Chapter 28

by Herman Melville

　　The silence at the moment of execution and for a moment or twocontinuing thereafter, a silence but emphasized by the regular wash ofthe sea against the hull or the flutter of a sail caused by thehelmsman's eyes being tempted astray, this emphasized silence wasgradually disturbed by a sound not easily to be verbally rendered.Whoever has heard the freshet-wave of a torrent suddenly swelled bypouring showers in tropical mountains, showers not shared by the plain;whoever has heard the first muffled murmur of its sloping advancethrough precipitous woods, may form some conception of the sound nowheard. The seeming remoteness of its source was because of its murmurousindistinctness since it came from close-by, even from the men massed onthe ship's open deck. Being inarticulate, it was dubious in significancefurther than it seemed to indicate some capricious revulsion of thoughtor feeling such as mobs ashore are liable to, in the present instancepossibly implying a sullen revocation on the men's part of theirinvoluntary echoing of Billy's benediction. But ere the murmur had timeto wax into clamour it was met by a strategic command, the more tellingthat it came with abrupt unexpectedness."Pipe down the starboard watch, Boatswain, and see that they go."Shrill as the shriek of the sea-hawk the whistles of the Boatswainand his Mates pierced that ominous low sound, dissipating it; andyielding to the mechanism of discipline, the throng was thinned by onehalf. For the remainder most of them were set to temporary employmentsconnected with trimming the yards and so forth, business readily to begot up to serve occasion by any officer-of-the-deck.Now each proceeding that follows a mortal sentence pronounced at seaby a drum-head court is characterised by promptitude not perceptiblymerging into hurry, tho' bordering that. The hammock, the one which hadbeen Billy's bed when alive, having already been ballasted with shot andotherwise prepared to serve for his canvas coffin, the last offices ofthe sea-undertakers, the Sail-Maker's Mates, were now speedilycompleted. When everything was in readiness a second call for all handsmade necessary by the strategic movement before mentioned was soundedand now to witness burial.The details of this closing formality it needs not to give. But whenthe tilted plank let slide its freight into the sea, a second strangehuman murmur was heard, blended now with another inarticulate soundproceeding from certain larger sea-fowl, whose attention having beenattracted by the peculiar commotion in the water resulting from theheavy sloped dive of the shotted hammock into the sea, flew screaming tothe spot. So near the hull did they come, that the stridor or bony creakof their gaunt double-jointed pinions was audible. As the ship underlight airs passed on, leaving the burial-spot astern, they still keptcircling it low down with the moving shadow of their outstretched wingsand the croaked requiem of their cries.Upon sailors as superstitious as those of the age preceding ours,men-of-war's-men too who had just beheld the prodigy of repose in theform suspended in air and now foundering in the deeps; to such marinersthe action of the sea-fowl, tho' dictated by mere animal greed for prey,was big with no prosaic significance. An uncertain movement began amongthem, in which some encroachment was made. It was tolerated but for amoment. For suddenly the drum beat to quarters, which familiar soundhappening at least twice every day, had upon the present occasion asignal peremptoriness in it. True martial discipline long continuedsuperinduces in average man a sort of impulse of docility whoseoperation at the official sound of command much resembles in itspromptitude the effect of an instinct.The drum-beat dissolved the multitude, distributing most of themalong the batteries of the two covered gun decks. There, as wont, theguns' crews stood by their respective cannon erect and silent. In duecourse the First Officer, sword under arm and standing in his place onthe quarter-deck, formally received the successive reports of thesworded Lieutenants commanding the sections of batteries below; the lastof which reports being made, the summed report he delivered with thecustomary salute to the Commander. All this occupied time, which in thepresent case, was the object of beating to quarters at an hour prior tothe customary one. That such variance from usage was authorized by anofficer like Captain Vere, a martinet as some deemed him, was evidenceof the necessity for unusual action implied in what he deemed to betemporarily the mood of his men. "With mankind," he would say, "forms,measured forms are everything; and that is the import couched in thestory of Orpheus with his lyre spell-binding the wild denizens of thewood." And this he once applied to the disruption of forms going onacross the Channel and the consequences thereof.At this unwonted muster at quarters, all proceeded as at the regularhour. The band on the quarter-deck played a sacred air. After which theChaplain went thro' the customary morning service. That done, the drumbeat the retreat, and toned by music and religious rites subserving thediscipline 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 low-hanging vapor hadvanished, licked up by the sun that late had so glorified it. And thecircumambient air in the clearness of its serenity was like smoothmarble in the polished block not yet removed from the marble-dealer's yard.