Chapter 25

by Herman Melville

　　In a seventy-four of the old order the deck known as the upper gundeck was the one covered over by the spar-deck which last though notwithout its armament was for the most part exposed to the weather. Ingeneral it was at all hours free from hammocks; those of the crewswinging on the lower gun deck, and berth-deck, the latter being notonly a dormitory but also the place for the stowing of the sailors'bags, and on both sides lined with the large chests or movable pantriesof the many messes of the men.On the starboard side of the Indomitable's upper gun deck, beholdBilly Budd under sentry, lying prone in irons, in one of the bays formedby the regular spacing of the guns comprising the batteries on eitherside. All these pieces were of the heavier calibre of that period.Mounted on lumbering wooden carriages they were hampered with cumbersomeharness of breechen and strong side-tackles for running them out. Gunsand carriages, together with the long rammers and shorter lintstockslodged in loops overhead -- all these, as customary, were painted black;and the heavy hempen breechens, tarred to the same tint, wore the likelivery of the undertakers. In contrast with the funereal hue of thesesurroundings the prone sailor's exterior apparel, white jumper and whiteduck trousers, each more or less soiled, dimly glimmered in the obscurelight of the bay like a patch of discolored snow in early Aprillingering at some upland cave's black mouth. In effect he is already inhis shroud or the garments that shall serve him in lieu of one. Overhim, but scarce illuminating him, two battle-lanterns swing from twomassive beams of the deck above. Fed with the oil supplied by thewar-contractors (whose gains, honest or otherwise, are in every land ananticipated portion of the harvest of death), with flickering splashesof dirty yellow light they pollute the pale moonshine all butineffectually struggling in obstructed flecks thro' the open ports fromwhich the tompioned cannon protrude. Other lanterns at intervals servebut to bring out somewhat the obscurer bays which, like smallconfessionals or side-chapels in a cathedral, branch from the longdim-vistaed broad aisle between the two batteries of that covered tier.Such was the deck where now lay the Handsome Sailor. Through therose-tan of his complexion, no pallor could have shown. It would havetaken days of sequestration from the winds and the sun to have broughtabout the effacement of that. But the skeleton in the cheekbone at thepoint of its angle was just beginning delicately to be defined under thewarm-tinted skin. In fervid hearts self-contained, some briefexperiences devour our human tissue as secret fire in a ship's holdconsumes 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 virginexperience of the diabolical incarnate and effective in some men -- thetension of that agony was over now. It survived not the somethinghealing in the closeted interview with Captain Vere. Without movement,he lay as in a trance. That adolescent expression previously noted ashis, taking on something akin to the look of a slumbering child in thecradle when the warm hearth-glow of the still chamber at night plays onthe dimples that at whiles mysteriously form in the cheek, silentlycoming and going there. For now and then in the gyved one's trance aserene happy light born of some wandering reminiscence or dream woulddiffuse itself over his face, and then wane away only anew to return.The Chaplain coming to see him and finding him thus, and perceivingno sign that he was conscious of his presence, attentively regarded himfor a space, then slipping aside, withdrew for the time, peradventurefeeling that even he the minister of Christ, tho' receiving his stipendfrom Mars, had no consolation to proffer which could result in a peacetranscending 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 littlepurpose that in the interview following the good man sought to bringBilly Budd to some godly understanding that he must die, and at dawn.True, Billy himself freely referred to his death as a thing close athand; but it was something in the way that children will refer to deathin general, who yet among their other sports will play a funeral withhearse and mourners.Not that like children Billy was incapable of conceiving what deathreally is. No, but he was wholly without irrational fear of it, a fearmore prevalent in highly civilized communities than those so-calledbarbarous ones which in all respects stand nearer to unadulterateNature. And, as elsewhere said, a barbarian Billy radically was; as muchso, for all the costume, as his countrymen the British captives, livingtrophies, made to march in the Roman triumph of Germanicus. Quite asmuch so as those later barbarians, young men probably, and pickedspecimens among the earlier British converts to Christianity, at leastnominally such, and taken to Rome (as to-day converts from lesser islesof the sea may be taken to London), of whom the Pope of that time,admiring the strangeness of their personal beauty so unlike the Italianstamp, their clear ruddy complexion and curled flaxen locks, exclaimed,"Angles-" (meaning English the modern derivative) "Angles do you callthem? And is it because they look so like angels?" Had it been later intime one would think that the Pope had in mind Fra Angelico's seraphssome of whom, plucking apples in gardens of the Hesperides, have thefaint rose-bud complexion of the more beautiful English girls.If in vain the good Chaplain sought to impress the young barbarianwith ideas of death akin to those conveyed in the skull, dial, andcross-bones on old tombstones; equally futile to all appearance were hisefforts to bring home to him the thought of salvation and a Saviour.Billy listened, but less out of awe or reverence perhaps than from acertain natural politeness; doubtless at bottom regarding all that inmuch the same way that most mariners of his class take any discourseabstract or out of the common tone of the work-a-day world. And thissailor-way of taking clerical discourse is not wholly unlike the way inwhich the pioneer of Christianity full of transcendent miracles wasreceived 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 ofnatural courtesy he received, but did not appropriate. It was like agift placed in the palm of an outreached hand upon which the fingers donot close.But the Indomitable's Chaplain was a discreet man possessing thegood sense of a good heart. So he insisted not in his vocation here. Atthe instance of Captain Vere, a lieutenant had apprised him of prettymuch everything as to Billy; and since he felt that innocence was even abetter thing than religion wherewith to go to Judgement, he reluctantlywithdrew; but in his emotion not without first performing an act strangeenough in an Englishman, and under the circumstances yet more so in anyregular priest. Stooping over, he kissed on the fair cheek hisfellow-man, a felon in martial law, one who though on the confines ofdeath he felt he could never convert to a dogma; nor for all that did hefear for his future.Marvel not that having been made acquainted with the young sailor'sessential innocence (an irruption of heretic thought hard to suppress)the worthy man lifted not a finger to avert the doom of such a martyr tomartial discipline. So to do would not only have been as idle asinvoking the desert, but would also have been an audacious transgressionof the bounds of his function, one as exactly prescribed to him bymilitary law as that of the boatswain or any other naval officer.Bluntly put, a chaplain is the minister of the Prince of Peace servingin the host of the God of War -- Mars. As such, he is as incongruous asa 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 thatwhich practically is the abrogation of everything but brute Force.