الفصل الفصل 13 · 第13章

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 (Billy’s) eyes?

Where could the fellow get guineas? Why, even buttons, spare buttons,

are not so plentiful at sea. The more he turned the matter over, the

more he was nonplussed, and made uneasy and discomforted. In his

disgustful recoil from an overture which though 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 recognised 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 rattle-brain, 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.

Although 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

speculations into which he was led were so disturbingly alien to him,

that he did his best to smother them. 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 savour overmuch of the dirty work of a tell-tale. 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, _Jemmy Legs_ is _down_ on you.’

‘And what,’ rejoined Billy in amazement, ‘has _Jemmy 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. For it was his wont to relapse into grim

silence when interrogated in sceptical 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.

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