Life in the fore-top well agreed with Billy Budd. There, when not actually
engaged on the yards yet higher aloft, the topmen, who as such had been picked
out for youth and activity, constituted an aerial club lounging at ease against
the smaller stun'sails rolled up into cushions, spinning yarns like the lazy
gods, and frequently amused with what was going on in the busy world of the
decks below. No wonder then that a young fellow of Billy's disposition was well
content in such society. Giving no cause of offence to anybody, he was always
alert at a call. So in the merchant service it had been with him. But now such a
punctiliousness in duty was shown that his topmates would sometimes
good-naturedly laugh at him for it. This heightened alacrity had its cause,
namely, the impression made upon him by the first formal gangway-punishment he
had ever witnessed, which befell the day following his impressment. It had been
incurred by a little fellow, young, a novice, an afterguardsman absent from his
assigned post when the ship was being put about; a dereliction resulting in a
rather serious hitch to that manoeuvre, one demanding instantaneous promptitude
in letting go and making fast. When Billy saw the culprit's naked back under the
scourge gridironed with red welts, and worse; when he marked the dire expression
on the liberated man's face as with his woolen shirt flung over him by the
executioner he rushed forward from the spot to bury himself in the crowd, Billy
was horrified. He resolved that never through remissness would he make himself
liable to such a visitation or do or omit aught that might merit even verbal
reproof. What then was his surprise and concern when ultimately he found himself
getting into petty trouble occasionally about such matters as the stowage of his
bag or something amiss in his hammock, matters under the police oversight of the
ship's-corporals of the lower decks, and which brought down on him a vague
threat from one of them.
So heedful in all things as he was, how could this be? He could not
understand it, and it more than vexed him. When he spoke to his young topmates
about it they were either lightly incredulous or found something comical in his
unconcealed anxiety. "Is it your bag, Billy?" said one. "Well, sew yourself up
in it, bully boy, and then you'll be sure to know if anybody meddles with it."
Now there was a veteran aboard who because his years began to disqualify him
for more active work had been recently assigned duty as mainmastman in his
watch, looking to the gear belayed at the rail roundabout that great spar near
the deck. At off-times the Foretopman had picked up some acquaintance with him,
and now in his trouble it occurred to him that he might be the sort of person to
go to for wise counsel. He was an old Dansker long anglicized in the service, of
few words, many wrinkles and some honorable scars. His wizened face, time-tinted
and weather-stained to the complexion of an antique parchment, was here and
there peppered blue by the chance explosion of a gun-cartridge in action. He was
an Agamemnon-man; some two years prior to the time of this story having served
under Nelson, when but Sir Horatio, in that ship immortal in naval memory, and
which, dismantled and in part broken up to her bare ribs, is seen a grand
skeleton in Haydon's etching. As one of a boarding-party from the Agamemnon he
had received a cut slantwise along one temple and cheek, leaving a long scar
like a streak of dawn's light falling athwart the dark visage. It was on account
of that scar and the affair in which it was known that he had received it, as
well as from his blue-peppered complexion, that the Dansker went among the
Indomitable's crew by the name of "Board-her-in-the-smoke."
Now the first time that his small weazel-eyes happened to light on Billy
Budd, a certain grim internal merriment set all his ancient wrinkles into antic
play. Was it that his eccentric unsentimental old sapience, primitive in its
kind, saw or thought it saw something which, in contrast with the war-ship's
environment, looked oddly incongruous in the Handsome Sailor? But after slyly
studying him at intervals, the old Merlin's equivocal merriment was modified;
for now when the twain would meet, it would start in his face a quizzing sort of
look, but it would be but momentary and sometimes replaced by an expression of
speculative query as to what might eventually befall a nature like that, dropped
into a world not without some man-traps and against whose subtleties simple
courage, lacking experience and address and without any touch of defensive
ugliness, is of little avail; and where such innocence as man is capable of does
yet in a moral emergency not always sharpen the faculties or enlighten the will.
However it was, the Dansker in his ascetic way rather took to Billy. Nor was
this only because of a certain philosophic interest in such a character. There
was another cause. While the old man's eccentricities, sometimes bordering on
the ursine, repelled the juniors, Billy, undeterred thereby, revering him as a
salt hero, would make advances, never passing the old Agamemnon-man without a
salutation marked by that respect which is seldom lost on the aged however
crabbed at times or whatever their station in life.
There was a vein of dry humor, or what not, in the mast-man; and, whether in
freak of patriarchal irony touching Billy's youth and athletic frame, or for
some other and more recondite reason, from the first in addressing him he always
substituted Baby for Billy. The Dansker in fact being the originator of the name
by which the Foretopman eventually became known aboard ship.
Well then, in his mysterious little difficulty, going in quest of the
wrinkled one, Billy found him off duty in a dog-watch ruminating by himself,
seated on a shot-box of the upper gun deck, now and then surveying with a
somewhat cynical regard certain of the more swaggering promenaders there. Billy
recounted his trouble, again wondering how it all happened. The salt seer
attentively listened, accompanying the Foretopman's recital with queer
twitchings of his wrinkles and problematical little sparkles of his small ferret
eyes. Making an end of his story, the Foretopman asked, "And now, Dansker, do
tell me what you think of it."
The old man, shoving up the front of his tarpaulin and deliberately rubbing
the long slant scar at the point where it entered the thin hair, laconically
said, "Baby Budd, Jimmy Legs" (meaning the Master-at-arms) "is down on you."
"Jimmy Legs!" ejaculated Billy, his welkin eyes expanding; "what for? Why he
calls me the sweet and pleasant fellow, they tell me."
"Does he so?" grinned the grizzled one; then said, "Ay, Baby Lad, a sweet
voice has Jimmy Legs."
"No, not always. But to me he has. I seldom pass him but there comes a
pleasant word."
"And that's because he's down upon you, Baby Budd."
Such reiteration along with the manner of it, incomprehensible to a novice,
disturbed Billy almost as much as the mystery for which he had sought
explanation. Something less unpleasingly oracular he tried to extract; but the
old sea-Chiron, thinking perhaps that for the nonce he had sufficiently
instructed his young Achilles, pursed his lips, gathered all his wrinkles
together and would commit himself to nothing further.
Years, and those experiences which befall certain shrewder men subordinated
life-long to the will of superiors, all this had developed in the Dansker the
pithy guarded cynicism that was his leading characteristic.
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