This incident sorely puzzled Billy Budd. It was an entirely new experience;
the first time in his life that he had ever been personally approached in
underhand intriguing fashion. Prior to this encounter he had known nothing of
the afterguardsman, the two men being stationed wide apart, one forward and
aloft during his watch, the other on deck and aft.
What could it mean? And could they really be guineas, those two glittering
objects the interloper had held up to his eyes? Where could the fellow get
guineas? Why even spare buttons are not so plentiful at sea. The more he turned
the matter over, the more he was non-plussed, and made uneasy and discomforted.
In his disgustful recoil from an overture which tho' he but ill comprehended he
instinctively knew must involve evil of some sort, Billy Budd was like a young
horse fresh from the pasture suddenly inhaling a vile whiff from some chemical
factory, and by repeated snortings tries to get it out of his nostrils and
lungs. This frame of mind barred all desire of holding further parley with the
fellow, even were it but for the purpose of gaining some enlightenment as to his
design in approaching him. And yet he was not without natural curiosity to see
how such a visitor in the dark would look in broad day.
He espied him the following afternoon, in his first dog-watch, below, one of
the smokers on that forward part of the upper gun deck allotted to the pipe. He
recognized him by his general cut and build, more than by his round freckled
face and glassy eyes of pale blue, veiled with lashes all but white. And yet
Billy was a bit uncertain whether indeed it were he- yonder chap about his own
age chatting and laughing in free-hearted way, leaning against a gun; a genial
young fellow enough to look at, and something of a rattlebrain, to all
appearance. Rather chubby too for a sailor, even an afterguardsman. In short the
last man in the world, one would think, to be overburthened with thoughts,
especially those perilous thoughts that must needs belong to a conspirator in
any serious project, or even to the underling of such a conspirator.
Altho' Billy was not aware of it, the fellow, with a sidelong watchful glance
had perceived Billy first, and then noting that Billy was looking at him,
thereupon nodded a familiar sort of friendly recognition as to an old
acquaintance, without interrupting the talk he was engaged in with the group of
smokers. A day or two afterwards, chancing in the evening promenade on a gun
deck to pass Billy, he offered a flying word of good-fellowship, as it were,
which by its unexpectedness, and equivocalness under the circumstances so
embarrassed Billy that he knew not how to respond to it, and let it go
unnoticed.
Billy was now left more at a loss than before. The ineffectual speculation
into which he was led was so disturbingly alien to him, that he did his best to
smother it. It never entered his mind that here was a matter which from its
extreme questionableness, it was his duty as a loyal blue-jacket to report in
the proper quarter. And, probably, had such a step been suggested to him, he
would have been deterred from taking it by the thought, one of
novice-magnanimity, that it would savor overmuch of the dirty work of a
telltale. He kept the thing to himself. Yet upon one occasion, he could not
forbear a little disburthening himself to the old Dansker, tempted thereto
perhaps by the influence of a balmy night when the ship lay becalmed; the twain,
silent for the most part, sitting together on deck, their heads propped against
the bulwarks. But it was only a partial and anonymous account that Billy gave,
the unfounded scruples above referred to preventing full disclosure to anybody.
Upon hearing Billy's version, the sage Dansker seemed to divine more than he was
told; and after a little meditation during which his wrinkles were pursed as
into a point, quite effacing for the time that quizzing expression his face
sometimes wore,"Didn't I say so, Baby Budd?"
"Say what?" demanded Billy.
"Why, Jimmy Legs is down on you."
"And what," rejoined Billy in amazement, "has Jimmy Legs to do with that
cracked afterguardsman?"
"Ho, it was an afterguardsman then. A cat's-paw, a cat's-paw!" And with that
exclamation, which, whether it had reference to a light puff of air just then
coming over the calm sea, or subtler relation to the afterguardsman there is no
telling, the old Merlin gave a twisting wrench with his black teeth at his plug
of tobacco, vouchsafing no reply to Billy's impetuous question, tho' now
repeated, for it was his wont to relapse into grim silence when interrogated in
skeptical sort as to any of his sententious oracles, not always very clear ones,
rather partaking of that obscurity which invests most Delphic deliverances from
any quarter.
Long experience had very likely brought this old man to that bitter prudence
which never interferes in aught and never gives advice.
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