth,

and a free heart, was yet by no means of a satirical turn. The will to it and the sinister dexterity were alike

wanting. To deal in double meanings and insinuations of any sort was quite foreign to his nature.

As to his enforced enlistment, that he seemed to take pretty much as he was wont to take any vicissitude of

weather. Like the animals, though no philosopher, he was, without knowing it, practically a fatalist. And, it

may be, that he rather liked this adventurous turn in his affairs, which promised an opening into novel scenes

Aboard the Indomitable our merchantsailor was forthwith rated as an ableseaman and assigned to the

starboard watch of the foretop. He was soon at home in the service, not at all disliked for his unpretentious

good looks and a sort of genial happygolucky air. No merrier man in his mess: in marked contrast to

certain other individuals included like himself among the impressed portion of the ship's company; for these

when not actively employed were sometimes, and more particularly in the last dogwatch when the drawing

near of twilight induced revery, apt to fall into a saddish mood which in some partook of sullenness. But they

were not so young as our foretopman, and no few of them must have known a hearth of some sort; others

may have had wives and children left, too probably, in uncertain circumstances, and hardly any but must have

had acknowledged kith and kin, while for Billy, as will shortly be seen, his entire family was practically

Though our newmade foretopman was well received in the top and on the gun decks, hardly here was he

that cynosure he had previously been among those minor ship's companies of the merchant marine, with

He was young; and despite his all but fully developed frame, in aspect looked even younger than he really

was, owing to a lingering adolescent expression in the as yet smooth face, all but feminine in purity of natural

complexion, but where, thanks to his seagoing, the lily was quite suppressed and the rose had some ado

To one essentially such a novice in the complexities of factitious life, the abrupt transition from his former

and simpler sphere to the ampler and more knowing world of a great warship; this might well have abashed

him had there been any conceit or vanity in his composition. Among her miscellaneous multitude, the

Indomitable mustered several individuals who, however inferior in grade, were of no common natural stamp,

sailors more signally susceptive of that air which continuous martial discipline and repeated presence in battle

can in some degree impart even to the average man. As the Handsome Sailor, Billy Budd's position aboard

the seventyfour was something analogous to that of a rustic beauty transplanted from the provinces and

brought into competition with the highborn dames of the court. But this change of circumstances he scarce

noted. As little did he observe that something about him provoked an ambiguous smile in one or two harder

faces among the bluejackets. Nor less unaware was he of the peculiar favorable effect his person and

demeanour had upon the more intelligent gentlemen of the quarterdeck. Nor could this well have been

otherwise. Cast in a mould peculiar to the finest physical examples of those Englishmen in whom the Saxon

strain would seem not at all to partake of any Norman or other admixture, he showed in face that humane

look of reposeful good nature which the Greek sculptor in some instances gave to his heroic strong man,

Hercules. But this again was subtly modified by another and pervasive quality. The ear, small and shapely,

the arch of the foot, the curve in mouth and nostril, even the indurated hand dyed to the orangetawny of the

toucan's bill, a hand telling alike of the halyards and tarbucket; but, above all, something in the mobile

expression, and every chance attitude and movement, something suggestive of a mother eminently favored by

Love and the Graces; all this strangely indicated a lineage in direct contradiction to his lot. The

mysteriousness here became less mysterious through a matteroffact elicited when Billy, at the capstan, was

being formally mustered into the service. Asked by the officer, a small brisk little gentleman, as it chanced

among other questions, his place of birth, he replied, "Please, Sir, I don't know."

Struck by the straightforward simplicity of these replies, the officer next asked, "Do you know anything about

"No, Sir. But I have heard that I was found in a pretty silklined basket hanging one morning from the knocker

"Found say you? Well," throwing back his head and looking up and down the new recruit; "Well, it turns out

to have been a pretty good find. Hope they'll find some more like you, my man; the fleet sadly needs them."

Yes, Billy Budd was a foundling, a presumable byblow, and, evidently, no ignoble one. Noble descent was

For the rest, with little or no sharpness of faculty or any trace of the wisdom of the serpent, nor yet quite a

dove, he possessed that kind and degree of intelligence going along with the unconventional rectitude of a

sound human creature, one to whom not yet has been proffered the questionable apple of knowledge. He was

illiterate; he could not read, but he could sing, and like the illiterate nightingale was sometimes the composer

Of selfconsciousness he seemed to have little or none, or about as much as we may reasonably impute to a

Habitually living with the elements and knowing little more of the land than as a beach, or, rather, that

portion of the terraqueous globe providentially set apart for dancehouses, doxies and tapsters, in short what

sailors call a "fiddlers'green," his simple nature remained unsophisticated by those moral obliquities which

are not in every case incompatible with that manufacturable thing known as respectability. But are sailors,

frequenters of "fiddlers'greens," without vices? No; but less often than with landsmen do their vices, so

called, partake of crookedness of heart, seeming less to proceed from viciousness than exuberance of vitality

after long constraint; frank manifestations in accordance with natural law. By his original constitution aided

by the cooperating influences of his lot, Billy in many respects was little more than a sort of upright

barbarian, much such perhaps as Adam presumably might have been ere the urbane Serpent wriggled himself

And here be it submitted that apparently going to corroborate the doctrine of man's fall, a doctrine now

popularly ignored, it is observable that where certain virtues pristine and unadulterate peculiarly characterize

anybody in the external uniform of civilization, they will upon scrutiny seem not to be derived from custom

or convention, but rather to be out of keeping with these, as if indeed exceptionally transmitted from a period

prior to Cain's city and citified man. The character marked by such qualities has to an unvitiated taste an

untamperedwith flavor like that of berries, while the man thoroughly civilized, even in a fair specimen of

the breed, has to the same moral palate a questionable smack as of a compounded wine. To any stray inheritor

of these primitive qualities found, like Caspar Hauser, wandering dazed in any Christian capital of our time,

the goodnatured poet's famous invocation, near two thousand years ago, of the good rustic out of his latitude

Though our Handsome Sailor had as much of masculine beauty as one can expect anywhere to see;

nevertheless, like the beautiful woman in one of Hawthorne's minor tales, there was just one thing amiss in

him. No visible blemish, indeed, as with the lady; no, but an occasional liability to a vocal defect. Though in

the hour of elemental uproar or peril he was everything that a sailor should be, yet under sudden provocation

of strong heartfeeling, his voice otherwise singularly musical, as if expressive of the harmony within, was

apt to develop an organic hesitancy, in fact, more or less of a stutter or even worse. In this particular Billy

was a striking instance that the arch interferer, the envious marplot of Eden, still has more or less to do with

every human consignment to this planet of earth. In every case, one way or another he is sure to slip in his

The avowal of such an imperfection in the Handsome Sailor should be evidence not alone that he is not

presented as a conventional hero, but also that the story in which he is the main figure is no romance.

At the time of Billy Budd's arbitrary enlistment into the Indomitable that ship was on her way to join the

Mediterranean fleet. No long time elapsed before the 'unction was effected. As one of that fleet the

seventyfour participated in its movements, tho' at times, on account of her superior sailing qualities, in the

absence of frigates, despatched on separate duty as a scout and at times on less temporary service. But with

all this the story has little concernment, restricted as it is to the inner life of one particular ship and the career

It was the summer of 1797. In the April of that year had occurred the commotion at Spithead followed in May

by a second and yet more serious outbreak in the fleet at the Nore. The latter is known, and without

exaggeration in the epithet, as the Great Mutiny. It was indeed a demonstration more menacing to England

than the contemporary manifestoes and conquering and proselyting armies of the French Directory.

To the British Empire the Nore Mutiny was what a strike in the firebrigade would be to London threatened

by general arson. In a crisis when the kingdom might well have anticipated the famous signal that some years

later published along the naval line of battle what it was that upon occasion England expected of Englishmen;

that was the time when at the mastheads of the threedeckers and seventyfours moored in her own

roadstead a fleet, the right arm of a Power then all but the sole free conservative one of the Old World the

bluejackets, to be numbered by thousands, ran up with huzzas the British colors with the union and cross

wiped out; by that cancellation transmuting the flag of founded law and freedom defined, into the enemy's red

meteor of unbridled and unbounded revolt. Reasonable discontent growing out of practical grievances in the

fleet had been ignited into irrational combustion, as by live cinders blown across the Channel from France in

The event converted into irony for a time those spirited strains of Dibdin as a songwriter no mean auxiliary

to the English Government at the European conjuncture strains celebrating, among other things, the patriotic

Such an episode in the Island's grand naval story her naval historians naturally abridge; one of them (G.P.R.

James) candidly acknowledging that fain would he pass it over did not "impartiality forbid fastidiousness."

And yet his mention is less a narration than a reference, having to do hardly at all with details. Nor are these

readily to be found in the libraries. Like some other events in every age befalling states everywhere, including

America, the Great Mutiny was of such character that national pride along with views of policy would fain

shade it off into the historical background. Such events can not be ignored, but there is a considerate way of

historically treating them. If a wellconstituted individual refrains from blazoning aught amiss or calamitous

in his family, a nation in the like circumstance may without reproach be equally discreet.

Though after parleyings between Government and the ringleaders, and concessions by the former as to some

glaring abuses, the first uprising that at Spithead with difficulty was put down, or matters for the time

pacified; yet at the Nore the unforeseen renewal of insurrection on a yet larger scale, and emphasized in the

conferences that ensued by demands deemed by the authorities not only inadmissible but aggressively

insolent, indicated if the Red Flag did not sufficiently do so what was the spirit animating the men. Final

suppression, however, there was; but only made possible perhaps by the unswerving loyalty of the marine

corps and voluntary resumption of loyalty among influential sections of the crews.

To some extent the Nore Mutiny may be regarded as analogous to the distempering irruption of contagious

At all events, of these thousands of mutineers were some of the tars who not so very long afterwards

whether wholly prompted thereto by patriotism, or pugnacious instinct, or by both, helped to win a coronet

for Nelson at the Nile, and the naval crown of crowns for him at Trafalgar. To the mutineers those battles,

and especially Trafalgar, were a plenary absolution and a grand one: For all that goes to make up scenic naval

display, heroic magnificence in arms, those battles, especially Trafalgar, stand unmatched in human annals.

In this matter of writing, resolve as one may to keep to the main road, some bypaths have an enticement not

readily to be withstood. I am going to err into such a bypath. If the reader will keep me company I shall be

glad. At the least we can promise ourselves that pleasure which is wickedly said to be in sinning, for a literary

Very likely it is no new remark that the inventions of our time have at last brought about a change in

seawarfare in degree corresponding to the revolution in all warfare effected by the original introduction

from China into Europe of gunpowder. The first European firearm, a clumsy contrivance, was, as is well

known, scouted by no few of the knights as a base implement, good enough peradventure for weavers too

craven to stand up crossing steel with steel in frank fight. But as ashore, knightly valor, tho' shorn of its

blazonry, did not cease with the knights, neither on the seas, though nowadays in encounters there a certain

kind of displayed gallantry be fallen out of date as hardly applicable under changed circumstances, did the

nobler qualities of such naval magnates as Don John of Austria, Doria, Van Tromp, Jean Bart, the long line of

British Admirals and the American Decaturs of 1812 become obsolete with their wooden walls.

Nevertheless, to anybody who can hold the Present at its worth without being inappreciative of the Past, it

may be forgiven, if to such an one the solitary old hulk at Portsmouth, Nelson's Victory, seems to float there,

not alone as the decaying monument of a fame incorruptible, but also as a poetic reproach, softened by its

picturesqueness, to the Monitors and yet mightier hulls of the European ironclads. And this not altogether

because such craft are unsightly, unavoidably lacking the symmetry and grand lines of the old battleships,

There are some, perhaps, who while not altogether inaccessible to that poetic reproach just alluded to, may

yet on behalf of the new order, be disposed to parry it; and this to the extent of iconoclasm, if need be. For

example, prompted by the sight of the star inserted in the Victory's quarterdeck designating the spot where

the Great Sailor fell, these martial utilitarians may suggest considerations implying that Nelson's ornate

publication of his person in battle was not only unnecessary, but not military, nay, savored of foolhardiness

and vanity. They may add, too, that at Trafalgar it was in effect nothing less than a challenge to death; and

death came; and that but for his bravado the victorious Admiral might possibly have survived the battle; and

so, instead of having his sagacious dying injunctions overruled by his immediate successor in command, he

himself, when the contest was decided, might have brought his shattered fleet to anchor, a proceeding which

might have averted the deplorable loss of life by shipwreck in the elemental tempest that followed the martial

Well, should we set aside the more disputable point whether for various reasons it was possible to anchor the

But the mighthavebeen is but boggy ground to build on. And, certainly, in foresight as to the larger issue

of an encounter, and anxious preparations for it buoying the deadly way and mapping it out, as at

Copenhagen few commanders have been so painstakingly circumspect as this same reckless declarer of his

Personal prudence even when dictated by quite other than selfish considerations surely is no special virtue in

a military man; while an excessive love of glory, impassioning a less burning impulse, the honest sense of

duty, is the first. If the name Wellington is not so much of a trumpet to the blood as the simpler name Nelson,

the reason for this may perhaps be inferred from the above. Alfred in his funeral ode on the victor of

Waterloo ventures not to call him the greatest soldier of all time, tho' in the same ode he invokes Nelson as

At Trafalgar, Nelson, on the brink of opening the fight, sat down and wrote his last brief will and testament.

If under the presentiment of the most magnificent of all victories to be crowned by his own glorious death, a

sort of priestly motive led him to dress his person in the jewelled vouchers of his own shining deeds; if thus

to have adorned himself for the altar and the sacrifice were indeed vainglory, then affectation and fustian is

each more heroic line in the great epics and dramas, since in such lines the poet but embodies in verse those

exaltations of sentiment that a nature like Nelson, the opportunity being given, vitalizes into acts.

Yes, the outbreak at the Nore was put down. But not every grievance was redressed. If the contractors, for

example, were no longer permitted to ply some practices peculiar to their tribe everywhere, such as providing

shoddy cloth, rations not sound, or false in the measure, not the less impressment, for one thing, went on. By

custom sanctioned for centuries, and judicially maintained by a Lord Chancellor as late as Mansfield, that

mode of manning the fleet, a mode now fallen into a sort of abeyance but never formally renounced, it was

not practicable to give up in those years. Its abrogation would have crippled the indispensable fleet, one

wholly under canvas, no steampower, its innumerable sails and thousands of cannon, everything in short,

worked by muscle alone; a fleet the more insatiate in demand for men, because then multiplying its ships of

all grades against contingencies present and to come of the convulsed Continent.

Discontent foreran the Two Mutinies, and more or less it lurkingly survived them. Hence it was not

unreasonable to apprehend some return of trouble, sporadic or general. One instance of such apprehensions:

In the same year with this story, Nelson, then ViceAdmiral Sir Horatio, being with the fleet off the Spanish

coast, was directed by the Admiral in command to shift his pennant from the Captain to the Theseus; and for

this reason: that the latter ship having newly arrived on the station from home where it had taken part in the

Great Mutiny, danger was apprehended from the temper of the men; and it was thought that an officer like

Nelson was the one, not indeed to terrorize the crew into base subjection, but to win them, by force of his

mere presence, back to an allegiance if not as enthusiastic as his own, yet as true. So it was that for a time on

more than one quarterdeck anxiety did exist. At sea precautionary vigilance was strained against relapse. At

short notice an engagement might come on. When it did, the lieutenants assigned to batteries felt it incumbent

on them, in some instances, to stand with drawn swords behind the men working the guns.

But on board the seventyfour in which Billy now swung his hammock, very little in the manner of the men

and nothing obvious in the demeanour of the officers would have suggested to an ordinary observer that the

Great Mutiny was a recent event. In their general bearing and conduct the commissioned officers of a warship

naturally take their tone from the Commander, that is if he have that ascendancy of character that ought to be

Captain the Honorable Edward Fairfax Vere, to give his full title, was a bachelor of forty or thereabouts, a

sailor of distinction even in a time prolific of renowned seamen. Though allied to the higher nobility, his

advancement had not been altogether owing to influences connected with that circumstance. He had seen

much service, been in various engagements, always acquitting himself as an officer mindful of the welfare of

his men, but never tolerating an infraction of discipline; thoroughly versed in the science of his profession,

and intrepid to the verge of temerity, though never injudiciously so. For his gallantry in the West Indian

waters as FlagLieutenant under Rodney in that Admiral's crowning victory over De Grasse, he was made a

Ashore in the garb of a civilian, scarce anyone would have taken him for a sailor, more especially that he

never garnished unprofessional talk with nautical terms, and grave in his bearing, evinced little appreciation

of mere humor. It was not out of keeping with these traits that on a passage when nothing demanded his

paramount action, he was the most undemonstrative of men. Any landsman observing this gentleman, not

conspicuous by his stature and wearing no pronounced insignia, emerging from his cabin to the open deck,

and noting the silent deference of the officers retiring to leeward, might have taken him for the King's guest, a

civilian aboard the King'sship, some highly honorable discreet envoy on his way to an important post. But

in fact this unobtrusiveness of demeanour may have proceeded from a certain unaffected modesty of

manhood sometimes accompanying a resolute nature, a modesty evinced at all times not calling for

pronounced action, and which shown in any rank of life suggests a virtue aristocratic in kind.

As with some others engaged in various departments of the world's more heroic activities, Captain Vere,

though practical enough upon occasion, would at times betray a certain dreaminess of mood. Standing alone

on the weatherside of the quarterdeck, one hand holding by the rigging, he would absently gaze off at the

blank sea. At the presentation to him then of some minor matter interrupting the current of his thoughts he

In the navy he was popularly known by the appellation Starry Vere. How such a designation happened to

fall upon one who, whatever his sterling qualities, was without any brilliant ones was in this wise: A favorite

kinsman, Lord Denton, a freehearted fellow, had been the first to meet and congratulate him upon his return

to England from his West Indian cruise; and but the day previous turning over a copy of Andrew Marvell's

poems, had lighted, not for the first time however, upon the lines entitled Appleton House, the name of one of

the seats of their common ancestor, a hero in the German wars of the seventeenth century, in which poem

Of Fairfax and the starry Vere." And so, upon embracing his cousin fresh from Rodney's great victory

wherein he had played so gallant a part, brimming over with just family pride in the sailor of their house, he

exuberantly exclaimed, "Give ye joy, Ed; give ye joy, my starry Vere!" This got currency, and the novel

prefix serving in familiar parlance readily to distinguish the Indomitable's Captain from another Vere his

senior, a distant relative, an officer of like rank in the navy, it remained permanently attached to the surname.

In view of the part that the Commander of the Indomitable plays in scenes shortly to follow, it may be well to

Aside from his qualities as a seaofficer, Captain Vere was an exceptional character. Unlike no few of

England's renowned sailors, long and arduous service with signal devotion to it, had not resulted in absorbing

and salting the entire man. He had a marked leaning toward everything intellectual. He loved books, never

going to sea without a newly replenished library, compact but of the best. The isolated leisure, in some cases

so wearisome, falling at intervals to commanders even during a warcruise, never was tedious to Captain

Vere. With nothing of that literary taste which less heeds the thing conveyed than the vehicle, his bias was

toward those books to which every serious mind of superior order occupying any active post of authority in

the world naturally inclines; books treating of actual men and events no matter of what era history,

biography and unconventional writers, who, free from cant and convention, like Montaigne, honestly and in

In this line of reading he found confirmation of his own more reasoned thoughts confirmation which he had

vainly sought in social converse, so that as touching most fundamental topics, there had got to be established

in him some positive convictions, which he forefelt would abide in him essentially unmodified so long as his

intelligent part remained unimpaired. In view of the troubled period in which his lot was cast this was well

for him. His settled convictions were as a dyke against those invading waters of novel opinion, social,

political and otherwise, which carried away as in a torrent no few minds in those days, minds by nature not

inferior to his own. While other members of that aristocracy to which by birth he belonged were incensed at

the innovators mainly because their theories were inimical to the privileged classes, not alone Captain Vere

disinterestedly opposed them because they seemed to him incapable of embodiment in lasting institutions, but

With minds less stored than his and less earnest, some officers of his rank, with whom at times he would

necessarily consort, found him lacking in the companionable quality, a dry and bookish gentleman, as they

deemed. Upon any chance withdrawal from their company one would be apt to say to another, something like

this: "Vere is a noble fellow, Starry Vere. Spite the gazettes, Sir Horatio" (meaning him with the Lord title)

"is at bottom scarce a better seaman or fighter. But between you and me now, don't you think there is a queer

streak of the pedantic running thro' him? Yes, like the King's yarn in a coil of navyrope?"

Some apparent ground there was for this sort of confidential criticism; since not only did the Captain's

discourse never fall into the jocosely familiar, but in illustrating of any point touching the stirring personages

and events of the time he would be as apt to cite some historic character or incident of antiquity as that he

would cite from the moderns. He seemed unmindful of the circumstance that to his bluff company such

remote allusions, however pertinent they might really be, were altogether alien to men whose reading was

mainly confined to the journals. But considerateness in such matters is not easy to natures constituted like

Captain Vere's. Their honesty prescribes to them directness, sometimes farreaching like that of a migratory

The lieutenants and other commissioned gentlemen forming Captain Vere's staff it is not necessary here to

particularize, nor needs it to make any mention of any of the warrantofficers. But among the pettyofficers

was one who having much to do with the story, may as well be forthwith introduced. His portrait I essay, but

shall never hit it. This was John Claggart, the Masteratarms. But that seatitle may to landsmen seem

somewhat equivocal. Originally, doubtless, that pettyofficer's function was the instruction of the men in the

use of arms, sword or cutlas. But very long ago, owing to the advance in gunnery making handtohand

encounters less frequent and giving to nitre and sulphur the preeminence over steel, that function ceased; the

Masteratarms of a great warship becoming a sort of Chief of Police, charged among other matters with

Claggart was a man about five and thirty, somewhat spare and tall, yet of no ill figure upon the whole. His

hand was too small and shapely to have been accustomed to hard toil. The face was a notable one; the

features all except the chin cleanly cut as those on a Greek medallion; yet the chin, beardless as Tecumseh's,

had something of strange protuberant heaviness in its make that recalled the prints of the Rev. Dr. Titus

Oates, the historic deponent with the clerical drawl in the time of Charles II and the fraud of the alleged

Popish Plot. It served Claggart in his office that his eye could cast a tutoring glance. His brow was of the sort

phrenologically associated with more than average intellect; silken jet curls partly clustering over it, making a

foil to the pallor below, a pallor tinged with a faint shade of amber akin to the hue of timetinted marbles of

old. This complexion, singularly contrasting with the red or deeply bronzed visages of the sailors, and in part

the result of his official seclusion from the sunlight, tho' it was not exactly displeasing, nevertheless seemed

to hint of something defective or abnormal in the constitution and blood. But his general aspect and manner

were so suggestive of an education and career incongruous with his naval function that when not actively

engaged in it he looked a man of high quality, social and moral, who for reasons of his own was keeping

incog. Nothing was known of his former life. It might be that he was an Englishman; and yet there lurked a

bit of accent in his speech suggesting that possibly he was not such by birth, but through naturalization in

early childhood. Among certain grizzled seagossips of the gun decks and forecastle went a rumor perdue

that the Masteratarms was a chevalier who had volunteered into the King's Navy by way of compounding

for some mysterious swindle whereof he had been arraigned at the King's Bench. The fact that nobody could

substantiate this report was, of course, nothing against its secret currency. Such a rumor once started on the

gun decks in reference to almost anyone below the rank of a commissioned officer would, during the period

assigned to this narrative, have seemed not altogether wanting in credibility to the tarry old wiseacres of a

manofwar crew. And indeed a man of Claggart's accomplishments, without prior nautical experience,

entering the navy at mature life, as he did, and necessarily allotted at the start to the lowest grade in it; a man,

too, who never made allusion to his previous life ashore; these were circumstances which in the dearth of

exact knowledge as to his true antecedents opened to the invidious a vague field for unfavorable surmise.

But the sailors' dogwatch gossip concerning him derived a vague plausibility from the fact that now for

some period the British Navy could so little afford to be squeamish in the matter of keeping up the

musterrolls, that not only were pressgangs notoriously abroad both afloat and ashore, but there was little or

no secret about another matter, namely that the London police were at liberty to capture any ablebodied

suspect, any questionable fellow at large and summarily ship him to dockyard or fleet. Furthermore, even

among voluntary enlistments there were instances where the motive thereto partook neither of patriotic

impulse nor yet of a random desire to experience a bit of sealife and martial adventure. Insolvent debtors of

minor grade, together with the promiscuous lame ducks of morality found in the Navy a convenient and

secure refuge. Secure, because once enlisted aboard a King'sship, they were as much in sanctuary, as the

transgressor of the Middle Ages harboring himself under the shadow of the altar. Such sanctioned

irregularities, which for obvious reasons the Government would hardly think to parade at the time, and which

consequently, and as affecting the least influential class of mankind, have all but dropped into oblivion, lend

color to something for the truth whereof I do not vouch, and hence have some scruple in stating; something I

remember having seen in print, though the book I can not recall; but the same thing was personally

communicated to me now more than forty years ago by an old pensioner in a cocked hat with whom I had a

most interesting talk on the terrace at Greenwich, a Baltimore Negro, a Trafalgar man. It was to this effect: In

the case of a warship short of hands whose speedy sailing was imperative, the deficient quota in lack of any

other way of making it good, would be eked out by draughts culled direct from the jails. For reasons

previously suggested it would not perhaps be easy at the present day directly to prove or disprove the

allegation. But allowed as a verity, how significant would it be of England's straits at the time, confronted by

those wars which like a flight of harpies rose shrieking from the din and dust of the fallen Bastille. That era

appears measurably clear to us who look back at it, and but read of it. But to the grandfathers of us

graybeards, the more thoughtful of them, the genius of it presented an aspect like that of Camouns' Spirit of

the Cape, an eclipsing menace mysterious and prodigious. Not America was exempt from apprehension. At

the height of Napoleon's unexampled conquests, there were Americans who had fought at Bunker Hill who

looked forward to the possibility that the Atlantic might prove no barrier against the ultimate schemes of this

French upstart from the revolutionary chaos who seemed in act of fulfilling judgement prefigured in the

But the less credence was to be given to the gundeck talk touching Claggart, seeing that no man holding his

office in a manofwar can ever hope to be popular with the crew. Besides, in derogatory comments upon

anyone against whom they have a grudge, or for any reason or no reason mislike, sailors are much like

About as much was really known to the Indomitable's tars of the Masteratarms' career before entering the

service as an astronomer knows about a comet's travels prior to its first observable appearance in the sky. The

verdict of the sea quidnuncs has been cited only by way of showing what sort of moral impression the man

made upon rude uncultivated natures whose conceptions of human wickedness were necessarily of the

narrowest, limited to ideas of vulgar rascality, a thief among the swinging hammocks during a nightwatch,

It was no gossip, however, but fact, that though, as before hinted, Claggart upon his entrance into the navy

was, as a novice, assigned to the least honourable section of a manofwar's crew, embracing the drudgery,

The superior capacity he immediately evinced, his constitutional sobriety, ingratiating deference to superiors,

together with a peculiar ferreting genius manifested on a singular occasion; all this capped by a certain

Of this maritime Chief of Police the ship'scorporals, so called, were the immediate subordinates, and

compliant ones; and this, as is to be noted in some business departments ashore, almost to a degree

inconsistent with entire moral volition. His place put various converging wires of underground influence

under the Chief's control, capable when astutely worked thro' his understrappers, of operating to the

Life in the foretop well agreed with Billy Budd. There, when not actually engaged on the yards yet higher

aloft, the topmen, who as such had been picked out for youth and activity, constituted an aerial club lounging

at ease against the smaller stun'sails rolled up into cushions, spinning yarns like the lazy gods, and frequently

amused with what was going on in the busy world of the decks below. No wonder then that a young fellow of

Billy's disposition was well content in such society. Giving no cause of offence to anybody, he was always

alert at a call. So in the merchant service it had been with him. But now such a punctiliousness in duty was

shown that his topmates would sometimes goodnaturedly laugh at him for it. This heightened alacrity had

its cause, namely, the impression made upon him by the first formal gangwaypunishment he had ever

witnessed, which befell the day following his impressment. It had been incurred by a little fellow, young, a

novice, an afterguardsman absent from his assigned post when the ship was being put about; a dereliction

resulting in a rather serious hitch to that manoeuvre, one demanding instantaneous promptitude in letting go

and making fast. When Billy saw the culprit's naked back under the scourge gridironed with red welts, and

worse; when he marked the dire expression on the liberated man's face as with his woolen shirt flung over

him by the executioner he rushed forward from the spot to bury himself in the crowd, Billy was horrified. He

resolved that never through remissness would he make himself liable to such a visitation or do or omit aught

that might merit even verbal reproof. What then was his surprise and concern when ultimately he found

himself getting into petty trouble occasionally about such matters as the stowage of his bag or something

amiss in his hammock, matters under the police oversight of the ship'scorporals of the lower decks, and

So heedful in all things as he was, how could this be? He could not understand it, and it more than vexed him.

When he spoke to his young topmates about it they were either lightly incredulous or found something

comical in his unconcealed anxiety. "Is it your bag, Billy?" said one. "Well, sew yourself up in it, bully boy,

Now there was a veteran aboard who because his years began to disqualify him for more active work had

been recently assigned duty as mainmastman in his watch, looking to the gear belayed at the rail roundabout

that great spar near the deck. At offtimes the Foretopman had picked up some acquaintance with him, and

now in his trouble it occurred to him that he might be the sort of person to go to for wise counsel. He was an

old Dansker long anglicized in the service, of few words, many wrinkles and some honorable scars. His

wizened face, timetinted and weatherstained to the complexion of an antique parchment, was here and

there peppered blue by the chance explosion of a guncartridge in action. He was an Agamemnonman;

some two years prior to the time of this story having served under Nelson, when but Sir Horatio, in that ship

immortal in naval memory, and which, dismantled and in part broken up to her bare ribs, is seen a grand

skeleton in Haydon's etching. As one of a boardingparty from the Agamemnon he had received a cut

slantwise along one temple and cheek, leaving a long scar like a streak of dawn's light falling athwart the dark

visage. It was on account of that scar and the affair in which it was known that he had received it, as well as

from his bluepeppered complexion, that the Dansker went among the Indomitable's crew by the name of

Now the first time that his small weazeleyes happened to light on Billy Budd, a certain grim internal

merriment set all his ancient wrinkles into antic play. Was it that his eccentric unsentimental old sapience,

primitive in its kind, saw or thought it saw something which, in contrast with the warship's environment,

looked oddly incongruous in the Handsome Sailor? But after slyly studying him at intervals, the old Merlin's

equivocal merriment was modified; for now when the twain would meet, it would start in his face a quizzing

sort of look, but it would be but momentary and sometimes replaced by an expression of speculative query as

to what might eventually befall a nature like that, dropped into a world not without some mantraps and

against whose subtleties simple courage, lacking experience and address and without any touch of defensive

ugliness, is of little avail; and where such innocence as man is capable of does yet in a moral emergency not

However it was, the Dansker in his ascetic way rather took to Billy. Nor was this only because of a certain

philosophic interest in such a character. There was another cause. While the old man's eccentricities,

sometimes bordering on the ursine, repelled the juniors, Billy, undeterred thereby, revering him as a salt hero,

would make advances, never passing the old Agamemnonman without a salutation marked by that respect

which is seldom lost on the aged however crabbed at times or whatever their station in life.

There was a vein of dry humor, or what not, in the mastman; and, whether in freak of patriarchal irony

touching Billy's youth and athletic frame, or for some other and more recondite reason, from the first in

addressing him he always substituted Baby for Billy. The Dansker in fact being the originator of the name by

Well then, in his mysterious little difficulty, going in quest of the wrinkled one, Billy found him off duty in a

dogwatch ruminating by himself, seated on a shotbox of the upper gun deck, now and then surveying with

a somewhat cynical regard certain of the more swaggering promenaders there. Billy recounted his trouble,

again wondering how it all happened. The salt seer attentively listened, accompanying the Foretopman's

recital with queer twitchings of his wrinkles and problematical little sparkles of his small ferret eyes. Making

an end of his story, the Foretopman asked, "And now, Dansker, do tell me what you think of it."

The old man, shoving up the front of his tarpaulin and deliberately rubbing the long slant scar at the point

where it entered the thin hair, laconically said, "Baby Budd, Jimmy Legs" (meaning the Masteratarms) "is

"Jimmy Legs!" ejaculated Billy, his welkin eyes expanding; "what for? Why he calls me the sweet and

"Does he so?" grinned the grizzled one; then said, "Ay, Baby Lad, a sweet voice has Jimmy Legs."

"No, not always. But to me he has. I seldom pass him but there comes a pleasant word."

Such reiteration along with the manner of it, incomprehensible to a novice, disturbed Billy almost as much as

the mystery for which he had sought explanation. Something less unpleasingly oracular he tried to extract;

but the old seaChiron, thinking perhaps that for the nonce he had sufficiently instructed his young Achilles,

pursed his lips, gathered all his wrinkles together and would commit himself to nothing further.

Years, and those experiences which befall certain shrewder men subordinated lifelong to the will of

superiors, all this had developed in the Dansker the pithy guarded cynicism that was his leading

The next day an incident served to confirm Billy Budd in his incredulity as to the Dansker's strange

summingup 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 souppan upon the new scrubbed deck. Claggart, the Masteratarms,

official rattan 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 rattan, 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 humourous, 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 Jimmy 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, Boardherinthesmoke, who had

suggested what to him was the smoky idea that this Masteratarms 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

drummerboy 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 rattan, vehemently exclaimed, "Look where you go!"

What was the matter with the Masteratarms? And, be the matter what it might, how could it have direct

relation to Billy Budd with whom, prior to the affair of the spilled soup, he had never come into any special

contact, official or otherwise? What indeed could the trouble have to do with one so little inclined to give

offence as the merchantship's peacemaker, even him who in Claggart's own phrase was "the sweet and

pleasant young fellow"? Yes, why should Jimmy Legs, to borrow the Dansker's expression, be down on the

Handsome Sailor? But, at heart and not for nothing, as the late chance encounter may indicate to the

Now to invent something touching the more private career of Claggart, something involving Billy Budd, of

which something the latter should be wholly ignorant, some romantic incident implying that Claggart's

knowledge of the young bluejacket began at some period anterior to catching sight of him on board the

seventyfourall this, not so difficult to do, might avail in a way more or less interesting to account for

whatever of enigma may appear to lurk in the case. But in fact there was nothing of the sort. And yet the

cause, necessarily to be assumed as the sole one assignable, is in its very realism as much charged with that

prime element of Radcliffian romance, the mysterious, as any that the ingenuity of the author of the Mysteries

of Udolpho could devise. For what can more partake of the mysterious than an antipathy spontaneous and

profound, such as is evoked in certain exceptional mortals by the mere aspect of some other mortal, however

Now there can exist no irritating juxtaposition of dissimilar personalities comparable to that which is possible

aboard a great warship fully manned and at sea. There, every day among all ranks almost every man comes

into more or less of contact with almost every other man. Wholly there to avoid even the sight of an

aggravating object one must needs give it Jonah's toss or jump overboard himself. Imagine how all this might

eventually operate on some peculiar human creature the direct reverse of a saint?

But for the adequate comprehending of Claggart by a normal nature, these hints are insufficient. To pass from

a normal nature to him one must cross "the deadly space between." And this is best done by indirection.

Long ago an honest scholar my senior, said to me in reference to one who like himself is now no more, a man

so unimpeachably respectable that against him nothing was ever openly said tho' among cracked by the tap of

a lady's fan. You are aware that I am the adherent of no organized religion much less of any philosophy built

into a system. Well, for all that, I think that to try and get into from some source other than what is known as

knowledge of the world that were hardly possible, at least for me." human, and knowledge of the world

"Yes, but a superficial knowledge of it, serving ordinary purposes. But for anything deeper, I am not certain

whether to know the world and to know human nature be not two distinct branches of knowledge, which

while they may coexist in the same heart, yet either may exist with little or nothing of the other. Nay, in an

average man of the world, his constant rubbing with it blunts that fine spiritual insight indispensable to the

understanding of the essential in certain exceptional characters, whether evil ones or good. In a matter of

some importance I have seen a girl wind an old lawyer about her little finger. Nor was it the dotage of senile

love. Nothing of the sort. But he knew law better than he knew the girl's heart. Coke and Blackstone hardly

shed so much light into obscure spiritual places as the Hebrew prophets. And who were they? Mostly

At the time my inexperience was such that I did not quite see the drift of all this. It may be that I see it now.

And, indeed, if that lexicon which is based on Holy Writ were any longer popular, one might with less

difficulty define and denominate certain phenomenal men. As it is, one must turn to some authority not liable

In a list of definitions included in the authentic translation of Plato, a list attributed to him, occurs this:

"Natural Depravity: a depravity according to nature." A definition which tho' savoring of Calvinism, by no

means involves Calvin's dogmas as to total mankind. Evidently its intent makes it applicable but to

individuals. Not many are the examples of this depravity which the gallows and jail supply. At any rate for

notable instances, since these have no vulgar alloy of the brute in them, but invariably are dominated by

intellectuality, one must go elsewhere. Civilization, especially if of the austerer sort, is auspicious to it. It

folds itself in the mantle of respectability. It has its certain negative virtues serving as silent auxiliaries. It

never allows wine to get within its guard. It is not going too far to say that it is without vices or small sins.

There is a phenomenal pride in it that excludes them from anything mercenary or avaricious. In short the

depravity here meant partakes nothing of the sordid or sensual. It is serious, but free from acerbity. Though

But the thing which in eminent instances signalizes so exceptional a nature is this: though the man's even

temper and discreet bearing would seem to intimate a mind peculiarly subject to the law of reason, not the

less in his heart he would seem to riot in complete exemption from that law, having apparently little to do

with reason further than to employ it as an ambidexter implement for effecting the irrational. That is to say:

Toward the accomplishment of an aim which in wantonness of malignity would seem to partake of the

These men are true madmen, and of the most dangerous sort, for their lunacy is not continuous but

occasional, evoked by some special object; it is probably secretive, which is as much to say it is

selfcontained, so that when moreover, most active, it is to the average mind not distinguishable from sanity,

and for the reason above suggested that whatever its aims may be and the aim is never declared the method

Now something such an one was Claggart, in whom was the mania of an evil nature, not engendered by

vicious training or corrupting books or licentious living, but born with him and innate, in short "a depravity

By the way, can it be the phenomenon, disowned or at least concealed, that in some criminal cases puzzles

the courts? For this cause have our juries at times not only to endure the prolonged contentions of lawyers

with their fees, but also the yet more perplexing strife of the medical experts with theirs? But why leave it to

them? Why not subpoena as well the clerical proficients? Their vocation bringing them into peculiar contact

with so many human beings, and sometimes in their least guarded hour, in interviews very much more

confidential than those of physician and patient; this would seem to qualify them to know something about

those intricacies involved in the question of moral responsibility; whether in a given case, say, the crime

proceeded from mania in the brain or rabies of the heart. As to any differences among themselves these

clerical proficients might develop on the stand, these could hardly be greater than the direct contradictions

Dark sayings are these, some will say. But why? Is it because they somewhat savor of Holy Writ in its phrase

"mysteries of iniquity"? If they do, such savor was far from being intended, for little will it commend these

The point of the present story turning on the hidden nature of the Masteratarms has necessitated this

chapter. With an added hint or two in connection with the incident at the mess, the resumed narrative must be

That Claggart's figure was not amiss, and his face, save the chin, well moulded, has already been said. Of

these favorable points he seemed not insensible, for he was not only neat but careful in his dress. But the

form of Billy Budd was heroic; and if his face was without the intellectual look of the pallid Claggart's, not

the less was it lit, like his, from within, though from a different source. The bonfire in his heart made

In view of the marked contrast between the persons of the twain, it is more than probable that when the

Masteratarms in the scene last given applied to the sailor the proverb Handsome is as handsome does, he

there let escape an ironic inkling, not caught by the young sailors who heard it, as to what it was that had first

Now envy and antipathy, passions irreconcilable in reason, nevertheless in fact may spring conjoined like

Chang and Eng in one birth. Is Envy then such a monster? Well, though many an arraigned mortal has in

hopes of mitigated penalty pleaded guilty to horrible actions, did ever anybody seriously confess to envy?

Something there is in it universally felt to be more shameful than even felonious crime. And not only does

everybody disown it, but the better sort are inclined to incredulity when it is in earnest imputed to an

intelligent man. But since its lodgement is in the heart not the brain, no degree of intellect supplies a

guarantee against it. But Claggart's was no vulgar form of the passion. Nor, as directed toward Billy Budd,

did it partake of that streak of apprehensive jealousy that marred Saul's visage perturbedly brooding on the

comely young David. Claggart's envy struck deeper. If askance he eyed the good looks, cheery health and

frank enjoyment of young life in Billy Budd, it was because these went along with a nature that, as Claggart

magnetically felt, had in its simplicity never willed malice or experienced the reactionary bite of that serpent.

To him, the spirit lodged within Billy, and looking out from his welkin eyes as from windows, that

ineffability it was which made the dimple in his dyed cheek, suppled his joints, and dancing in his yellow

curls made him preeminently the Handsome Sailor. One person excepted, the Masteratarms was perhaps

the only man in the ship intellectually capable of adequately appreciating the moral phenomenon presented in

Billy Budd. And the insight but intensified his passion, which assuming various secret forms within him, at

times assumed that of cynic disdain disdain of innocence. To be nothing more than innocent! Yet in an

aesthetic way he saw the charm of it, the courageous freeandeasy temper of it, and fain would have shared

With no power to annul the elemental evil in him, tho' readily enough he could hide it; apprehending the

good, but powerless to be it; a nature like Claggart's surcharged with energy as such natures almost invariably

are, what recourse is left to it but to recoil upon itself and like the scorpion for which the Creator alone is

Passion, and passion in its profoundest, is not a thing demanding a palatial stage whereon to play its part.

Down among the groundlings, among the beggars and rakers of the garbage, profound passion is enacted.

And the circumstances that provoke it, however trivial or mean, are no measure of its power. In the present

instance the stage is a scrubbed gun deck, and one of the external provocations a manofwar'sman's spilled

Now when the Masteratarms noticed whence came that greasy fluid streaming before his feet, he must

have taken it to some extent wilfully, perhaps not for the mere accident it assuredly was, but for the sly

escape of a spontaneous feeling on Billy's part more or less answering to the antipathy on his own. In effect a

foolish demonstration he must have thought, and very harmless, like the futile kick of a heifer, which yet

were the heifer a shod stallion, would not be so harmless. Even so was it that into the gall of Claggart's envy

he infused the vitriol of his contempt. But the incident confirmed to him certain telltale reports purveyed to

his ear by Squeak, one of his more cunning Corporals, a grizzled little man, so nicknamed by the sailors on

account of his squeaky voice, and sharp visage ferreting about the dark corners of the lower decks after

From his Chief's employing him as an implicit tool in laying little traps for the worriment of the Foretopman

for it was from the Masteratarms that the petty persecutions heretofore adverted to had proceeded the

Corporal having naturally enough concluded that his master could have no love for the sailor, made it his

business, faithful understrapper that he was, to foment the ill blood by perverting to his Chief certain innocent

frolics of the goodnatured Foretopman, besides inventing for his mouth sundry contumelious epithets he

claimed to have overheard him let fall. The Masteratarms never suspected the veracity of these reports,

more especially as to the epithets, for he well knew how secretly unpopular may become a masteratarms,

at least a masteratarms of those days zealous in his function, and how the bluejackets shoot at him in

private their raillery and wit; the nickname by which he goes among them (Jimmy Legs) implying under the

But in view of the greediness of hate for patrolmen, it hardly needed a purveyor to feed Claggart's passion.

An uncommon prudence is habitual with the subtler depravity, for it has everything to hide. And in case of an

injury but suspected, its secretiveness voluntarily cuts it off from enlightenment or disillusion; and, not

unreluctantly, action is taken upon surmise as upon certainty. And the retaliation is apt to be in monstrous

disproportion to the supposed offence; for when in anybody was revenge in its exactions aught else but an

inordinate usurer? But how with Claggart's conscience? For though consciences are unlike as foreheads,

every intelligence, not excluding the Scriptural devils who "believe and tremble," has one. But Claggart's

conscience being but the lawyer to his will, made ogres of trifles, probably arguing that the motive imputed to

Billy in spilling the soup just when he did, together with the epithets alleged, these, if nothing more, made a

strong case against him; nay, justified animosity into a sort of retributive righteousness. The Pharisee is the

Guy Fawkes prowling in the hid chambers underlying the Claggarts. And they can really form no conception

of an unreciprocated malice. Probably, the Masteratarms' clandestine persecution of Billy was started to try

the temper of the man; but it had not developed any quality in him that enmity could make official use of or

even pervert into plausible selfjustification; so that the occurrence at the mess, petty if it were, was a

welcome one to that peculiar conscience assigned to be the private mentor of Claggart. And, for the rest, not

Not many days after the last incident narrated, something befell Billy Budd that more gravelled him than

It was a warm night for the latitude; and the Foretopman, whose watch at the time was properly below, was

dozing on the uppermost deck whither he had ascended from his hot hammock, one of hundreds suspended so

closely wedged together over a lower gun deck that there was little or no swing to them. He lay as in the

shadow of a hillside, stretched under the lee of the booms, a piled ridge of spare spars amidships between

foremast and mainmast and among which the ship's largest boat, the launch, was stowed. Alongside of three

other slumberers from below, he lay near that end of the booms which approaches the foremast; his station

aloft on duty as a foretopman being just over the deckstation of the forecastlemen, entitling him according to

Presently he was stirred into semiconsciousness by somebody, who must have previously sounded the sleep

of the others, touching his shoulder, and then as the Foretopman raised his head, breathing into his ear in a

quick whisper, "Slip into the lee forechains, Billy; there is something in the wind. Don't speak. Quick, I will

Now Billy like sundry other essentially goodnatured ones had some of the weaknesses inseparable from

essential goodnature; and among these was a reluctance, almost an incapacity of plumply saying no to an

abrupt proposition not obviously absurd, on the face of it, nor obviously unfriendly, nor iniquitous. And being

of warm blood he had not the phlegm tacitly to negative any proposition by unresponsive inaction. Like his

sense of fear, his apprehension as to aught outside of the honest and natural was seldom very quick. Besides,

However it was, he mechanically rose, and sleepily wondering what could be in the wind, betook himself to

the designated place, a narrow platform, one of six, outside of the high bulwarks and screened by the great

deadeyes and multiple columned lanyards of the shrouds and backstays; and, in a great warship of that

time, of dimensions commensurate with the hull's magnitude; a tarry balcony, in short, overhanging the sea,

and so secluded that one mariner of the Indomitable, a nonconformist old tar of a serious turn, made it even

In this retired nook the stranger soon joined Billy Budd. There was no moon as yet; a haze obscured the

starlight. He could not distinctly see the stranger's face. Yet from something in the outline and carriage,

"Hist! Billy," said the man in the same quick cautionary whisper as before; "You were impressed, weren't

you? Well, so was I"; and he paused, as to mark the effect. But Billy, not knowing exactly what to make of

this, said nothing. Then the other: "We are not the only impressed ones, Billy. There's a gang of us. Couldn't

"Hist, hist!" the hurried whisper now growing husky, "see here"; and the man held up two small objects

faintly twinkling in the nightlight; "see, they are yours, Billy, if you'll only"

But Billy broke in, and in his resentful eagerness to deliver himself his vocal infirmity somewhat intruded:

"DDDamme, I don't know what you are dddriving at, or what you mean, but you had better gggo

where you belong!" For the moment the fellow, as confounded, did not stir; and Billy springing to his feet,

said, "If you ddon't start I'll tttoss you back over the rrail!" There was no mistaking this and the

mysterious emissary decamped disappearing in the direction of the mainmast in the shadow of the booms.

"Hallo, what's the matter?" here came growling from a forecastleman awakened from his deckdoze by

Billy's raised voice. And as the Foretopman reappeared and was recognized by him; "Ah, Beauty, is it you?

"O," rejoined Billy, now mastering the impediment; "I found an afterguardsman in our part of the ship here

"And is that all you did about it, Foretopman?" gruffly demanded another, an irascible old fellow of

brickcolored visage and hair, and who was known to his associate forecastlemen as Red Pepper; "Such

sneaks I should like to marry to the gunner's daughter!" by that expression meaning that he would like to

However, Billy's rendering of the matter satisfactorily accounted to these inquirers for the brief commotion,

since of all the sections of a ship's company, the forecastlemen, veterans for the most part and bigoted in their

seaprejudices, are the most jealous in resenting territorial encroachments, especially on the part of any of the

afterguard, of whom they have but a sorry opinion, chiefly landsmen, never going aloft except to reef or furl

the mainsail and in no wise competent to handle a marlinspike or turn in a deadeye, say.

This incident sorely puzzled Billy Budd. It was an entirely new experience; the first time in his life that he

had ever been personally approached in underhand intriguing fashion. Prior to this encounter he had known

nothing of the afterguardsman, the two men being stationed wide apart, one forward and aloft during his

What could it mean? And could they really be guineas, those two glittering objects the interloper had held up

to his eyes? Where could the fellow get guineas? Why even spare buttons are not so plentiful at sea. The

more he turned the matter over, the more he was nonplussed, and made uneasy and discomforted. In his

disgustful recoil from an overture which tho' he but ill comprehended he instinctively knew must involve evil

of some sort, Billy Budd was like a young horse fresh from the pasture suddenly inhaling a vile whiff from

some chemical factory, and by repeated snortings tries to get it out of his nostrils and lungs. This frame of

mind barred all desire of holding further parley with the fellow, even were it but for the purpose of gaining

some enlightenment as to his design in approaching him. And yet he was not without natural curiosity to see

He espied him the following afternoon, in his first dogwatch, below, one of the smokers on that forward part

of the upper gun deck allotted to the pipe. He recognized him by his general cut and build, more than by his

round freckled face and glassy eyes of pale blue, veiled with lashes all but white. And yet Billy was a bit

uncertain whether indeed it were he yonder chap about his own age chatting and laughing in freehearted

way, leaning against a gun; a genial young fellow enough to look at, and something of a rattlebrain, to all

appearance. Rather chubby too for a sailor, even an afterguardsman. In short the last man in the world, one

would think, to be overburthened with thoughts, especially those perilous thoughts that must needs belong to

a conspirator in any serious project, or even to the underling of such a conspirator.

Altho' Billy was not aware of it, the fellow, with a sidelong watchful glance had perceived Billy first, and

then noting that Billy was looking at him, thereupon nodded a familiar sort of friendly recognition as to 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

goodfellowship, 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 speculation into which he was led was so

disturbingly alien to him, that he did his best to smother it. It never entered his mind that here was a matter

which from its extreme questionableness, it was his duty as a loyal bluejacket 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 novicemagnanimity, that it would savor overmuch of the dirty work of a telltale. 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?"

"And what," rejoined Billy in amazement, "has Jimmy Legs to do with that cracked afterguardsman?"

"Ho, it was an afterguardsman then. A cat'spaw, a cat'spaw!" 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, tho' now repeated, for it was his wont to relapse

into grim silence when interrogated in skeptical 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.

Long experience had very likely brought this old man to that bitter prudence which never interferes in aught

Yes, despite the Dansker's pithy insistence as to the Masteratarms being at the bottom of these strange

experiences of Billy on board the Indomitable, the young sailor was ready to ascribe them to almost anybody

but the man who, to use Billy's own expression, "always had a pleasant word for him." This is to be wondered

at. Yet not so much to be wondered at. In certain matters, some sailors even in mature life remain

unsophisticated enough. But a young seafarer of the disposition of our athletic Foretopman, is much of a

childman. And yet a child's utter innocence is but its blank ignorance, and the innocence more or less wanes

as intelligence waxes. But in Billy Budd intelligence, such as it was, had advanced, while yet his

simplemindedness remained for the most part unaffected. Experience is a teacher indeed; yet did Billy's years

make his experience small. Besides, he had none of that intuitive knowledge of the bad which in natures not

good or incompletely so foreruns experience, and therefore may pertain, as in some instances it too clearly

And what could Billy know of man except of man as a mere sailor? And the oldfashioned sailor, the

veritable manbeforethemast, the sailor from boyhood up, he, tho' indeed of the same species as a

landsman, is in some respects singularly distinct from him. The sailor is frankness, the landsman is finesse.

Life is not a game with the sailor, demanding the long head; no intricate game of chess where few moves are

made in straightforwardness, and ends are attained by indirection; an oblique, tedious, barren game hardly

Yes, as a class, sailors are in character a juvenile race. Even their deviations are marked by juvenility. And

this more especially holding true with the sailors of Billy's time. Then, too, certain things which apply to all

sailors, do more pointedly operate, here and there, upon the junior one. Every sailor, too, is accustomed to

obey orders without debating them; his life afloat is externally ruled for him; he is not brought into that

promiscuous commerce with mankind where unobstructed free agency on equal terms equal superficially, at

least soon teaches one that unless upon occasion he exercise a distrust keen in proportion to the fairness of

the appearance, some foul turn may be served him. A ruled undemonstrative distrustfulness is so habitual, not

with businessmen so much, as with men who know their kind in less shallow relations than business,

namely, certain menoftheworld, that they come at last to employ it all but unconsciously; and some of

them would very likely feel real surprise at being charged with it as one of their general characteristics.

But after the little matter at the mess Billy Budd no more found himself in strange trouble at times about his

hammock or his clothesbag or what not. While, as to that smile that occasionally sunned him, and the

pleasant passing word, these were if not more frequent, yet if anything, more pronounced than before.

But for all that, there were certain other demonstrations now. When Claggart's unobserved glance happened

to light on belted Billy rolling along the upper gun deck in the leisure of the second dogwatch, exchanging

passing broadsides of fun with other young promenaders in the crowd; that glance would follow the cheerful

seaHyperion with a settled meditative and melancholy expression, his eyes strangely suffused with incipient

feverish tears. Then would Claggart look like the man of sorrows. Yes, and sometimes the melancholy

expression would have in it a touch of soft yearning, as if Claggart could even have loved Billy but for fate

and ban. But this was an evanescence, and quickly repented of, as it were, by an immitigable look, pinching

and shrivelling the visage into the momentary semblance of a wrinkled walnut. But sometimes catching sight

in advance of the Foretopman coming in his direction, he would, upon their nearing, step aside a little to let

him pass, dwelling upon Billy for the moment with the glittering dental satire of a Guise. But upon any

abrupt unforeseen encounter a red light would flash forth from his eye like a spark from an anvil in a dusk

smithy. That quick fierce light was a strange one, darted from orbs which in repose were of a color nearest

Tho' some of these caprices of the pit could not but be observed by their object, yet were they beyond the

construing of such a nature. And the thews of Billy were hardly compatible with that sort of sensitive

spiritual organisation which in some cases instinctively conveys to ignorant innocence an admonition of the

proximity of the malign. He thought the Masteratarms acted in a manner rather queer at times. That was

all. But the occasional frank air and pleasant word went for what they purported to be, the young sailor never

Had the Foretopman been conscious of having done or said anything to provoke the ill will of the official, it

would have been different with him, and his sight might have been purged if not sharpened. As it was,

So was it with him in yet another matter. Two minor officers the Armorer and Captain of the Hold, with

whom he had never exchanged a word, his position in the ship not bringing him into contact with them; these

men now for the first began to cast upon Billy when they chanced to encounter him, that peculiar glance

which evidences that the man from whom it comes has been some way tampered with and to the prejudice of

him upon whom the glance lights. Never did it occur to Billy as a thing to be noted or a thing suspicious, tho'

he well knew the fact, that the Armorer and Captain of the Hold, with the ship'syeoman, apothecary, and

others of that grade, were by naval usage, messmates of the Masteratarms, men with ears convenient to his

But the general popularity that our Handsome Sailor's manly forwardness bred upon occasion, and his

irresistible goodnature, indicating no mental superiority tending to excite an invidious feeling, 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, aspects he could not fathom as to infer their whole import.

As to the afterguardsman, tho' Billy for reasons already given necessarily saw little of him, yet when the two

did happen to meet, invariably came the fellow's offhand 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,

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, ignominiously baffled

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

forechains. 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

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 selfcontained and rational demeanour; this, like a

subterranean fire was eating its way deeper and deeper in him. Something decisive must come of it.

After the mysterious interview in the forechains the one so abruptly ended there by Billy nothing

especially german to the story occurred until the events now about to be narrated.

Elsewhere it has been said that in the lack of frigates (of course better sailers than lineofbattle ships) in the

English squadron up the Straits at that period, the Indomitable was occasionally employed not only as an

available substitute for a scout, but at times on detached service of more important kind. This was not alone

because of her sailing qualities, not common in a ship of her rate, but quite as much, probably, that the

character of her commander, it was thought, specially adapted him for any duty where under unforeseen

difficulties a prompt initiative might have to be taken in some matter demanding knowledge and ability in

addition to those qualities implied in good seamanship. It was on an expedition of the latter sort, a somewhat

distant one, and when the Indomitable was almost at her furthest remove from the fleet, that in the latter part

of an afternoonwatch she unexpectedly came in sight of a ship of the enemy. It proved to be a frigate. The

latter perceiving thro' the glass that the weight of men and metal would be heavily against her, invoking her

light heels, crowded sail to get away. After a chase urged almost against hope and lasting until about the

Not long after the pursuit had been given up, and ere the excitement incident thereto had altogether waned

away, the Masteratarms, ascending from his cavernous sphere, made his appearance cap in hand by the

mainmast, respectfully waiting the notice of Captain Vere then solitary walking the weatherside of the

quarterdeck, doubtless somewhat chafed at the failure of the pursuit. The spot where Claggart stood was the

place allotted to men of lesser grades seeking some more particular interview either with the

officerofthedeck or the Captain himself. But from the latter it was not often that a sailor or pettyofficer

of those days would seek a hearing; only some exceptional cause, would, according to established custom,

Presently, just as the Commander absorbed in his reflections was on the point of turning aft in his promenade,

he became sensible of Claggart's presence, and saw the doffed cap held in deferential expectancy. Here be it

said that Captain Vere's personal knowledge of this pettyofficer had only begun at the time of the ship's last

sailing from home, Claggart then for the first, in transfer from a ship detained for repairs, supplying on board

No sooner did the Commander observe who it was that deferentially stood awaiting his notice, than a peculiar

expression came over him. It was not unlike that which uncontrollably will flit across the countenance of one

at unawares encountering a person who, though known to him indeed, has hardly been long enough known

for thorough knowledge, but something in whose aspect nevertheless now for the first provokes a vaguely

repellent distaste. But coming to a stand, and resuming much of his wonted official manner, save that a sort

of impatience lurked in the intonation of the opening word, he said, "Well? what is it, Masteratarms?"

With the air of a subordinate grieved at the necessity of being a messenger of ill tidings, and while

conscientiously determined to be frank, yet equally resolved upon shunning overstatement, Claggart, at this

invitation or rather summons to disburthen, spoke up. What he said, conveyed in the language of no

uneducated man, was to the effect following, if not altogether in these words, namely, that during the chase

and preparations for the possible encounter he had seen enough to convince him that at least one sailor aboard

was a dangerous character in a ship mustering some who not only had taken a guilty part in the late serious

troubles, but others also who, like the man in question, had entered His Majesty's service under another form

At this point Captain Vere with some impatience interrupted him: "Be direct, man; say impressed men."

Quite lately he (Claggart) had begun to suspect that on the gun decks some sort of movement prompted by

the sailor in question was covertly going on, but he had not thought himself warranted in reporting the

suspicion so long as it remained indistinct. But from what he had that afternoon observed in the man referred

to, the suspicion of something clandestine going on had advanced to a point less removed from certainty. He

deeply felt, he added, the serious responsibility assumed in making a report involving such possible

consequences to the individual mainly concerned, besides tending to augment those natural anxieties which

every naval commander must feel in view of extraordinary outbreaks so recent as those which, he sorrowfully

Now at the first broaching of the matter Captain Vere, taken by surprise, could not wholly dissemble his

disquietude. But as Claggart went on, the former's aspect changed into restiveness under something in the

witness' manner in giving his testimony. However, he refrained from interrupting him. And Claggart,

continuing, concluded with this: "God forbid, Your Honor, that the Indomitable's should be the experience of

"Never mind that!" here peremptorily broke in the superior, his face altering with anger, instinctively divining

the ship that the other was about to name, one in which the Nore Mutiny had assumed a singularly tragical

character that for a time jeopardized the life of its commander. Under the circumstances he was indignant at

the purposed allusion. When the commissioned officers themselves were on all occasions very heedful how

they referred to the recent events, for a pettyofficer unnecessarily to allude to them in the presence of his

Captain, this struck him as a most immodest presumption. Besides, to his quick sense of selfrespect, it even

looked under the circumstances something like an attempt to alarm him. Nor at first was he without some

surprise that one who so far as he had hitherto come under his notice had shown considerable tact in his

But these thoughts and kindred dubious ones flitting across his mind were suddenly replaced by an intuitional

surmise which, though as yet obscure in form, served practically to affect his reception of the ill tidings.

Certain it is, that long versed in everything pertaining to the complicated gundeck life, which like every

other form of life, has its secret mines and dubious side, the side popularly disclaimed, Captain Vere did not

permit himself to be unduly disturbed by the general tenor of his subordinate's report. Furthermore, if in view

of recent events prompt action should be taken at the first palpable sign of recurring insubordination, for all

that, not judicious would it be, he thought, to keep the idea of lingering disaffection alive by undue

forwardness in crediting an informer, even if his own subordinate, and charged among other things with

police surveillance of the crew. This feeling would not perhaps have so prevailed with him were it not that

upon a prior occasion the patriotic zeal officially evinced by Claggart had somewhat irritated him as

appearing rather supersensible and strained. Furthermore, something even in the official's selfpossessed and

somewhat ostentatious manner in making his specifications strangely reminded him of a bandsman, a

perjurous witness in a capital case before a courtmartial ashore of which when a lieutenant, he, Captain Vere,

Now the peremptory check given to Claggart in the matter of the arrested allusion was quickly followed up

"William Budd," repeated Captain Vere with unfeigned astonishment; "and mean you the man that

Lieutenant Ratcliff took from the merchantman not very long ago the young fellow who seems to be so

"The same, Your Honor; but for all his youth and good looks, a deep one. Not for nothing does he insinuate

himself into the good will of his shipmates, since at the least all hands will at a pinch say a good word for him

at all hazards. Did Lieutenant Ratcliff happen to tell Your Honor of that adroit fling of Budd's, jumping up in

the cutter's bow under the merchantman's stern when he was being taken off? It is even masqued by that sort

of goodhumoured air that at heart he resents his impressment. You have but noted his fair cheek. A

Now the Handsome Sailor, as a signal figure among the crew, had naturally enough attracted the Captain's

attention from the first. Tho' in general not very demonstrative to his officers, he had congratulated

Lieutenant Ratcliff upon his good fortune in lighting on such a fine specimen of the genus homo, who in the

As to Billy's adieu to the ship RightsofMan, which the boarding lieutenant had indeed reported to him, but

in a deferential way more as a good story than aught else, Captain Vere, tho' mistakenly understanding it as a

satiric sally, had but thought so much the better of the impressed man for it; as a military sailor, admiring the

spirit that could take an arbitrary enlistment so merrily and sensibly. The Foretopman's conduct, too, so far as

it had fallen under the Captain's notice, had confirmed the first happy augury, while the new recruit's qualities

as a sailorman seemed to be such that he had thought of recommending him to the executive officer for

promotion to a place that would more frequently bring him under his own observation, namely, the captaincy

of the mizzentop, replacing there in the starboard watch a man not so young whom partly for that reason he

deemed less fitted for the post. Be it parenthesized here that since the mizzentopmen having not to handle

such breadths of heavy canvas as the lower sails on the mainmast and foremast, a young man if of the right

stuff not only seems best adapted to duty there, but in fact is generally selected for the captaincy of that top,

and the company under him are light hands and often but striplings. In sum, Captain Vere had from the

beginning deemed Billy Budd to be what in the naval parlance of the time was called a "King's bargain," that

is to say, for His Britannic Majesty's Navy a capital investment at small outlay or none at all.

After a brief pause during which the reminiscences above mentioned passed vividly through his mind and he

weighed the import of Claggart's last suggestion conveyed in the phrase "mantrap under his daisies," and the

more he weighed it the less reliance he felt in the informer's good faith, suddenly he turned upon him and in a

low voice: "Do you come to me, Masteratarms, with so foggy a tale? As to Budd, cite me an act or spoken

word of his confirmatory of what you in general charge against him. Stay," drawing nearer to him, "heed

what you speak. Just now, and in a case like this, there is a yardarmend for the falsewitness."

"Ah, Your Honor!" sighed Claggart, mildly shaking his shapely head as in sad deprecation of such unmerited

severity of tone. Then, bridling erecting himself as in virtuous selfassertion, he circumstantially alleged

certain words and acts, which collectively, if credited, led to presumptions mortally inculpating Budd. And

With gray eyes impatient and distrustful essaying to fathom to the bottom Claggart's calm violet ones,

Captain Vere again heard him out; then for the moment stood ruminating. The mood he evinced, Claggart

himself for the time liberated from the other's scrutiny steadily regarded with a look difficult to render, a

look curious of the operation of his tactics, a look such as might have been that of the spokesman of the

envious children of Jacob deceptively imposing upon the troubled patriarch the blooddyed coat of young

Though something exceptional in the moral quality of Captain Vere made him, in earnest encounter with a

fellowman, a veritable touchstone of that man's essential nature, yet now as to Claggart and what was

really going on in him, his feeling partook less of intuitional conviction than of strong suspicion clogged by

strange dubieties. The perplexity he evinced proceeded less from aught touching the man informed against

as Claggart doubtless opined than from considerations how best to act in regard to the informer. At first

indeed he was naturally for summoning that substantiation of his allegations which Claggart said was at hand.

But such a proceeding would result in the matter at once getting abroad, which in the present stage of it, he

thought, might undesirably affect the ship's company. If Claggart was a false witness, that closed the affair.

And therefore before trying the accusation, he would first practically test the accuser; and he thought this

The measure he determined upon involved a shifting of the scene, a transfer to a place less exposed to

observation than the broad quarterdeck. For although the few gunroom officers there at the time had, in

due observance of naval etiquette, withdrawn to leeward the moment Captain Vere had begun his promenade

on the deck's weatherside; and tho' during the colloquy with Claggart they of course ventured not to

diminish the distance; and though throughout the interview Captain Vere's voice was far from high, and

Claggart's silvery and low; and the wind in the cordage and the wash of the sea helped the more to put them

beyond earshot; nevertheless, the interview's continuance already had attracted observation from some

Having determined upon his measures, Captain Vere forthwith took action. Abruptly turning to Claggart he

"No, Your Honor." Whereupon, "Mr. Wilkes!" summoning the nearest midshipman, "tell Albert to come to

me." Albert was the Captain's hammockboy, a sort of seavalet in whose discretion and fidelity his master

"Go find him. It is his watch off. Manage to tell him out of earshot that he is wanted aft. Contrive it that he

speaks to nobody. Keep him in talk yourself. And not till you get well aft here, not till then let him know that

the place where he is wanted is my cabin. You understand. Go. Masteratarms, show yourself on the decks

below, and when you think it time for Albert to be coming with his man, stand by quietly to follow the sailor

Now when the Foretopman found himself closeted there, as it were, in the cabin with the Captain and

Claggart, he was surprised enough. But it was a surprise unaccompanied by apprehension or distrust. To an

immature nature essentially honest and humane, forewarning intimations of subtler danger from one's kind

come tardily if at all. The only thing that took shape in the young sailor's mind was this: Yes, the Captain, I

have always thought, looks kindly upon me. Wonder if he's going to make me his coxswain. I should like

"Shut the door there, sentry," said the Commander; "stand without, and let nobody come in. Now,

Masteratarms, tell this man to his face what you told of him to me"; and stood prepared to scrutinize the

With the measured step and calm collected air of an asylumphysician approaching in the public hall some

patient beginning to show indications of a coming paroxysm, Claggart deliberately advanced within short

range of Billy, and mesmerically looking him in the eye, briefly recapitulated the accusation.

Not at first did Billy take it in. When he did, the rosetan of his cheek looked struck as by white leprosy. He

stood like one impaled and gagged. Meanwhile the accuser's eyes removing not as yet from the blue dilated

ones, underwent a phenomenal change, their wonted rich violet color blurring into a muddy purple. Those

lights of human intelligence losing human expression, gelidly protruding like the alien eyes of certain

uncatalogued creatures of the deep. The first mesmeric glance was one of serpent fascination; the last was as

"Speak, man!" said Captain Vere to the transfixed one, struck by his aspect even more than by Claggart's,

"Speak! defend yourself." Which appeal caused but a strange dumb gesturing and gurgling in Billy;

amazement at such an accusation so suddenly sprung on inexperienced nonage; this, and, it may be, horror of

the accuser, serving to bring out his lurking defect and in this instance for the time intensifying it into a

convulsed tonguetie; while the intent head and entire form straining forward in an agony of ineffectual

eagerness to obey the injunction to speak and defend himself, gave an expression to the face like that of a

condemned Vestal priestess in the moment of being buried alive, and in the first struggle against suffocation.

Though at the time Captain Vere was quite ignorant of Billy's liability to vocal impediment, he now

immediately divined it, since vividly Billy's aspect recalled to him that of a bright young schoolmate of his

whom he had once seen struck by much the same startling impotence in the act of eagerly rising in the class

to be foremost in response to a testing question put to it by the master. Going close up to the young sailor,

and laying a soothing hand on his shoulder, he said, "There is no hurry, my boy. Take your time, take your

time." Contrary to the effect intended, these words so fatherly in tone, doubtless touching Billy's heart to the

quick, prompted yet more violent efforts at utterance efforts soon ending for the time in confirming the

paralysis, and bringing to his face an expression which was as a crucifixion to behold. The next instant, quick

as the flame from a discharged cannon at night, his right arm shot out, and Claggart dropped to the deck.

Whether intentionally or but owing to the young athlete's superior height, the blow had taken effect fully

upon the forehead, so shapely and intellectuallooking a feature in the Masteratarms; so that the body fell

over lengthwise, like a heavy plank tilted from erectness. A gasp or two, and he lay motionless.

"Fated boy," breathed Captain Vere in tone so low as to be almost a whisper, "what have you done! But here,

The twain raised the felled one from the loins up into a sitting position. The spare form flexibly acquiesced,

but inertly. It was like handling a dead snake. They lowered it back. Regaining erectness Captain Vere with

one hand covering his face stood to all appearance as impassive as the object at his feet. Was he absorbed in

taking in all the bearings of the event and what was best not only now at once to be done, but also in the

sequel? Slowly he uncovered his face; and the effect was as if the moon emerging from eclipse should

reappear with quite another aspect than that which had gone into hiding. The father in him, manifested

towards Billy thus far in the scene, was replaced by the military disciplinarian. In his official tone he bade the

Foretopman retire to a stateroom aft (pointing it out), and there remain till thence summoned. This order

Billy in silence mechanically obeyed. Then going to the cabindoor where it opened on the quarterdeck,

Captain Vere said to the sentry without, "Tell somebody to send Albert here." When the lad appeared his

master so contrived it that he should not catch sight of the prone one. "Albert," he said to him, "tell the

Surgeon I wish to see him. You need not come back till called." When the Surgeon entered a selfpoised

character of that grave sense and experience that hardly anything could take him aback, Captain Vere

advanced to meet him, thus unconsciously intercepting his view of Claggart, and interrupting the other's

wonted ceremonious salutation, said, "Nay, tell me how it is with yonder man," directing his attention to the

The Surgeon looked, and for all his selfcommand, somewhat started at the abrupt revelation. On Claggart's

always pallid complexion, thick black blood was now oozing from nostril and ear. To the gazer's professional

"Is it so then?" said Captain Vere intently watching him. "I thought it. But verify it." Whereupon the

customary tests confirmed the Surgeon's first glance, who now looking up in unfeigned concern, cast a look

of intense inquisitiveness upon his superior. But Captain Vere, with one hand to his brow, was standing

Suddenly, catching the Surgeon's arm convulsively, he exclaimed, pointing down to the body "It is the

Disturbed by the excited manner he had never before observed in the Indomitable's Captain, and as yet

wholly ignorant of the affair, the prudent Surgeon nevertheless held his peace, only again looking an earnest

But Captain Vere was now again motionless standing absorbed in thought. But again starting, he vehemently

At these passionate interjections, mere incoherences to the listener as yet unapprised of the antecedents, the

Surgeon was profoundly discomposed. But now as recollecting himself, Captain Vere in less passionate tone

"But come; we must despatch," he added. "me to remove him" (meaning the body) "to yonder compartment,"

designating one opposite that where the Foretopman remained immured. Anew disturbed by a request that as

implying a desire for secrecy, seemed unaccountably strange to him, there was nothing for the subordinate to

"Go now," said Captain Vere with something of his wonted manner "Go now. I shall presently call a

drumhead court. Tell the lieutenants what has happened, and tell Mr. Mordant," meaning the Captain of

Full of disquietude and misgiving the Surgeon left the cabin. Was Captain Vere suddenly affected in his

mind, or was it but a transient excitement, brought about by so strange and extraordinary a happening? As to

the drumhead court, it struck the Surgeon as impolitic, if nothing more. The thing to do, he thought, was to

place Billy Budd in confinement and in a way dictated by usage, and postpone further action in so

extraordinary a case to such time as they should rejoin the squadron, and then refer it to the Admiral. He

recalled the unwonted agitation of Captain Vere and his excited exclamations so at variance with his normal

manner. Was he unhinged? But assuming that he is, it is not so susceptible of proof. What then can he do? No

more trying situation is conceivable than that of an officer subordinate under a Captain whom he suspects to

be, not mad indeed, but yet not quite unaffected in his intellect. To argue his order to him would be insolence.

In obedience to Captain Vere he communicated what had happened to the lieutenants and Captain of

Marines; saying nothing as to the Captain's state. They fully shared his own surprise and concern. Like him

Who in the rainbow can draw the line where the violet tint ends and the orange tint begins? Distinctly we see

the difference of the colors, but where exactly does the one first blendingly enter into the other? So with

sanity and insanity. In pronounced cases there is no question about them. But in some supposed cases, in

various degrees supposedly less pronounced, to draw the exact line of demarkation few will undertake tho'

for a fee some professional experts will. There is nothing namable but that some men will undertake to do it

Whether Captain Vere, as the Surgeon professionally and privately surmised, was really the sudden victim of

any degree of aberration, one must determine for himself by such light as this narrative may afford.

That the unhappy event which has been narrated could not have happened at a worse juncture was but too

true. For it was close on the heel of the suppressed insurrections, an aftertime very critical to naval authority,

demanding from every English seacommander two qualities not readily interfusable prudence and rigour.

In the jugglery of circumstances preceding and attending the event on board the Indomitable, and in the light

of that martial code whereby it was formally to be judged, innocence and guilt personified in Claggart and

Budd in effect changed places. In a legal view the apparent victim of the tragedy was he who had sought to

victimize a man blameless; and the indisputable deed of the latter, navally regarded, constituted the most

heinous of military crimes. Yet more. The essential right and wrong involved in the matter, the clearer that

might be, so much the worse for the responsibility of a loyal seacommander inasmuch as he was not

Small wonder then that the Indomitable's Captain, though in general a man of rapid decision, felt that

circumspectness not less than promptitude was necessary. Until he could decide upon his course, and in each

detail; and not only so, but until the concluding measure was upon the point of being enacted, he deemed it

advisable, in view of all the circumstances, to guard as much as possible against publicity. Here he may or

may not have erred. Certain it is, however, that subsequently in the confidential talk of more than one or two

gunrooms and cabins he was not a little criticized by some officers, a fact imputed by his friends and

vehemently by his cousin, Jack Denton, to professional jealousy of Starry Vere. Some imaginative ground for

invidious comment there was. The maintenance of secrecy in the matter, the confining all knowledge of it for

a time to the place where the homicide occurred, the quarterdeck cabin; in these particulars lurked some

resemblance to the policy adopted in those tragedies of the palace which have occurred more than once in the

The case indeed was such that fain would the Indomitable's Captain have deferred taking any action whatever

respecting it further than to keep the Foretopman a close prisoner till the ship rejoined the squadron, and then

But a true military officer is in one particular like a true monk. Not with more of selfabnegation will the

latter keep his vows of monastic obedience than the former his vows of allegiance to martial duty.

Feeling that unless quick action was taken on it, the deed of the Foretopman, so soon as it should be known

on the gun decks, would tend to awaken any slumbering embers of the Nore among the crew, a sense of the

urgency of the case overruled in Captain Vere every other consideration. But tho' a conscientious

disciplinarian, he was no lover of authority for mere authority's sake. Very far was he from embracing

opportunities for monopolizing to himself the perils of moral responsibility, none at least that could properly

be referred to an official superior, or shared with him by his official equals or even subordinates. So thinking,

he was glad it would not be at variance with usage to turn the matter over to a summary court of his own

officers, reserving to himself as the one on whom the ultimate accountability would rest, the right of

maintaining a supervision of it, or formally or informally interposing at need. Accordingly a drumhead court

was summarily convened, he electing the individuals composing it, the First Lieutenant, the Captain of

In associating an officer of marines with the sealieutenants in a case having to do with a sailor, the

Commander perhaps deviated from general custom. He was prompted thereto by the circumstance that he

took that soldier to be a judicious person, thoughtful, and not altogether incapable of grappling with a

difficult case unprecedented in his prior experience. Yet even as to him he was not without some latent

misgiving, for withal he was an extremely goodnatured man, an enjoyer of his dinner, a sound sleeper, and

inclined to obesity, a man who tho' he would always maintain his manhood in battle might not prove

altogether reliable in a moral dilemma involving aught of the tragic. As to the First Lieutenant and the Sailing

Master, Captain Vere could not but be aware that though honest natures, of approved gallantry upon

occasion, their intelligence was mostly confined to the matter of active seamanship and the fighting demands

of their profession. The court was held in the same cabin where the unfortunate affair had taken place. This

cabin, the Commander's, embraced the entire area under the poopdeck. Aft, and on either side, was a small

stateroom; the one room temporarily a jail and the other a deadhouse, and a yet smaller compartment

leaving a space between, expanding forward into a goodly oblong of length coinciding with the ship's beam.

A skylight of moderate dimension was overhead and at each end of the oblong space were two sashed

All being quickly in readiness, Billy Budd was arraigned, Captain Vere necessarily appearing as the sole

witness in the case, and as such, temporarily sinking his rank, though singularly maintaining it in a matter

apparently trivial, namely, that he testified from the ship's weatherside, with that object having caused the

court to sit on the leeside. Concisely he narrated all that had led up to the catastrophe, omitting nothing in

Claggart's accusation and deposing as to the manner in which the prisoner had received it. At this testimony

the three officers glanced with no little surprise at Billy Budd, the last man they would have suspected either

of the mutinous design alleged by Claggart or the undeniable deed he himself had done.

The First Lieutenant, taking judicial primacy and turning toward the prisoner, said, "Captain Vere has

spoken. Is it or is it not as Captain Vere says?" In response came syllables not so much impeded in the

utterance as might have been anticipated. They were these: "Captain Vere tells the truth. It is just as Captain

Vere says, but it is not as the Masteratarms said. I have eaten the King's bread and I am true to the King."

"I believe you, my man," said the witness, his voice indicating a suppressed emotion not otherwise betrayed.

"God will bless you for that, Your Honor!" not without stammering said Billy, and all but broke down. But

immediately was recalled to selfcontrol by another question, to which with the same emotional difficulty of

utterance he said, "No, there was no malice between us. I never bore malice against the Masteratarms. I am

sorry that he is dead. I did not mean to kill him. Could I have used my tongue I would not have struck him.

But he foully lied to my face and in presence of my Captain, and I had to say something, and I could only say

In the impulsive aboveboard manner of the frank one, the court saw confirmed all that was implied in words

that just previously had perplexed them, coming as they did from the testifier to the tragedy and promptly

following Billy's impassioned disclaimer of mutinous intent Captain Vere's words, "I believe you, my man."

Next it was asked of him whether he knew of or suspected aught savoring of incipient trouble (meaning

mutiny, tho' the explicit term was avoided) going on in any section of the ship's company.

The reply lingered. This was naturally imputed by the court to the same vocal embarrassment which had

retarded or obstructed previous answers. But in main it was otherwise here; the question immediately

recalling to Billy's mind the interview with the afterguardsman in the forechains. But an innate repugnance

to playing a part at all approaching that of an informer against one's own shipmates the same erring sense of

uninstructed honor which had stood in the way of his reporting the matter at the time though as a loyal

manofwarman it was incumbent on him, and failure so to do if charged against him and proven, would

have subjected him to the heaviest of penalties; this, with the blind feeling now his, that nothing really was

"One question more," said the officer of marines now first speaking and with a troubled earnestness. "You tell

us that what the Masteratarms said against you was a lie. Now why should he have so lied, so maliciously

At that question unintentionally touching on a spiritual sphere wholly obscure to Billy's thoughts, he was

nonplussed, evincing a confusion indeed that some observers, such as can readily be imagined, would have

construed into involuntary evidence of hidden guilt. Nevertheless he strove some way to answer, but all at

once relinquished the vain endeavor, at the same time turning an appealing glance towards Captain Vere as

deeming him his best helper and friend. Captain Vere who had been seated for a time rose to his feet,

addressing the interrogator. "The question you put to him comes naturally enough. But how can he rightly

answer it? or anybody else? unless indeed it be he who lies within there," designating the compartment where

lay the corpse. "But the prone one there will not rise to our summons. In effect, tho', as it seems to me, the

point you make is hardly material. Quite aside from any conceivable motive actuating the Masteratarms,

and irrespective of the provocation to the blow, a martial court must needs in the present case confine its

attention to the blow's consequence, which consequence justly is to be deemed not otherwise than as the

This utterance, the full significance of which it was not at all likely that Billy took in, nevertheless caused

him to turn a wistful interrogative look toward the speaker, a look in its dumb expressiveness not unlike that

which a dog of generous breed might turn upon his master seeking in his face some elucidation of a previous

gesture ambiguous to the canine intelligence. Nor was the same utterance without marked effect upon the

three officers, more especially the soldier. Couched in it seemed to them a meaning unanticipated, involving a

prejudgement on the speaker's part. It served to augment a mental disturbance previously evident enough.

The soldier once more spoke; in a tone of suggestive dubiety addressing at once his associates and Captain

Vere: "Nobody is present none of the ship's company, I mean who might shed lateral light, if any is to be

"That is thoughtfully put," said Captain Vere; "I see your drift. Ay, there is a mystery; but, to use a Scriptural

phrase, it is 'a mystery of iniquity,' a matter for psychologic theologians to discuss. But what has a military

court to do with it? Not to add that for us any possible investigation of it is cut off by the lasting tonguetie

of him in yonder," again designating the mortuary stateroom. "The prisoner's deed, with that alone we

To this, and particularly the closing reiteration, the marine soldier knowing not how aptly to reply, sadly

abstained from saying aught. The First Lieutenant who at the outset had not unnaturally assumed primacy in

the court, now overrulingly instructed by a glance from Captain Vere, a glance more effective than words,

resumed that primacy. Turning to the prisoner, "Budd," he said, and scarce in equable tones, "Budd, if you

Upon this the young sailor turned another quick glance toward Captain Vere; then, as taking a hint from that

aspect, a hint confirming his own instinct that silence was now best, replied to the Lieutenant, "I have said all,

The marine the same who had been the sentinel without the cabindoor at the time that the Foretopman

followed by the Masteratarms, entered it he, standing by the sailor throughout these judicial proceedings,

was now directed to take him back to the after compartment originally assigned to the prisoner and his

custodian. As the twain disappeared from view, the three officers as partially liberated from some inward

constraint associated with Billy's mere presence, simultaneously stirred in their seats. They exchanged looks

of troubled indecision, yet feeling that decide they must and without long delay. As for Captain Vere, he for

the time stood unconsciously with his back toward them, apparently in one of his absent fits, gazing out from

a sashed porthole to windward upon the monotonous blank of the twilight sea. But the court's silence

continuing, broken only at moments by brief consultations in low earnest tones, this seemed to arm him and

energize him. Turning, he toandfro paced the cabin athwart; in the returning ascent to windward, climbing

the slant deck in the ship's lee roll; without knowing it symbolizing thus in his action a mind resolute to

surmount difficulties even if against primitive instincts strong as the wind and the sea. Presently he came to a

stand before the three. After scanning their faces he stood less as mustering his thoughts for expression, than

as one inly deliberating how best to put them to wellmeaning men not intellectually mature, men with whom

it was necessary to demonstrate certain principles that were axioms to himself. Similar impatience as to

talking is perhaps one reason that deters some minds from addressing any popular assemblies.

When speak he did, something both in the substance of what he said and his manner of saying it, showed the

influence of unshared studies modifying and tempering the practical training of an active career. This, along

with his phraseology, now and then was suggestive of the grounds whereon rested that imputation of a certain

pedantry socially alleged against him by certain naval men of wholly practical cast, captains who

nevertheless would frankly concede that His Majesty's Navy mustered no more efficient officer of their grade

What he said was to this effect: "Hitherto I have been but the witness, little more; and I should hardly think

now to take another tone, that of your coadjutor, for the time, did I not perceive in you, at the crisis too a

troubled hesitancy, proceeding, I doubt not, from the clash of military duty with moral scruple scruple

vitalized by compassion. For the compassion, how can I otherwise than share it? But, mindful of paramount

obligations I strive against scruples that may tend to enervate decision. Not, gentlemen, that I hide from

myself that the case is an exceptional one. Speculatively regarded, it well might be referred to a jury of

casuists. But for us here acting not as casuists or moralists, it is a case practical, and under martial law

"But your scruples: do they move as in a dusk? Challenge them. Make them advance and declare themselves.

Come now: do they import something like this? If, mindless of palliating circumstances, we are bound to

regard the death of the Masteratarms as the prisoner's deed, then does that deed constitute a capital crime

whereof the penalty is a mortal one? But in natural justice is nothing but the prisoner's overt act to be

considered? How can we adjudge to summary and shameful death a fellowcreature innocent before God,

and whom we feel to be so? Does that state it aright? You sign sad assent. Well, I too feel that, the full force

of that. It is Nature. But do these buttons that we wear attest that our allegiance is to Nature? No, to the King.

Though the ocean, which is inviolate Nature primeval, tho' this be the element where we move and have our

being as sailors, yet as the King's officers lies our duty in a sphere correspondingly natural? So little is that

true, that in receiving our commissions we in the most important regards ceased to be natural freeagents.

When war is declared are we the commissioned fighters previously consulted? We fight at command. If our

judgements approve the war, that is but coincidence. So in other particulars. So now. For suppose

condemnation to follow these present proceedings. Would it be so much we ourselves that would condemn as

it would be martial law operating through us? For that law and the rigour of it, we are not responsible. Our

avowed responsibility is in this: That however pitilessly that law may operate, we nevertheless adhere to it

"But the exceptional in the matter moves the hearts within you. Even so too is mine moved. But let not warm

hearts betray heads that should be cool. Ashore in a criminal case will an upright judge allow himself off the

bench to be waylaid by some tender kinswoman of the accused seeking to touch him with her tearful plea?

Well the heart here denotes the feminine in man is as that piteous woman, and hard tho' it be, she must here

"But something in your aspect seems to urge that it is not solely the heart that moves in you, but also the

conscience, the private conscience. But tell me whether or not, occupying the position we do, private

conscience should not yield to that imperial one formulated in the code under which alone we officially

Here the three men moved in their seats, less convinced than agitated by the course of an argument troubling

Perceiving which, the speaker paused for a moment; then abruptly changing his tone, went on.

"To steady us a bit, let us recur to the facts. In wartime at sea a manofwar'sman strikes his superior in

grade, and the blow kills. Apart from its effect, the blow itself is, according to the Articles of War, a capital

"Ay, Sir," emotionally broke in the officer of marines, "in one sense it was. But surely Budd purposed neither

"Surely not, my good man. And before a court less arbitrary and more merciful than a martial one, that plea

would largely extenuate. At the Last Assizes it shall acquit. But how here? We proceed under the law of the

Mutiny Act. In feature no child can resemble his father more than that Act resembles in spirit the thing from

which it derives War. In His Majesty's service in this ship indeed there are Englishmen forced to fight for

the King against their will. Against their conscience, for aught we know. Tho' as their fellowcreatures some

of us may appreciate their position, yet as navy officers, what reck we of it? Still less recks the enemy. Our

impressed men he would fain cut down in the same swath with our volunteers. As regards the enemy's naval

conscripts, some of whom may even share our own abhorrence of the regicidal French Directory, it is the

same on our side. War looks but to the frontage, the appearance. And the Mutiny Act, War's child, takes after

"But while, put to it by these anxieties in you which I can not but respect, I only repeat myself while thus

strangely we prolong proceedings that should be summary the enemy may be sighted and an engagement

"Can we not convict and yet mitigate the penalty?" asked the junior Lieutenant here speaking, and falteringly,

"Lieutenant, were that clearly lawful for us under the circumstances, consider the consequences of such

clemency. The people" (meaning the ship's company) "have nativesense; most of them are familiar with our

naval usage and tradition; and how would they take it? Even could you explain to them which our official

position forbids they, long moulded by arbitrary discipline have not that kind of intelligent responsiveness

that might qualify them to comprehend and discriminate. No, to the people the Foretopman's deed, however it

be worded in the announcement, will be plain homicide committed in a flagrant act of mutiny. What penalty

for that should follow, they know. But it does not follow. Why? they will ruminate. You know what sailors

are. Will they not revert to the recent outbreak at the Nore? Ay. They know the wellfounded alarm the

panic it struck throughout England. Your clement sentence they would account pusillanimous. They would

think that we flinch, that we are afraid of them afraid of practising a lawful rigour singularly demanded at

this juncture lest it should provoke new troubles. What shame to us such a conjecture on their part, and how

deadly to discipline. You see then, whither, prompted by duty and the law, I steadfastly drive. But I beseech

you, my friends, do not take me amiss. I feel as you do for this unfortunate boy. But did he know our hearts, I

take him to be of that generous nature that he would feel even for us on whom in this military necessity so

With that, crossing the deck he resumed his place by the sashed porthole, tacitly leaving the three to come to

a decision. On the cabin's opposite side the troubled court sat silent. Loyal lieges, plain and practical, though

at bottom they dissented from some points Captain Vere had put to them, they were without the faculty,

hardly had the inclination, to gainsay one whom they felt to be an earnest man, one too not less their superior

in mind than in naval rank. But it is not improbable that even such of his words as were not without influence

over them, less came home to them than his closing appeal to their instinct as seaofficers in the forethought

he threw out as to the practical consequences to discipline, considering the unconfirmed tone of the fleet at

the time, should a manofwar'sman's violent killing at sea of a superior in grade be allowed to pass for

Not unlikely they were brought to something more or less akin to that harassed frame of mind which in the

year 1842 actuated the Commander of the U.S. brigofwar Somers to resolve, under the socalled Articles

of War, Articles modelled upon the English Mutiny Act, to resolve upon the execution at sea of a

midshipman and two pettyofficers as mutineers designing the seizure of the brig. Which resolution was

carried out though in a time of peace and within not many days' of home. An act vindicated by a naval court

of inquiry subsequently convened ashore. History, and here cited without comment. True, the circumstances

on board the Somers were different from those on board the Indomitable. But the urgency felt,

Says a writer whom few know, "Forty years after a battle it is easy for a noncombatant to reason about how

it ought to have been fought. It is another thing personally and under fire to direct the fighting while involved

in the obscuring smoke of it. Much so with respect to other emergencies involving considerations both

practical and moral, and when it is imperative promptly to act. The greater the fog the more it imperils the

steamer, and speed is put on tho' at the hazard of running somebody down. Little ween the snug cardplayers

In brief, Billy Budd was formally convicted and sentenced to be hung at the yardarm in the early morning

watch, it being now night. Otherwise, as is customary in such cases, the sentence would forthwith have been

carried out. In wartime on the field or in the fleet, a mortal punishment decreed by a drumhead court on

the field sometimes decreed by but a nod from the General follows without delay on the heel of conviction

It was Captain Vere himself who of his own motion communicated the finding of the court to the prisoner;

for that purpose going to the compartment where he was in custody and bidding the marine there to withdraw

Beyond the communication of the sentence what took place at this interview was never known. But in view

of the character of the twain briefly closeted in that stateroom, each radically sharing in the rarer qualities of

our nature so rare indeed as to be all but incredible to average minds however much cultivated some

It would have been in consonance with the spirit of Captain Vere should he on this occasion have concealed

nothing from the condemned one should he indeed have frankly disclosed to him the part he himself had

played in bringing about the decision, at the same time revealing his actuating motives. On Billy's side it is

not improbable that such a confession would have been received in much the same spirit that prompted it. Not

without a sort of joy indeed he might have appreciated the brave opinion of him implied in his Captain's

making such a confidant of him. Nor, as to the sentence itself could he have been insensible that it was

imparted to him as to one not afraid to die. Even more may have been. Captain Vere in the end may have

developed the passion sometimes latent under an exterior stoical or indifferent. He was old enough to have

been Billy's father. The austere devotee of military duty, letting himself melt back into what remains primeval

in our formalized humanity, may in the end have caught Billy to his heart even as Abraham may have caught

young Isaac on the brink of resolutely offering him up in obedience to the exacting behest. But there is no

telling the sacrament, seldom if in any case revealed to the gadding world, wherever under circumstances at

all akin to those here attempted to be set forth, two of great Nature's nobler order embrace. There is privacy at

the time, inviolable to the survivor, and holy oblivion, the sequel to each diviner magnanimity, providentially

The first to encounter Captain Vere in act of leaving the compartment was the senior Lieutenant. The face he

beheld, for the moment one expressive of the agony of the strong, was to that officer, tho' a man of fifty, a

startling revelation. That the condemned one suffered less than he who mainly had effected the condemnation

was apparently indicated by the former's exclamation in the scene soon perforce to be touched upon.

Of a series of incidents within a brief term rapidly following each other, the adequate narration may take up a

term less brief, especially if explanation or comment here and there seem requisite to the better understanding

of such incidents. Between the entrance into the cabin of him who never left it alive, and him who when he

did leave it left it as one condemned to die; between this and the closeted interview just given, less than an

hour and a half had elapsed. It was an interval long enough however to awaken speculations among no few of

the ship's company as to what it was that could be detaining in the cabin the Masteratarms and the sailor;

for a rumor that both of them had been seen to enter it and neither of them had been seen to emerge, this

rumor had got abroad upon the gun decks and in the tops; the people of a great warship being in one respect

like villagers taking microscopic note of every outward movement or nonmovement going on. When

therefore in weather not at all tempestuous all hands were called in the second dogwatch, a summons under

such circumstances not usual in those hours, the crew were not wholly unprepared for some announcement

extraordinary, one having connection too with the continued absence of the two men from their wonted

There was a moderate sea at the time; and the moon, newly risen and near to being at its full, silvered the

white spardeck wherever not blotted by the clearcut shadows horizontally thrown of fixtures and moving

men. On either side of the quarterdeck, the marine guard under arms was drawn up; and Captain Vere

standing in his place surrounded by all the wardroom officers, addressed his men. In so doing his manner

showed neither more nor less than that properly pertaining to his supreme position aboard his own ship. In

clear terms and concise he told them what had taken place in the cabin; that the Masteratarms was dead;

that he who had killed him had been already tried by a summary court and condemned to death; and that the

execution would take place in the early morning watch. The word mutiny was not named in what he said. He

refrained too from making the occasion an opportunity for any preachment as to the maintenance of

discipline, thinking perhaps that under existing circumstances in the navy the consequence of violating

Their Captain's announcement was listened to by the throng of standing sailors in a dumbness like that of a

seated congregation of believers in hell listening to the clergyman's announcement of his Calvinistic text.

At the close, however, a confused murmur went up. It began to wax. All but instantly, then, at a sign, it was

pierced and suppressed by shrill whistles of the Boatswain and his Mates piping down one watch.

To be prepared for burial Claggart's body was delivered to certain pettyofficers of his mess. And here, not to

clog the sequel with lateral matters, it may be added that at a suitable hour, the Masteratarms was

committed to the sea with every funeral honor properly belonging to his naval grade.

In this proceeding as in every public one growing out of the tragedy, strict adherence to usage was observed.

Nor in any point could it have been at all deviated from, either with respect to Claggart or Billy Budd,

without begetting undesirable speculations in the ship's company, sailors, and more particularly

For similar cause, all communication between Captain Vere and the condemned one ended with the closeted

interview already given, the latter being now surrendered to the ordinary routine preliminary to the end. This

transfer under guard from the Captain's quarters was effected without unusual precautions at least no visible

If possible, not to let the men so much as surmise that their officers anticipate aught amiss from them is the

tacit rule in a military ship. And the more that some sort of trouble should really be apprehended the more do

the officers keep that apprehension to themselves; tho' not the less unostentatious vigilance may be

In the present instance the sentry placed over the prisoner had strict orders to let no one have communication

with him but the Chaplain. And certain unobtrusive measures were taken absolutely to insure this point.

In a seventyfour of the old order the deck known as the upper gun deck was the one covered over by the

spardeck 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

berthdeck, 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 breechen and strong sidetackles 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 breechens, tarred to the same tint, wore the like livery

of the undertakers. In contrast with the funereal hue of these surroundings the prone sailor's exterior apparel,

white jumper and white duck trousers, each more or less soiled, dimly glimmered in the obscure light of the

bay like a patch of discolored 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 battlelanterns swing from two massive beams of the deck above. Fed with the oil supplied by the

warcontractors (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 thro' 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

sidechapels in a cathedral, branch from the long dimvistaed broad aisle between the two batteries of that

Such was the deck where now lay the Handsome Sailor. Through the rosetan 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 cheekbone at the point of its angle was just beginning

delicately to be defined under the warmtinted skin. In fervid hearts selfcontained, some brief experiences

devour our human tissue as secret fire in a ship's hold consumes cotton in the bale.

But now lying between the two guns, as nipped in the vice of fate, Billy's agony, mainly proceeding from a

generous young heart's virgin experience of the diabolical incarnate and effective in some men the tension

of that agony was over now. It survived not the something healing in the closeted interview with Captain

Vere. Without movement, he lay as in a trance. That adolescent expression previously noted as his, taking on

something akin to the look of a slumbering child in the cradle when the warm hearthglow of the still

chamber at night plays on the dimples that at whiles mysteriously form in the cheek, silently coming and

going there. For now and then in the gyved one's trance a serene happy light born of some wandering

reminiscence or dream would diffuse itself over his face, and then wane away only anew to return.

The Chaplain coming to see him and finding him thus, and perceiving no sign that he was conscious of his

presence, attentively regarded him for a space, then slipping aside, withdrew for the time, peradventure

feeling that even he the minister of Christ, tho' receiving his stipend from Mars, had no consolation to proffer

which could result in a peace transcending that which he beheld. But in the small hours he came again. And

the prisoner, now awake to his surroundings, noticed his approach, and civilly, all but cheerfully, welcomed

him. But it was to little purpose that in the interview following the good man sought to bring Billy Budd to

some godly understanding that he must die, and at dawn. True, Billy himself freely referred to his death as a

thing close at hand; but it was something in the way that children will refer to death in general, who yet

Not that like children Billy was incapable of conceiving what death really is. No, but he was wholly without

irrational fear of it, a fear more prevalent in highly civilized communities than those socalled barbarous

ones which in all respects stand nearer to unadulterate Nature. And, as elsewhere said, a barbarian Billy

radically was; as much so, for all the costume, as his countrymen the British captives, living trophies, made to

march in the Roman triumph of Germanicus. Quite as much so as those later barbarians, young men

probably, and picked specimens among the earlier British converts to Christianity, at least nominally such,

and taken to Rome (as today converts from lesser isles of the sea may be taken to London), of whom the

Pope of that time, admiring the strangeness of their personal beauty so unlike the Italian stamp, their clear

ruddy complexion and curled flaxen locks, exclaimed, "Angles" (meaning English the modern derivative)

"Angles do you call them? And is it because they look so like angels?" Had it been later in time one would

think that the Pope had in mind Fra Angelico's seraphs some of whom, plucking apples in gardens of the

Hesperides, have the faint rosebud complexion of the more beautiful English girls.

If in vain the good Chaplain sought to impress the young barbarian with ideas of death akin to those

conveyed in the skull, dial, and crossbones on old tombstones; equally futile to all appearance were his

efforts to bring home to him the thought of salvation and a Saviour. Billy listened, but less out of awe or

reverence perhaps than from a certain natural politeness; doubtless at bottom regarding all that in much the

same way that most mariners of his class take any discourse abstract or out of the common tone of the

workaday world. And this sailorway of taking clerical discourse is not wholly unlike the way in which

the pioneer of Christianity full of transcendent miracles was received long ago on tropic isles by any superior

savage so called a Tahitian say of Captain Cook's time or shortly after that time. Out of natural courtesy he

received, but did not appropriate. It was like a gift placed in the palm of an outreached hand upon which the

But the Indomitable's Chaplain was a discreet man possessing the good sense of a good heart. So he insisted

not in his vocation here. At the instance of Captain Vere, a lieutenant had apprised him of pretty much

everything as to Billy; and since he felt that innocence was even a better thing than religion wherewith to go

to Judgement, he reluctantly withdrew; but in his emotion not without first performing an act strange enough

in an Englishman, and under the circumstances yet more so in any regular priest. Stooping over, he kissed on

the fair cheek his fellowman, a felon in martial law, one who though on the confines of death he felt he

Marvel not that having been made acquainted with the young sailor's essential innocence (an irruption of

heretic thought hard to suppress) the worthy man lifted not a finger to avert the doom of such a martyr to

martial discipline. So to do would not only have been as idle as invoking the desert, but would also have been

an audacious transgression of the bounds of his function, one as exactly prescribed to him by military law as

that of the boatswain or any other naval officer. Bluntly put, a chaplain is the minister of the Prince of Peace

serving in the host of the God of War Mars. As such, he is as incongruous as a musket would be on the altar

at Christmas. Why then is he there? Because he indirectly subserves the purpose attested by the cannon;

because too he lends the sanction of the religion of the meek to that which practically is the abrogation of

The night, so luminous on the spardeck, but otherwise on the cavernous ones below, levels so like the tiered

galleries in a coalmine the luminous night passed away. But, like the prophet in the chariot disappearing in

heaven and dropping his mantle to Elisha, the withdrawing night transferred its pale robe to the breaking day.

A meek shy light appeared in the East, where stretched a diaphanous fleece of white furrowed vapor. That

light slowly waxed. Suddenly eight bells was struck aft, responded to by one louder metallic stroke from

forward. It was four o'clock in the morning. Instantly the silver whistles were heard summoning all hands to

witness punishment. Up through the great hatchways rimmed with racks of heavy shot, the watch below came

pouring, overspreading with the watch already on deck the space between the mainmast and foremast

including that occupied by the capacious launch and the black booms tiered on either side of it, boat and

booms making a summit of observation for the powderboys and younger tars. A different group comprising

one watch of topmen leaned over the rail of that seabalcony, no small one in a seventyfour, looking down

on the crowd below. Man or boy, none spake but in whisper, and few spake at all. Captain Vere as before,

the central figure among the assembled commissioned officers stood nigh the break of the poopdeck facing

forward. Just below him on the quarterdeck the marines in full equipment were drawn up much as at the

At sea in the old time, the execution by halter of a military sailor was generally from the foreyard. In the

present instance, for special reasons the mainyard was assigned. Under an arm of that leeyard the prisoner

was presently brought up, the Chaplain attending him. It was noted at the time and remarked upon afterwards,

that in this final scene the good man evinced little or nothing of the perfunctory. Brief speech indeed he had

with the condemned one, but the genuine Gospel was less on his tongue than in his aspect and manner

towards him. The final preparations personal to the latter being speedily brought to an end by two boatswain's

mates, the consummation impended. Billy stood facing aft. At the penultimate moment, his words, his only

ones, words wholly unobstructed in the utterance were these "God bless Captain Vere!" Syllables so

unanticipated coming from one with the ignominious hemp about his neck a conventional felon's

benediction directed aft towards the quarters of honor; syllables too delivered in the clear melody of a

singingbird on the point of launching from the twig, had a phenomenal effect, not unenhanced by the rare

personal beauty of the young sailor spiritualized now thro' late experiences so poignantly profound.

Without volition as it were, as if indeed the ship's populace were but the vehicles of some vocal current

electric, with one voice from alow and aloft came a resonant sympathetic echo "God bless Captain Vere!"

And yet at that instant Billy alone must have been in their hearts, even as he was in their eyes.

At the pronounced words and the spontaneous echo that voluminously rebounded them, Captain Vere, either

thro' stoic selfcontrol or a sort of momentary paralysis induced by emotional shock, stood erectly rigid as a

The hull deliberately recovering from the periodic roll to leeward was just regaining an even keel, when the

last signal, a preconcerted dumb one, was given. At the same moment it chanced that the vapory fleece

hanging low in the East, was shot thro' with a soft glory as of the fleece of the Lamb of God seen in mystical

vision, and simultaneously therewith, watched by the wedged mass of upturned faces, Billy ascended; and,

In the pinioned figure, arrived at the yardend, to the wonder of all no motion was apparent, none save that

created by the ship's motion, in moderate weather so majestic in a great ship ponderously cannoned.

When some days afterward in reference to the singularity just mentioned, the Purser, a rather ruddy rotund

person more accurate as an accountant than profound as a philosopher, said at mess to the Surgeon, "What

testimony to the force lodged in willpower," the latter saturnine, spare and tall, one in whom a discreet

causticity went along with a manner less genial than polite, replied, "Your pardon, Mr. Purser. In a hanging

scientifically conducted and under special orders I myself directed how Budd's was to be effected any

movement following the completed suspension and originating in the body suspended, such movement

indicates mechanical spasm in the muscular system. Hence the absence of that is no more attributable to

"But this muscular spasm you speak of, is not that in a degree more or less invariable in these cases?"

"Mr. Purser, it is clear that your sense of the singularity in this matter equals not mine. You account for it by

what you call willpower, a term not yet included in the lexicon of science. For me I do not, with my present

knowledge, pretend to account for it at all. Even should we assume the hypothesis that at the first touch of the

halyards the action of Budd's heart, intensified by extraordinary emotion at its climax, abruptly stopt much

like a watch when in carelessly winding it up you strain at the finish, thus snapping the chain even under

"It was phenomenal, Mr. Purser, in the sense that it was an appearance the cause of which is not immediately

"But tell me, my dear Sir," pertinaciously continued the other, "was the man's death effected by the halter, or

"Euthanasia, Mr. Purser, is something like your willpower: I doubt its authenticity as a scientific term

begging your pardon again. It is at once imaginative and metaphysical, in short, Greek. But," abruptly

changing his tone, "there is a case in the sickbay that I do not care to leave to my assistants. Beg your

The silence at the moment of execution and for a moment or two continuing thereafter, a silence but

emphasized by the regular wash of the sea against the hull or the flutter of a sail caused by the helmsman's

eyes being tempted astray, this emphasized silence was gradually disturbed by a sound not easily to be

verbally rendered. Whoever has heard the freshetwave of a torrent suddenly swelled by pouring showers in

tropical mountains, showers not shared by the plain; whoever has heard the first muffled murmur of its

sloping advance through precipitous woods, may form some conception of the sound now heard. The

seeming remoteness of its source was because of its murmurous indistinctness since it came from closeby,

even from the men massed on the ship's open deck. Being inarticulate, it was dubious in significance further

than it seemed to indicate some capricious revulsion of thought or feeling such as mobs ashore are liable to,

in the present instance possibly implying a sullen revocation on the men's part of their involuntary echoing of

Billy's benediction. But ere the murmur had time to wax into clamour it was met by a strategic command, the

Shrill as the shriek of the seahawk the whistles of the Boatswain and his Mates pierced that ominous low

sound, dissipating it; and yielding to the mechanism of discipline, the throng was thinned by one half. For the

remainder most of them were set to temporary employments connected with trimming the yards and so forth,

Now each proceeding that follows a mortal sentence pronounced at sea by a drumhead court is characterised

by promptitude not perceptibly merging into hurry, tho' bordering that. The hammock, the one which had

been Billy's bed when alive, having already been ballasted with shot and otherwise prepared to serve for his

canvas coffin, the last offices of the seaundertakers, the SailMaker's Mates, were now speedily completed.

When everything was in readiness a second call for all hands made necessary by the strategic movement

The details of this closing formality it needs not to give. But when the tilted plank let slide its freight into the

sea, a second strange human murmur was heard, blended now with another inarticulate sound proceeding

from certain larger seafowl, whose attention having been attracted by the peculiar commotion in the water

resulting from the heavy sloped dive of the shotted hammock into the sea, flew screaming to the spot. So near

the hull did they come, that the stridor or bony creak of their gaunt doublejointed pinions was audible. As

the ship under light airs passed on, leaving the burialspot astern, they still kept circling it low down with the

moving shadow of their outstretched wings and the croaked requiem of their cries.

Upon sailors as superstitious as those of the age preceding ours, menofwar'smen too who had just beheld

the prodigy of repose in the form suspended in air and now foundering in the deeps; to such mariners the

action of the seafowl, tho' dictated by mere animal greed for prey, was big with no prosaic significance. An

uncertain movement began among them, in which some encroachment was made. It was tolerated but for a

moment. For suddenly the drum beat to quarters, which familiar sound happening at least twice every day,

had upon the present occasion a signal peremptoriness in it. True martial discipline long continued

superinduces in average man a sort of impulse of docility whose operation at the official sound of command

The drumbeat dissolved the multitude, distributing most of them along the batteries of the two covered gun

decks. There, as wont, the guns' crews stood by their respective cannon erect and silent. In due course the

First Officer, sword under arm and standing in his place on the quarterdeck, formally received the

successive reports of the sworded Lieutenants commanding the sections of batteries below; the last of which

reports being made, the summed report he delivered with the customary salute to the Commander. All this

occupied time, which in the present case, was the object of beating to quarters at an hour prior to the

customary one. That such variance from usage was authorized by an officer like Captain Vere, a martinet as

some deemed him, was evidence of the necessity for unusual action implied in what he deemed to be

temporarily the mood of his men. "With mankind," he would say, "forms, measured forms are everything;

and that is the import couched in the story of Orpheus with his lyre spellbinding the wild denizens of the

wood." And this he once applied to the disruption of forms going on across the Channel and the

At this unwonted muster at quarters, all proceeded as at the regular hour. The band on the quarterdeck

played a sacred air. After which the Chaplain went thro' the customary morning service. That done, the drum

beat the retreat, and toned by music and religious rites subserving the discipline and purpose of war, the men

in their wonted orderly manner, dispersed to the places allotted them when not at the guns.

And now it was full day. The fleece of lowhanging vapor had vanished, licked up by the sun that late had so

glorified it. And the circumambient air in the clearness of its serenity was like smooth marble in the polished

The symmetry of form attainable in pure fiction can not so readily be achieved in a narration essentially

having less to do with fable than with fact. Truth uncompromisingly told will always have its ragged edges;

hence the conclusion of such a narration is apt to be less finished than an architectural finial.

How it fared with the Handsome Sailor during the year of the Great Mutiny has been faithfully given. But

tho' properly the story ends with his life, something in way of sequel will not be amiss. Three brief chapters

In the general rechristening under the Directory of the craft originally forming the navy of the French

monarchy, the St. Louis lineofbattle ship was named the Atheiste. Such a name, like some other

substituted ones in the Revolutionary fleet, while proclaiming the infidel audacity of the ruling power was

yet, tho' not so intended to be, the aptest name, if one consider it, ever given to a warship; far more so

indeed than the Devastation, the Erebus (the Hell) and similar names bestowed upon fightingships.

On the returnpassage to the English fleet from the detached cruise during which occurred the events already

recorded, the Indomitable fell in with the Atheiste. An engagement ensued; during which Captain Vere, in the

act of putting his ship alongside the enemy with a view of throwing his boarders across her bulwarks, was hit

by a musketball from a porthole of the enemy's main cabin. More than disabled he dropped to the deck and

was carried below to the same cockpit where some of his men already lay. The senior Lieutenant took

command. Under him the enemy was finally captured and though much crippled was by rare good fortune

successfully taken into Gibraltar, an English port not very distant from the scene of the fight. There, Captain

Vere with the rest of the wounded was put ashore. He lingered for some days, but the end came. Unhappily

he was cut off too early for the Nile and Trafalgar. The spirit that spite its philosophic austerity may yet have

indulged in the most secret of all passions, ambition, never attained to the fulness of fame.

Not long before death, while lying under the influence of that magical drug which soothing the physical

frame mysteriously operates on the subtler element in man, he was heard to murmur words inexplicable to his

attendant "Billy Budd, Billy Budd." That these were not the accents of remorse, would seem clear from

what the attendant said to the Indomitable's senior officer of marines who, as the most reluctant to condemn

of the members of the drumhead court, too well knew, tho' here he kept the knowledge to himself, who Billy

Some few weeks after the execution, among other matters under the head of News from the Mediterranean,

there appeared in a naval chronicle of the time, an authorized weekly publication, an account of the affair. It

was doubtless for the most part written in good faith, tho' the medium, partly rumor, through which the facts

must have reached the writer, served to deflect and in part falsify them. The account was as follows:

"On the tenth of the last month a deplorable occurrence took place on board H.M.S. Indomitable. John

Claggart, the ship's Masteratarms, discovering that some sort of plot was incipient among an inferior

section of the ship's company, and that the ringleader was one William Budd; he, Claggart, in the act of

arraigning the man before the Captain was vindictively stabbed to the heart by the suddenly drawn

"The deed and the implement employed, sufficiently suggest that tho' mustered into the service under an

English name the assassin was no Englishman, but one of those aliens adopting English cognomens whom

the present extraordinary necessities of the Service have caused to be admitted into it in considerable

"The enormity of the crime and the extreme depravity of the criminal, appear the greater in view of the

character of the victim, a middleaged man respectable and discreet, belonging to that official grade, the

pettyofficers, upon whom, as none know better than the commissioned gentlemen, the efficiency of His

Majesty's Navy so largely depends. His function was a responsible one, at once onerous thankless, and his

fidelity in it the greater because of his strong patriotic impulse. In this instance as in so many other instances

in these days, the character of this unfortunate man signally refutes, if refutation were needed, that peevish

saying attributed to the late Dr. Johnson, that patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.

"The criminal paid the penalty of his crime. The promptitude of the punishment has proved salutary. Nothing

The above, appearing in a publication now long ago superannuated and forgotten, is all that hitherto has stood

in human record to attest what manner of men respectively were John Claggart and Billy Budd.

Everything is for a term remarkable in navies. Any tangible object associated with some striking incident of

the service is converted into a monument. The spar from which the Foretopman was suspended, was for some

few years kept trace of by the bluejackets. Their knowledge followed it from ship to dockyard and again

from dockyard to ship, still pursuing it even when at last reduced to a mere dockyard boom. To them a

chip of it was as a piece of the Cross. Ignorant tho' they were of the secret facts of the tragedy, and not

thinking but that the penalty was somehow unavoidably inflicted from the naval point of view, for all that

they instinctively felt that Billy was a sort of man as incapable of mutiny as of wilfull murder. They recalled

the fresh young image of the Handsome Sailor, that face never deformed by a sneer or subtler vile freak of

the heart within. Their impression of him was doubtless deepened by the fact that he was gone, and in a

measure mysteriously gone. At the time, on the gun decks of the Indomitable, the general estimate of his

nature and its unconscious simplicity eventually found rude utterance from another foretopman, one of his

own watch, gifted, as some sailors are, with an artless poetic temperament; the tarry hands made some lines

which after circulating among the shipboard crew for a while, finally got rudely printed at Portsmouth as a