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 Bellipotent’s senior officer of marines, who, as the most reluctant to condemn of the members of the drumhead court, too well knew, though here he kept the knowledge to himself, who Billy Budd was.
CHAPTER 29
SOME FEW weeks after the execution, among other matters under the head of “News from the Mediterranean,” there appeared in a naval chronicle of the time, an authorized weekly publication, an account of the affair. It was doubtless for the most part written in good faith, though the medium, partly rumor, through which the facts must have reached the writer served to deflect and in part falsify them. The account was as follows:
“On the tenth of the last month a deplorable occurrence took place on board H.M.S. Bellipotent. John Claggart, the ship’s master-at-arms, discovering that some sort of plot was incipient among an inferior section of the ship’s company, and that the ringleader was one William Budd; he, Claggart, in the act of arraigning the man before the captain, was vindictively stabbed to the heart by the suddenly drawn sheath knife of Budd.
“The deed and the implement employed sufficiently suggest that though mustered into the service under an English name the assassin was no Englishman, but one of those aliens adopting English cognomens whom the present extraordinary necessities of the service have caused to be admitted into it in considerable numbers.
“The enormity of the crime and the extreme depravity of the criminal appear the greater in view of the character of the victim, a middle-aged man respectable and discreet, belonging to that minor official grade, the petty officers, upon whom, as none know better than the commissioned gentlemen, the efficiency of His Majesty’s navy so largely depends. His function was a responsible one, at once onerous and thankless; and his fidelity in it the greater because of his strong patriotic impulse. In this instance as in so many other instances in these days, the character of this unfortunate man signally refutes, if refutation 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 the punishment has proved salutary. Nothing amiss is now apprehended aboard H.M.S. Bellipotent.”
The above, appearing in a publication now long ago superannuated and forgotten, is all that hitherto has stood in human record to attest what manner of men respectively were John Claggart and Billy Budd.
CHAPTER 30
EVERYTHING IS for a term venerated in navies. Any tangible object associated with some striking incident of the service is converted into a monument. The spar from which the foretopman was suspended was for some few years kept trace of by the bluejackets. Their knowledges followed it from ship to dockyard and again from dockyard to ship, still pursuing it even when at last reduced to a mere dockyard boom. To them a chip of it was as a piece of the Cross. Ignorant though they were of the secret facts of the tragedy, and not thinking but that the penalty was somehow unavoidably inflicted from the naval point of view, for all that, they instinctively felt that Billy was a sort of man as incapable of mutiny as of wilful murder. They recalled the fresh young image of the Handsome Sailor, that face never deformed by a sneer or subtler vile freak of the heart within. This impression of him was doubtless deepened by the fact that he was gone, and in a measure mysteriously gone. On the gun decks of the Bellipotent the general estimate of his nature and its unconscious simplicity eventually found rude utterance from another foretopman, one of his own watch, gifted, as some sailors are, with an artless poetic temperament. The tarry hand made some lines which, after circulating among the shipboard crews for a while, finally got rudely printed at Portsmouth as a ballad. The title given to it was the sailor’s.
BILLY IN THE DARBIES
Good of the chaplain to enter Lone Bay
And down on his marrowbones here and pray
For the likes just o’ me, Billy Budd.—But, look:
Through the port comes the moonshine astray!
It tips the guard’s cutlass and silvers this nook;
But ’twill die in the dawning of Billy’s last day.
A jewel-block they’ll make of me tomorrow,
Pendant pearl from the yardarm-end
Like the eardrop I gave to Bristol Molly—
O, ’tis me, not the sentence they’ll suspend.
Ay, ay, all is up; and I must up too,
Early in the morning, aloft from alow.
On an empty stomach now never it would do.
They’ll give me a nibble—bit o’ biscuit ere I go.
Sure, a messmate will reach me the last parting cup;
But, turning heads away from the hoist and the belay,
Heaven knows who will have the running of me up!
No pipe to those halyards.—But aren’t it all sham?
A blur’s in my eyes; it is dreaming that I am.
A hatchet to my hawser? All adrift to go?
The drum roll to grog, and Billy never know?
But Donald he has promised to stand by the plank;
So I’ll shake a friendly hand ere I sink.
But—no! It is dead then I’ll be, come to think.
I remember Taff the Welshman when he sank.
And his cheek it was like the budding pink.
But me they’ll lash in hammock, drop me deep.
Fathoms down, fathoms down, how I’ll dream fast asleep.
I feel it stealing now. Sentry, are you there?
Just ease these darbies at the wrist,
And roll me over fair!
I am sleepy, and the oozy weeds about me twist.
ASK YOUR BOOKSELLER FOR THESE BANTAM CLASSICS
BEOWULF AND OTHER ENGLISH POEMS, 978-0-553-21347-8
THE BHAGAVAD-GITA: KRISHNA’S COUNSEL IN TIME OF WAR, 978-0-553-21365-2
THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE and THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES, 978-0-553-21482-6
THE FEDERALIST PAPERS, 978-0-553-21340-9
FOUR GREAT AMERICAN CLASSICS (THE SCARLET LETTER; THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN; THE RED BADGE OF COURAGE; BILLY BUDD, SAILOR), 978-0-553-21362-1
GREEK DRAMA, 978-0-553-21221-1
JO’S BOYS, Louisa May Alcott, 978-0-553-21449-9
LITTLE WOMEN, Louisa May Alcott, 978-0-553-21275-4
WINESBURG, OHIO, Sherwood Anderson, 978-0-553-21439-0
THE COMPLETE PLAYS, Aristophanes, 978-0-553-21343-0
EMMA, Jane Austen, 978-0-553-21273-0
MANSFIELD PARK, Jane Austen, 978-0-553-21276-1
NORTHANGER ABBEY, Jane Austen, 978-0-553-21197-9
PERSUASION, Jane Austen, 978-0-553-21137-5
PRIDE AND PREJUDICE, Jane Austen, 978-0-553-21310-2
SENSE AND SENSIBILITY, Jane Austen, 978-0-553-21334-8
PETER PAN, J. M. Barrie, 978-0-553-21178-8
BRADBURY CLASSIC STORIES, Ray Bradbury, 978-0-553-28637-3
THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES, Ray Bradbury, 978-0-553-27822-4
JANE EYRE, Charlotte Brontë, 978-0-553-21140-5
VILLETTE, Charlotte Brontë, 978-0-553-21243-3
WUTHERING HEIGHTS, Emily Brontë, 978-0-553-21258-7
THE SECRET GARDEN, Frances Hodgson Burnett, 978-0-553-21201-3
ALICE’S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND and THROUGH THE LOOKING-GLASS, Lewis Carroll, 978-0-553-21345-4
MY ÁNTONIA, Willa Cather, 978-0-553-21418-5
O PIONEERS!, Willa Cather, 978-0-553-21358-4
THE CANTERBURY TALES, Geoffrey Chaucer, 978-0-553-21082-8
STORIES, Anton Chekhov, 978-0-553-38100-9
THE AWAKENING, Kate Chopin, 978-0-553-21330-0
THE WOMAN IN WHITE, Wilkie Collins, 978-0-553-21263-1
HEART OF DARKNESS and THE SECRET SHA
RER, Joseph Conrad, 978-0-553-21214-3
LORD JIM, Joseph Conrad, 978-0-553-21361-4
THE DEERSLAYER, James Fenimore Cooper, 978-0-553-21085-9
THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS, James Fenimore Cooper, 978-0-553-21329-4
MAGGIE: A GIRL OF THE STREETS AND OTHER SHORT FICTION, Stephen Crane, 978-0-553-21355-3
THE RED BADGE OF COURAGE, Stephen Crane, 978-0-553-21011-8
THE INFERNO, Dante, 978-0-553-21339-3
PARADISO, Dante, 978-0-553-21204-4
PURGATORIO, Dante, 978-0-553-21344-7
THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES, Charles Darwin, 978-0-553-21463-5
MOLL FLANDERS, Daniel Defoe, 978-0-553-21328-7
ROBINSON CRUSOE, Daniel Defoe, 978-0-553-21373-7
BLEAK HOUSE, Charles Dickens, 978-0-553-21223-5
A CHRISTMAS CAROL, Charles Dickens, 978-0-553-21244-0
DAVID COPPERFIELD, Charles Dickens, 978-0-553-21189-4
GREAT EXPECTATIONS, Charles Dickens, 978-0-553-21342-3
HARD TIMES, Charles Dickens, 978-0-553-21016-3
OLIVER TWIST, Charles Dickens, 978-0-553-21102-3
THE PICKWICK PAPERS, Charles Dickens, 978-0-553-21123-8
A TALE OF TWO CITIES, Charles Dickens, 978-0-553-21176-4
THREE SOLDIERS, John Dos Passos, 978-0-553-21456-7
THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV, Fyodor Dostoevsky, 978-0-553-21216-7
CRIME AND PUNISHMENT, Fyodor Dostoevsky, 978-0-553-21175-7
THE ETERNAL HUSBAND AND OTHER STORIES, Fyodor Dostoevsky, 978-0-553-21444-4
THE IDIOT, Fyodor Dostoevsky, 978-0-553-21352-2
NOTES FROM UNDERGROUND, Fyodor Dostoevsky, 978-0-553-21144-3
SHERLOCK HOLMES VOL I, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 978-0-553-21241-9
SHERLOCK HOLMES VOL II, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 978-0-553-21242-6
SISTER CARRIE, Theodore Dreiser, 978-0-553-21374-4
THE SOULS OF BLACK FOLK, W. E. B. Du Bois, 978-0-553-21336-2
THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO, Alexandre Dumas, 978-0-553-21350-8
THE THREE MUSKETEERS, Alexandre Dumas, 978-0-553-21337-9
MIDDLEMARCH, George Eliot, 978-0-553-21180-1
SILAS MARNER, George Eliot, 978-0-553-21229-7
SELECTED ESSAYS, LECTURES, AND POEMS, Ralph Waldo Emerson, 978-0-553-21388-1
TEN PLAYS BY EURIPIDES, Euripides, 978-0-553-21363-8
APRIL MORNING, Howard Fast, 978-0-553-27322-9
MADAME BOVARY, Gustave Flaubert, 978-0-553-21341-6
HOWARDS END, E. M. Forster, 978-0-553-21208-2
A ROOM WITH A VIEW, E. M. Forster, 978-0-553-21323-2
THE DIARY OF A YOUNG GIRL, Anne Frank, 978-0-553-57712-9
ANNE FRANK’S TALES FROM THE SECRET ANNEX, Anne Frank, 978-0-553-58638-1
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY AND OTHER WRITINGS, Benjamin Franklin, 978-0-553-21075-0
THE YELLOW WALLPAPER AND OTHER WRITINGS, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, 978-0-553-21375-1
FAUST: FIRST PART, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 978-0-553-21348-5
THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS, Kenneth Grahame, 978-0-553-21368-3
THE COMPLETE FAIRY TALES OF THE BROTHERS GRIMM, translated by Jack Zipes, 978-0-553-38216-7
ROOTS, Alex Haley, 978-0-440-17464-6
FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD, Thomas Hardy, 978-0-553-21331-7
JUDE THE OBSCURE, Thomas Hardy, 978-0-553-21191-7
THE MAYOR OF CASTERBRIDGE, Thomas Hardy, 978-0-553-21024-8
THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE, Thomas Hardy, 978-0-553-21269-3
TESS OF THE D’URBERVILLES, Thomas Hardy, 978-0-553-21168-9
THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES, Nathaniel Hawthorne, 978-0-553-21270-9
THE SCARLET LETTER, Nathaniel Hawthorne, 978-0-553-21009-5
THE FAIRY TALES OF HERMANN HESSE, Hermann Hesse, 978-0-553-37776-7
SIDDHARTHA, Hermann Hesse, 978-0-553-20884-9
THE ODYSSEY OF HOMER, Homer, 978-0-553-21399-7
THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME, Victor Hugo, 978-0-553-21370-6
FOUR GREAT PLAYS: A DOLL’S HOUSE, GHOSTS, AN ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE, and THE WILD DUCK, Henrik Ibsen, 978-0-553-21280-8
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY, Henry James, 978-0-553-21127-6
THE TURN OF THE SCREW AND OTHER SHORT FICTION, Henry James, 978-0-553-21059-0
A COUNTRY DOCTOR, Sarah Orne Jewett, 978-0-553-21498-7
DUBLINERS, James Joyce, 978-0-553-21380-5
A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN, James Joyce, 978-0-553-21404-8
THE METAMORPHOSIS, Franz Kafka, 978-0-553-21369-0
THE STORY OF MY LIFE, Helen Keller, 978-0-553-21387-4
CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS, Rudyard Kipling, 978-0-553-21190-0
THE JUNGLE BOOK, Rudyard Kipling, 978-0-553-21199-3
KIM, Rudyard Kipling, 978-0-553-21332-4
LADY CHATTERLEY’S LOVER, D. H. Lawrence, 978-0-553-21262-4
SONS AND LOVERS, D. H. Lawrence, 978-0-553-21192-4
WOMEN IN LOVE, D. H. Lawrence, 978-0-553-21454-3
THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA, Gaston Leroux, 978-0-553-21376-8
BABBITT, Sinclair Lewis, 978-0-553-21486-4
MAIN STREET, Sinclair Lewis, 978-0-553-21451-2
THE CALL OF THE WILD and WHITE FANG, Jack London, 978-0-553-21233-4
THE SEA WOLF, Jack London, 978-0-553-21225-9
TO BUILD A FIRE AND OTHER STORIES, Jack London, 978-0-553-21335-5
THE PRINCE, Niccolò Machiavelli, 978-0-553-21278-5
DEATH IN VENICE AND OTHER STORIES, Thomas Mann, 978-0-553-21333-1
THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, 978-0-553-21406-2
OF HUMAN BONDAGE, W. Somerset Maugham, 978-0-553-21392-8
THE BALLAD OF THE SAD CAFÉ AND OTHER STORIES, Carson McCullers, 978-0-553-27254-3
THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER, Carson McCullers, 978-0-553-26963-5
THE MEMBER OF THE WEDDING, Carson McCullers, 978-0-553-25051-0
BILLY BUDD, SAILOR AND OTHER STORIES, Herman Melville, 978-0-553-21274-7
MOBY-DICK, Herman Melville, 978-0-553-21311-9
ON LIBERTY and UTILITARIANISM, John Stuart Mill, 978-0-553-21414-7
THE ANNOTATED MILTON, John Milton, 978-0-553-58110-2
THE SCARLET PIMPERNEL, Baroness Emmuska Orczy, 978-0-553-21402-4
COMMON SENSE, Thomas Paine, 978-0-553-21465-9
THE DIALOGUES OF PLATO, Plato, 978-0-553-21371-3
THE TELL-TALE HEART AND OTHER WRITINGS, Edgar Allan Poe, 978-0-553-21228-0
CYRANO DE BERGERAC, Edmond Rostand, 978-0-553-21360-7
IVANHOE, Sir Walter Scott, 978-0-553-21326-3
THE COMPLETE WORKS OF SHAKESPEARE (29 vols.), William Shakespeare PYGMALION and MAJOR BARBARA, George Bernard Shaw, 978-0-553-21408-6
FRANKENSTEIN, Mary Shelley, 978-0-553-21247-1
THE JUNGLE, Upton Sinclair, 978-0-553-21245-7
THE WEALTH OF NATIONS, Adam Smith, 978-0-553-58597-1
ONE DAY IN THE LIFE OF IVAN DENISOVICH, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, 978-0-553-24777-0
THE COMPLETE PLAYS OF SOPHOCLES, Sophocles, 978-0-553-21354-6
DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE, Robert Louis Stevenson, 978-0-553-21277-8
KIDNAPPED, Robert Louis Stevenson, 978-0-553-21260-0
TREASURE ISLAND, Robert Louis Stevenson, 978-0-553-21249-5
DRACULA, Bram Stoker, 978-0-553-21271-6
UNCLE TOM’S CABIN, Harriet Beecher Stowe, 978-0-553-21218-1
GULLIVER’S TRAVELS AND OTHER WRITINGS, Jonathan Swift, 978-0-553-21232-7
VANITY FAIR, William Makepeace Thackeray, 978-0-553-21462-8
WALDEN AND OTHER WRITINGS, Henry David Thoreau, 978-0-553-21246-4
DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA, Alexis de Tocqueville, 978-0-553-21464-2
ANNA KARENINA, Leo Tolstoy, 978-0-553-21346-1
THE DEATH OF IVAN ILYICH, Leo Tolstoy, 978-0-553-21035-4
THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN, Mark Twain, 978-0-553-21079-8
THE ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER, Mark Twain, 978-0-553-21128-3
THE COMPLETE SHORT STORIES OF MARK TWAIN, Mark Twain, 978-0-553-21195-
5
A CONNECTICUT YANKEE IN KING ARTHUR’S COURT, Mark Twain, 978-0-553-21143-6
LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI, Mark Twain, 978-0-553-21349-2
THE PRINCE AND THE PAUPER, Mark Twain, 978-0-553-21256-3
PUDD’NHEAD WILSON, Mark Twain, 978-0-553-21158-0
20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA, Jules Verne, 978-0-553-21252-5
AROUND THE WORLD IN EIGHTY DAYS, Jules Verne, 978-0-553-21356-0
FROM THE EARTH TO THE MOON, Jules Verne, 978-0-553-21420-8
THE AENEID OF VIRGIL, Virgil, 978-0-553-21041-5
CANDIDE, Voltaire, 978-0-553-21166-5
THE INVISIBLE MAN, H. G. Wells, 978-0-553-21353-9
THE ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU, H. G. Wells, 978-0-553-21432-1
THE TIME MACHINE, H. G. Wells, 978-0-553-21351-5
THE WAR OF THE WORLDS, H. G. Wells, 978-0-553-21338-6
THE AGE OF INNOCENCE, Edith Wharton, 978-0-553-21450-5
THE CUSTOM OF THE COUNTRY, Edith Wharton, 978-0-553-21393-5
ETHAN FROME AND OTHER SHORT FICTION, Edith Wharton, 978-0-553-21255-6
THE HOUSE OF MIRTH, Edith Wharton, 978-0-553-21320-1
SUMMER, Edith Wharton, 978-0-553-21422-2
LEAVES OF GRASS, Walt Whitman, 978-0-553-21116-0
THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY AND OTHER WRITINGS, Oscar Wilde, 978-0-553-21254-9
THE SWISS FAMILY ROBINSON, Johann David Wyss, 978-0-553-21403-1
EARLY AFRICAN-AMERICAN CLASSICS, edited by Anthony Appiah, 978-0-553-21379-9
FIFTY GREAT SHORT STORIES, edited by Milton Crane, 978-0-553-27745-6
FIFTY GREAT AMERICAN SHORT STORIES, edited by Milton Crane, 978-0-553-27294-9
SHORT SHORTS, edited by Irving Howe, 978-0-553-27440-0
GREAT AMERICAN SHORT STORIES, edited by Wallace & Mary Stegner, 978-0-440-33060-8
AMERICAN SHORT STORY MASTERPIECES, edited by Raymond Carver & Tom Jenks, 978-0-440-20423-7
SHORT STORY MASTERPIECES, edited by Robert Penn Warren, 978-0-440-37864-8
THE VOICE THAT IS GREAT WITHIN US, edited by Hayden Carruth, 978-0-553-26263-6
THE BLACK POETS, edited by Dudley Randal, 978-0-553-27563-6
THREE CENTURIES OF AMERICAN POETRY, edited by Allen Mandelbaum, (Trade) 978-0-553-37518-3, (Hardcover) 978-0-553-10250-5
Four Great American Classics Page 80
