Chapter 6

by Herman Melville

　　But on board the seventy-four in which Billy now swung his hammock,very little in the manner of the men and nothing obvious in thedemeanour of the officers would have suggested to an ordinary observerthat the Great Mutiny was a recent event. In their general bearing andconduct the commissioned officers of a warship naturally take their tonefrom the Commander, that is if he have that ascendancy of character thatought to be his.Captain the Honorable Edward Fairfax Vere, to give his full title,was a bachelor of forty or thereabouts, a sailor of distinction even ina time prolific of renowned seamen. Though allied to the highernobility, his advancement had not been altogether owing to influencesconnected with that circumstance. He had seen much service, been invarious engagements, always acquitting himself as an officer mindful ofthe welfare of his men, but never tolerating an infraction ofdiscipline; thoroughly versed in the science of his profession, andintrepid to the verge of temerity, though never injudiciously so. Forhis gallantry in the West Indian waters as Flag-Lieutenant under Rodneyin that Admiral's crowning victory over De Grasse, he was made aPost-Captain.Ashore in the garb of a civilian, scarce anyone would have taken himfor a sailor, more especially that he never garnished unprofessionaltalk with nautical terms, and grave in his bearing, evinced littleappreciation of mere humor. It was not out of keeping with these traitsthat on a passage when nothing demanded his paramount action, he was themost undemonstrative of men. Any landsman observing this gentleman, notconspicuous by his stature and wearing no pronounced insignia, emergingfrom his cabin to the open deck, and noting the silent deference of theofficers retiring to leeward, might have taken him for the King's guest,a civilian aboard the King's-ship, some highly honorable discreet envoyon his way to an important post. But in fact this unobtrusiveness ofdemeanour may have proceeded from a certain unaffected modesty ofmanhood sometimes accompanying a resolute nature, a modesty evinced atall times not calling for pronounced action, and which shown in any rankof life suggests a virtue aristocratic in kind.As with some others engaged in various departments of the world'smore heroic activities, Captain Vere, though practical enough uponoccasion, would at times betray a certain dreaminess of mood. Standingalone on the weather-side of the quarter-deck, one hand holding by therigging, he would absently gaze off at the blank sea. At thepresentation to him then of some minor matter interrupting the currentof his thoughts he would show more or less irascibility; but instantlyhe would control it.In the navy he was popularly known by the appellation -- StarryVere. How such a designation happened to fall upon one who, whatever hissterling qualities, was without any brilliant ones was in this wise: Afavorite kinsman, Lord Denton, a free-hearted fellow, had been the firstto meet and congratulate him upon his return to England from his WestIndian cruise; and but the day previous turning over a copy of AndrewMarvell's poems, had lighted, not for the first time however, upon thelines entitled Appleton House, the name of one of the seats of theircommon ancestor, a hero in the German wars of the seventeenth century,in which poem occur the lines,"This 'tis to have been from the firstIn a domestic heaven nursed,Under the discipline severeOf Fairfax and the starry Vere."And so, upon embracing his cousin fresh from Rodney's great victorywherein he had played so gallant a part, brimming over with just familypride in the sailor of their house, he exuberantly exclaimed, "Give yejoy, Ed; give ye joy, my starry Vere!" This got currency, and the novelprefix serving in familiar parlance readily to distinguish theIndomitable's Captain from another Vere his senior, a distantrelative, an officer of like rank in the navy, it remained permanentlyattached to the surname.