Chapter Chapter 25 · 第25章

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 authorised weekly publication, an account of the affair. It

was doubtless for the most part written in good faith, though the

medium, partly rumour, through which the facts must have reached the

writer, served to deflect, and in part falsify them. Because it appeared

in a publication now long ago superannuated and forgotten, and is all

that hitherto has stood on human record to attest what manner of men

respectively were John Claggart and Billy Budd, it is here reproduced.

‘On the tenth of the last month a deplorable occurrence took place

on board H.M.S. _Indomitable_. 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 an

English cognomen 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 the

unfortunate man signally refutes, if refutation were needed, that

peevish saying attributed to 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. _Indomitable_.’[11]

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Footnote 11:

An author’s note, crossed out, here appears in the original MS. It

reads:--Here ends a story not unwarranted by what happens in this

incongruous world of ours--innocence and infirmary, spiritual

depravity and fair respite.

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