Chapter 26

by Herman Melville

　　The night, so luminous on the spar-deck, but otherwise on thecavernous ones below, levels so like the tiered galleries in a coal-mine-- the luminous night passed away. But, like the prophet in the chariotdisappearing in heaven and dropping his mantle to Elisha, thewithdrawing night transferred its pale robe to the breaking day. A meekshy light appeared in the East, where stretched a diaphanous fleece ofwhite furrowed vapor. That light slowly waxed. Suddenly eight bellswas struck aft, responded to by one louder metallic stroke from forward.It was four o'clock in the morning. Instantly the silver whistles wereheard summoning all hands to witness punishment. Up through the greathatchways rimmed with racks of heavy shot, the watch below came pouring,overspreading with the watch already on deck the space between themain-mast and fore-mast including that occupied by the capacious launchand the black booms tiered on either side of it, boat and booms making asummit of observation for the powder-boys and younger tars. A differentgroup comprising one watch of topmen leaned over the rail of thatsea-balcony, no small one in a seventy-four, looking down on the crowdbelow. Man or boy, none spake but in whisper, and few spake at all.Captain Vere -- as before, the central figure among the assembledcommissioned officers -- stood nigh the break of the poop-deck facingforward. Just below him on the quarter-deck the marines in fullequipment were drawn up much as at the scene of the promulgated sentence.At sea in the old time, the execution by halter of a military sailorwas generally from the fore-yard. In the present instance, for specialreasons the main-yard was assigned. Under an arm of that lee-yard theprisoner was presently brought up, the Chaplain attending him. It wasnoted at the time and remarked upon afterwards, that in this final scenethe good man evinced little or nothing of the perfunctory. Brief speechindeed he had with the condemned one, but the genuine Gospel was less onhis tongue than in his aspect and manner towards him. The finalpreparations personal to the latter being speedily brought to an end bytwo boatswain's mates, the consummation impended. Billy stood facingaft. At the penultimate moment, his words, his only ones, words whollyunobstructed in the utterance were these -- "God bless Captain Vere!"Syllables so unanticipated coming from one with the ignominious hempabout his neck -- a conventional felon's benediction directed afttowards the quarters of honor; syllables too delivered in the clearmelody of a singing-bird on the point of launching from the twig, had aphenomenal effect, not unenhanced by the rare personal beauty of theyoung sailor spiritualized now thro' late experiences so poignantlyprofound.Without volition as it were, as if indeed the ship's populace werebut the vehicles of some vocal current electric, with one voice fromalow and aloft came a resonant sympathetic echo -- "God bless CaptainVere!" And yet at that instant Billy alone must have been in theirhearts, even as he was in their eyes.At the pronounced words and the spontaneous echo that voluminouslyrebounded them, Captain Vere, either thro' stoic self-control or a sortof momentary paralysis induced by emotional shock, stood erectly rigidas a musket in the ship-armorer's rack.The hull deliberately recovering from the periodic roll to leewardwas just regaining an even keel, when the last signal, a preconcerteddumb one, was given. At the same moment it chanced that the vaporyfleece hanging low in the East, was shot thro' with a soft glory as ofthe fleece of the Lamb of God seen in mystical vision, andsimultaneously therewith, watched by the wedged mass of upturned faces,Billy ascended; and, ascending, took the full rose of the dawn.In the pinioned figure, arrived at the yard-end, to the wonder ofall no motion was apparent, none save that created by the ship's motion,in moderate weather so majestic in a great ship ponderously cannoned.