The symmetry of form attainable in pure fiction can not so readily be
achieved in a narration essentially having less to do with fable than with fact.
Truth uncompromisingly told will always have its ragged edges; hence the
conclusion of such a narration is apt to be less finished than an architectural
finial.
How it fared with the Handsome Sailor during the year of the Great Mutiny has
been faithfully given. But tho' properly the story ends with his life, something
in way of sequel will not be amiss. Three brief chapters will suffice.
In the general re-christening under the Directory of the craft originally
forming the navy of the French monarchy, the St. Louis line-of-battle ship was
named the Atheiste. Such a name, like some other substituted ones in the
Revolutionary fleet, while proclaiming the infidel audacity of the ruling power
was yet, tho' not so intended to be, the aptest name, if one consider it, ever
given to a war-ship; far more so indeed than the Devastation, the Erebus (the
Hell) and similar names bestowed upon fighting-ships.
On the return-passage to the English fleet from the detached cruise during
which occurred the events already recorded, the Indomitable fell in with the
Atheiste. An engagement ensued; during which Captain Vere, in the act of putting
his ship alongside the enemy with a view of throwing his boarders across her
bulwarks, was hit by a musket-ball from a port-hole of the enemy's main cabin.
More than disabled he dropped to the deck and was carried below to the same
cock-pit where some of his men already lay. The senior Lieutenant took command.
Under him the enemy was finally captured and though much crippled was by rare
good fortune successfully taken into Gibraltar, an English port not very distant
from the scene of the fight. There, Captain Vere with the rest of the wounded
was put ashore. He lingered for some days, but the end came. Unhappily he was
cut off too early for the Nile and Trafalgar. The spirit that spite its
philosophic austerity may yet have indulged in the most secret of all passions,
ambition, never attained to the fulness of fame.
Not long before death, while lying under the influence of that magical drug
which soothing the physical frame mysteriously operates on the subtler element
in man, he was heard to murmur words inexplicable to his attendant- "Billy Budd,
Billy Budd." That these were not the accents of remorse, would seem clear from
what the attendant said to the Indomitable's senior officer of marines who, as
the most reluctant to condemn of the members of the drum-head court, too well
knew, tho' here he kept the knowledge to himself, who Billy Budd was.
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