Chapter Chapter 22 · 第22章

The night so luminous on the spar-deck (otherwise on the cavernous ones

below--levels so like the tiered galleries in a coal-mine) passed away.

Like the prophet in the chariot disappearing in heaven and dropping his

mantle to Elisha, the withdrawing night transferred its pale robe to the

peeping day. A meek, shy light appeared in the east, where stretched a

diaphanous fleece of white furrowed vapour. That light slowly waxed.

Suddenly _one[8] bells_ was struck aft, responded to by one louder

metallic stroke from forward. It was four o’clock in the morning.

Instantly the silver whistles were heard summoning all hands to witness

punishment. Up through the great hatchway, rimmed with racks of heavy

shot, the watch-below came pouring, overspreading with the watch already

on deck the space between the mainmast and foremast, including that

occupied by the capacious _launch_ and the black booms tiered on either

side of it, boat and booms making a summit of observation for the

powder-boys and younger tars. A different group comprising one watch of

topmen leaned over the side of the rail of that sea-balcony, no small

one in a seventy-four, looking down on the crowd below. Man or boy, none

spake but in whispers, and few spake at all. Captain Vere--as before,

the central figure among the assembled commissioned officers--stood nigh

the break of the poop-deck, facing forward. Just below him on the

quarter-deck the marines in full equipment were drawn up much as at the

scene of the promulgated sentence.

At sea in the old time, the execution by halter of a military sailor was

generally from the fore-yard. In the present instance, for special

reasons, the main-yard was assigned. Under an arm of that yard the

prisoner was presently brought up, the chaplain attending him. It was

noted at the time, and remarked upon afterwards, that in this final

scene the good man evinced little or nothing of the perfunctory. Brief

speech indeed he had with the condemned one, but the genuine Gospel was

less on his tongue than in his aspect and manner toward him. The final

preparations personal to the latter being speedily brought to an end by

two boatswain’s-mates, the consummation impended. Billy stood facing

aft. At the penultimate moment, his words, his only ones, words wholly

unobstructed in the utterance, were these--‘God bless Captain Vere!’

Syllables so unanticipated coming from one with the ignominious hemp

about his neck--a conventional felon’s benediction directed aft toward

the quarters of honour; syllables, too, delivered in the clear melody of

a singing-bird on the point of launching from the twig, had a phenomenal

effect, not unenhanced by the rare personal beauty of the young sailor,

spiritualised now through late experiences so poignantly profound.

Without volition, as it were, as if indeed the ship’s populace were the

vehicles of some vocal current-electric, with one voice, from alow and

aloft, came a resonant echo--‘God bless Captain Vere!’ And yet at that

instant Billy alone must have been in their hearts, even as he was in

their eyes.

At the pronounced words and the spontaneous echo that voluminously

rebounded them, Captain Vere, either through stoic self-control or a

sort of momentary paralysis induced by emotional shock, stood erectly

rigid as a musket in the ship-armourer’s rack.

The hull, deliberately recovering from the periodic roll to leeward, was

just regaining an even keel, when the last signal, the preconcerted dumb

one, was given. At the same moment it chanced that the vapoury fleece

hanging low in the east, was shot through with a soft glory as of the

fleece of the Lamb of God seen in mystical vision, and simultaneously

therewith, watched by the wedged mass of upturned faces, Billy ascended;

and ascending, took the full rose of the dawn.

In the pinioned figure, arrived at the yard-end, to the wonder of all,

no motion was apparent save that created by the slow roll of the hull,

in moderate weather so majestic in a great ship heavy-cannoned.

A DIGRESSION

When some days afterwards in reference to the singularity just

mentioned, the purser, a rather ruddy, rotund person, more accurate as

an accountant than profound as a philosopher, said at mess to the

surgeon, ‘What testimony to the force lodged in will-power,’ the latter,

spare and tall, one in whom a discreet causticity went along with a

manner less genial than polite, replied, ‘Your pardon, Mr. Purser. In a

hanging scientifically conducted--and under special orders I myself

directed how Budd’s was to be effected--any movement following the

completed suspension and originating in the body suspended, such

movement indicates mechanical spasm in the muscular system. Hence the

absence of that is no more attributable to will-power, as you call it,

than to horse-power--begging your pardon.’

‘But this muscular spasm you speak of, is not that in a degree more or

less invariable in these cases?’

‘Assuredly so, Mr. Purser.’

‘How then, my good sir, do you account for its absence in this

instance?’

‘Mr. Purser, it is clear that your sense of the singularity in this

matter equals not mine. You account for it by what you call will-power,

a term not yet included in the lexicon of science. For me I do not with

my present knowledge pretend to account for it at all. Even should one

assume the hypothesis that at the first touch of the halyards the action

of Budd’s heart, intensified by extraordinary emotion at its climax,

abruptly stopped--much like a watch when in carelessly winding it up you

strain at the finish, thus snapping the chain--even under that

hypothesis how account for the phenomenon that followed?’

‘You admit, then, that the absence of spasmodic movement was

phenomenal?’

‘It was phenomenal, Mr. Purser, in the sense that it was an appearance,

the cause of which is not immediately to be assigned.’

‘But tell me, my dear sir,’ pertinaciously continued the other, ‘was the

man’s death effected by the halter, or was it a species of euthanasia?’

‘_Euthanasia_, Mr. Purser, is something like your will-power; I doubt

its authenticity as a scientific term--begging your pardon again. It is

at once imaginative and metaphysical--in short, Greek. But,’ abruptly

changing his tone, ‘there is a case in the sick-bay that I do not care

to leave to my assistants. Beg your pardon, but excuse me.’ And rising

from the mess he formally withdrew.

-----

Footnote 8:

Written in pencil above this ‘one,’ an ‘eight,’ allowing a choice of

readings.

------------------------------------------------------------------------