第 二十三 章 · 第23章

The silence at the moment of execution, and for a moment or two

continuing thereafter, but emphasised by the regular wash of the sea

against the hull, or the flutter of a sail caused by the helmsman’s eyes

being tempted astray, this emphasised silence was gradually disturbed by

a sound not easily to be verbally rendered. Whoever has heard the

freshet-wave of a torrent suddenly swelled by pouring showers in

tropical mountains, showers not shared by the plain; whoever has heard

the first muffled murmur of its sloping advance through precipitous

woods, may form some conception of the sound now heard. The seeming

remoteness of its source was because of its murmurous indistinctness,

since it came from close by, even from the men massed on the ship’s open

deck. Being inarticulate, it was dubious in significance further than it

seemed to indicate some capricious revulsion of thought or feeling such

as mobs ashore are liable to, in the present instance possibly implying

a sullen revocation on the men’s part of their involuntary echoing of

Billy’s benediction. But ere the murmur had time to wax into clamour it

was met by a strategic command, the more telling that it came with

abrupt unexpectedness.

‘Pipe down the starboard watch, boatswain, and see that they go.’

Shrill as the shriek of the sea-hawk the whistles of the boatswain and

his mates pierced that ominous low sound, dissipating it; and yielding

to the mechanism of discipline the throng was thinned by one half. For

the remainder, most of them were set to temporary employments connected

with trimming the yards and so forth, business readily to be found upon

occasion by any officer-of-the-deck.

Now each proceeding that follows a mortal sentence pronounced at sea by

a drum-head court is characterised by promptitude not perceptibly

merging into hurry, though bordering that. The hammock, the one which

had been Billy’s bed when alive, having already been ballasted with

shot, and otherwise prepared to serve for his canvas coffin, the last

office of the sea-undertakers, the sail-maker’s mates, was now speedily

completed. When everything was in readiness a second call for all hands,

made necessary by the strategic movement before mentioned, was sounded,

and now to witness burial.

The details of this closing formality it needs not to give. But when the

tilted plank let slide its freight into the sea, a second strange human

murmur was heard, blended now with another inarticulate sound proceeding

from certain larger sea-fowl, who, their attention having been attracted

by the peculiar commotion in the water resulting from the heavy sloped

dive of the shotted hammock into the sea, flew screaming to the spot. So

near the hull did they come, that the stridor or bony creak of their

gaunt double-jointed pinions was audible. As the ship under light airs

passed on, leaving the burial spot astern, they still kept circling it

low down with the moving shadow of their outstretched wings and the

croaked requiem of their cries.

Upon sailors as superstitious as those of the age preceding ours,

man-of-war’s men, too, who had just beheld the prodigy of repose in the

form suspended in air and now foundering in the deeps; to such mariners

the action of the sea-fowl, though dictated by mere animal greed for

prey, was big with no prosaic significance. An uncertain movement began

among them, in which some encroachment was made. It was tolerated but

for a moment. For suddenly the drum beat to quarters, which familiar

sound happening at least twice every day, had upon the present occasion

a signal peremptoriness in it. True martial discipline long continued

superinduces in average man a sort of impulse of docility whose

operation at the official tone of command much resembles in its

promptitude the effect of an instinct.

The drum-beat dissolved the multitude, distributing most of them along

the batteries of the two covered gun-decks. There, as wont, the gun

crews stood by their respective cannon erect and silent. In due course

the first officer, sword under arm and standing in his place on the

quarter-deck, formally received the successive reports of the sworded

lieutenants commanding the sections of batteries below; the last of

which reports being made, the summed report he delivered with the

customary salute to the commander. All this occupied time, which in the

present case was the object of beating to quarters at an hour prior to

the customary one. That such variance from usage was authorised by an

officer like Captain Vere, a martinet as some deemed him, was evidence

of the necessity for unusual action implied in what he deemed to be

temporarily the mood of his men. ‘With mankind,’ he would say, ‘forms,

measured forms, are everything; and that is the import couched in the

story of Orpheus with his lyre spell-binding the wild denizens of the

woods.’ And this he once applied to the disruption of forms going on

across the Channel and the consequences thereof.

At this unwonted muster at quarters all proceeded as at the regular

hour. The band on the quarter-deck played a sacred air. After which the

chaplain went through the customary morning service. That done, the drum

beat the retreat, and toned by music and religious rites subserving the

discipline and purpose of war, the men in their wonted orderly manner

dispersed to the places allotted them when not at the guns.

And now it was full day. The fleece of low-hanging vapour had vanished,

licked up by the sun that late had so glorified it. And the

circumambient air in the clearness of its serenity was like smooth white

marble in the polished block not yet removed from the marble-dealer’s

yard.

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