الفصل الفصل 2 · 第2章

Though our new-made foretopman was well received in the top and on the

gun-decks, hardly here was he that cynosure he had previously been among

those minor ships’ companies of the merchant marine, with which

companies only had he hitherto consorted.

He was young; and despite his all but fully developed frame, in aspect

looked even younger than he really was. This was owing to a lingering

adolescent expression in the as yet smooth face, all but feminine in

purity of natural complexion, but where, thanks to his sea-going, the

lily was quite suppressed, and the rose had some ado visibly to flush

through the tan.

To one essentially such a novice in the complexities of factitious life,

the abrupt transition from his former and simpler sphere to the ampler

and more knowing world of a great warship--this might well have abashed

him had there been any conceit or vanity in his composition. Among her

miscellaneous multitude, the _Indomitable_ mustered several individuals

who, however inferior in grade, were of no common natural stamp, sailors

more signally susceptive of that air which continuous martial discipline

and repeated presence in battle can in some degree impart even to the

average man. As the _Handsome Sailor_ Billy Budd’s position aboard the

seventy-four was something analogous to that of a rustic beauty

transplanted from the provinces and brought into competition with the

high-born dames of the court. But this change of circumstances he scarce

noted. As little did he observe that something about him provoked an

ambiguous smile in one or two harder faces among the blue-jackets. Nor

less unaware was he of the peculiar favourable effect his person and

demeanour had upon the more intelligent gentlemen of the quarter-deck.

Nor could this well have been otherwise. Cast in a mould peculiar to the

finest physical examples of those Englishmen in whom the Saxon strain

would seem not at all to partake of any Norman or other admixture, he

showed in face that humane look of reposeful good-nature which the Greek

sculptor in some instances gave to his heroic strong man, Hercules. But

this again was subtly modified by another and pervasive quality. The

ear, small and shapely, the arch of the foot, the curve in mouth and

nostril, even the indurated hand dyed to the orange-tawny of the

toucan’s bill, a hand telling of the halyards and tar-buckets; but,

above all, something in the mobile expression, and every chance attitude

and movement, something suggestive of a mother eminently favoured by

Love and the Graces; all this strangely indicated a lineage in direct

contradiction to his lot. The mysteriousness here, became less

mysterious through a matter of fact elicited when Billy at the capstan

was being formally mustered into the service. Asked by the officer, a

small, brisk little gentleman as it chanced, among other questions, his

place of birth, he replied, ‘Please, sir, I don’t know.’

‘Don’t know where you were born? Who was your father?’

‘God knows, sir.’

Struck by the straightforward simplicity of these replies, the officer

next asked, ‘Do you know anything about your beginning?’

‘No, sir. But I have heard that I was found in a pretty silk-lined

basket hanging one morning from the knocker of a good man’s door in

Bristol.’

‘_Found_, say you? Well,’ throwing back his head, and looking up and

down the new recruit--‘well, it turns out to have been a pretty good

find. Hope they’ll find some more like you, my man; the fleet sadly

needs them.’

Yes, Billy Budd was a foundling, a presumable by-blow, and, evidently,

no ignoble one. Noble descent was as evident in him as in a blood horse.

For the rest, with little or no sharpness of faculty or any trace of the

wisdom of the serpent, nor yet quite a dove, he possessed a certain

degree of intelligence along with the unconventional rectitude of a

sound human creature--one to whom not yet has been proffered the

questionable apple of knowledge. He was illiterate; he could not read,

but he could sing, and like the illiterate nightingale was sometimes the

composer of his own song.

Of self-consciousness he seemed to have little or none, or about as much

as we may reasonably impute to a dog of St. Bernard’s breed.

Habitually being with the elements and knowing little more of the land

than as a beach, or, rather, that portion of the terraqueous globe

providentially set apart for dance-houses, doxies and tapsters, in

short, what sailors call a ‘fiddlers’ green,’ his simple nature remained

unsophisticated by those moral obliquities which are not in every case

incomparable with that manufacturable thing known as respectability. But

are sailor frequenters of fiddlers’ greens without vices? No; but less

often than with landsmen do their vices, so-called, partake of

crookedness of heart, seeming less to proceed from viciousness than

exuberance of vitality after long restraint, frank manifestations in

accordance with natural law. By his original constitution, aided by the

co-operating influences of his lot, Billy in many respects was little

more than a sort of upright barbarian, much such perhaps as Adam

presumably might have been ere the urbane Serpent wriggled himself into

his company.

And here be it submitted that, apparently going to corroborate the

doctrine of man’s fall (a doctrine now popularly ignored), it is

observable that where certain virtues pristine and unadulterate

peculiarly characterise anybody in the external uniform of civilisation,

they will upon scrutiny seem not to be derived from custom or convention

but rather to be out of keeping with these, as if indeed exceptionally

transmitted from a period prior to Cain’s city and citified man. The

character marked by such qualities has to an unvitiated taste an

untampered-with flavour like that of berries, while the man thoroughly

civilised, even in a fair specimen of the breed, has to the same moral

palate a questionable smack as of a compounded wine. To any stray

inheritor of these primitive qualities found, like Caspar Hauser,

wandering dazed in any Christian capital of our time, the poet’s famous

invocation, near two thousand years ago, of the good rustic out of his

latitude in the Rome of the Cæsars, still appropriately holds:--

‘Faithful in word and thought,

What hast Thee, Fabian, to the city brought.’

Though our Handsome Sailor had as much of masculine beauty as one can

expect anywhere to see; nevertheless, like the beautiful woman in one of

Hawthorne’s minor tales, there was just one thing amiss in him. No

visible blemish, indeed, as with the lady; no, but an occasional

liability to a vocal defect. Though in the hour of elemental uproar or

peril, he was everything that a sailor should be, yet under sudden

provocation of strong heart-feeling his voice, otherwise singularly

musical, as if expressive of the harmony within, was apt to develop an

organic hesitancy,--in fact, more or less of a stutter or even worse. In

this particular Billy was a striking instance that the arch-interpreter,

the envious marplot of Eden still has more or less to do with every

human consignment to this planet of earth. In every case, one way or

another, he is sure to slip in his little card, as much as to remind

us--I too have a hand here.

The avowal of such an imperfection in the Handsome Sailor should be

evidence not alone that he is not presented as a conventional hero, but

also that the story in which he is the main figure is no romance.

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