Chapter 30

by Herman Melville

　　Some few weeks after the execution, among other matters under thehead of News from the Mediterranean, there appeared in a naval chronicleof the time, an authorized weekly publication, an account of the affair.It was doubtless for the most part written in good faith, tho' themedium, partly rumor, through which the facts must have reached thewriter, served to deflect and in part falsify them. The account was asfollows: --"On the tenth of the last month a deplorable occurrence took placeon board H.M.S. Indomitable. John Claggart, the ship's Master-at-arms,discovering that some sort of plot was incipient among an inferiorsection of the ship's company, and that the ringleader was one WilliamBudd; he, Claggart, in the act of arraigning the man before the Captainwas vindictively stabbed to the heart by the suddenly drawn sheath-knifeof Budd."The deed and the implement employed, sufficiently suggest that tho'mustered into the service under an English name the assassin was noEnglishman, but one of those aliens adopting English cognomens whom thepresent extraordinary necessities of the Service have caused to beadmitted into it in considerable numbers."The enormity of the crime and the extreme depravity of thecriminal, appear the greater in view of the character of the victim, amiddle-aged man respectable and discreet, belonging to that officialgrade, the petty-officers, upon whom, as none know better than thecommissioned gentlemen, the efficiency of His Majesty's Navy so largelydepends. His function was a responsible one, at once onerous &thankless, and his fidelity in it the greater because of his strongpatriotic impulse. In this instance as in so many other instances inthese days, the character of this unfortunate man signally refutes, ifrefutation 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 thepunishment has proved salutary. Nothing amiss is now apprehended aboardH.M.S. Indomitable."The above, appearing in a publication now long ago superannuated andforgotten, is all that hitherto has stood in human record to attest whatmanner of men respectively were John Claggart and Billy Budd.