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COPYRIGHT (O R 1956, BY
LIVERIGHT PUBLISHING CORPORATION

COPYRIGHT, 1928, BY
HORACE LIVERIGHT, INC.

*

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
LIVERIGHT PUBLISHING CORPORATION

*

BLACK AND GOLD EDITION
January, 1942

*

Manufactured

in the United States of America

CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . .
BENITO CERENO . . . . . . . . . .
BARTLEBY THE SCRIVENER . . . . . . .
THE ENCANTADAS, 0R ENCHANTED ISLES . . .

BILLY BUDD, FORETOPMAN . . . . . . .

DAG!
vii

107

I57
227

 

INTRODUCTION

I

ON Monday, September 28, I 891, at 104 East 26th Street,
New York City, an obscure and elderly private citizen quietly
died in bed. His funeral, at Woodlawn Cemetery, was at—
tended by his Wife and his two daughters—all of his im-
mediate family that survived—and a meagre scattering of
family acquaintances. The New York Time: missed the
news of this demise, but published a few days later an edi—
torial which began:

“There has died and been buried in this city, during the
current week, at an advanced age, a man who is so little
known, even by name, to the generation now in the vigour of
life, that only one newspaper contained an obituary account
of him, and this was of but three or four lines.”

In I 885, Robert Buchanan, in speaking of a pilgrimage he
had made to these shores, wrote of Melville in the London
Academy: “I sought everywhere for this Triton, who is still
living somewhere in New York. No one seemed to know
anything of the one great writer ﬁt to stand shoulder with
Whitman on that continent.”

The man who had created Moby—Dick had, in early man-
hood, prayed that if his soul missed its haven that it might, ‘1
at least, end in utter wreck. “All Fame 13 patronage,” he
. had once in the long past written to Hawthorne, “let me be
infamous.” But as if ‘ in contempt even for this preference,
he had, during t‘ ‘g’f't half of his life, cruised OE and away
upon boundles: and uncharted water; and in the end he sank

down into death, without a ripple of renown.
vii

viii INTRODUCTION

Though for the twenty years between I866 and 1886,
Melville had been employed as Inspector of Customs, and
the world at large had seemed utterly to have forgotten him
as a man-of-letters, his wife, though temperamentally un—
ﬁtted to understand him in any profound essential, had borne
with him gallantly through poverty, sickness, and apparent
failure, and on his certiﬁcate of death she declared her faith
by giving his “Occupation” as that of “Writer.” And the
funeral once over, Mrs. Melville returned to his bedroom
study, with its black, narrow bed, its black bookcases lined
with volumes of poets and philosophers, with its prints and
etchings that Melville had collected, and at the massive and
ornate desk (brought over from France by Melville’s father
before Melville’s birth) she went through Melville’s papers.
What was destroyed will never be known. What has sur—
vived she sorted, tied with pink tape into orderly bundles
frequently labelled in pencil in her hand, and deposited the
slight bulk of it all into a miniature trunk hardly larger than
an average sized suit-case, where they reposed untampered
with for twenty-eight years.

Mrs. Melville died; and then the older of her two daugh-
ters. The other daughter had married, and to her daughter,
Mrs. Eleanor Melville Metcalf, descended this trunk.

As a small girl, Mrs. Metcalf had'been perhaps as intimate
a companion to Melville’s solitude as any human soul alive.
In recollection of Melville, Mrs. Metcalf has written:

“I was not yet ten years old when my grandfather died.
To put aside all later impressions gathered from those who
knew him long and coloured by their personal reactions, all
impressions made by subsequent reading of his books, results
in a series of childish recollections, vividly homely scenes
wherein he formed a palpable background for my own inter—
ested activities.

I {N TROD UC TION ix

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“Setting forth on a bright spring afternoon for a trip to
Central Park, the Mecca of most of our pilgrimages, he made
a brave and striking ﬁgure as he walked erect, head thrown
back, cane in hand, inconspicuously dressed in a dark blue
suit and a soft black felt hat. . . .

“We never came in from a trip of this kind, nor indeed
from any walk, but we stopped in the front hall under a col-
oured engraving of the Bay of Naples, its still blue dotted
with tiny white sails. He would point at them with his cane
and say, ‘See the little boats sailing hither and thither.’ . . .

“Once in a long while his interest in his grandchildren led
him to cross the river and take the suburban train to East
Orange, where we lived. He must have been an impressive
ﬁgure, sitting silently on the piazza of our little house, while
my sister and I pranced with a neighbour’s boy and his ex-
press wagon, ﬁlled with a satisﬁed sense of the strength and
accomplishment of our years. When he had had enough of
such exhibitions, he would suddenly rise and take the next
train back to Hoboken.

“Chieﬂy do I think of him connected with diﬁerent parts
of the 26th Street house.

“His own room was a place of mystery and awe to me;
there I never ventured unless invited by him. It looked
bleakly north. The great mahogany desk, heavily bearing
up four shelves of dull gilt and leather books; the high dim
bookcase, topped by strange plaster heads that peered along
the ceiling level, or bent down, searching blindly with sight-
less balls; the small black iron bed, covered with dark cre-
tonne; the narrow iron grate 5 the wide table in the alcove,
piled with papers I would not dream of touching—these
made a room even more to be ﬂed than the back parlour,
by whose door I always ran to escape the following eyes of
his portrait, which hung there in a half light. Yet 10, the
paper-piled table also held a little bag of ﬁgs, and one of

x INTRODUCTION

the pieces of sweet stickiness was for me. ‘Tittery-Eye’ he
called me, and awe melted into glee, as I skipped away to my
grandmother’s room, which adjoined.

“That was a very diﬂerent place—-sunny, comfortable and
familiar, with a sewing machine and a white bed like other
peoples’. In the corner stood a great arm chair, where he
always sat when he left the recesses of his own dark privacy.
I used to climb on his knee, while he told me wild stories of
cannibals and tropical isles. Little did I then know that he
was reliving his own past. We came nearest intimacy at these
times, and part of the fun was to put my hands in his thick
beard and squeeze it hard. It was no soft silken beard, but
tight curled like the horse-hair breaking out of old uphol—
stered chairs, ﬁrm and wiry to the grasp, and squarely
chopped.

“Sad it is that he felt that his grandchildren would turn
against him as he grew older. He used to forebode as
much. . . .”

In the case of Mrs. Metcalf, at least, his persecution pat-
tern was misplaced. She it was who elected herself to the
trust of preserving all possible records of her grandfather.
And with Mrs. Metcalf it was my privilege to examine the
trunk of Melville papers just arrived in her possession, and
to untie and examine the neatly docketed parcels that Mrs.
Metcalf had preserved.

Not the least exciting bundle in the trunk was a batch of
some 340 sheets of yellow paper, about six by eight inches,
covered with an incredibly crabbed manuscript in pencil in
Melville’s hand. A posthumous novel it turned out to be:
Billy Budd. “Friday, November 16, I888, Begun,” it
started oﬁ, “End of Book, April 19, I891,” it concluded.
Here then seemed a completed work ﬁnished within a few
months of Melville’s death: a last testament to a world he

IatTROD UCTION xi

 

had come to rate as being too inconsiderable to address, writ-
ten in the room that had ﬁlled Mrs. Metcalf with such mys-
tery and awe, and by the man Whose beard she had crumpled
in her hands,—the man whose published works had marked
him as the most completely disillusioned of American writers.

This, as everything else, I was permitted to copy. In
1924., in a limited edition, Billy Budd was published for the
ﬁrst time by Constable and Company, in England,—and
never since. And between that edition and this present one
there are certain minor variations which need a word of
comment.

Such is the state of the Billy Budd manuscript that there
can never appear a reprint that will be adequate to every
ideal. In the ﬁrst place (though this is not the worst difﬁ—
culty) the script is in certain parts a miracle of crabbedness:
misspellings in the grand manner; scraps of paragraphs cut
out and pasted over disembowelled sentences; words ambigu—
ously begun and dwindling into waves and dashes; variant
readings, with no choice indicated among them. More
disheartening than this even, is one ﬂoating chapter (Section
IV in both this and the Constable Edition) with no number—
ing beyond the vague direction “To be inserted.” The
manuscript is evidently in a more or less tentative state as to
details, and Without some editing it would be in parts unin-
telligible. In such editing for intelligibility with the least
possible departure from accuracy, I have only occasionally
varied from the Constable text. In several cases I have
been persuaded to change a single word; less frequently, the
order of words 5 and once, in Section XXV, I have shifted a
paragraph.

The three other narratives herein contained—The E man-
tadas, or Enchanted Isles,- Bartleby the Scrivener; Benito
Cereno—appeared originally in Putnam’s Monthly Maga-

xii INTRODUCTIOJ‘C

Vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv

 

zine in 18 5 3-4- 5, and were included by Melville among the
six pieces of The Piazza Tales (1856). The Piazza Tale:
have been but once reprinted—in the limited Constable Edi-
tion of Melville’s Works; Benito C arena separately has been
once reprinted again—in a limited edition of the Nonesuch
Press. Until this volume, these things have been practically
unavailable. They are of prime importance, not only for
their inherent qualities as works of art, but because of the
very peculiar position they hold in Melville’s development
both as an artist and as a man.

II

The early eﬁulgence of Melville’s genius, and its long
obscuration—the brilliant early achievement, the long and
black eclipse: here is the most striking single aspect of his
career. Yet, in its pOpular statement, this apparent discon-
tinuity in his development has been surrounded by a lot of
unnecessary mystery, with Whispers from elegiac synods that
he went insane. Romantically and irresponsibly viewed,
Melville’s career is like a star that drops aline of streaming
ﬁre down the sky—and then the dark and blasted shape that
sinks into the earth. The ﬁgure is profoundly misleading. It
is a fact that Melville was thirty-two when he produced
M oby-Dicle, his undoubted masterpiece and his sixth narra-
tive. It is further true that the forty years which lay ahead
of him after this were largely spent in sedulous isolation, and
deepening silence. But it is at once both true and perni-
ciously deceptive to say that he gave up the attempt to sup-
port himself and his family by writing books “because of
some odd psychological experience that has never been deﬁ-
nitely explained.”

In the midst of the composition of Moby—Dic/e Melville

INTRODUCTION xiii
wrote to Hawthorne: “My development has been all within
a few years past. I am like one of those seeds taken out of
the Egyptian pyramids, which, after being three thousand
years a seed and nothing but a seed, being planted in English
soil, it developed itself, grew to greenness, and then fell to
mould. So I. Until I was twenty-ﬁve, I had no develop-
ment at all. From my twenty—ﬁfth year I date my life.
Three weeks have scarcely passed, at any time between
then and now, that I have not unfolded within myself.
But I feel that I am now come to the inmost leaf of the
bulb, and that shortly the ﬂower must fall to the mould.”
From a superﬁcial View of Melville’s life this seems strict
history and sound prophecy. It is neither.

Not the least remarkable part of this pronouncement of
Melville’s is its discounting of the crowded years of his early
manhood,—years of Whaling, and captivity among practising
cannibals, and mutiny, and South Sea drifting, and service in
the Navy. His youth and early manhood he had spent in
barbarous outposts of human experience. When, in October,
1844, Melville was in Boston discharged from the Navy, he
made the dizzy transition from vagabondage in Polynesia to
the‘stern yoke of self-supporting citizenship—and he made
it at the age of twenty—ﬁve. “From my twenty-ﬁfth year I
date my life.” And the ﬁrst two steps in that initiation were
singularly momentous: Melville sat down to the feverish
making of books; he married the only daughter ofthief

.Justice Shaw of Massachusetts. The manuscript for Types
Was bought in London by John Murray, by an agreement
dated December, I845. Melville was married to Elizabeth
Shaw on August 4., 184.7.

Although the evidence is almost wholly circumstantial, it
Would appear that at the time of his marriage there was every
promise of a happy and brilliant career ahead. Behind, it is

xiv INTRODUCTION

true, lay morbidity, bitterness, and rebellion: traits that are
manifested, after all, in the green immaturity of many of
our'most upright and seasoned pillars of society.

His childhood had been spent in Albany and in New
York. Both of his parents were of powerful family con—
nections. His father had been merchant importer of French
notions: a man who, by the extensive records of him which
survive, was a snob, a prig, an epic boreg—and by Melville’s
own intimation, a hypocrite besides. Though he died rich in
ostentatious respectability, he died with no corresponding
abundanCe. of corruptible riches. And nothing in his life
more ill became him than his failure in business and his be—
quest of poverty to his wife and eight children.

Herman, the second son and third child, was not thirteen
years old at the time of his father’s decease: young enough to
cherish up into early manhood the most extravagant idealiza—
tion of his male parent. His ﬁrst venture to sea as a youth,
for example, though provoked in part by poverty and discon-
tent, had as one of its most clearly deﬁned goals a pious pil-
grimage to retrace the steps of his father in Liverpool as
they were mapped out in an old dog—cared guide—book which
Melville cherished.

But as Melville grew in years, he did not grow in charity
towards either of his parents. In his novel Pierre, he draws
a vindictive delight in pronouncing, under a thin disguise, an
unsubstantiated libel upon his father’s memory. This dark
wild book of incest and disaster is of the greatest importance
as a document in autobiography. Most of the characters in
Pierre are unmistakably idealizations of actual people. 'The
hero, Pierre Glendinning, is a gloriﬁcation of Melville’s self 5
the Widowed mother, Marie Glendinning, owes more to
Melville’s mother, Marie Gansevoort, than the initials of her
name. And in this book Melville exercises the ghost of his

INTRODUCTION xv
father, and traces the ambiguous steps by which Pierre, at
the age of nineteen, arrived at the staggering conviction that
his sainted parent had in his youth been a lecherous rake.

As a child, Melville’s imagination had been unusually.
active. “I always thought my father,” he says “a marvellous
being, inﬁnitely purer and greater than I was, who could not
by any possibility do wrong or say an untruth.” With this
“dangerous predominance of the imagination” it was inevi-
table that he should early begin to experience a poignant in—
compatibility between reality and heart’s desire—between the
worlds of fancy and of fact. From his infancy, it would
seem, he began to View perfect happiness as a possession
lurking always just beyond the horizon. But to him, para—
dise were less than paradise if he could not return to the
humdrum world to make an ostentation of his enviable su-
periority. He confesses that as a boy he used to think “how
ﬁne it would be, to be able to talk about barbarous countries;
with what reverence and wonder people would regard me,
if I had just returned from the coast of Africa or New Zea—
land: how dark and romantic my sunburnt cheeks would
look, how I would bring home with me foreign clothes of
rich fabric and princely make, and wear them up and down
the streets, and how grocers’ boys would turn their heads to
look at me as I went by.” The Narcissism here playfully
ﬂaunted—a trait fundamental and persistent in Melville’s
character—is more strikingly indicated Where Melville asks
in Moby—Dic/z: “Why did the old Persians hold the sea
holy? Why did the Greeks give it a separate deity, and own
brother to Jove? Surely all this is not without meaning.
And still deeper the story of Narcissus, who because he could
not grasp the tormenting, mild image he saw in the fountain,
plunged into it and was drowned. But that same image, we
ourselves see in all rivers and oceans. It is the image of the

xvi INTRODUCTIOJC

ungraspable phantom of life; and this is the key to all.”
When he thus compares himself to Narcissus tormented by
the irony of being two, he was perhaps hotter on the trail of
the truth about himself than he was at the time aware.

“I am tormented,” he said, “with an everlasting itch for
things remote.” This disorganizing appeal of other times
and other places emerged early 'in his childhood. “We had
several pieces of furniture in the house,” he says, speaking of
his early years, “that had been imported from Europe. These
I examined again and again, wondering Where the wood
grew; whether the workmen who made them still survived,
and What they could be doing with themselves.”

It is one of the few certainties of life that a boy who sits
abstracted in this mood, with his eye ﬁxed upon a table leg,
is not likely to die an eﬂiciency expert. At the age of ﬁfteen,
introspective and morbidly sensitive, a poor relative in a
family of well-to—do uncles and aunts, Melville found him-
self faced with the premature necessity of coming to some
sort of terms With life on his own account. Helped by an
inﬂuential uncle, he tried working in a bank. The experi—
ment was not a tempting success. His next venture was
clerking in his brother’s fur—and-cap store. Banking and
clerking drove him to the farm of another uncle, who had
lived twenty—one years in France, where he alternated agri-
culture With .rustic school teaching. The end result was des—
peration and the luxury of self-pity. “Talk not of the bit—
terness of middle-age and after—life,” he wrote in retrospect;
“a boy can feel all that, and much more, when upon his
young soul the mildew has fallen. . . . Before the death of
my father I never thought of working for my living, and
never knew there were hard hearts in the world. . . . I had
learned to think much, and bitterly, before my time.” Had
he been endowed with less impetuosity, with less abundance

I N TROD UC TION xvii
of physical vitality, he might have moped tamely by the
family hearth and “yearned.” As it was, he resolved to
slough off the irksome respectabilities of well-to-do uncles
and cousins and aunts. Goaded by hardship, and lured by
the mirage of distance, he decided to view the watery world.
“With a philosophic ﬂourish Cato throws himself upon his
sword; I quietly take to the ship. This is my substitute for
pistol and ball.”

Redbum: Hi: First Voyage. Being the Sailor—boy C on-
fessiom and Reminiscence: of the S on-of—a-Gentleman
(1849) is the only surviving record of Melville’s initial at—
tempt “to sail beyond the sunset.” In the words of Mr.
H. 8. Salt: “It is a record of bitter experience and temporary
disillusionment—the confessions of a poor, proud youth, who
goes to sea ‘with a devil in his heart’ and is painfully initiated
into the unforeseen hardships of a sea-faring life.”

Before the time of Melville’s hegira, many a young man
of good family and education bade farewell to a home of
comfort and reﬁnement and made his berth in a smoky, fetid
forecastle to learn the sailor’s calling. Ships were multiply-
ing fast, and no really lively and alert seaman need long stay
in the forecastle. The sea was then a favourite career, not
only for American boys with their way to make in the world,
but for the sons of wealthy men as well. And Melville’s
relatives would doubtless have been agreeably surprised had
he attempted to justify his sea-going by reminding them
that at this time it was nothing remarkable for seamen
to become full-ﬂedged captains and part owners at the
age of twenty-one, or even earlier. Melville’s brother Tom
chose such a career. But Melville was unmoved by any such
vulgar and mundane considerations. “At that early age,”
he says, “I was as unambitious as a man of sixty.”

In any event, this early recourse to the ocean was a

xviii INTR OD UCTION

wvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv-vv

heroic measure, calculated either to take the nonsense out
of Melville, or else to drive him straight to suicide, madness,
or rum—soaked barbarism. It did none of these things. But
he did return to his family still harbouring in his heart a
fatal longing to repudiate the restrictions of the world of
reality into which he was plunged, hankering still for a return
to the happy omnipotence of infancy, for an escape into some
land of heart’s desire.

Of the details of his existence upon his return we have
but the most sketchy records. In the brief record of his life
preserved in the Commonplace Book of his wife, this period
between Liverpool and the South Seas is dismissed in a single
sentence: “Taught school at intervals in Pittsﬁeld and in
Greenbush (near East Albany), N. Y.” In the interims be-
tween pedagogy, Melville “desired to write.” In Pierre he
devotes a whole book—half—satirical, half of the utmost
seriousness—discussing his juvemlia. Two of the effusions
of this period survive: and these ghastly attempts to be “lit—
erary” are, indeed, as Melville says in Pierre, “equally re—
moved from vulgarity and vigour”—“characterized through—
out by Perfect Taste.” Melville proceeds ironically to praise
these earliest writings for possessing those very defects which
his maturer work was damned for not exhibiting. But Mel—
ville surely deceived himself if he in any degree believed that
had he gone on in the dull and shallow tameness of his ﬁrst
manner he would thereby increase his royalties.

In the beginning, evidently, they brought him neither
recognition nor release from poverty. His teaching, while
keeping him ﬁt by demanding pugilism as an instrument for
discipline, was without further advantage. He did not com—
fortably ﬁt into any recognized socket of New England re«
spectability, and he had not disciplined himself against the
teasing lure of some stupendous discovery awaiting him at

INTRODUCTION xix

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the rainbow’s end. One night, during the years immediately
ensuing, out on the Paciﬁc, and in the glare and the Wild
Hindoo odour of the try-works of a Whaler in full operation,
he fell asleep at the helm. “Starting from a brief standing
sleep,” he says, “I was horribly conscious of something
fatally wrong. I thought my eyes were open; I was half
conscious of putting my ﬁngers to the lids and mechanically
stretching them still further apart. But, despite all this, I
could see no compass before me to steer by. Nothing
seemed before me but a jet of gloom, now and then made
ghastly by ﬂashes of redness. Uppermost was the impres-
sion, that whatever swift, rushing thing I stood on was not
so much bound for any haven ahead as rushing from all
havens astern.”

In headlong retreat from all havens astern, on January 3,
1841 , Melville sailed from Fairhaven in the Whaler Acwlz—
net, bound for the Paciﬁc Ocean and the sperm ﬁsheries.

Just what were the immediate and speciﬁc circumstances
which precipitated Melville into this drastic step will prob-
ably never be known: What burst of demonic impulse, either
of anger, envy, or spite, what passionate disappointment;
what cruciﬁxion of affection; what sinister discovery. But
this is certain: that when a youth of Melville’s temperament
and history concludes the Christmas holidays by a mid—winter
plunge into the ﬁlthy and shabby business of whaling, this
shifting of whereabouts is hardly a sign of mere jolly animal
exuberance.

Melville was away three and a half years. His experiences
during this time, while beyond the pale of civilization, are
widely known, and the basis of what popularity as a writer
he enjoyed during his life. During his far driftings, how-
ever, Melville had sentimentally clung to thoughts of home,
——his imagination treacherously caressing those very scenes

xx INTRODUCTION

whose intimate contact had ﬁlled him with revulsion. “Do
men ever hate the thing they love?” he asks in White-
Jac/eet, perplexed at the paradox of his perpetual recoil. And
until the ﬁnal peace of his extreme old age, the present was
always poisoned, for him, by bitter margins of pining and
regret.

Of his impressions immediately upon his return he has
left no account. Such was the calibre of his imagination,
that he must have found the familiar scenes and people un—
believably like he knew they must be, yet incredibly diﬁerent
from what he was prepared to ﬁnd.

Tanned with sea-faring and exuberant in health, he was
eﬁulgent with amazing tales. Deep in his heart, too, was
the proud warm memory of a companionship which was to
prove itself to be perhaps the happiest in his life. On board
the man—of—war in which he had returned from the
South Seas, Melville had been immediately under command
of Jack Chase, ﬁrst captain of the top. In White-Jacket,
Melville glows with the same superlative admiration for Jack
Chase that Ouida or the Duchess exhibit in celebrating the
conquests of their most irresistible cavaliers. Of no other
human being is Melville known to have spoken with such
admiration and love, ﬁnding in him something heroic yet all
human: an educated man, wise as Ulysses, shining as Nelson,
azure—eyed, bright—hearted—“wherever you may be rolling
over the blue waters, dear Jack, take my best love along
with you.” It would almost seem that Jack did, and that
for this reason Melville lived unhappily many years after-
ward. This was the one glamorous and exultant attachment
of Melville’s that time never marred. And it was par—
ticularly appropriate that in the ultimate serenity of his old
age he should have dedicated Billy Budd to Jack Chase.

Though bodily he was in a suburb of Albany, his com—

INTRODUCTION xxi
panion image was the distant adventurer he saw mirrored
in the admiring eyes of his friends. With what melancholy
—-—if any—he Viewed this reﬂected image of himself, and to
what degree he was, Narcissus—Wise, conscious of its irony,
we do not know. But if the gay exuberance of Typee and
Omoo be any index of his mood, he returned home happier
and wholesomer than he was to be at any other period of his
life. Before many years, unsolved problems of his youth
were to reassert themselves, heightened in difﬁculty and in
pertinacity. Typee was an almost instantaneous success; and
its success was none the less brilliant because it was in part a
:uccé: dc scandale. The appearance of Omoo on January
30, 184.7, augmented Melville’s notoriety and his income as
well. Abetted by reviews, and encouraged by royalties,
Melville began more hopefully to look at the world. He
seemed at last to have stepped decoratively and proﬁtably
into his assigned niche in the cosmic order. It was delightful
to rehearse outlived pleasures and hardships, and to discover
that one’s reveries and dreams sold for cash on the open
market. Under this exhilaration, he married.

To Elizabeth Shaw, according to Melville’s diagnosis of
himself, he transferred his boyhood idealization of his
mother. In Pierre he spends a chapter of dithyrambic in
celebration of that sentiment, which, “inspired by one’s
mother, one transfers to all other women honOurably loved.”
And during his courtship of Elizabeth Shaw, it seems that
in Melville were these “audacious immortalities of divinest
love.”

Soon after the marriage, Melville and his wife moved to
New York, Where, at 103 Fourth Avenue, in a household
made up of his brothers Allan and Tom, his sisters Augusta,
Fanny and Helen, his mother, his wife, with incursions of
Shaws on visit from Boston, Melville started his third book,

xxii INTRODUCTIOmC

March". On April 14, I 849, two years after Melville’s mar-
riage, Mardz' appeared simultaneously here and in England.
Of the adverse reviews it provoked, Melville wrote to his
father—in—law: “These attacks are a matter of course, and are
essential to the building up of any permanent reputation—
if such should ever prove to be mine—but Time, which is
the solver of all riddles, will solve Mardi.”

The riddle of Mardi goes near to the heart of the riddle
of Melville’s life. “Not long ago,” Melville says in the
preface to this book, “having published two narratives of
voyages in the Paciﬁc, which, in many quarters, were received
with incredulity, the thought occurred to me, of indeed
writing a romance of Polynesian adventure, and publishing
it as such, to see whether the ﬁction might not, possibly, be
received for a verity: in some degree the reverse of my pre-
vious experience. This thought was the germ of others,
which have resulted in M ardi.”

Mardi, as M oby—Dick, starts 0E ﬁrmly rooted in reality.
But after less than quarter way through, it swings abruptly
into allegory—and there it was that Melville ﬁrst tried his
hand at the orphic style.

This allegorical part of March deﬁes simple characteriza-
tion, though its purpose is simple enough. It is a quest after
Yillah, a maiden from Oroolia, the Island of Delight. A
voyage is made through symbolic realms, and around the
civilized world, in quest of her. But Yillah is lost beyond
recovery. In its intention to show the vanity of human wishes
it is a kind of Rasselas—though a Rassela: which, for its
“dangerous predominance of imagination,” Dr. Johnson
would have despised. The happiness sought in the per-
son of Yillah is the total and undivined possession of that
holy and mysterious joy that touched Melville during the
period of his courtship. When he wrote Mardi he was

INTRODUCTION xxiii

vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv—

 

married, and his Wife was with child. And Mardi is a pil—
grimage for a lost glamour.

In these wanderings in search of Yillah, the symbol of
this faded ecstasy, the hero is pursued by three shadowy
messengers from the temptress Hautia; she who was
descended from the queen who ﬁrst incited the kingdom of
Mardi to wage war against beings with wings. Despairing
of ever achieving Yillah, the hero in the end turns towards
the island of Hautia, called Flozella-a—Nina, or “The—Last—
Verse-of—the Song.” “Yillah was all beauty and innocence;
my crown of felicity; my heaven below :——and Hautia, my
whole heart abhorred. Yillah I sought, Hautia sought me.
Yet now I was wildly dreaming of ﬁnding them both
together. In some mysterious way seemed Hautia and
Yillah connected.”

The hero lands on the shore of Hautia’s bower of bliss.
*‘A'll the sea, like a harvest plain, was stacked with glittering
sheaves of spray. And far down, fathoms on fathoms, ﬂitted
rainbow huesz—as skeins—full of mermaids, half—screening
the bower of the drowned.” Hautia lavished him with
ﬂowers, and with wine that like a blood—freshet ran through
his veins,-—she the vortex that draws all in. “But as my
hand touched Hautia’s, down dropped a dead bird from the
clouds.” And at the climax of the surrender into which
Hautia had betrayed him, it was, between them, “snake and
victim :' life ebbing from out me, to her.”

Later, in Pierre, Melville came to reﬂect upon “the in-
evitable evanescence of all earthly loveliness.” The nup—
tial embrace, he says, “breaks love’s airy zone.” The
idealities of courtship, he wrote, “like the bouquet of the
costliest of German Wines, too often evaporate upon pouring
love out to drink in the disenchanting glasses of matrimonial

xxiv INTRODUCTION
days and nights.” And Pierre exclaims: “By heaven, but
marriage is an impious thing!”

This darkly ﬁgured hieroglyph of Melville’s discontent
was neither acclaimed by the public nor deciphered by Mel-
ville’s wife. Withal, Melville was now not only a husband,
but a father besides; and for his income he depended solely
upon the earnings from his books. The reviewers had, in
effect, given him clear warning that he could not support
his family in luxury by the sale of cryptic libels upon it.
Mardz' had been followed rapidly by Redbwm. Though his
household at IO 3 Fourth Avenue was populous with relatives
and visitors, he had shut himself away from the distraction
of this varied company. In a letter to Hawthorne he later
confessed: “The calm, the coolness, the silent grass—growing
mood in which a man ought always to compose,—that, I fear,
can seldom be mine.” Endless bustle within the house; out-
side, as Mrs. Melville writes to her mother, screams of street
venders “continually under our Windows in every variety of
cracked voices”—screams in which the guests from Boston
“ﬁnd much amusement.” Mrs. Melville further writes that
“Herman thinks I had better go back to Boston with Sam
to see if the change of air will not beneﬁt me,” but she
could not bring herself selﬁshly to follow Melville’s solici—
tude: “I don’t know as I can make up my mind to go and
leave him here—and, besides, I’m afraid to trust him to ﬁn-
ish up the book Without me!” It was a life to enamour even
a misanthrope to the family hearth. To quiet them all
momentarily, Melville would put them copying manuscript.
Yet, despite everything, Melville had stuck to his desk. In
three years he had published ﬁve volumes: Typee, Omoo,
Mardi (in two volumes), and Redbum. Though he had
attracted wide attention as a writer, he was, nevertheless, in
debt to his publishers. Another book—White-Jacket—he

INTROD UC TI 0.1M xxv
had ﬁnished in manuscript. Some Very drastic step was
necessary. So, ﬁve years after his return from the South
Seas, and two years after his marriage, Melville for the third
time decided to resort to a ship.

He was away eleven weeks. Most of the time he was in
England, making personal intercessions with publishers,
hoping thereby to improve his income from the other side
of the Atlantic. After signing a contract with Bentley, he
took a running jaunt through Paris, Brussels, Cologne, and
Coblenz, returning in time to sail from Southampton on
Christmas Day, 1849. Mrs. Melville, in her Commonplace
Book, says of this trip: “Took little satisfaction in it from
mere homesickness, and. hurried home, leaving attractive
invitations to visit distinguished people.” As surprising as
this “homesickness” may sound, it is repeatedly confessed
in the journal of this trip which survives. This is but another
instance of Melville’s sentimental preoccupation with dis-
tance. As it had been with his mother, so was it with his wife:
together, he craved to put oceans between them; estranged,
he was restless to return. And it was thoroughly character-
istic that, once back again to his household of Wife, mother,
and maiden sisters, he should have written companion
sketches of moments in his life home and abroad entitled
Paradise 0f Bachelor: and Tartaru: of Maids. Of the Par-
adise of Bachelors he wrote: “We were a band of brothers.
You could see that these easy-hearted men had no wives
and children to give them anxious thought. Almost all of
them were travellers, too; for bachelors alone can travel
freely, and Without any twinge of their conscience touching
desertion of the fireside.”

The summer following his return, in search of less dis-
organization than New York oEered, he and his wife and
infant son Malcolm boarded at Broadhall, near Pittsﬁeld,—

xxvi INTRODUCTION
the old home of his uncle, where he had visited as a boy, and
since converted into a hotel. In the autumn of the same
year, with money advanced by his father—in—law, he took
possession of a neighbouring farm which he named “Arrow-
head.” This was his home from October, 18 50, to October,
I863. And it was, at once, the scene of the apex of his
achievement, and of the blackest night of his defeat. Here
M oby—Dick was to be written and dedicated to his neighbour,
Nathaniel Hawthorne. In the headlong and desperate out--
pouring of himself in this friendship, and in this agony of
creation, he was to spend himself to the verge of utter ex-
haustion. And with his recognition of Hawthorne as a case
of mistaken identity, and the popular ﬁasco of Moby—Dick,
Melville for the ﬁrst time would have been a perfect artist
if he had put a bullet through his head. Instead, as if in a
rage of vindictive and self-righteous defeat, he wrote Pierre.
Mrs. Melville records of the ﬁrst years at Arrowhead:
“Wrote White—Whale or Moby—Dick under unfavourable
circumstances—would sit at his desk all day not eating any—
thing until four or ﬁve o’clock—~then ride to the village
after dark—would be up early and out walking before break—
fast—sometimes splitting wood for exercise. Published
White-Whale in 18 51—wrote Pierre, published 1852. We
all felt anxious about his health in the spring of 18 5 3.” In
a letter written to Hawthorne in the midst of Moby—Dick,
Melville says: “The reason I have not been up to Lenox is
this,-—in the evening I feel completely done up, as the
phrase is, and incapable of the long jolting to get to your
house and back. In a week or so I go to New York, to bury
myself in a third—story room, and work and slave on my
Whale While it is driving through the press. Tim): is the
only way I can ﬁnish it now,—-—I am so pulled hither and
thither by circumstances. Dollars damn me, and the mali-

INTRODUCTION xxvii
cious Devil is for ever grinning in upon me, holding the door
ajar. My dear Sir, a presentiment is upon me,—-I shall at
last be worn out and perish, like an old nutmeg-grater,
grated to pieces by the constant attrition of the wood, that is,
the nutmeg. What I feel most moved to write, that is
banned,—it will not pay. Yet, altogether, write the other
way I cannot. So the product is a ﬁnal hash, and all my
books are botches.” Letters of Melville to Duyckinck writ—
ten at this time tell the same story—with the added detail
that he seems going blind. “I keep one eye shut and wink
at the paper with the other,” he says, or again, “My eve-
nings I spend in a sort of mesmeric state in my room—being
unable to read”; or yet again, “Like an owl I steal about by
twilight, owing to the twilight of my eyes.” These were
the eyes which Mrs. Hawthorne objected to in a dissertation
to her mother because they were neither large nor deep.
“They are not keen eyes, either, but quite undistinguished
in any way.” One full section of Pierre recounts under
thin disguise the torture of those days in New York, men—
tioned above to Hawthorne, during which Melville wrestled
with M oby—Dic/e, not only half blinded, but dropping in the
streets from sudden vertigo.

It was in this state of exhaustion and hyper-excitability
that Melville found himself a neighbour of Hawthorne’s.
When Hawthorne moved to Lenox, he was forty-six years
old—Melville’s senior by ﬁfteen years. “He had recovered
his health,” his son says, “he had done his work, he was
famous, and the region in which he dwelt was beautiful and
inspiring. . . . Had The Scarlet Letter not achieved so fair
a success, he might have been long in recovering his normal
frame of mind. But the broad murmur of popular applause,
coming to his unaccustomed ears from all parts of his native
country, and rolling in across the sea from academic England,

xxviii INTRODUCTION

gave him the spiritual refreshment born of the assurance
that our fellow-creatures think well of the work we have
striven to make good. Such assurance is essential, sooner or
later, to soundness and serenity of mind.” And such assur—
ance Melville had never known, nor was he ever to know it.
At the time of his meeting with Hawthorne, he was ravished
in solitude by his alienation from his fellows, and eager,
to the point of hysteria, for a Utopian friendship that might
solace him for all his earlier defeats. His letters to Haw-
thorne are amazing documents: exultant in worship, absolute
in surrender. ‘He craved of Hawthorne an understanding
and a sympathy which neither Hawthorne, nor any other
human being, perhaps, could ever have given. His im—
petuous soul rushed out to embrace Hawthorne’s as that of a
brother in despair. At this time, so his son says, “Hawthorne
became a sort of Mecca of pilgrims with Christian’s burden
on their backs. Secret criminals of all kinds came to him
for counsel and relief.” Hawthorne was weary, perhaps,
of souls harrowed and in voluble cruciﬁxion, and when
Melville came to him, not for counsel, but in headlong and
absolute devotion, and in the intimate fraternity of the dis-
enchanted, Melville had totally misread the temper of Haw-
thorne’s disenchantment.

Emile Montégut, it is true, has described Hawthorne as a
romancier pessimism. Pessimist Hawthorne doubtless was—
if pessimism be an absence of illusions. And in this sense,
every worldly—wise man is a pessimist. Hawthorne was, of
course, as W. C. Brownell has taken pains to show, “dis—
tinctly the most hard—headed of our men of genius.” His
son said of him: “He was the slave of no theory and no
emotion, he always knew, so to speak, where he was and
what he was about.” His nature clearly was cool and self—
sustaining, and like a star he dwelt apart; though no ﬂower

INTROD UC TION xxix
that ever bloomed could ever ﬁll him with thoughts too
deep for tears. For one of his nature, his family life was
ideal. He was worshipped, idolized, canonized, and on his
side it seems to have required small eﬁort worthily to ﬁll
the role a more ardent nature would have either merited less
or found more irksome. With his vital interests bounded by
his domestic periphery, he had the good sense, the lack of
enthusiasm, the disillusioned pessimism of the man of the
world.

Though both Hawthorne and Melville were, in a sense,
pessimists, they were pessimists in diametrically opposed
usages of the word. Both were repelled by reality; both
were quite out of sympathy with their time and its ten—
dencies. But they had arrived at this point of meeting from
opposite points of the compass.

Whereas Hawthorne’s pessimism was an expression of
lack of ardour and illusion, it was the very ardour of Mel-
ville’s illusions, and the passion to discover that reality was
cast in their mould, that was at the basis of Melville’s hurt
and embittered defeat. Both men, from their youth, had felt
the ﬂagrant and stubborn discord between the actual and the
ideal, between fact and aspiration. But Hawthorne, unlike
Melville, found no great diﬂiculty in accepting the obdurate
universe of people and things with a serene and robust
fatalism. He accepted the universe as unalterable, and, as
fame came to him, towards his own destiny he felt satis-
faction without elation. It was his good sense to behave as if
he felt that, in so far God had seemed to botch His job as a
creative artist, that God’s masterpiece, such as it was, was
amenable to but trivial modiﬁcation. The world of fact, and
the world of illusion, he viewed as essentially exclusive
realms; and, as Thoreau has counselled, he contented himself
to live in “one world at a time.” He was without hope in

xxx INTRODUCTION
the sense that he never expected the order of nature to
swerve of itself one hair’s—breadth in the direction of his
heart’s desire. And this very hopelessness steadied him to
the faith which no reasonable man can be without: faith,
that is, in illusions as such, without the naive and romantic
exuberance which expects by the mere magic of wishing and
the fever of locomotion, to ﬁnd paradise in any local habita-
tion. The realm of illusion,——which is the realm of the
imagination, the realm of reverie and of art: his craving for
omnipotence he restricted to that realm. And herein lay
Hawthorne’s superior adjustment to the world.
Hawthorne’s was an adjustment that seems to have been A
an easy fulﬁlment of an essentially cool and self—possessed
nature. Melville’s was a more primal temperament, for the
domestication of which, centuries, and not a mortal span of
years, were best adequate. He was born with an imagina-
tion of very extraordinary vigour, and with a constitution of
corresponding Vitality. In sheer capacity to feel, most
denizens of Christendom look pale beside him. Fired by
a lust for life, a clogged unwillingness to learn from experi-
ence, a contempt for rationality, he launched forth in search
of the seacoast of Bohemia. Few men have compassed such
a volume of the raw material of experience as he crowded
within the thirty-two years of his quest. Such was his na'fve
fulness of hope, his innocence of faith, that it was inevitable
that, as one by one he put his illusions to the test, the bolts
of his imagination, discharged against reality, but blazed out
charred avenues to despair. And when on a bleak and snowy
November day in 18 5I, the Hawthorne family, with its
trunks, got into a large farm wagon and drove away from
their little red house, Melville had dreamed the last of his
avenging dreams. At Arrowhead there remained a very sick
man in his thirty—second year, and a desperately poor one,

INTRODUC TICK xxxi
with no source of income but from the writing of books
which didn’t sell, his soul solitary in its desolation.

Other than suicide, and short of miracle, the number of
choices which were open to Melville in this extremity were
limited in the extreme. He and the world had come to
bitter and intolerable odds, and the world, not he, had, to
all appearances, the upper hand. Something was drastically
wrong somewhere, either with himself, or the World, or both.
If with him, he might attempt to examine his conscience and
reform; if with the world, he might defame and despise
what he could not mend, protest thereby his own deep right—
‘ eousness, and draw sweet solace besides, from feeling sorry
for himself. More difﬁcult than either, by rising superior to
his emotions, as a disinterested spectator he might try to un-
derstand both himself and the world. Already he had dis-
covered that when he put his earnest convictions on paper,
the value of the paper deteriorated thereby. Though sick in
body and soul, he was, none the less, married and twice a
father: and but for the charity of relatives, debtors could be
held at bay only by the point of his pen. Under these cir-
cumstances he behaved with incredible subtlety, passion and
perverseness. Acting under no single one of the choices
enumerated above, but alternating among them all, he sat
down to write an apologia of his life, which he deﬁantly
ﬂung into the public’ 5 face.

lVIelVille wrote Pzerr e, or, The Améigm‘tie: (dedicated,
this time, not to Hawthorne, but to the mountain Greylock),
with no intent to reform the ways of the world. But he did
write Pierre to show the impracticality of virtue; to give
speciﬁc evidence, plagiarized from his own experience, that
“the heavenly wisdom of God is an earthly folly to men,”
to put on record the reminder that the world’s way is a
hypocritical way in so far as it pretends to be other than the

xxxii INTRODUCTION

Devil’s way also. When he sat down to write, what seemed
to him the holiest part of himself—his ardent aspirations—-
had wrecked itself against reality. So he undertook to present,
in the character of Pierre, his own character purged of dross.
For the other characters he drew upon relatives and intimate
enemies, including Hawthorne (under the name of Plotinus
Plinlimmon). Then he started his hero forth upon a career
of lofty and unselﬁsh impulse, intent to show that the more
transcendent a man’s ideals, the more certain and devastating
his worldly defeat; that the most innocent in heart are those
most in peril of being eventually involved in “strange, unique
follies and sins, unimagined before.”

And yet even the purest of impulses, Melville is intent
to show, are less immaculate than superﬁcially they seem.
“In reserves men build imposing characters,” he remarks;
“not in revelations.” And here in the character of Pierre,
Melville seemed resolute to exhibit before a scandalized pub-
lic a human soul, naked and unashamed. The subtlety of the
analysis is extraordinary 5 and in its probings into the winding
ambiguities of our self—deceptions, it is prophetic of some of
the most recent and savoury ﬁndings in psychiatry. Beside it,
Jude the Obscure, The Idiot, and Women in Love seem
rather obvious and wholesome tales.

Pierre is a double-edged apologia of Melville’s own de—
feat, in the sense that in Pierre Melville attempted to show
that in so far as his own defeat—essentially paralleling
Pierre’s—was unblackened by incest, murder, and suicide,
he had escaped these rewards of seraphic virtue through
accident and inherent defect, rather than because of superior
merit.

After Pierre, any further writing from Melville was both
an impertinence and a moral defection. Melville was con—
vinced of the futility of writing and effort, he wanted only

INTROD UCTION xxxiii
tranquillity for thought. But his health was seriously break—
ing, and his family had to be fed. Writing had proven itself
an arduous way to starvation. On April 29, I8 51 ,—six
months before the American publication of Moby-Dick,—-
Melville drew up an inventory of his earnings as author, in
an effort to demonstrate to himself and to Harpers that he
was a valuable business venture. To that time, the ﬁve
books that he had produced in ﬁve years of prodigious con-
centration, had brought him in $8,069.34: prodigal wealth,
when compared with What was to be his later driblets of
income. To that time,——as thereafter,——Harpers was lib-
eral to him beyond the strict letter of the bond. Though
he was then nearly $700 in debt to Harpers, he asked for a
further advance on royalties,—counting against hope, ap—
parently, that the supreme eﬁort of M oey-Dic/e would bring
corresponding rewards. Harpers denied this advance.
M oey-Die/e appeared, and left Melville still in debt to Har-
pers. In publishing Pierre, Harpers made certain drastic
modiﬁcations of contract with Melville. Whereas before
Pierre, Melville and Harpers had shared, half—and—half,
cost of manufacture of books and proﬁt from sales, with
Pierre Harpers agreed to pay Melville twenty-ﬁve cents on
the sale of any volumes after the ﬁrst 1,190 copies. Mel-
ville’s ﬁrst royalties on Pierre were $58.25: an amount
greater than the sum of royalties that Pierre accumulated
during all the years that were to follow. During 18 5 3—-
the year after the publication of Pierre,—54. copies of
Typee were sold; 56 of Omoo; 42 of Redeurn; 49 of
Mardi; 29 of White—Jacket,- 48 of Moby-Dick; and 27 of
Pierre. After his initial burst of popularity, it was a
miraculous year, indeed, that brought him in $100 royalties.
By working his farm, he succeeded in producing some of the
barest necessities of life. He had tried farming in the

xxxiv IN TROD UCTION
prime of his youth, and had sailed for the South Seas soon
after instituting the venture. In his present state of health
it was a more diﬂicult and no more luring occupation. And
he had taken hostages of fortune to make impossible an—
other escape to the watery world. So he looked about him
for some other and unliterary source of income. Attempts
were made by Hawthorne, Richard H. Dana, Jr., and by his
brother Allan, to get him a consular appointment,—prefer-
ably in the South Seas, but that failing, anywhere. All
attempts unavailing, Melville did the one thing he could:
he sat down to try to turn out stuff that would sell.
Between 185 3 and I8 56 Melville published, in Putnam’s
Magazine and in Harper’s Monthly, a serial novel and
ﬁfteen sketches and stories. The novel, Israel Potter, ap-
peared in book form in 1855. The Piazza T ales, which
appeared the following year, was a book of short stories,
ﬁve of which had appeared in either Putnam’s or H arper’s.
Having followed Melville’s career to this point, one
would expect, with every apparent guarantee of mortal cer—
tainty, that this novel and these stories, done under economic
compulsion, and by a man in Melville’s state, would be
worse than negligible, and most of the sketches and stories
undoubtedly are. The unqualiﬁed failures are those in which
Melville tries to imitate Hawthorne. Of himself Haw—
thorne once wrote, with engaging candour: “Whether from
lack of power, or an unconquerable reserve, the Author’s
touches have often an effect of tameness.” Of Hawthorne
at his best this statement is false in every part. But of
Hawthorne as Melville unconsciously parodies him, it is a
ﬂattering description. In these pieces Melville evidently
recognized his failure 3 for he never republished them nor
violated the anonymity under which they appeared.
Surprisingly enough, Israel Potter is a decidedly com-

INTRODUCTION xxxv

vvvVvvvvvvvvvﬁvvVVVYVVYYVYYYVVYVVVVVVVVVYYVYVVV'

 

petent and entertaining picaresque story, half of it strictly
historical. And, as Mr. John Freeman observes: “As if the
attacks and sneers at his natural exuberance had indeed
entered his soul, he resolved no more to cast his style to the
swine but to restrict himself to the dry husks of language,
putting an external constraint upon his genius.” This book
is to be dismissed as insigniﬁcant only by those who value
Melville but for his eccentricities. It was praised by Haw-
thorne for its delineations of Franklin and John Paul Jones,
and doubtless deserves a wider recognition than has ever
been given it.

With The Piazza Tale: we come upon one of the most.
totally amazing of all the surprises of Melville’s career.
For, though the book dropped from the press into almost
perfect silence and neglect, the two chief stories of the
volume—Benito Cereno and The Encanmdas—are slowly
coming to be chosen as marking the supreme technical
achievement of Melville as an artist. When The E mmtada:
ﬁrst appeared, it was read by Lowell, and according to a
letter from the editor of Putnam’s Monthly to Melville,
Lowell was so moved that “the ﬁgure of the cross on the
ass’ neck brought tears into his eyes, and he thought it the
ﬁnest touch of genius he had seen in prose.” But Lowell
was an isolated admirer; and in so far as is known, no other
word of praise of these stories ever reached Melville. It was
not until 1922, when all the happiness and hysteria of the
Melville boom was upon us, that this book was singled out
for special mention: and then, very quietly, in a kind of
minority report. I quote at some length from Mr. Michael
Sadlier’s Excursions in Victorian Bihliogmphy:

“The respective merits of the outstanding books of Mel—
ville are already (and will remain for long enough) the
sport of literary publicists, to whose views and counter—views

xxxvi INTROD UC TION

Vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv7VVVVVVvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvﬁ

 

I refer the curious. One feature, nevertheless, of contem—
porary opinion challenges to protest my amateur temerity.
Apart from Moby-Dic/e, the neo—Melvillian has little be—
yond patronizing approval for the books of his hero; Typee
(1846) and Omoo (1847) are interesting records of travel,
remarkable mainly for the early date of their appearance
and as forerunners of the South Sea School in letters and in
painting. Mardi ( I849), Redbum ( 1849), and White-
]ac/zet (I850) claim respect as autobiography and for pas-
sages that reveal their author’s genius struggling towards a
more complete expression. These are the rising steps to the
unique summit of Melville’s work. There, unique and
peerless, stands M oby-Dicla ; beyond it the terraces fall away
again, and even more steeply than they rose.

“Is this opinion a just one? I am a little uncertain. With
no desire to denigrate M coy-Dick or to deny it the ﬁrst place
in importance among Melville’s books, I would venture that
his genius is more perfectly and skilfully revealed in a vol-
ume of stories belonging to the so—called decadence. The
Piazza Tale: are liable to be dismissed by the critic to—day
with kindly condescension as ‘the best of the later work,’ a
judgment as misleading as it is easily explained. In some
degree the worship of M oby-Dick and the comparative neg-
lect of the other work are inevitable corollaries of the Mel-
ville boom at its present stage. During the ﬁrst period of
any new aesthetic wonder, the peculiar transcends the normal
in the imagination of the disciples. Let the case of Melville
be paralleled with that of Tintoretto’s pupil, Greco. When
ﬁrst set in the revival of interest in this painter’s work, he
was most admired when most bizarre. He won favour for
the contrast he presented to his immediate forerunners and
his contemporaries. The name of Greco stood for certain
mannerisms in colour and composition, and, the more a Greco

INTROD UC TIOJ‘C xxxvii
picture revealed those mannerisms, the better a Greco it was
judged to be. Already, from the hand of time, this formula
of appreciation is suffering adjustment, but Melville is to-day
precisely at the point where yesterday Greco stood. Like the
master of Toledo, he has peculiar and noticeable tricks of
matter and of style. Because Moby-Dick is of those tricks
more redolent than the author’s other books, it tickles the
palate of contemporary enthusiasm more thoroughly than
do they.

“M oby—Dick for all that it is unmistakably Melville is far
from ﬂawless. What if Melville recognized its weaknesses?
What if he deplored those very characteristics that are to—day
lauded as his priceless individuality and chief claim to fame?
With all its vastness and its wonder, the epic story of Ahab
and the great white whale displays the faults of its author
as strikingly as it reveals his talents. In years to come,
when the glamour of oddity has paled a little, it will be
admitted that the book labours under a sad weight of in-
tolerable prolixity. Nor is this prolixity implicit in the
greatness of Melville’s writing. This is proved by the two
chief stories in The Piazza Tales. Benito Cereno and The
Encamtadas hold in the small compass of their beauty the
essence of their author’s supreme artistry. They are pro—
found and lovely and tenderly robust, but they are never
tedious and never wilful. Surely it were generous to admit
that Melville sought to improve on Moby-Dic/e and that, in
the matter of technical control, he succeeded. These two
stories cannot as literary achievements compare with their
vast and teeming predecessor. That is natural. But they
may not be ignored as the last glimmer of a dying lamp.
They mark the highest technical achievement of their
author’s work, and, had not within a year or two of their
appearance the darkness of distrust descended upon him,

xxxviii INTROD UCTIOJN

might well have proved a revelation of something yet to
come from the brain of Herman Melville, something des-
tined—but for the treacherous inhibition of human frailty—
to excel in power everything to which that brain had previ-
ously given birth.”

With the appearance of Mr. John Freeman’s Herman
Melville in 1926, another deliberate and competent critic
spoke out against the neglect of The Piazza Tales. Mr.
Freeman characterizes Benito Cereno as “a ﬂaming instance
of the author’s pure genius. . . . An astonishing story that
must have brought tears of pride to Melville when he looked
back upon it; and only a little less wonderful is an episode in
another of the series, The Encantadas, or Enchanted Isles.”

All this has been mounting to the pronouncement of Mr.
Edward J. O’Brien. In the F 0mm for June, I928, Mr.
O’Brien has published his choice of “The Fifteen Finest
Short Stories.” Benito C ereno heads the list. Mr. O’Brien
says:

“I regard this as the noblest short story in American litera-
ture. The balance of forces is complete, the atmosphere one
of epic signiﬁcance, the light cast upon the hero intense to the
highest degree, the realization of the human soul profound,
and the telling of the story orchestrated like a great sym-
phony. Although it is the greatest short story in American
literature, it has been practically inaccessible and is known
to very few people. All Conrad’s strivings reach fulﬁlment
in this story, and its music lingers in the memory long after
Conrad’s music is forgotten.”

To an incorrigible romantic, these tributes to works of
Melville’s “decline” must appear impious to Mohy—Dich.
For to the romantic, the prime excellence of any work of
art is the volume of its passion; and to such a temperament,
a work may be inchoate and ill-digested, a volcanic erup—

INTROD UCTION xxxix
tion that tosses itself blindly into the sky, and for that very
reason be a glorious and successful achievement. The power
to stimulate is surely the beginning of greatness. But a
red—hot irrationality that can utter the wildest cries, sur-
render itself with the most absolute passion, heap up the
most indiscriminate wealth of images, is not the perfection
of genius. Melville himself, in the midst of the composition
of M oby-Dic/e, confessed to Hawthorne a feeling that head—
long turmoil botched creation.

It was Melville’s great misfortune to drift into manhood
without education: with no discipline of the will, no training
in the uses of the practical or theoretical intellect, no initia-
tion into the lessons of the past. After all, there is pro-
found and disastrous signiﬁcance in Melville’s boast: “for a
whale-ship was my Yale College and my Harvard.” When
Melville states that his development began in his twenty—
ﬁfth year he congratulates himself unduly. Marriage and
authorship “developed” him in the sense that they made
more explicit his capacity for chaos. During the vagrancy
of his ﬁrst twenty-ﬁve years he had gone about among the
latitudes expressing his “spontaneous Me,” like Rousseau,
“burning with desire without any deﬁnite object.” As a
writer, he had put the highest premium upon “sincerity”
and earnestness 5 and these, as he had yet to learn, are very
questionable virtues in an artist. His case was similar to
that of the amateur musician who, with gorgeous native en-
dowment, tries to make up in “feeling” for what he lacks in
mastery of technique. A man who is mastered by an emo-
tion is in no state to calculate how that emotion were best
communicated. As Richard Strauss exclaimed of Wagner’s
Tristan: “Such ﬁre of sustained passion! It could have
been written only by a man of ice!” Melville’s career as a
writer, up to and including his outburst in Pierre in praise of

x! INTRODUCTION
folly, is marred by a deepening of “sincerity.” And in such
a state he could not portray emotion, which demands detach-
ment; at best he could betray it. The overwhelming bulk
of Melville’s writing is self-expression and satire; the hero
is always himself, either in his own undisguised person or
else thinly masked in all sorts of romantic and allegorical
ﬁnery. And, since he was so much in earnest in his ﬁction,
since he threw himself so unreservedly into his creations,
since his imagination was so exclusively a vent for his per-
sonal preoccupations, Melville’s most enthusiastic readers
have been those primarily interested in him as a tortured and
cryptic personality—not readers who have valued him for
being a ﬁrst—rate creative artist.

It was in Benito Cereno that for once, at least, he saved
his soul as an artist, by losing it in something outside of
himself. In this story he rose to the vantage ground of
universal reason, above the passionate experiences which he
overlooked and upon which he reﬂected. And for once he
composed in the spirit of true beauty: a work devoutly ﬁn-
ished, simple, and truly just.*

A brief moment of equilibrium—a momentary brightening
of the embers into pure ﬂame! Then, totally unencouraged
by sympathetic friendship, by enlightened criticism, or by a
glimmer of appreciation from the public, Melville for ever
abandoned letters as a career.

The long remaining years were a struggle against poverty
and ill health. In I8 56, such was his growing moodiness—-
bursts of rage, followed by periods of silence and depres—
sion—that with the generosity of his father-in—law it was
made possible for him to try to get away from his immediate
worries and disappointments. He was away seven months;

‘In The Publication 0/ the Modern Language Association 0! America, Vol. XVIII,
No. 2, June, 1928, Mr. Harold H. Scudder reprints the Eighteenth Chapter of Delano’s
Voyage: and Travel: (Boston, 1817): Melville’s source for Benito Ccrm.

INTRODUCTION xli
but the diﬂiculty was, he travelled with himself. At Liver-
pool, “a little paler, perhaps, and a little sadder, with his
characteristic gravity and reserve of manner,” he saw Haw-
thorne for the last time. Hawthorne goes on to say: “He in—
formed me that he had ‘pretty much made up his mind to
be annihilated’; but still he does not seem to rest in that
anticipation, and I think will never rest until he gets hold of
some deﬁnite belief. It is strange how he persists—and has
persisted ever since I knew him, and probably long before-—
in wandering to and fro over these deserts, as dismal and
monotonous as the sandhills amidst which we were sitting.
He can neither believe, nor be comfortable in his unbelief;
and he is too honest and courageous not to try to do one or
the other.” From Liverpool he moved on to Constantinople
and the Holy Land. In Melville’s journal of this trip,
his agonized scepticism is repeatedly recorded, and if not
precisely homesick, his conscience tortured him for truancy
from his obligations at home.

Back to Pittsﬁeld, he earned what money he could from
the produce of his farm, and from lecturing. For his own
private behoof, he expanded the journal of his trip to the
Near East into an amazing poem of 571 pages, which in I 876
was printed at the expense of a maternal uncle. Clarel: A
Pam and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land is of prime impor-
tance as a document if not as a poem.

In 1863, after a residence of thirteen years, Melville and
his family left Pittsﬁeld, and by ﬁnancial arrangements with
his father—in—law bought the house at 104. East 26th Street,
New York.

It was not until he was forty—seven that he succeeded in
ﬁnding some non-literary employment that would assure him
against starvation. On December 5, 1866, he was appointed
Inspector of Customs. And for twenty years, morning and

xlii INTRODUCTION

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evening, between 26th Street and the foot of Gansevoort
Street, East River, an inconspicuous and elderly private citi—
zen—a man whose history had been partly told and partly
foreshadowed in Bartleﬁy the Scrivener—walked with his
own private thoughts.

All the While, except for the associations at home and in
the Custom House, Melville sedulously avoided human con-
tacts. His leisure he spent in reading, and in worrying over
the problem of the freedom of the will. But his impulse to
write he seemed to have been unable ever to completely
strangle. Most of his indulgence was in verse. Of these he
printed two small volumes—John Marr (I888) and Timo-
leon (I891)—at his own expense and in editions of twenty—
ﬁve each. Tied up in the trunk of Melville’s papers was
the manuscript of another volume of verse: Weed: and
Wilding C/zieﬂy: With a Rose or Two. There is a longish
dedication to his wife which concludes: “But take them.
And for aught suggestive of the ‘melting mood’ that any
may possibly betray, call to mind the dissolving snowﬂakes
on the ruddy oblation of old, and remember your ‘Tears of
the Happy.’ ” On the title page he had inscribed as legend:
“Alms for Oblivion,” and “Yes, decay is often a gardener.”

Another manuscript volume, apparently unﬁnished, is a
mixture of prose and verse. It is chieﬂy interesting because
of Melville’s preoccupation therein with a character called
the Marquis de Grandvin, and his friend and disciple, John
Gentian. Both the Marquis and his friend are old gende—
men but are men endowed from birth with personal beauty,
moral charm, keen Wit, and an amplitude of worldly be-
longings. In their lives, Melville suggests, they have so
fully realized themselves they have never been urged to the
vicarious fulﬁlment which is the function of the arts. And
since, because of the very superiority of their gifts, these

INTRODUCTION xliii

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men will make no exertion to rescue their names from ob—
livion, Melville proposes to exert his lesser gifts to perpetu-
ate their superior endowments. The scheme of the book is
best indicated in the most protracted of the ﬁve title-pages
Melville designed: AT THE HOSTELRY. Literally ren—
dered from the rhythmic inspiration of the Marquis de
Grandm'n; being a piece introductory to AN AFTERNOON IN
NAPLES IN THE TIME OF BOMBA ( herein included); the
latter digested into metre from the desultory narration of
John Gentian, Esq., of the Burgundian Old Fellows’ Club,
a man the cherished lover of the aforesaid Marquis. The
Whole supplied with expository headings to the parts by the
Editor. Except for the glimmer of an attempt to present
a life of overﬂowing sociability as being superior to a life
cramped to authorship, the book is as pretentious and dull
as its ﬁve title—pages.

It was not until Melville’s sixty-ninth year that he was
for the ﬁrst time to know the taste of leisure and economic
security. His wife had come into an inheritance from
her family. Melville resigned from the Custom House on
January I, I 888, and before many months he was at his desk
——writing the last and not the least remarkable of his novels.
He had come to the end of his long ordeal. The passionate
urgencies within him had been tempered by years, and his
worldly defeat had gone into the recollections of things
past. He had money. Of his four children, both sons were
dead 5 one daughter was well married. His household con-
sisted only of his wife, nobly loyal to him through forty-one
years, and an unmarried daughter approaching middle-age.
Then it was, and so protected and surrounded, that time and
circumstance were to bring Melville into that innocence and
serenity from which, by his own striving, he had been more
alienated the more he had striven to take them by violence.

xliv INTRODUCTION

A robust conscience had never been part of Melville’s vig-
orous endowment. When he married and took hostages of
fortune, he suffered profoundly from his inability to earn
a decent income, dependent constantly upon his father-in-
law’s liberality. The quick succession of his books at the be-
ginning of his career, an outpouring of his vital powers sus-
tained at enormous length, was not the behaviour of a man
primarily disposed to expect unearned increments from the
world. He challenged the world with his genius, and the
world defeated him by ignoring the challenge and starving
him. He stopped writing because he had failed and because
he had no choice but to accept the world’s terms: there is no
mystery here. This was not insanity, but common sense.

But in his personality and in his defeat in all human con-
tacts there is mystery. In his books is revealed the secret
fury of his essential nature. By every known record he was,
to all external appearance, a man of extraordinary reserve;
and the face that he presented to the world in his day, and
to us still, is a mask.

Julian Hawthorne has written: “There was vivid genius
in this man, and he was the strangest being that ever came
into our circle. Through all his Wild and reckless adventures,
of which a small part only got into his fascinating books, he
had been unable to rid himself of a Puritan conscience; he
afterwards tried to loosen its grip by studying German meta-
physics, but in vain. He was restless and disposed to dark
hours, and there is reason to suspect that there was in him a
vein of insanity. His later writings were incomprehensible.
When I was in New York in 1884, I met him, looking pale,
sombre, nervous, but little touched by age. He died a few
years later. He conceived the highest admiration for my
father’s genius, and a deep affection for him personally, but
he told me, during our talk. that he was convinced that there

INTRODUCTION xlv

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Was some secret in my father’s life which had never been
revealed, and which accounted for the gloomy passages in
his books. It was characteristic for him to imagine so, there
were many secrets untold in his own career.”

To call a man crazy when you cannot understand what he
says, is an easy way to rest the intellect. But in detect-
ing a consciousness of suppression in Melville, and in
noting that he imputed it to others, Mr. Hawthorne is an
acute and valuable witness. It is, of course, inadequate to
say that Melville was merely hiding his disappointment at_
the failure of fame, and renouncing his gifts because they
Were no longer recognized. Year after year to go on per-
petually writing books that would not sell was a luxury he
could not afford. But his personal isolation, the infelicity
of his marriage, his friendlessness, his growing sense that
contact with men was an embarrassment rather than a re-
freshment—these suggest some fatal and hidden maladjust-
ment within himself. The whole known record of his life
seems insistently to indicate that veiled and deep-seated im-
pulses from his nether—consciousness resolutely blocked the
way to singleness of purpose and whole—heartedness of sur-
render, suppressions the more eloquently betrayed by his
efforts both in his writings and in his life, to conceal them
from himself. His was a soul so divided against itself that
in the failure of self—mastery was mastered by life.

According to the myth which Plato puts into the mouth
of Aristophanes, there was, in the beginning, a race of beings
terrible for their strength and might: round in shape, with
four feet and four hands, back and sides forming a circle, one
head with two faces looking opposite ways, and the remainder
to correspond. When this race in their might and insolence
made an attack upon the gods, Zeus, after doubt, hit upon a
scheme to mend their manners and humble their ways: he

xlvi IWTRODUCTION

cut them all in half. Since then, each human creature, being
but a mutilation, is in endless quest of his other half. And
this is the nature of love: to reunite our dissevered selves,
making one of two, healing the state of man. “And if we
are not obedient to the gods,” Aristophanes warns in con-
clusion, “there is danger that we shall be split up again.”
With Christianity, his prophecy was fulﬁlled, and this second
severance became a fact. Man was divided against himself
into body and soul, into ﬂesh and spirit, cruciﬁed between the
war of the members. “For the good that I would do I do
not, but the evil which I would not, that I do. I delight in
the law of God after the inner man: but I see another law in
my members, warring against the law of my mind, and
bringing me unto captivity to the law of sin which is in my
members.”

With very remarkable intensity of ardour, Melville’s most
relentless craving was to discover and dissolve himself into
his other Platonic half. But his own nature was so disinte-
grated by the New England contamination from Saint Paul,
that he viewed any such dissolution as a surrender to in—
iquity. Sexual strife and bodily surrender were not to him
(as they were to Blake, whom in other ways he strikingly re—
sembles), an ultimate fulﬁlment rehearsing the reconcilia-
tion of the vaster conﬂict between man and God, between
Time and Eternity 5 it was a grossness and a shame, only to
be annulled. Sex, to him, was not the consummation and
dedication of ideality, but its ﬁlthy reverse.

His demoralization—as seems to be true of every other
Galahad—had begun at home. His father,—who from
Paris had characteristically written of the lascivious tempta-
tion of France and the rectitude of his own New England
uxoriousness,—-—had infected his offspring with corrupt ideals
of “innocence.” Melville’s extravagantly affectionate nature

INTROD UC TIOJC xIvii
had, moreover, from the cradle haloed his mother with the
wonder and mystery of sanctiﬁed womanhood: without blem—
ish—unclouded, snow—white, terrible, yet serene. Between
this ideality and the gymnastics of passions wherein he had
been conceived, was a revolting antinomy that he was able
to resolve neither at home nor in any latitude of Polynesia.
“By heaven, but marriage is an impious thing!” he exclaims
after his own marriage, in the person of Pierre; “Hard fate,
that Love’s best verdure should feed on tears.”

No one can read Melville’s work extensively without being
struck by the almost complete absence of women and his al-
most complete avoidance of any mention of sex except either
in glib parroting of traditional “literary” attitudes or else
in dark and ominous evasion. As Mr. Freeman has said:
“A cold nature his assuredly was not, and passages in Pierre
have a power so unholy that one reads shrinkingly. But ex-
cept in Pierre and one or two of the lesser books, and also
Clarel among the poems, there is scarce a hint that Melville
was aware of what it is that teases, exalts, ennobles, and de—
stroys men. The sharpest sexual passion in his work, and it is
an all but solitary instance, is incestuous.” In Timoleon, the
book of poems that appeared the year of his death, there is
one piece amazingly apart from all the rest of this other—
wise serene volume. After the Pleasure Party is the title,
and the subject is the sting of sex. And here, with a direct-
ness unparalleled elsewhere in his work, he speaks out plain
of “the sexual feud that clogs the aspiring life.” “Drear
shame,” he exclaims, asking bitterly, “And kept I long
heaven’s watch for this?”

Viewing women as he did in the double capacity of Yillah
and Hautia—“Yillah was all beauty and innocence; my
crown of felicity, my heaven below5—and Hautia my heart
abhorred”——-it was in manly friendship, as oﬁering ideality

xlviii INTRODUCTION

without sex—that he hoped for the fulﬁlment that marriage
denied. That the volcanic and unenlisted energies of his
sex might be roused in the fullest integrity of any such pas-
sion: that, by the evidence of his books and his behaviour,
was of such nauseating repugnance to him that his whole na—
ture seems to have fended against the very thought of such a
possibility. And yet, in his writing, as in his life, is an
abundance of masculine passion, an extremity of devotion,
which suggest an indecision of frontier between friendship
and love. Such enthusiasms, of which his last, for Haw-
thorne, is the most intimately documented expression, he
celebrated with neither reticence, nor, in so far as we have
any evidence, with outspoken integrity. Failure in quest
of his Platonic half was perhaps inevitable. In his old age,
in After the Pleasure Party again, he makes this remarkable
comment upon his destiny:

“Could I remake me! or set free
This sexless hound in sex, then plunge
Deeper than Sappho, in a lunge
Piercing Pan’s paramount mystery!
For, Nature, in no shallow surge
Against thee either sex may urge.
Why hast thou made us hut in halves —
C o—relatives? This makes us slaves.
I 1‘ these co-relatives never meet
Selfhood itself seems incomplete.
And such the dicing of hlind fate
Few matching halves here meet and mate.
What Cosmic jest or Anarch blunder
The human integral clove asunder
And shied the fractions through life’s gate?”

7N TROD UC TI ON xlix

His last word upon the strange mystery of himself and
of human destiny is Billy Budd: “A story,” so Melville said
in a pencilled note at the end, “not unwarranted by what hap-
pens in this incongruous world of ours—innocence and in-
ﬁrmity, spiritual depravity and fair respite.” It is a brief
and appealing narrative, unmatched among Melville’s works
in lucidity and inward peace. “With calm of mind, all pas-
sion spent,” Melville turned again to the narrative of one
who, like Pierre, reaps death as the wages of Virtue. The
scene is aboard ship, and the conﬂict is between the innocence
of the handsome young sailor Billy Budd, and the “natural
depravity” of Claggart, a subtle, dark, demon-haunted petty
ofﬁcer. Claggart’s is the “natural depravity” of Plato’s deﬁ—
nition: “depravity according to nature.” Primarily he had
been moved against Billy by his signiﬁcant personal beauty,
but not by that alone, it was, more deeply, the simplicity of
a nature which had never willed malice which pricked the
malice of the master—at—arms. “One person excepted, the
master—at-arms was perhaps the only man in the ship intel—
lectually capable of adequately appreciating the moral phe-
nomenon presented in Billy Budd, and the insight but inten—
siﬁed his passion, which, assuming various secret forms within
him, at times assumed that of cynic disdain—disdain of inno-
cence. To be nothing more than innocent!” Melville him—
self had known this “cynic disdain.” For when he wrote
Pierre, one part of him hated the youthful guilelessness of
his earlier self as represented in the hero of that novel, even
as Claggart hated Billy Budd.

To pass from a normal nature to one haunted as was Clag—
gart one must cross, Melville says, “the deadly space be-
tween, and this is best done by indirection.” In attempting
this oblique passage, Melville tells how “long ago an honest
scholar, my senior, said to me in reference to one who like

1 INTRODUCTION

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himself is no more, a man so unimpeachably respectable that
against him nothing was ever openly said, though among the
few something was whispered, ‘Yes, X is a nut not to be
cracked by the tap of a lady’s fan.’ ” And Melville’s com—
ment is as guarded as the rest of the passage: “At the time
my inexperience was such that I did not quite see the drift
of all this. It may be that I see it now.”

But there are other and less ambiguous glimpses given us
into Claggart’s dark soul. “When Claggart’s unobserved
glance happened to light on belted Billy rolling along the
upper gun—deck in the leisure of the second dog—watch, ex-
changing passing broadsides of fun with other promenaders
in the crowd, that glance would follow the cheerful sea-
Hyperion with a settled, meditative, and melancholy ex—
pression, his eyes strangely suffused with incipient feverish
tears. Then would Claggart look like the man of sorrows.
Yes, and sometimes the melancholy expression would have
in it a touch of soft yearning, as if Claggart could even have
loved Billy but for fate and ban.” Claggart would seem
to be an American forerunner of the Charlus of Marcel
Proust. And as a study in abnormal psychology, Billy Budd
is remarkably detached, subtle, and profound. In the writ-
ing of it, however, Melville’s exclusive interest was not to
probe clinically into “the mystery of iniquity.”

Just as some theologians have presented the fall of man as
evidence of the great glory of God, in similar manner Mel-
. Ville studies the evil in Claggart in vindication of the inno-
cence in Billy Budd. For, primarily, Melville wrote Billy
Budd in witness to his ultimate faith that evil is defeat and
natural goodness invincible in the aﬁections of man. Billy
Budd, as Pierre, ends in disaster and death, in each case in-
experience and innocence and seraphic impulse are wrecked
against the malign forces of darkness that seem to preside

 

INTRODUCTION Ii
over external human destiny. In Pierre, Melville had hurled
himself into a fury of vituperation against the world 5 with
Billy Budd he would justify the ways of God to man.
Among the many parallels of contrast between these two
books, each is a tragedy (as was Melville’s life), but in op—
posed sense of the term. For tragedy may be viewed not as
being essentially the representation of human misery, but
rather as the representation of human goodness or nobility.
All of the supremest art is tragic: but the tragedy is, in Aris—
totle’s phrase, “the representation of Eudaimonia,” or the
highest kind of happiness. There is, of course, in this type
of tragedy, with its essential quality of encouragement and
triumph, no ﬂinching of any horror of tragic life, no shirking
of the truth by a feeble idealism, none of the compromises
of the so-called “happy ending.” The powers of evil and
horror must be granted their fullest scope; it is only thus we
can triumph over them. Even though in the end the tragic
hero ﬁnds no friends among the living or dead, no help
in God, only a deluge of calamity everywhere, yet in the
very intensity of his afﬂiction he may reveal the splendour un-
discoverable in any gentler fate. Here he has reached, not
the bottom, but the crowning peak of fortune—something
which neither suﬁering nor misfortune can touch. Only
when worldly disaster has worked its utmost can we realize
that there remains something in man’s soul which is for ever
beyond the grasp of the accidents of existence, with power in
its own right to make life beautiful. Only through tragedy ,
of this type could Melville afﬁrm his everlasting yea. The
ﬁnal great revelation—or great illusion—of his life, he
uttered in Billy Budd.

RAYMOND WEAVER.
BUTLER HALL,
NEW YORK CITY,
7 July, 1928.

 

fBENIT-O CERENO

First published anonymously in Putnam’: M 013ny Magazine, October,
November, December, 1 8 5 5.
Republished in “The Piazza Tales”, 18 56.

BENITO CERENO

IN the year 1799, Captain Amasa Delano,iof Duxbury,
in Massachusetts, commanding a large sealer and general
trader, lay at anchor, with a valuable cargo, in the harbour
of St. Maria—a small, desert, uninhabited island towards
the southern extremity of the long coast of Chili. There
he had touched for water.

On the second day, not long after dawn, while lying in
his berth, his mate came below, informing him that a strange
sail was coming into the bay. Ships were then not so plenty
in those waters as now. He rose, dressed, and went on deck.

The morning was one peculiar to that coast. Everything
was mute and calm; everything grey. The sea, though
undulated into long roods of swells, seemed ﬁxed, and was
sleeked at the surface like waved lead that has cooled and
set in the smelter’s mould. The sky seemed a grey mantle.
1Flights of troubled grey fowl, kith and kin with ﬂights of
troubled grey vapours among which they were mixed,
skimmed low and ﬁtfully over the waters, as swallows over
meadows before storms. Shadows present, foreshadowing
deeper shadows to come.

To Captain Delano’s surprise, the stranger, viewed
through the glass, showed no colours; though to do so upon
entering a haven, however uninhabited in its shores, where
but a single other ship might be lying, was the custom
among peaceful seamen of all nations. Considering the
lawlessness and loneliness of the spot, and the sort of stories,
at that day, associated with those seas, Captain Delano’s
surprise might have deepened into some uneasiness had he \ '
not been a person of a singularly undistrustful gWe, .\

3

4 SHORTER NOVELS OF HERMJN MELVILLEW
not liable, except on extraordinary and repeated excitement,
and hardly then, to indulge in personal alarms, any way
involving the imputation of .malign evil 1n man. Whether,
in view of what humanity 1s capable, such a trait implies,
along with a benevolent heart, more than ordinary quick-
ness and accuracy of intellectual perception, may be left to
the wise to determine. '

But whatever misgivings might have obtruded on ﬁrst
seeing the stranger, would almost, in any seaman’s mind,
have been dissipated by observing that, the ship, in navigat—
ing into the harbour, was drawing too near the land, for her
own safety’s sake, owing to a sunken reef making out off
her bow. This seemed to prove her a stranger, indeed,
not only to the sealer, but the island; consequently, she
could be'no wonted freebooter on that ocean. With no
small interest, Captain Delano continued to watch her—a
proceeding not much facilitated by the vapours partly man-
tling the hull, through which the far matin light from her
cabin streamed equivocally enough; much like the sun—by
this time crescented on the rim of the horizon, and appar-
ently, in company with the strange ship, entering the harbour
—which, wimpled by the same low, creeping clouds, showed
not unlike a Lima intriguante’s one sinister eye peering across
the Plaza from the Indian loop—hole of her dusk saya—y-
manta.

It might have been but a deception of the vapours, but,
the longer the stranger was watched, the more singular ap-
peared her manoeuvres. Ere long it seemed hard to decide
whether she meant to come in or no—what she wanted, or
what she was about. The wind, which had breezed up a
little during the night, was now extremely light and bafﬂing,
which the more increased the apparent uncertainty of her
movements.

{BENITO CERENO 5

Surmising, at last, that it might be a ship in distress, Cap—
tain Delano ordered his whale—boat to be dropped, and,
much to the wary opposition of his mate, prepared to board
her, and, at the least, pilot her in. On the night previous,
a ﬁshing-party of the seamen had gone a long distance to
some detached rocks out of sight from the sealer, and, an
hour or two before day—break, had returned, having met
with no small success. Presuming that the stranger might
have been long 0E soundings, the good captain put several
baskets of the ﬁsh, for presents, into his boat, and so pulled
away. From her continuing too near the sunken reef, deem-
ing her in danger, calling to his men, he made all haste to
apprise those on board of their situation. But, some time ere
the boat came up, the wind, light though it was, having
shifted, had headed the vessel off, as well as partly broken
the vapours from about her.

Upon gaining a less remote View, the ship, when made
signally visible on the verge of the leaden-hued swells, with
the shreds of fog here and there raggedly furring her, ap
peared like a white—washed monastery after a thunder—storm,
seen perched upon some dun cliff among the Pyrenees. But
it was no purely fanciful resemblance which now, for a
moment, almost led Captain Delano to think that nothing
less than a ship-load of monks was before him. Peering
over the bulwarks were what really seemed, in the hazy
distance, throngs of dark cowls; while, ﬁtfully revealed
through the open port—holes, other dark moving ﬁgures
were dimly descried, as of Black Friars pacing the Cloisters.

Upon a still nigher approach, this appearance was modi—
ﬁed, and the true character of the vessel was plain—a
Spanish merchantman of the ﬁrst class, carrying negro
slaves, amongst other valuable freight, from one colonial
port to another. A very large, and, in its time, a very ﬁne

6 SHOR‘TER NOVELS OF HERM/IN MELVILLEW
vessel, such as in those days were at intervals encountered
along that main, sometimes superseded Acapulco treasure-
ships, or retired frigates of the Spanish king’s navy, which,
like superannuated Italian palaces, still, under a decline of
masters, preserved signs of former state.

As the whale—boat drew more and more nigh, the cause
of the peculiar pipe—clayed aspect of the stranger was seen
in the slovenly neglect pervading her. The spars, ropes,
and great part of the bulwarks, looked woolly, from long
unacquaintance with the scraper, tar, and the brush. Her
keel seemed laid, her ribs put together, and she launched,
from Ezekiel’s Valley of Dry Bones.

In the present business in which she was engaged, the
ship’s general model and rig appeared to have undergone
no material change from their original warlike and Froissart
pattern. However, no guns were seen.

The tops were large, and were railed about with what
had once been octagonal net-work, all now in sad disrepair.
These tops hung overhead like three ruinous aviaries, in
one of which was seen perched, on a ratlin, a White noddy,
a strange fowl, so called from its lethargic somnambulistic
character, being frequently caught by hand at sea. Bat-
tered and mouldy, the castellated forecastle seemed some
ancient turret, long ago taken by assault, and then left to
decay. Towards the stern, two high-raised quarter galleries
—the balustrades here and there covered with dry, tindery
sea-moss—opening out from the unoccupied state—cabin,
Whose dead lights, for all the mild weather, were hermeti-
cally closed and caulked—these tenantless balconies hung
over the sea as if it were the grand Venetian canal. But
the principal relic of faded grandeur was the ample oval of
the shield—like stern—piece, intricately carved with the arms
of Castile and Leon, medallioned about by groups of mytho-

?ENITO CERENO 7
logical or symbolical devices; uppermost and central of
which was a dark satyr in a mask, holding his foot on the
prostrate neck of a writhing ﬁgure, likewise masked.

Whether the ship had a ﬁgure—head, or only a plain
beak, was not quite certain, owing to canvas wrapped about
that part, either to protect it while undergoing a refurbish—
ing, or else decently to hide its decay. Rudely painted or
chalked, as in a sailor freak, along the forward side of a
sort of pedestal below the canvas, was the sentence, “Seguid
maestro jefe,” (follow your leader); while upon the tar-
nished head-boards, near by, appeared, in stately capitals,
once gilt, the ship’s name, “SAN DOMINICK,” each letter
streakingly corroded with tricklings of copper-spike rust;
While, like mourning weeds, dark festoons of sea—grass
slimily swept to and fro over the name, with every hearse—
like roll of the hull.

As at last the boat was hooked from the bow along to—
ward the gangway amidship, its keel, while yet some inches
separated from the hull, harshly grated as on a sunken
coral reef. It proved a huge bunch of conglobated barnacles
adhering below the water to the side like a wen; a token
of bafﬂing airs and long calms passed somewhere in those
seas.

Climbing the side, the visitor was at once surrounded by
a clamorous throng of whites and blacks, but the latter out—
numbering the former more than could have been expected,
negro transportation—ship as the stranger in port was. But,
in one language, and as with one voice, all poured out a
common tale of suffering; in which the negresses, of whom
there were not a few, exceeded the others in their dolorous
vehemence. The scurvy, together with a fever, had swept
OE a great part of their number, more especially the Span—
iards. OE Cape Horn, thev had narrowly escaped ship-

8 SHORTER NOVELS OF HERMAN MELVILLE
wreck, then, for days together, they had lain tranced
without wind; their provisions were low; their water next
to none; their lips that moment were baked.

While Captain Delano was thus made the mark of all
eager tongues, his one eager glance took in all the faces,
with every other object about him.

Always upon ﬁrst boarding a large and populous ship at
sea, especially a foreign one, with a nondescript crew such
as Lascars or Manilla men, the impression varies in a
peculiar way from that produced by ﬁrst entering a strange
house with strange inmates in a strange land. Both house
and ship, the one by its walls and blinds, the other by its
high bulwarks like ramparts, hoard from View their interiors
till the last moment; but in the case of the ship there is this
addition: that the living spectacle it contains, upon its sudden
and complete disclosure, has, in contrast with the blank
ocean which zones it, something of the effect of enchant-
ment. The ship seems unreal; these strange costumes, ges-
tures, and faces, but a shadowy tableau just emerged from
the deep, which directly must receive back what it gave.

Perhaps it was some such inﬂuence as above is attempted
to be described which, in Captain Delano’s mind, heightened
whatever, upon a staid scrutiny, might have seemed unusual,
especially the conspicuous ﬁgures of four elderly grizzled
negroes, their heads like black, doddered willow tops, who,
in venerable contrast to the tumult below them, were
couched sphynx—like, one on the starboard cat-head, another
on the larboard, and the remaining pair face to face on the
opposite bulwarks above the main—chains. They each had
bits of unstranded old junk in their hands, and, with a sort
of stoical self-content, were picking the junk into oakum,
a small heap of which lay by their sides. They accompanied
the task with a continuous, low, monotonous chant; droning

{BENITO CERENO 9
and drooling away like so many grey—headed bag-pipers
playing a funeral march.

The quarter-deck rose into an ample elevated poop, upon
the forward verge of which, lifted, like the oakum-pickers,
some eight feet above the general throng, sat along in a
row, separated by regular spaces, the cross-legged ﬁgures of
six other blacks; each With a rusty hatchet in his hand, which,
with a bit of brick and a rag, he was engaged like a scullion
in scouring, while between each two was a small stack of
hatchets, their rusted edges turned forward awaiting a like
operation. Though occasionally the four oakum~pickers
would brieﬂy address some person or persons in the crowd
below, yet the six hatchet—polishers neither spoke to others,
nor breathed a Whisper among themselves, but sat intent
upon their task, except at intervals, when, with the peculiar
love in negroes of uniting industry With pastime, two—and-
two they sideways clashed their hatchets together, like cym-
bals, with a barbarous din. All six, unlike the generality,
had the raw aspect of unsophisticated Africans.

But that ﬁrst comprehensive glance which took in those
ten ﬁgures, with scores less conspicuous, rested but an instant
upon them, as, impatient of the hubbub of voices, the visitor
turned in quest of Whomsoever it might be that commanded
the ship.

But as if not unwilling to let nature make known her own
case among his suffering charge, or else in despair of re-
straining it for the time, the Spanish captain, a gentlemanly,
reserved—looking, and rather young man to a stranger’s eye,
dressed with singular richness, but bearing plain traces of
recent sleepless cares and disquietudes, stood passively by,
leaning against the main-mast, at one moment casting a
dreary, spiritless look upon his excited people, at the next
an unhappy glance toward his Visitor. By his side stood

Io SHORTER NOVELS 0F HERM/IN MELVILLE

a black of small stature, in Whose rude face, as occasionally,
like a shepherd’s dog, he mutely turned it up into the
Spaniard’s, sorrow and aﬁection were equally blended.

Struggling through the throng, the American advanced
to the Spaniard, assuring him of his sympathies, and oﬁering
to render whatever assistance might be in his power. To
which the Spaniard returned, for the present, but grave and
ceremonious acknowledgments, his national formality dusked
by the saturnine mood of ill health.

But losing no time in mere compliments, Captain Delano
returning to the gangway, had his baskets of ﬁsh brought
up, and as the wind still continued light, so that some hours
at least must elapse ere the ship could be brought to the
anchorage, he bade his men return to the sealer, and fetch
back as much water as the whale—boat could carry, with
whatever soft bread the steward might have, all the re—
maining pumpkins on board, with a box of sugar, and a
dozen of his private bottles of cider.

Not many minutes after the boat’s pushing off, to the
vexation of all, the wind entirely died away, and the tide
turning, began drifting back the ship helplessly seaward.
But trusting this would not long last, Captain Delano sought
with good hopes to cheer up the strangers, feeling no small
satisfaction that, with persons in their condition he could—
thanks to his frequent voyages along the Spanish main—-
converse with some freedom in their native tongue.

While left alone with them, he was not long in observing
some things tending to heighten his ﬁrst impressions; but
surprise was lost in pity, both for the Spaniards and blacks,
alike evidently reduced from scarcity of water and provi-
sions; While long-continued suffering seemed to have
brought out the less good—natured qualities of the negroes,
besides, at the same time, impairing the Spaniard’s authority

BENITO CERENO I!
over them. But, under the circumstances, precisely this con-
dition of things was to have been anticipated. In armies,
navies, cities, or families—in nature herself—nothing more
relaxes good order than misery. Still, Captain Delano was
not without the idea, that had Benito Cereno been a man
of greater energy, misrule would hardly have come to the
present pass. But the debility, constitutional or induced by
the hardships, bodily and mental, of the Spanish captain,
was too obvious to be overlooked. A prey to settled dejec—
tion, as if long mocked with hope he would not now indulge
it, even when it had ceased to be a mock, the prospect of
that day or evening at furthest, lying at anchor, with plenty
of water for his people, and a brother captain to counsel and
befriend, seemed in no perceptible degree to encourage him.
His mind appeared unstrung, if not still more seriously af—
fected. Shut up in these oaken walls, chained to one dull
round of command, whose unconditionality cloyed him, like
some hypochondriac abbot he moved slowly about, at times
suddenly pausing, starting, or staring, biting his lip, biting
his ﬁnger—nail, ﬂushing, paling, twitching his beard, with
other symptoms of an absent or moody mind. This distem-
pered spirit was lodged, as before hinted, in as distempered
a frame. He was rather tall, but seemed never to have been
robust, and now with nervous suffering was almost worn
to a skeleton. A tendency to some pulmonary complaint ap-
peared to have been lately conﬁrmed. His Voice was like
that of one with lungs half gone, hoarsely suppressed, a
husky whisper. N o wonder that, as in this state he tottered
about, his private servant apprehensively followed him.
Sometimes the negro gave his master his arm, or took his
handkerchief out of his pocket for him; performing these
and similar ofﬁces with that affectionate zeal which trans-
mutes into something ﬁlial or fraternal acts in themselves

12 SHORTER NOVELS OF HERMAN MELVILLE
but menial; and which has gained for the negro the repute
of making the most pleasing body servant in the world;
one, too, Whom a master need be on no stiﬂly superior terms
with, but may treat with familiar trust, less a servant than
a devoted companion.

Marking the noisy indocility of the blacks in general, as
well as what seemed the sullen inefﬁciency of the whites,
it was not without humane satisfaction that Captain Delano
witnessed the steady good conduct of Babo.

But the good conduct of Babo, hardly more than the ill-
behaviour of others, seemed to withdraw the half—lunatic
Don Benito from his cloudy languor. Not that such pre-
cisely was the impression made by the Spaniard on the mind
of his Visitor. The Spaniard’s individual unrest was, for the
present, but noted as a conspicuous feature in the ship’s
general affliction. Still, Captain Delano was not a little
concerned at What he could not help taking for the time
to be Don Benito’s unfriendly indifference toward himself.
The Spaniard’s manner, too, conveyed a sort of sour and
gloomy disdain, which he seemed at no pains to disguise.
But this the American in charity ascribed to the harassing
effects of sickness, since, in former instances, he had noted
that there are peculiar natures on Whom prolonged physical
suﬂ’ering seems to cancel every social instinct of kindness;
as if forced to black bread themselves, they deemed it but
equity that each person coming nigh them should, indirectly,
by some slight or affront, be made to partake of their fare.

But ere long Captain Delano bethought him that, in—
dulgent as he was at the ﬁrst, in judging the Spaniard, he
might not, after all, have exercised charity enough. At bot—
tom it was Don Benito’s reserve which displeased him; but
the same reserve was shown toward all but his personal
attendant. Even the formal reports which, according to

BENITO CERENO 13
sea-usage, were at stated times made to him by some petty
underling (either a white, mulatto or black), he hardly had
patience enough to listen to, without betraying contemptu-
ous aversion. His manner upon such occasions was, in its
degree, not unlike that which might be supposed to have
been his imperial countryman’s, Charles V., just previous to
the anchoritish retirement of that monarch from the throne.

This splenetic disrelish of his place was evinced in almost
every function pertaining to it. Proud as he was moody,
he condescended to no personal mandate. Whatever special
orders were necessary, their delivery was delegated to his
body—servant, who in turn transferred them to their ultimate
destination, through runners, alert Spanish boys or slave
boys, like pages or pilot-ﬁsh within easy call continually
hovering round Don Benito. So that to have beheld this
undemonstrative invalid gliding about, apathetic and mute,
no landsman could have dreamed that in him was lodged
a dictatorship beyond which, while at sea, there was no
earthly appeal.

Thus, the Spaniard, regarded in his reserve, seemed as
the involuntary victim of mental disorder. But, in fact, his
reserve might, in some degree, have proceeded from design.
If so, then in DonlBenito was evinced the unhealthy climax
of that icy though conscientious policy, more or less adopted
by all commanders of large ships, which, except in signal
emergencies, obliterates alike the manifestation of sway with
every trace of sociality; transforming the man into a block,
or rather into a loaded cannon, which, until there is call for
thunder, has nothing to say.

Viewing him in this light, it seemed but a natural token
of the perverse habit induced by a long course of such hard
self—restraint, that, notwithstanding the present condition of
his ship, the Spaniard should still persist in a demeanour,

I4 SHORTER NOVELS OF HERM/YN MELVILLE
which, however harmless—or it may be, appropriate—in a
well—appointed vessel, such as the San Dominick might have
been at the outset of the voyage, was anything but judicious
now. But the Spaniard perhaps thought that it was with
captains as With gods: reserve, under all events, must still
be their cue. But more probably this appearance of slumber-
ing dominion might havebeen but an attempted disguise.
to conscious imbecility—not deep policy, but shallow device.
But be all this as it might, whether Don Benito’s manner
was designed or not, the more Captain Delano noted its
pervading reserve, the less he felt uneasiness at any particu-
lar manifestation of that reserve toward himself.

Neither were his thoughts taken up by the captain alone.
Wonted to the quiet orderliness of the sealer’s comfortable
family of a creW, the noisy confusion of the San Dominick’s
suﬁering host repeatedly challenged his eye. Some promi-
nent breaches not only of discipline but of decency were ob—
served. These Captain Delano could not but ascribe, in
the main, to the absence of those subordinate deck-ofﬁcers
to whom, along with higher duties, is entrusted What may
be styled the police department of a populous ship. True,
the old oakum—pickers appeared at times to act the part of
monitorial constables to their countrymen, the blacks; but
though occasionally succeeding in allaying triﬂing outbreaks
now and then between man and man, they could do little or
nothing toward establishing general quiet. The Sam Domi-
nic/z was in the condition of a transatlantic emigrant ship,
among whose multitude of living freight are some individu—
als, doubtless, as little troublesome as crates and bales; but
the friendly remonstrances of such with their ruder com—
panions are of not so much avail as the unfriendly arm of
the mate. What the San Dominick wanted was, what the

_ BENITO CERENO 15
emigrant ship has, stern superior ofﬁcers. But on these decks
not so much as a fourth mate was to be seen.

The visitor’s curiosity was roused to learn the particulars
of those mishaps which had brought about such absenteeism,
with its consequences; because, though deriving some inkling
of the voyage from the wails which at the ﬁrst moment had
greeted him, yet of the details no clear understanding had
been had. The best account would, doubtless, be given by
the captain. Yet at ﬁrst the visitor was loth to ask it, un—
willing to provoke some distant rebuﬁ. But plucking up
courage, he at last accosted Don Benito, renewing the ex--
pression of his benevolent interest, adding, that did he
(Captain Delano) but know the particulars of the ship’s mis—
fortunes, he would, perhaps, be better able in the end to
relieve them. Would Don Benito favour him with the whole
story?

Don Benito faltered; then, like some somnambulist sud—
denly interfered with, vacantly stared at his visitor, and
ended by looking down on the deck. He maintained this
posture so long, that Captain Delano, almost equally discon-
certed, and involuntarily almost as rude, turned suddenly
from him, walking forward to accost one of the Spanish sea-
men for the desired information. But he had hardly gone
ﬁve paces, when with a sort of eagerness Don Benito invited
him back, regretting his momentary absence of mind, and
professing readiness to gratify him.

While most part of the story was being given, the two
captains stood on the after part of the main-deck, a privi-
leged spot, no one being near but the servant.

“It is now a hundred and ninety days,” began the Span-
iard, in his husky whisper, “that this ship, well oﬂicered and
well manned, with several cabin passengers—some ﬁfty
Spaniards in all—sailed from Buenos Ayres bound to Lima,

16 SHORTER NOVELS OF HERMAN MELVILLE
with a general cargo, Paraguay tea and the like—and,”
pointing forward, “that parcel of negroes, now not more
than a hundred and ﬁfty, as you see, but then numbering
over three hundred souls. OE Cape Horn we had heavy
gales. In one moment, by night, three of my best ofﬁcers,
with ﬁfteen sailors, were lost, with the main—yard; the spar
snapping under them in the slings, as they sought, with
heavers, to beat down the icy sail. To lighten the hull,
the heavier sacks of mata were thrown into the sea, with
most of the water—pipes lashed on deck at the time. And
this last necessity it was, combined with the prolonged de-
tentions afterwards experienced, which eventually brought
about our chief causes of suffering. When—”

Here there was a sudden fainting attack of his cough,
brought on, no doubt, by his mental distress. His servant
sustained him, and drawing a cordial from his pocket placed
it to his lips. He a little revived. But unwilling to leave
him unsupported while yet imperfectly restored, the black
with one arm still encircled his master, at the same time
keeping his eye ﬁxed on his face, as if to watch for the ﬁrst
sign of complete restoration, or relapse, as the event might
prove.

The Spaniard proceeded, but brokenly and obscurely, as
one in a dream.

—“Oh, my God! rather than pass through what I have,
with joy I would have hailed the most terrible gales,
but—-”

His cough returned and with increased violence; this sub-
siding, with reddened lips and closed eyes he fell heavily
against his supporter.

“His mind wanders. He was thinking of the plague that
followed the gales,” plaintively sighed the servant; “my
poor, poor master!” wringing one hand, and with the other

BENITO CERENO 17
wiping the mouth. “But be patient, Seﬁor,” again turning
to Captain Delano, “these ﬁts do not last long; master will
soon be himself.”

Don Benito reviving, went on; but as this portion of the
story was very brokenly delivered, the substance only will
here be set down.

It appeared that after the ship had been many days tossed
in storms off the Cape, the scurvy broke out, carrying oﬁ'
numbers of the whites and blacks. When at last they had
worked round into the Paciﬁc, their spars and sails were so
damaged, and so inadequately handled by the surviving mar-
iners, most of whom were become invalids, that, unable to
lay her northerly course by the wind, which was powerful,
the unmanageable ship for successive days and nights was
blown northwestward, where the breeze suddenly deserted
her, in unknown waters, to sultry calms. The absence of the
water—pipes now proved as fatal to life as before their pres—
ence had menaced it. Induced, or at least aggravated, by the
more than scanty allowance of water, a malignant fever fol—
lowed the scurvy; with the excessive heat of the lengthened
calm, making such short work of it as to sweep away, as by
billows, whole families of the Africans, and a yet larger num-
ber, proportionably, of the Spaniards, including, by a luck—
less fatality, every ofﬁcer on board. Consequently, in the
smart west winds eventually following the calm, the already
rent sails having to be simply dropped, not furled, at need,
had been gradually reduced to the beggar’s rags they were
now. To procure substitutes for his lost sailors, as well as
supplies of water and sails, the captain at the earliest oppor—
tunity had made for Baldivia, the southermost civilized port
of Chili and South America; but upon nearing the coast the
thick weather had prevented him from so much as sighting
that harbour. Since which period, almost without a crew,

18 SHOR‘TER NOVELS OF HERMAN MELVILLE
and almost without canvas and almost without water, and at
intervals giving its added dead to the sea, the San Dominick
had been battle-dored about by contrary winds, inveigled by
currents, or grown weedy in calms. Like a man lost in
woods, more than once she had doubled upon her own track.

“But throughout these calamities,” huskily continued Don
Benito, painfully turning inthe half embrace of his servant,
“I have to thank those negroes you see, who, though to your
inexperienced eyes appearing unruly, have, indeed, conducted
themselves with less of restlessness than even their owner
could have thought possible under such circumstances.”

Here he again fell faintly back. Again his mind wan-
dered: but he rallied, and less obscurely proceeded.

“Yes, their owner was quite right in assuring me that no
fetters would be needed with his blacks, so that while, as is
wont in this transportation, those negroes have always re-
mained upon deck—not thrust below, as in the Guineamen—
they have, also, from the beginning, been freely permitted to
range Within given bounds at their pleasure.”

Once more the faintness returned—his mind roved—but,
recovering, he resumed:

“But it is Babo here to whom, under God, I owe not only
my own preservation, but likewise to him, chieﬂy, the merit
is due, of pacifying his more ignorant brethren, when at in—
tervals tempted to murmurings.”

“Ah, master,” sighed the black, bowing his face, “don’t
speak of me; Babo is nothing, what Babo has done was but
duty.”

“Faithful fellow!” cried Captain Delano. “Don Benito,
I envy you such a friend; slave I cannot call him.”

As master and man stood before him, the black upholding
the white, Captain Delano could not but bethink him of the
beauty of that relationship which could present such a spec-

{BENITO CERENO 19
tacle of ﬁdelity on the one hand and conﬁdence on the other.
The scene was heightened by the contrast in dress, denoting
their relative positions. The Spaniard wore a loose Chili
jacket of dark velvet, White small clothes and stockings, with
silver buckles at the knee and instep; a high—crowned som—
brero, of ﬁne grass; a slender sword, silver mounted, hung
from a knot in his sash; the last being an almost invariable
adjunct, more for utility than ornament, of a South American
gentleman’s dress to this hour. Excepting when his occa-
sional nervous contortions brought about disarray, there was
a certain precision in his attire, curiously at variance with the
unsightly disorder around; especially in the belittered
Ghetto, forward of the main-mast, wholly occupied by the
blacks.

The servant wore nothing but wide trousers, apparently,
from their coarseness and patches, made out of some old top—
sail, they were clean, and conﬁned at the waist by a bit of un-
stranded rope, which, with his composed, deprecatory air at
times, made him look something like a begging friar of St.
Francis.

However unsuitable for the time and place, at least in the
blunt—thinking American’s eyes, and however strangely sur—
viving in the midst of all his afﬂictions, the toilette of Don
Benito might not, in fashion at least, have gone beyond the
style of the day among South Americans of his class.
Though on the present voyage sailing from Buenos Ayres,
he had avowed himself a native and resident of Chili, whose
inhabitants had not so generally adopted the plain coat and
once plebeian pantaloons, but, with a becoming modiﬁcation,
adhered to their provincial costume, picturesque as any in
the world. Still, relatively to the pale history of the voyage,
and his own pale face, there seemed something so incongru-
ous in the Spaniard’s apparel, as almost to suggest the image

20 SHORTER NOVELS OF HERMAN MELVILLE

of an invalid courtier tottering about London streets in the
time of the plague.

The portion of the narrative which, perhaps, most excited
interest, as well as some surprise, considering the latitudes in
question, was the long calms spoken of, and more particularly
the ship’s so long drifting about. Without communicating
the opinion, of course, the American could not but impute at
least part of the detentions both to clumsy seamanship and
faulty navigation. Eyeing Don Benito’s small, yellow hands,
he easily inferred that the young captain had not got into
command at the hawse—hole but the cabin—window, and if so,
why wonder at incompetence, in youth, sickness, and aris—
tocracy united? Such was his democratic conclusion.

But drowning criticism in compassion, after a fresh repeti-
tion of his sympathies, Captain Delano having heard out his
story, not only engaged, as in the ﬁrst place, to see Don
Benito and his people supplied in their immediate bodily
needs, but, also, now further promised to assist him in pro—
curing a large permanent supply of water, as well as some
sails and rigging, and, though it would involve no small em—
barrassment to himself, yet he would spare three of his best
seamen for temporary deck oﬂ‘icers; so that Without delay
the ship might proceed to Concepcion, there fully to reﬁt for
Lima, her destined port.

Such generosity was not Without its effect, even upon the
invalid. His face lighted up, eager and hectic, he met the
honest glance of his visitor. With gratitude he seemed
overcome.

“This excitement is bad for master,” whispered the serv-
ant, taking his arm, and with soothing words gently drawing
him aside.

When Don Benito returned, the American was pained to

BENITO CEREJ‘CO 21
observe that his hopefulness, like the sudden kindling in his
check, was but febrile and transient.

Ere long, with a joyless mien, looking up toward the
poop, the host invited his guest to accompany him there,
for the beneﬁt of What little breath of wind might be stirring.

As during the telling of the story, Captain Delano had
once or twice started at the occasional cymballing of the
hatchet—polishers, wondering why such an interruption should
be allowed, especially in that part of the ship, and in the
ears of an invalid; and, moreover, as the hatchets had any-
thing but an attractive look, and the handlers of them still
less so, it was, therefore, to tell the truth, not without some
lurking reluctance, or even shrinking, it may be, that Captain
Delano, with apparent complaisance, acquiesced in his host’s
invitation. The more so, since with an untimely caprice of
punctilio, rendered distressing by his cadaverous aspect, Don
Benito, with Castilian bows, solemnly insisted upon his guest’s
preceding him up the ladder leading to the elevation, where,
one on each side of the last step, sat four armorial supporters
and sentries, two of the ominous ﬁle. Gingerly enough
stepped good Captain Delano between them, and in the in-
stant of leaving them behind, like one running the gauntlet,
he felt an apprehensive twitch in the calves of his legs.

But when, facing about, he saw the Whole ﬁle, like so
many organ—grinders, still stupidly intent on their work, un-
mindful of everything beside, he could not but smile at his
late ﬁdgeting panic.

Presently, While standing with Don Benito, looking for-
ward upon the decks below, he was struck by one of those in-
stances of insubordination previously alluded to. Three
black boys, with two Spanish boys, were sitting together on
the hatchets, scraping a rude wooden platter, in which some
scanty mess had recently been cooked. Suddenly. one of

22 SHOR‘TER NOVELS 0F HERMﬂN MELVILLE
the black boys, enraged at a word dropped by one of his
white companions, seized a knife, and though called to for-
bear by one of the oakum—pickers, struck the lad over the
head, inﬂicting a gash from which blood ﬂowed.

In amazement, Captain Delano inquired What this meant.
To which the pale Benito dully muttered, that it was merely
the sport of the lad.

“Pretty serious sport, truly,” rejoined Captain Delano.
“Had such a thing happened on board the Bachelor’: De—
light, instant punishment would have followed.”

At these words the Spaniard turned upon the American
one of his sudden, staring, half—lunatic looks, then, relaps-
ing into his torpor, answered, “Doubtless, doubtless, Seﬁor.”

Is it, thought Captain Delano, that this helpless man is
one of those paper captains I’ve known, who by policy wink
at what by power they cannot put down? I know no sadder
sight than a commander who has little of command but the
name.

“I should think, Don Benito,” he now said, glancing to—
ward the oakum-picker who had sought to interfere with the
boys, “that you would ﬁnd it advantageous to keep all your
blacks employed, especially the younger ones, no matter at
What useless task, and no matter what happens to the ship.
Why, even with my little band, I ﬁnd such a course indis-
pensable. I once kept a crew on my quarter—deck thrumming
mats for my cabin, when, for three days, I had given up my
ship—mats, men, and all—for a speedy loss, owing to the
Violence of a gale in which we could do nothing but help—
lessly drive before it.”

“Doubtless, doubtless,” muttered Don Benito.

“But,” continued Captain Delano, again glancing upon the
oakum-pickers and then at the hatchet—polishers, near by, “I
see you keep some at least of your host employed.”

BENITO CERENO 23

“Yes,” was again the vacant response.

“Those old men there, shaking their pows from their pul-
pits,” continued Captain Delano, pointing to the oakum-
pickers, “seem to act the part of old dominies to the rest, little
heeded as their admonitions are at times. Is this voluntary
on their part, Don Benito, or have you appointed them shep-
herds to your ﬂock of black sheep?”

“What posts they ﬁll, I appointed them,” rejoined the
Spaniard in an acrid tone, as if resenting some supposed sa-
tiric reﬂection.

“And these others, these Ashantee conjurors here,” con-
tinued Captain Delano, rather uneasily eyeing the brandished
steel of the hatchet-polishers, where in spots it had been
brought to a shine, “this seems a curious business they are at,
Don Benito?”

“In the gales we met,” answered the Spaniard, “what of
our general cargo was not thrown overboard was much dam—
aged by the brine. Since coming into calm weather, I have
had several cases of knives and hatchets daily brought up for
overhauling and cleaning.”

“A prudent idea, Don Benito. You are part owner of ship
and cargo, I presume; but not of the slaves, perhaps?”

“I am owner of all you see,” impatiently returned Don
Benito, “except the main company of blacks, who belonged
to my late friend, Alexandre Aranda.”

As he mentioned this name, his air was heart-broken, his
knees shook; his servant supported him.

Thinking he divined the cause of such unusual emotion,
to conﬁrm his surmise, Captain Delano, after a pause, said,
“And may I ask, Don Benito, Whether——since awhile ago
you spoke of some cabin passengers—the friend, Whose loss

so aﬁiicts you, at the outset of the voyage accompanied his
blacks?”

24 SHORTER NOVELS 0F HERMAN MELVILLE

((Yes.))

“But died of the fever?”

“Died of the fever.——-Oh, could I but—”

Again quivering, the Spaniard paused.

“Pardon me,” said Captain Delano slowly, “but I think
that, by a sympathetic experience, I conjecture, Don Benito,
what it is that gives the keener edge to your grief. It was
once my hard fortune to lose at sea a dear friend, my own
brother, then supercargo. Assured of the welfare of his
spirit, its departure I could have borne like a man; but that
honest eye, that honest hand—both of which had so often
met mine—and that warm heart; all, all—like scraps to the
dogs—to throw all to the sharks! It was then I vowed never
to have for fellow—voyager a man I loved, unless, unbeknown
to him, I had provided every requisite, in case of a fatality,
for embalming his mortal part for interment on shore. Were
your friend’s remains now on board this ship, Don Benito,
not thus strangely would the mention of his name aﬁect
you.”

“On board this ship?” echoed the Spaniard. Then, with
horriﬁed gestures, as directed against some spectre, he un—
consciously fell into the ready arms of his attendant, who,
with a silent appeal toward Captain Delano, seemed be-
seeching him not again to broach a theme so unspeakably dis—
tressing to his master.

This poor fellow now, thought the pained American, is
the Victim of that sad superstition which associates goblins
with the deserted body of man, as ghosts with an abandoned
house. How unlike are we made! What to me, in like case,
would have been a solemn satisfaction, the bare suggestion,
even, terriﬁes the Spaniard into this trance. Poor Alexandro
Aranda! what would you say could you here see your friend
———who, on former voyages, when you for months were left

BENITO CERENO 25
behind, has, I dare say, often longed, and longed, for one
peep at you—now transported with terror at the least
thought of having you anyway nigh him.

At this moment, with a dreary graveyard toll, betokening
a ﬂaw, the ship’s forecastle bell, smote by one of the grizzled
oakum—pickers, proclaimed ten o’clock through the leaden
calm, when Captain Delano’s attention was caught by the
moving ﬁgure of a gigantic black, emerging from the general
crowd below, and slowly advancing toward the elevated
poop. An iron collar was about his neck, from which de-
pended a chain, thrice wound round his body; the terminat-
ing links padlocked together at a broad band of iron, his
girdle.

“How like a mute Atufal moves,” murmured the servant.

The black mounted the steps of the poop, and, like a
brave prisoner, brought up to receive sentence, stood in un-
quailing muteness before Don Benito, now recovered from
his attack.

At the ﬁrst glimpse of his approach, Don Benito had
started, a resentful shadow swept over his face; and, as with
the sudden memory of bootless rage, his white lips glued
together

This is some mulish mutineer, thought Captain Delano,
surveying, not without a mixture of admiration, the colossal
form of the negro.

“See, he waits your question, master,” said the servant.

Thus reminded, Don Benito, nervously averting his
glance, as if shunning, by anticipation, some rebellious
response, in a disconcerted voice, thus spoke:

“Atufal, will you ask my pardon now?”

The black was silent.

“Again, master,” murmured the servant, with bitter up-

26 SHORTER NOVELS OF HERMJN MELVILLE
braiding eyeing his countryman; “Again, master ; he will
bend to master yet.”

“Answer,” said Don Benito, still averting his glance, “say
but the one word pardon, and your chains shall be off.”

Upon this, the black, slowly raising both arms, let them
lifelessly fall, his links clanking, his head bowed, as much
as to say, “No, I am content.”

“Go,” said Don Benito, with inkept and unknown emo—
tion.

Deliberately as he had come, the black obeyed.

“Excuse me, Don Benito,” said Captain Delano, “but this
scene surprises me, What means it, pray?”

“It means that that negro alone, of all the band, has given
me peculiar cause of offence. I have put him in chains;
I_,,

Here he paused, his hand to his head, as if there were a
swimming there, or a sudden bewilderment of memory had
come over him; but meeting his servant’s kindly glance
seemed reassured, and proceeded'

“I could not scourge such a form. But I told him he must
ask my pardon. As yet he has not. At my command, every
two hours he stands before me.” ‘

“And how long has this been?”

“Some sixty days.”

“And obedient in all else? And respectful?”

((Yes',’

“Upon my conscience, then,” exclaimed Captain Delano,
impulsively, “he has a royal spirit in him, this fellow.”

“He may have some right to it,” bitterly returned Don
Benito, “he says he was king in his own land.”

“Yes,” said the servant, entering a word, “those slits in
Atufal’s ears once held wedges of gold; but poor Babo here,

BENITO CERENO 27
in his own land, was only a poor slave; a black man’s slave
was Babo, who now is the White’s.”

Somewhat annoyed by these conversational familiarities,
Captain Delano turned curiously upon the attendant, then
glanced inquiringly at his master; but, as if long wonted to
these little informalities, neither master nor man seemed to
understand him.

“What, pray, was Atufal’s offence, Don Benito?” asked
Captain Delano; “if it was not something very serious, take
a fool’s advice, and, in View of his general docility, as well
as in some natural respect for his spirit, remit his penalty.”

“No, no, master never will do that,” here murmured the
servant to himself, “proud Atufal must ﬁrst ask master’s
pardon. The slave there carries the padlock, but master here
carries the key.”

His attention thus directed, Captain Delano now noticed
for the ﬁrst time that, suspended by a slender silken cord,
from Don Benito’s neck hung a key. At once, from the serv—
ant’s muttered syllables divining the key’s purpose, he smiled
and said: “So, Don Benito—padlock and key—signiﬁcant
symbols, truly.”

Biting his lip, Don Benito faltered.

Though the remark of Captain Delano, a man of such
native simplicity as to be incapable of satire or irony, had
been dropped in playful allusion to the Spaniard’s singu—
larly evidenced lordship over the black; yet the hypochon-
driac seemed in some way to have taken it as a malicious re-
ﬂection upon his confessed inability thus far to break down,
at least, on a verbal summons, the entrenched Will of the
slave. Deploring this supposed misconception, yet despair-
ing of correcting it, Captain Delano shifted the subject; but
ﬁnding his companion more than ever withdrawn, as if still
slowly digesting the lees of the presumed aﬁront above-men-

28 SHORTER NOVELS OF HERMAN MELVILLE
tioned, by-and—by Captain Delano likewise became less talka—
tive, oppressed, against his own will, by what seemed the
secret vindictiveness of the morbidly sensitive Spaniard. But
the good sailor himself, of a quite contrary disposition, re—
frained, on his part, alike from the appearance as from the
feeling of resentment, and if silent, was only so from con—
tagion. -

Presently the Spaniard, assisted by his servant, somewhat
discourteously crossed over from Captain Delano 5 a pro-
cedure which, sensibly enough, might have been allowed to
pass for idle caprice of ill—humour, had not master and man,
lingering round the corner of the elevated skylight, begun
Whispering together in low voices. This was unpleasing.
And more: the moody air of the Spaniard, which at times
had not been without a sort of valetudinarian stateliness, now
seemed anything but digniﬁed; while the menial familiarity
of the servant lost its original charm of simple—hearted at—
tachment.

In his embarrassment, the visitor turned his face to the
other side of the ship. By so doing, his glance accidentally
fell on a young Spanish sailor, a coil of rope in his hand,
just stepped from the deck to the ﬁrst round of the mizzen—
rigging. Perhaps the man would not have been particularly
noticed, were it not that, during his ascent to one of the yards,
he, with a sort of covert intentness, kept his eye ﬁxed on
Captain Delano, from whom, presently, it passed, as if by a
natural sequence, to the two whisperers.

His own attention thus redirected to that quarter, Captain
Delano gave a slight start. From something in Don Benito’s
manner just then, it seemed as if the visitor had, at least
partly, been the subject of the Withdrawn consultation going
on—a conjecture as little agreeable to the guest as it was
little ﬂattering to the host.

BENITO CERENO 29

The singular alternations of courtesy and ill-breeding in
the Spanish captain were unaccountable, except on one of tWO
suppositions—innocent lunacy, or wicked imposture.

But the first idea, though it might naturally have occurred
"0 an indiﬁerent observer, and, in some respects, had not
hitherto been wholly a stranger to Captain Delano’s mind,
yet, now that, in an incipient way, he began to regard the
stranger’s conduct something in the light of an intentional af—
front, of course the idea of lunacy was virtually vacated.
But if not a lunatic, What then? Under the circumstances,
Would a gentleman, nay, any honest boor, act the part now
acted by his host? The man was an impostor. Some low-
born adventurer, masquerading as an oceanic grandee; yet so
ignorant of the ﬁrst requisites of mere gentlemanhood as to
be betrayed into the present remarkable indecorum. That
strange ceremoniousness, too, at other times evinced, seemed
not uncharacteristic of one playing a part above his real level.
Benito Cereno—Don Benito Cereno—a sounding name.
One, too, at that period, not unknown, in the surname, to
supercargoes and sea captains trading along the Spanish
Main, as belonging to one of the most enterprising and ex—
tensive mercantile families in all those provinces; several
members of it having titles, a sort of Castilian Rothschild,
with a noble brother, or cousin, in every great trading town
of South America. The alleged Don Benito was in early
manhood, about twenty—nine or thirty. To assume a sort of
roving cadetship in the maritime aﬁ'airs of such a house, what
more likely scheme for a young knave of talent and spirit?
But the Spaniard was a pale invalid. Never mind. For
even to the degree of simulating mortal disease, the craft
of some tricksters had been known to attain. To think that,
under the aspect of infantile weakness, the most savage ener—

go SHORTER NOVELS 0F HERM/IN MELVILLE

gies might be couched—those velvets of the Spaniard but the
velvet paw to his fangs.

From no train of thought did these fancies come 5 not from
within, but from without; suddenly, too, and in one throng,
like hoar frost, yet as soon to vanish as the mild sun of Cap—
tain Delano’s good—nature regained its meridian.

Glancing over once again toward Don Benito—whose
side—face, revealed above the skylight, was now turned to—
ward him—Captain Delano was struck by the proﬁle, whose
clearness of cut was reﬁned by the thinness incident to ill—
health, as well as ennobled about the chin by the beard.
Away with suspicion. He was a true oﬁ—shoot of a true
hidalgo Cereno.

Relieved by these and other better thoughts, the visitor,
lightly humming a tune, now began indifferently pacing the
poop, so as not to betray to Don Benito that he had at all
mistrusted incivility, much less duplicity, for such mistrust
would yet be proved illusory, and by the event, though, for
the present, the circumstance which had provoked that dis-
trust remained unexplained. But when that little mystery
should have been cleared up, Captain Delano thought he
might extremely regret it, did he allow Don Benito to be-
come aware that he had indulged in ungenerous surmises.
In short, to the Spaniard’s black—letter text, it was best, for a
While, to leave open margin.

Presently, his pale face twitching and overcast, the Span-
iard, still supported by his attendant, moved over toward
his guest, when, with even more than his usual embarrass—
ment, and a strange sort of intriguing intonation in his
husky whisper, the following conversation began:

“Seﬁor, may I ask how long you have lain at this isle?”

“Oh, but a day or two, Don Benito.”

“And from what port are you last?”

__ QENI‘TO CEREWO 3r

“Canton.”

“And there, Seﬁor, you exchanged your seal—skins for teas
and silks, I think you said?”

“Yes. Silks, mostly.”

“And the balance you took in specie, perhaps?”

Captain Delano, ﬁdgeting a little, answered—

“Yes; some silver, not a very great deal, though.”

“Ah—well. May I ask how many men have you on
board, Seﬁor?”

Captain Delano slightly started, but answered:

“About ﬁve-and-twenty, all told.”

“And at present, Seﬁor, all on board, I suppose?”

“All on board, Don Benito,” replied the captain now with
satisfaction.

“And will be to-night, Senor?”

At this last question, following so many pertinacious ones,
for the soul of him Captain Delano could not but look very
earnestly at the questioner, who, instead of meeting the
glance, with every token of craven discomposure dropped
his eyes to the deck; presenting an unworthy contrast to his
servant, who, just then, was kneeling at his feet adjusting a
loose shoe-buckle; his disengaged face meantime, with
humble curiosity, turned openly up into his master’s down-
cast one.

The Spaniard, still with a guilty shuﬂie, repeated his ques-
tion:

“And—and will be to-night, Seﬁor?”

“Yes, for aught I know,” returned Captain Delano,—
“but nay,” rallying himself into fearless truth, “some of
them talked of going off on another ﬁshing party about
midnight.”

“Your ships generally go—go more or less armed, I be-
lieve, Seﬁor?”

32 SHORTER NOVELS OF HERMAN MELVILLE

“Oh, a six-pounder or two, in case of emergency,” was
the intrepidly indiﬁerent reply, “with a small stock of mus-
kets, sealing-spears, and cutlasses, you know.”

As he thus responded, Captain Delano again glanced at
Don Benito, but the latter’s eyes were averted; while ab-
ruptly and awkwardly shifting the subject, he made some
peevish allusion to the calm, .and then, without apology,
once more, with his attendant, withdrew to the opposite bul-
warks, where the Whispering was resumed.

At this moment, and ere Captain Delano could cast a cool
thought upon what had just passed, the young Spanish sailor
before mentioned was seen descending from the rigging. In
act of stooping over to spring inboard to the deck, his volu-
minous, unconﬁned frock, or shirt, of coarse Woollen, much
spotted with tar, opened out far down the chest, revealing
a soiled under—garment of what seemed the ﬁnest linen,
edged, about the neck, with a narrow blue ribbon, sadly
faded and worn. At this moment the young sailor’s eye was
again ﬁxed on the whisperers, and Captain Delano thought
he observed a lurking signiﬁcance in it, as if silent signs of
some freemason sort had that instant been interchanged.

This once more impelled his own glance in the direction
of Don Benito, and, as before, he could not but infer that
himself formed the subject of the conference. He paused.
The sound of the hatchet-polishing fell on his ears. He
cast another swift side—look at the two. They had the air
of conspirators. In connection with the late questionings,
and the incident of the young sailor, these things now begat
such return of involuntary suspicion, that the singular guile~
lessness of the American could not endure it. Plucking up
a gay and humorous expression, he crossed over to the two
rapidly, saying: “Ha, Don Benito, your black here seems
high in your trust; a sort of privy-counsellor, in fact.”

QENITO CERENO m

Upon this, the servant looked up with a good-natured
grin, but the master started as from a venomous bite. It was
a moment or two before the Spaniard sufﬁciently recovered
himself to reply; which he did, at last, with cold con-
straint: “Yes, Seﬁor, I have trust in Babo.”

Here Babo, changing his previous grin of mere animal
humour into an intelligent smile, not ungratefully eyed his
master.

Finding that the Spaniard now stood silent and reserved,
as if involuntarily, or purposely giving hint that his guest’s
proximity was inconvenient just then, Captain Delano, un-
willing to appear uncivil even to incivility itself, made some
trivial remark and moved off, again and again turning over
in his mind the mysterious demeanour of Don Benito
Cereno.

He had descended from the poop, and, wrapped in
thought, was passing near a dark hatchway, leading down
into the steerage, when, perceiving motion there, he looked
to see what moved. The same instant there was a sparkle
in the shadowy hatchway, and he saw one of the Spanish
sailors, prowling there, hurriedly placing his hand in the
bosom of his frock, as if hiding something. Before the man
could have been certain who it was that was passing, he slunk
below out of sight. But enough was seen of him to make it
sure that he was the same young sailor before noticed in
- the rigging.

What was that Which so sparkled? thought Captain De-
lano. It was no lamp—no match—no live coal. Could
it have been a jewel? But how come sailors with jewels?
—or with silk-trimmed under—shirts either? Has he been
robbing the trunks of the dead cabin passengers? But if
so, he would hardly wear one of the stolen articles on board
ship here. Ah, ah—if now that was, indeed, a secret sign

24 SHOR‘TER NOVELS OF HERMAN MELVILLE

I saw passing between this suspicious fellow and his captain
awhile since; if I could only be certain that in my uneasi-
ness my senses did not deceive me, then——

Here, passing from one suspicious thing to another, his
mind revolved the point of the strange questions put to him
concerning his ship.

By a curious coincidence, as each point was recalled, the
black wizards of Ashantee would strike up with their
hatchets, as in ominous comment on the White stranger’s
thoughts. Pressed by such enigmas and portents, it would
have been almost against nature, had not, even into the least
distrustful heart, some ugly misgivings obtruded.

Observing the ship now helplessly fallen into a current,
with enchanted sails, drifting with increased rapidity sea-
ward; and noting that, from a lately intercepted projection
of the land, the sealer was hidden, the stout mariner began
to quake at thoughts which he barely durst confess to him—
self. Above all, he began to feel a ghostly dread of Don
Benito. And yet when he roused himself, dilated his chest,
felt himself strong on his legs, and coolly considered it—
what did all these phantoms amount to?

Had the Spaniard any sinister scheme, it must have refer-
ence not so much to him (Captain Delano) as to his ship
(the Bachelor’: Delight). Hence the present drifting away
of the one ship from the other, instead of favouring any
such possible scheme, was, for the time at least, opposed
to it. Clearly any suspicion, combining such contradictions,
must need be delusive. Beside, was it not absurd to think
of a vessel in distress—a vessel by sickness almost dismanned
of her crew—a vessel whose inmates were parched for water
—was it not a thousand times absurd that such a craft should,
at present, be of a piratical character; or her commander,
either for himself or those under him, cherish any desire

BENI‘Z 0 CERENO "
ivvvvvvvvvvvv"YVVVV-vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv-vvvva’}:

but for speedy relief and refreshment? But then, might not
general distress, and thirst in particular, be aﬁected? And
might not that same undiminished Spanish crew, alleged to
have perished off to a remnant, be at that very moment
lurking in the hold? On heart-broken pretence of entreat—
ing a cup of cold water, ﬁends in human form had got into
lonely dwellings, nor retired until a dark deed had been
done. And among the Malay pirates, it was no unusual
thing to lure ships after them into their treacherous harbours,
or entice boarders from a declared enemy at sea, by the
spectacle of thinly manned or vacant decks, beneath which
prowled a hundred spears with yellow arms ready to up—
thrust them through the mats. Not that Captain Delano
had entirely credited such things. He had heard of them—
and now, as stories, they recurred. The present destination
of the ship was the anchorage. There she would be near
his own vessel. Upon gaining that vicinity, might not the
San Dominick, like a slumbering volcano, suddenly let loose
energies now hid?

He recalled the Spaniard’s manner while telling his story.
There was a gloomy hesitancy and subterfuge about it. It
was just the manner of one making up his tale for evil pur-
poses, as he goes. But if that story was not true, What was
the truth? That the ship had unlawfully come into the
Spaniard’s possession? But in many of its details, especially
in reference to the more calamitous parts, such as the fatali—
ties among the seamen, the consequent prolonged beating
about, the past suﬁerings from obstinate calms, and still con-
tinued suEering from thirst, in all these points, as well as
others, Don Benito’s story had corroborated not only the
wailing ejaculations of the indiscriminate multitude, white
and black, but likewise—what seemed impossible to be coun-
terfeit—by the very expression and play of every human

36 SHOR‘TER NOVELS OF HERMJN MELVILLE
feature, which Captain Delano saw. If Don Benito’s story
was throughout an invention, then every soul on board,
down to the youngest negress, was his carefully drilled re-
cruit in the plot: an incredible inference. And yet, if there
was ground for mistrusting the Spanish captain’s veracity,
that inference was a legitimate one.

In short, scarce an uneasiness entered the honest sailor’s
mind but, by a subsequent spontaneous act of good sense,
it was ejected. At last he began to laugh at these forebod—
ings; and laugh at the strange ship for, in its aspect some—
way siding With them, as it were; and laugh, too, at the
odd—looking blacks, particularly those old scissors-grinders,
the Ashantees; and those bed-ridden old knitting—women,
the oakum-pickers; and, in a human way, he almost began
to laugh at the dark Spaniard himself, the central hobgoblin
of all.

For the rest, whatever in a serious way seemed enigmati—
cal, was now good-naturedly explained away by the thought
that, for the most part, the poor invalid scarcely knew what
he was about; either sulking in black vapours, or putting
random questions without sense or object. Evidently, for
the present, the man was not ﬁt to be entrusted with the ship.
On some benevolent plea withdrawing the command from
him, Captain Delano would yet have to send her to Concep—
cion in charge of his second mate, a worthy person and good
navigator—a plan which would prove no wiser for the San
Dominick than for Don Benito; for—relieved from all
anxiety, keeping wholly to his cabin—the sick man, under
the good nursing of his servant, would probably, by the end
of the passage, be in a measure restored to health and with
that he should also be restored to authority.

Such were the American’s thoughts. They were tranquil-
lizing. There was a difference between the idea of Don

EENI‘TO CERENO 37
Benito’s darky pre-ordaining Captain Delano’s fate, and
Captain Delano’s lightly arranging Don Benito’s. Never—
theless, it was not without something of relief that the good
seaman presently perceived his whale—boat in the distance.
Its absence had been prolonged by unexpected detention at
the sealer’s side, as well as its returning trip lengthened by
the continual recession of the goal.

The advancing speck was observed by the blacks. Their
shouts attracted the attention of Don Benito, who, with a
return of courtesy, approaching Captain Delano, expressed
satisfaction at the coming of some supplies, slight and tem—
porary as they must necessarily prove.

Captain Delano responded, but while doing so, his atten—
tion was drawn to something passing on the deck below:
among the crowd climbing the landward bulwarks, anxiously
watching the coming boat, two blacks, to all appearances
accidentally incommoded by one of the sailors, ﬂew out
against him with horrible curses, which the sailor someway
resenting, the two blacks dashed him to the deck and jumped
upon him, despite the earnest cries of the oakum—pickers.

“Don Benito,” said Captain Delano quickly, “do you see
what is going on there? Look!”

But, seized by his cough, the Spaniard staggered, with
both hands to his face, on the point of falling. Captain
Delano would have supported him, but the servant was
more alert, who, with one hand sustaining his master, with
the other applied the cordial. Don Benito, restored, the
black withdrew his support, slipping aside a little, but
dutifully remaining within call of a whisper. Such discre-
tion was here evinced as quite wiped away, in the visitor’s
eyes, any blemish of impropriety which might have attached
to the attendant, from the indecorous conferences before
mentioned; showing, too, that if the servant were to blame,

38 SHORTER NOVELS OF HERM/{N MELVILLEW
it might be more the master’s fault than his own, since when
left to himself he could conduct thus well.

His glance thus called away from the spectacle of disorder
to the more pleasing one before him, Captain Delano could
not avoid again congratulating Don Benito upon possessing
such a servant, who, though perhaps a little too forward
now and then, must upon the whole be invaluable to one
in the invalid’s situation.

“Tell me, Don Benito,” he added, with a smile—“I
should like to have your man here myself—what will you
take for him? Would ﬁfty doubloons be any object?”

“Master wouldn’t part with Babo for a thousand dou-
bloons,” murmured the black, overhearing the offer, and
taking it in earnest, and, with the strange vanity of a faithful
slave appreciated by his master, scorning to hear so paltry
a valuation put upon him by a stranger. But Don Benito,
apparently hardly yet completely restored, and again inter-
rupted by his cough, made but some broken reply.

Soon his physical distress became so great, aﬁecting his
mind, too, apparently, that, as if to screen the sad spectacle,
the servant gently conducted his master below.

Left to himself, the American, to while away the time
till his boat should arrive, would have pleasantly accosted
some one of the few Spanish seamen he saw, but recalling
something that Don Benito had said touching their ill con-
duct, he refrained, as a ship—master indisposed to countenance
cowardice or unfaithfulness in seamen.

While, with these thoughts, standing with eye directed
forward toward that handful of sailors—suddenly he
thought that some of them returned the glance and with a
sort of meaning. He rubbed his eyes, and looked again;
but again seemed to see the same thing. Under a new form,
but more obscure than any previous one, the old suspicions

BENITO CEREINO 39
recurred, but, in the absence of Don Benito, with less of
panic than before. Despite the bad account given of the
sailors, Captain Delano resolved forthwith to accost one of
them. Descending the poop, he made his way through the
blacks, his movement drawing a queer cry from the oakum-
pickers, prompted by whom the negroes, twitching each other
aside, divided before him; but, as if curious to see what
was the object of this deliberate Visit to their Ghetto, closing
in behind, in tolerable order, followed the white stranger
up. His progress thus proclaimed as by mounted kings-at—
arms, and escorted as by a Caifre guard of honour, Captain
Delano, assuming a good—humoured, off-hand air, continued
to advance, now and then saying a blithe word to the
negroes, and his eye curiously surveying the white faces,
here and there sparsely mixed in with the blacks, like stray
white pawns venturously involved in the ranks of the chess~
men opposed.

While thinking which of them to select for his purpose,
he chanced to observe a sailor seated on the deck engaged
in tarring the strap of a large block, with a circle of blacks
squatted round him inquisitively eyeing the process.

The mean employment of the man was in contrast with
something superior in his ﬁgure. His hand, black with con-
tinually thrusting it into the tar-pot held for him by a
negro, seemed not naturally allied to his face, a face which
would have been a very ﬁne one but for its haggardness.
Whether this haggardness had aught to do with criminality,
could not be determined; since, as intense heat and cold,
though unlike, produce like sensations, so innocence and
guilt, when, through casual association with mental pain,
stamping any visible impress, use one seal—a hacked one.

Not again that this reﬂection occurred to Captain Delano
at the time, charitable man as he was. Rather another idea.

40 SHORTER NOVELS OF HERMAN MELVILLE
Because observing so singular a haggardness to be combined
with a dark eye, averted as in trouble and shame, and then,
however illogically, uniting in his mind his own private suspi-
cions of the crew with the confessed ill-opinion on the part
of their mptain, he was insensibly operated upon by certain
general notions, which, while disconnecting pain and abash—
ment from virtue, as invariably link them with Vice.

If, indeed, there be any wickedness on board this ship,
thought Captain Delano, be sure that man there has fouled
his hand in it, even as now he fouls it in the pitch. I don’t
like to accost him. I will speak to this other, this old Jack
here on the Windlass.

He advanced to an old Barcelona tar, in ragged red
breeches and dirty night—cap, cheeks trenched and bronzed,
Whiskers dense as thorn hedges. Seated between two sleepy—
looking Africans, this mariner, like his younger shipmate,
was employed upon some rigging—splicing a cable—the
sleepy—looking blacks performing the inferior function of
holding the outer parts of the ropes for him.

Upon Captain Delano’s approach, the man at once hung
his head below its previous level; the one necessary for busi-
ness. It appeared as if he desired to be thought absorbed,
with more than common ﬁdelity, in his task. Being ad-
dressed, he glanced up, but with what seemed a furtive,
diﬁident air, which sat strangely enough on his weather-
beaten Visage, much as if a grizzly bear, instead of growling
and biting, should simper and cast sheep’s eyes. He was
asked several questions concerning the voyage—questions
purposely referring to several particulars in Don Benito’s
narrative—not previously corroborated by those impulsive
cries greeting the visitor on ﬁrst coming on board. The
questions were brieﬂy answered, conﬁrming all that remained
to be conﬁrmed of the story. The negroes about the wind-

BENITO CEREJIO 41
lass joined in with the old sailor, but, as they became talka-
tive, he by degrees became mute, and at length quite glum,
seemed morosely unwilling to answer more questions, and
yet, all the while, this ursine air was somehow mixed with
his sheepish one.

Despairing of getting into unembarrassed talk with such
a centaur, Captain Delano, after glancing round for a more
promising countenance, but seeing none, spoke pleasantly to
the blacks to make way for him; and so, amid various grins
and grimaces, returned to the poop, feeling a little strange
at ﬁrst, he could hardly tell why, but upon the whole with
regained conﬁdence in Benito Cereno.

How plainly, thought he, did that old whiskerando yonder
betray a consciousness of ill—desert. N o doubt, when he saw
me coming, he dreaded lest I, apprised by his captain of the
crew’s general misbehaviour, came with sharp words for him,
and so down With his head. And yet—and yet, now that I
think of it, that very old fellow, if I err not, was one of those
who seemed so earnestly eyeing me here awhile since. Ah,
these currents spin one’s head round almost as much as they
do the ship. Ha, there now’s a pleasant sort of sunny sight;
quite sociable, too.

His attention had been drawn to a slumbering negress,
partly disclosed through the lace-work of some rigging,
lying, with youthful limbs carelessly disposed, under the lee
of the bulwarks, like a doe in the shade of a woodland
rock. Sprawling at her lapped breasts Was her wide-awake
fawn, stark naked, its black little body half lifted from the
deck, crosswise with its dam’s, its hands, like two paws,
clambering upon her; its mouth and nose ineffectually root-
ing to get at the mark, and meantime giving a vexatious
half—grunt, blending with the composed snore of the negress.

The uncommon vigour of the child at length roused the

42 SHORTER NOVELS OF HERMAN MELVILLE
mother. She started up, at distance facing Captain Delano.
But, as if not at all concerned at the attitude in which she
had been caught, delightedly she caught the child up, with
maternal transports, covering it with kisses.

There’s naked nature, now; pure tenderness and love,
thought Captain Delano, well pleased.

This incident prompted himto remark the other negresses
more particularly than before. He was gratiﬁed with their
manners; like most uncivilized women, they seemed at once
tender of heart and tough of constitution; equally ready to
die for their infants or ﬁght for them. Unsophisticated as
leopardesses, loving as doves. Ah! thought Captain De—
lano, these perhaps are some of the very women whom
Mungo Park saw in Africa, and gave such a noble account of.

These natural sights somehow insensibly deepened his con-
ﬁdence and ease. At last he looked to see how his boat was
getting on, but it was still pretty remote. He turned to see
if Don Benito had returned; but he had not.

To change the scene, as well as to please himself with a
leisurely observation of the coming boat, stepping over into
the mizzen—chains he clambered his way into the starboard
quarter—gallery; one of those abandoned Venetian—looking
water—balconies previously mentioned 5 retreats cut off from
the deck. As his foot pressed the half-damp, half—dry sea~
mosses matting the place, and a chance phantom cats-paw—
an islet of breeze, unheralded, unfollowed—as this ghostly
cats—paw came fanning his cheek, as his glance fell upon the
row of small, round dead—lights, all closed like coppered eyes "
of the coﬂined, and the state—cabin door, once connecting with
the gallery, even as the dead-lights had once looked out upon
it, but now caulked fast like a sarcophagus lid, to a purple-
black, tarred-over panel, threshold, and post; and he be-
thought him of the time, when that state—cabin and this state-

BENITO CERENO 4.3
balcony had heard the voices of the Spanish king’s ofﬁcers,
and the forms of the Lima Viceroy’s daughters had perhaps
leaned where he stood-«as these and other images ﬂitted
through his mind, as the cats—paw through the calm, gradu—
ally he felt rising a dreamy inquietude, like that of one
who alone on the prairie feels unrest from the repose of the
noon.

He leaned against the carved balustrade, again looking
off toward his boat, but found his eye falling upon the rib—
boned grass, trailing along the ship’s water—line, straight as
a border of green box, and parterres of sea-weed, broad ovals
and crescents, ﬂoating nigh and far, with what seemed long
formal alleys between, crossing the terraces of swells, and
sweeping round as if leading to the grottoes below. And
overhanging all was the balustrade by his arm, which, partly
stained with pitch and partly embossed with moss, seemed
the charred ruin of some summer—house in a grand garden
long running to waste.

Trying to break one charm, he was but becharmed anew.
Though upon the wide sea, he seemed in some far inland
country, prisoner in some deserted chateau, left to stare at
empty grounds, and peer out at vague roads, Where never
wagon or wayfarer passed.

But these enchantments were a little disenchanted as his
eye fell on the corroded main-chains. Of an ancient style,
massy and rusty in link, shackle and bolt, they seemed even
more ﬁt for the ship’s present business than the one for
which probably she had been built.

Presently he thought something moved nigh the chains.
He rubbed his eyes, and looked hard. Groves of rigging
were about the chains; and there, peering from behind a
great stay, like an Indian from behind a hemlock, a Spanish
sailor, a marlingspike in his hand, was seen, who made what

44 SHORTER NOVELS 0F HERMAN MELVILLE
seemed an imperfect gesture toward the balcony—but im—
mediately, as if alarmed by some advancing step along the
deck within, vanished into the recesses of the hempen forest,
like a poacher.

What meant this? Something the man had sought to com-
municate, unbeknown to any one, even to his captain. Did
the secret involve aught unfavourable to his captain? Were
those previous misgivings of Captain Delano’s about to be
veriﬁed? Or, in his haunted mood at the moment, had some
random, unintentional motion of the man, while busy with
the stay, as if repairing it, been mistaken for a signiﬁcant
beckoning?

Not unbewildered, again he gazed OR for his boat. But
it was temporarily hidden by a rocky spur of the isle. As
with some eagerness he bent forward, watching for the ﬁrst
shooting View of its beak, the balustrade gave way before
him like charcoal. Had he not clutched an outreaching rope
he would have fallen into the sea. The crash, though
feeble, and the fall, though hollow, of the rotten fragments,
must have been overheard. He glanced up. With sober
curiosity peering down upon him was one of the old oakum—
pickers, slipped from his perch to an outside boom 3 while
below the old negro—and, invisible to him, reconnoitring
from a port-hole like a fox from the mouth of its den——
crouched the Spanish sailor again. From something sud-—
denly suggested by the man’s air, the mad idea now darted
into Captain Delano’s mind, that Don Benito’s plea of in~
disposition, in withdrawing below, was but a pretence: that
he was engaged there maturing some plot, of which the
sailor, by some means gaining an inkling, had a mind to
warn the stranger against, incited, it may be, by gratitude
for a kind word on ﬁrst boarding the ship. Was it from fore-
seeing some possible interference like this, that Don Benito

BENITO CERENO 45
had, beforehand, given such a bad character of his sailors,
while praising the negroes; though, indeed, the former
seemed as docile as the latter the contrary? The whites, too,
by nature, were the shrewder race. A man With some evil
design, would not he be likely to speak well of that stupidity
which was blind to his depravity, and malign that intelligence
from which it might not be hidden? Not unlikely, perhaps.
But if the whites had dark secrets concerning Don Benito,
could then Don Benito be any way in complicity with the
blacks? But they were too stupid. Besides, who ever heard
of a white so far a renegade as to apostatize from his very
species almost, by leaguing in against it with negroes? These
difﬁculties recalled former ones. Lost in their mazes, Captain
Delano, Who had now regained the deck, was uneasily ad—
vancing along it, when he observed a new face: an aged
sailor seated cross—legged near the main hatchway. His skin
Was shrunk up with wrinkles like a pelican’s empty pouch, his
hair frosted; his countenance grave and composed. His
hands were full of ropes, which he was working into a large
knot. Some blacks were about him obligingly dipping the
strands for him, here and there, as the exigencies of the
operation demanded.

Captain Delano crossed over to him, and stood in silence
surveying the knot, his mind, by a not uncongenial transi-
tion, passing from its own entanglements to those of the
hemp. For intricacy such a knot he had never seen in an
American ship, or indeed any other. The old man looked
like an Egyptian priest, making gordian knots for the temple
of Ammon. The knot seemed a combination of double-bow—
line-knot, treble-crown-knot, back—handed-Well-knot, knot-
in—and-out—knot, and jamming—knot.

At last, puzzled to comprehend the meaning of such a
knot, Captain Delano, addressed the knotter:—

46 SHORTER NOVELS OF HERM/IN MELVILLE

“What are you knotting there, my man?”

“The knot,” was the brief reply, Without looking up.

“So it seems, but what is it for?”

“For some one else to undo,” muttered back the old man,
plying his ﬁngers harder than ever, the knot being now
nearly completed.

While Captain Delano stood watching him, suddenly the
old man threw the knot toward him, and said in broken
English,———the ﬁrst heard in the ship,—something to this
effect—“Undo it, cut it, quick.” It was said lowly, but with
such condensation of rapidity, that the long, slow words in
Spanish, which had preceded and followed, almost operated
as covers to the brief English between.

For a moment, knot in hand, and knot in head, Captain
Delano stood mute; while, Without further heeding him, the
old man was now intent upon other ropes. Presently there
was a slight stir behind Captain Delano. Turning, he saw
the chained negro, Atufal, standing quietly there. The next
moment the old sailor rose, muttering, and, followed by his
subordinate negroes, removed to the forward part of the
ship, Where in the crowd he disappeared.

An elderly negro, in a clout like an infant’s, and with a
pepper and salt head, and a kind of attorney air, now
approached Captain Delano. In tolerable Spanish, and with
a good-natured, knowing wink, he informed him that the
old knotter was simple-Witted, but harmless; often playing
his old tricks. The negro concluded by begging the knot, for
of course the stranger would not care to be troubled with it.
Unconsciously, it was handed to him. With a sort of congé,
the negro received it, and turning his back ferreted into it
like a detective Custom House oﬂicer after smuggled laces.
Soon, with some African word, equivalent to pshaw, be tossed
the knot overboard. -

BENITO CERENO 47

All this is very queer now, thought Captain Delano, with
a qualmish sort of emotion, but as one feeling incipient sea-
sickness, he strove, by ignoring the symptoms, to get rid of
the malady. Once more he looked off for his boat. To his
delight, it was now again in View, leaving the rocky spur
astern.

The sensation here experienced, after at ﬁrst relieving
his uneasiness, with unforeseen efﬁciency, soon began to re-
move it. The less distant sight of that well—known boat—-
showing it, not as before, half blended with the haze, but
with outline deﬁned, so that its individuality, like a man’s,
was manifest, that boat, Rover by name, which, though now
in strange seas, had often pressed the beach of Captain
Delano’s home, and, brought to its threshold for repairs, had
familiarly lain there, as a Newfoundland dog, the sight of
that household boat evoked a thousand trustful associations,
which, contrasted with previous suspicions, ﬁlled him not
only with lightsome conﬁdence, but somehow with half hu—
morous self—reproaches at his former lack of it.

“What, I, Amasa Delano—Jack of the Beach, as they
called me when a lad—I, Amasa, the same that, duck-satchel
in hand, used to paddle along the waterside to the school—
house made from the old hulk;—I, little Jack of the Beach,
that used to go berrying with cousin Nat and the rest; I to be
murdered here at the ends of the earth, on board a haunted
pirate-ship by a horrible SpaniardP—Too nonsensical to think
of! Who would murder Amasa Delano? His conscience is
clean. There is some one above. Fie, ﬁe, Jack of the Beach!
you are a child indeed; a child of the second childhood, old
boy; you are beginning to dote and drule, I’m afraid.”

Light of heart and foot, he stepped aft, and there was met
by Don Benito’s servant, who, with a pleasing expression,
responsive to his own present feelings, informed him that

48 SHORTER NOVELS OF HERMAN MELVILLE
his master had recovered from the effects of his coughing ﬁt,
and had just ordered him to go present his compliments to
his good guest, Don Amasa, and say that he (Don Benito)
would soon have the happiness to rejoin him.

There now, do you mark that? again thought Captain
Delano, walking the poop. What a donkey I was. This
kind gentleman who here sends me his kind compliments,
he, but ten minutes ago, dark—lantern in hand, was dodging
round some old grind—stone in the hold, sharpening a hatchet
for me, I thought. Well, well 5 these long calms have a
morbid effect on the mind, I’ve often heard, though I never
believed it before. Ha! glancing toward the boat; there’s
Rover,- 3 good dog; a White bone in her mouth. A pretty
big bone though, seems to me.——What? Yes, she has fallen
afoul of the bubbling tide—rip there. It sets her the other
way, too, for the time. Patience.

It was now about noon, though, from the greyness of
everything, it seemed to be getting toward dusk.

The calm was conﬁrmed. In the far distance, away from
the inﬂuence of land, the leaden ocean seemed laid out and
leaded up, its course ﬁnished, soul gone, defunct. But the
current from landward, where the ship was, increased 5
silently sweeping her further and further toward the tranced
waters beyond.

Still, from his knowledge of those latitudes, cherishing
hopes of a breeze, and a fair and fresh one, at any moment,
Captain Delano, despite present prospects, buoyantly counted
upon bringing the San Dominick safely to anchor ere night.
The distance swept over was nothing; since, with a good
wind, ten minutes’ sailing would retrace more than sixty
minutes’ drifting. Meantime, one moment turning to mark
“Rover” ﬁghting the tide-rip, and the next to see Don Benito
approaching, he continued walking the poop.

ﬁEJ‘UTO CEREﬂO 4.9

Gradually he felt a vexation arising from the delay of his
boat, this soon merged into uneasiness; and at last, his eye
falling continually, as from a stage—box into the pit, upon the
strange crowd before and below him, and by—and—by recog—
nizing there the face—now composed to indifference—of the
Spanish sailor who had seemed to beckon from the main
chains, something of his old trepidations returned.

Ah, thought he—gravely enough—this is like the ague:
because it went 0E, it follows not that it won’t come back.

Though ashamed of the relapse, he could not altogether
subdue it; and so, exerting his good nature to the utmost,
insensibly he came to a compromise.

Yes, this is a strange craft; a strange history, too, and
strange folks on board. But—nothing more.

By way of keeping his mind out of mischief till the boat
should arrive, he tried to occupy it with turning over and
over, in a purely speculative sort of way, some lesser pecu-
liarities of the captain and crew. Among others, four curious
points recurred.

First, the affair of the Spanish lad assailed with a knife by
the slave boy; an act winked at by Don Benito. Second, the
tyranny in Don Benito’s treatment of Atufal, the black; as if
a child should lead a bull of the Nile by the ring in his nose.
Third, the trampling of the sailor by the two negroes; a piece
of insolence passed over without so much as a reprimand.
Fourth, the cringing submission to their master of all the
ship’s underlings, mostly blacks; as if by the least inadvert—
ence they feared to draw down his despotic displeasure. l/

Coupling these points, they seemed somewhat contra—
dictory. But What then, thought Captain Delano, glancing
toward his now nearing boat,——what then? Why, this Don
Benito is a very capricious commander. But he is not the ﬁrst
of the sort I have seen; though it’s true he rather exceeds

50 SHORTER NOVELS OF HERMAN MELVILLE

any other. But as a nation—continued he in his reveries—
these Spaniards are all an odd set, the very word Spaniard
has a curious, conspirator, Guy-Fawkish twang to it. And
yet, I dare say, Spaniards in the main are as good folks as
any in Duxbury, Massachusetts. Ah, good! At last “Rover”
has come.

As, with its welcome freight, the boat touched the side, the
oakum—pickers, with venerable gestures, sought to restrain
the blacks, who, at the sight of three gurried water—casks in
its bottom, and a pile of wilted pumpkins in its bow, hung
over the bulwarks in disorderly raptures.

Don Benito with his servant now appeared; his coming,
perhaps, hastened by hearing the noise. Of him Captain
Delano sought permission to serve out the water, so that all
might share alike, and none injure themselves by unfair
excess. But sensible, and, on Don Benito’s account, kind as
this oEer was, it was received with what seemed impatience,
as if aware that he lacked energy as a commander, Don
Benito, with the true jealousy of weakness, resented as an
affront any interference. So, at least, Captain Delano in-
ferred.

In another moment the casks were being hoisted in, when
some of the eager negroes accidentally jostled Captain
Delano, where he stood by the gangway, so that, unmindful
of Don Benito, yielding to the impulse of the moment, with
good-natured authority he bade the blacks stand back; to
enforce his words making use of a half-mirthful, half-
menacing gesture. Instantly the blacks paused, just where
they were, each negro and negress suspended in his or her
posture, exactly as the word had found them—for a few
seconds continuing so—while, as between the responsive posts
of a telegraph, an unknown syllable ran from man to man
among the perched oakum—pickers. While Captain Delano’s

QEIMITO CEREJ‘CO 5!
attention was ﬁxed by this scene, suddenly the hatchet-
polishers half rose, and a rapid cry came from Don Benito.

Thinking that at the signal of the Spaniard he was about
to be massacred, Captain Delano would have sprung for his
boat, but paused, as the oakum-pickers, dropping down into
the crowd with earnest exclamations, forced every white and
every negro back, at the same moment, with gestures friendly
and familiar, almost jocose, bidding him, in substance, not be
a fool. Simultaneously the hatchet-polishers resumed their
seats, quietly as so many tailors, and at once, as if nothing
had happened, the work of hoisting in the casks was resumed,
whites and blacks singing at the tackle.

Captain Delano glanced toward Don Benito. As he saw
his meagre form in the act of recovering itself from reclin-
ing in the servant’s arms, into which the agitated invalid had
fallen, he could not but marvel at the panic by which him-
self had been surprised on the darting supposition that such
a commander, who upon a legitimate occasion, so trivial, too,
as it now appeared, could lose all self-command, was, with
energetic iniquity, going to bring about his murder.

The casks being on deck, Captain Delano was handed a
number of jars and cups by one of the steward’s aides, who,
in the name of Don Benito, entreated him to do as he had
proposed: dole out the water. He complied, with republican
impartiality as to this republican element, which always seeks
one level, serving the oldest white no better than the young-
est black, excepting, indeed, poor Don Benito, whose condi—
tion, if not rank, demanded an extra allowance. To him, in
the ﬁrst place, Captain Delano presented a fair pitcher of the
ﬂuid, but, thirsting as he was for fresh water, Don Benito
quaﬁed not a drop until after several grave bows and salutes:
a reciprocation of courtesies which the sight-loving Africans
hailed with clapping of hands.

52 SHORTER NOVELS OF HERMAN MELVILLE

Two of the less wilted pumpkins being reserved for the
cabin table, the residue were minced up on the spot for the
general regalement. But the soft bread, sugar, and bottled
cider, Captain Delano would have given the Spaniards alone,
and in chief Don Benito; but the latter objected; which dis-
interestedness, on his part, not a little pleased the American;
and so mouthfuls all around were given alike to whites and
blacks, excepting one bottle of cider, which Babo insisted
upon setting aside for his master.

Here it may be observed that as, on the ﬁrst Visit of the
boat, the American had not permitted his men to board the
ship, neither did he now; being unwilling to add to the
confusion of the decks.

Not uninﬂuenced by the peculiar good humour at present
prevailing, and for the time oblivious of any but benevolent
thoughts, Captain Delano, who from recent indications
counted upon a breeze Within an hour or two at furthest,
despatched the boat back to the sealer with orders for all the
hands that could be spared immediately to set about rafting
casks to the watering—place and ﬁlling them. Likewise he
bade word be carried to his chief ofﬁcer, that if against present
expectation the ship was not brought to anchor by sunset,
he need be under no concern, for as there was to be a full
moon that night, he (Captain Delano) would remain on
board ready to play the pilot, should the Wind come soon
or late.

As the two captains stood together, observing the depart-
ing boat—the servant as it happened having just spied a spot
on his master’s velvet sleeve, and silently engaged rubbing it
out—the American expressed his regrets that the San Dom-
inick had no boats; none, at least, but the unseaworthy old
hulk of the long-boat, which, warped as a camel’s skeleton
in the desert, and almost as bleached, lay pot-wise inverted

BENITO CERESNO 53
amidships, one side a little tipped, furnishing a subterraneous
sort of den for family groups of the blacks, mostly women
and small children; who, squatting on old mats below, or
perched above in the dark dome, on the elevated seats, were
descried, some distance within, like a social circle of bats,
sheltering in some friendly cave, at intervals, ebon ﬂights
of naked boys and girls, three or four years old, darting in
and out of the den’s mouth.

“Had you three or four boats now, Don Benito,” said Cap—
tain Delano, “I think that, by tugging at the oars, your
negroes here might help along matters some—Did you sail
from port Without boats, Don Benito?”

“They were stove in the gales, Senor.”

“That was bad. Many men, too, you lost then. Boats
and men.—-—Those must have been hard gales. Don Benito.”

“Past all speech,” cringed the Spaniard.

“Tell me, Don Benito,” continued his companion with
increased interest, “tell me, were these gales immediately
off the pitch of Cape Horn?”

“Cape HornP—who spoke of Cape Horn?”

“Yourself did, when giving me an account of your
voyage,” answered Captain Delano with almost equal aston—
ishment at this eating of his own words, even as he ever
seemed eating his own heart, on the part of the Spaniard.
“You yourself, Don Benito, spoke of Cape Horn,” he em—
phatically repeated.

The Spaniard turned, in a sort of stooping posture, pausing
an instant, as one about to make a plunging exchange of
elements, as from air to water.

At this moment a messenger—boy, a white, hurried by, in
the regular performance of his function carrying the last
expired half—hour forward to the forecastle, from the cabin
time-piece, to have it struck at the ship’s large bell.

54 SHORTER {NOVELS OF HERMAN MELVILLE

“Master,” said the servant, discontinuing his work on the
coat sleeve, and addressing the rapt Spaniard with a sort of
timid apprehensiveness, as one charged with a duty, the dis-
charge of which, it was foreseen, would prove irksome to the
very person who had imposed it, and for whose beneﬁt it
was intended, “master told me never mind Where he was, or
how engaged, always to remind him, to a minute, when
shaving—time comes. Miguel has gone to strike the half—
hour afternoon. It is now, master. Will master go into the
cuddy?”

“Ah—yes,” answered the Spaniard, starting, somewhat
as from dreams into realities; then turning upon Captain
Delano, he said that ere long he would resume the con-
versation.

“Then if master means to talk more to Don Amasa,” said
the servant, “Why not let Don Amasa sit by master in the
cuddy, and master can talk, and Don Amasa can listen, while
Babo here lathers and strops.”

“Yes,” said Captain Delano, not unpleased with this
sociable plan, “yes, Don Benito, unless you had rather not,
I will go with you.”

“Be it so, Seﬁor.”

As the three passed aft, the American could not but think
it another strange instance of his host’s capriciousness, this
being shaved with such uncommon punctuality in the middle
of the day. But he deemed it more than likely that the
servant’s anxious ﬁdelity had something to do with the
matter, inasmuch as the timely interruption served to rally
his master from the mood which had evidently been coming
upon him.

The place called the cuddy was a light deck-cabin formed
by the poop, a sort of attic to the large cabin below. Part
of it had formerly been the quarters of the ofﬁcers; but since

22ENI‘TO CERENO 55

 

their death all the partitionings had been thrown down, and
the whole interior converted into one spacious and airy marine
hall, for absence of ﬁne furniture and picturesque disarray,
of odd appurtenances, somewhat answering to the wide, clut—
tered hall of some eccentric bachelor—squire in the country,
who hangs his shooting—jacket and tobacco—pouch on deer
antlers, and keeps his ﬁshing-rod, tongs, and walking—stick
in the same corner.

The similitude was heightened, if not originally suggested,
by glimpses of the surrounding sea; since, in one aspect, the
country and the ocean seem cousins—german.

The ﬂoor of the cuddy was matted. Overhead, four or
ﬁve old muskets were stuck into horizontal holes along the
beams. On one side was a claw—footed old table lashed to
the deck, a thumbed missal on it, and over it a small, meagre
cruciﬁx attached to the bulkhead. Under the table lay a
dented cutlass or two, with a hacked harpoon, among some
melancholy old rigging, like a heap of poor friar’s girdles.
There were also two long, sharp-ribbed settees of malacca
cane, black with age, and uncomfortable to look at as in—
quisitors’ racks, with a large, misshapen arm-chair, which,
furnished with a rude barber’s crutch at the back, working
with a screw, seemed some grotesque Middle Age engine of
torment. A ﬂag locker was in one corner, exposing various
coloured bunting, some rolled up, others half unrolled, still
others tumbled. Opposite was a cumbrous washstand, of
black mahogany, all of one block, with a pedestal, like a
font, and over it a railed shelf, containing combs, brushes,
and other implements of the toilet. A torn hammock of
stained grass swung near, the sheets tossed, and the pillow
wrinkled up like a brow, as if Whoever slept here slept but

illy, with alternate visitations of sad thoughts and bad
dreams.

56 SHORTER NOVELS OF HERMAN MELVILLE

The further extremity of the cuddy, overhanging the
ship’s stern, was pierced with three openings, windows or
port holes, according as men or cannon might peer, socially
or unsocially, out of them. At present neither men nor
cannon were seen, though huge ring—bolts and other rusty
iron ﬁxtures of the wood-work hinted of twenty—four-
pounders. .

Glancing toward the hammock as he entered. Captain
Delano said, “You sleep here, Don Benito?”

“Yes, Seﬁor, since we got into mild weather.”

“This seems a sort of dormitory, sitting-room, sail—loft,
chapel, armoury, and private closet together. Don Benito,”
added Captain Delano, looking round.

“Yes, Seﬁor; events have not been favourable to much
order in my arrangements.”

Here the servant, napkin on arm, made a motion as if
Waiting his master’s good pleasure. Don Benito signiﬁed his
readiness, when, seating him in the malacca arm—chair, and
for the guest’s convenience drawing opposite it one of the
settees, the servant commenced operations by throwing back
his master’s collar and loosening his cravat.

There is something in the negro which, in a peculiar way,
ﬁts him for avocations about one’s person. Most negroes
are natural valets and hair—dressers, taking to the comb and
brush congenially as to the castanets, and ﬂourishing them
apparently with almost equal satisfaction. There is, too, a
smooth tact about them in this employment, with a marvel-
lous, noiseless, gliding briskness, not ungraceful in its way,
singularly pleasing to behold, and still more so to be the
manipulated subject of. And above all is the great gift
of good humour. Not the mere grin or laugh is here meant.
Those were unsuitable. But a certain easy cheerfulness,

BENITO CERENO 57
harmonious in every glance and gesture; as though God had
set the Whole negro to some pleasant tune.

When to all this is added the docility arising from the
unaspiring contentment of a limited mind, and that suscep-
tibility of blind attachment sometimes inhering in indisputable
inferiors, one readily perceives Why those hypochondriacs,
Johnson and Byron—it may be something like the hypo-
chondriac, Benito Cereno—took to their hearts, almost
to the exclusion of the entire white race, their serving men,
the negroes, Barber and Fletcher. But if there be that in
the negro which exempts him from the inﬂicted sourness of
the morbid or cynical mind, how, in his most prepossessing
aspects, must he appear to a benevolent one? When at ease
with respect to exterior things, Captain Delano’s nature was
not only benign, but familiarly and humorously so. At
home, he had often taken rare satisfaction in sitting in his
door, watching some free man of colour at his work or play.
If on a voyage he chanced to have a black sailor, invariably
he was on chatty, and half—gamesome terms with him. In
fact, like most men of a good, blithe heart, Captain Delano
took to negroes, not philanthropically, but genially, just as
other men to Newfoundland dogs.

Hitherto the circumstances in which he found the San
Dominick had repressed the tendency. But in the cuddy,
relieved from his former uneasiness, and, for various reasons,
more sociably inclined than at any previous period of the clay,
and seeing the coloured servant, napkin on arm, so debonair
about his master, in a business so familiar as that of shaving,
too, all his old weakness for negroes returned.

Among other things, he was amused with an odd instance
of the African love of bright colours and ﬁne shows, in the
black’s informally taking from the ﬂag-locker a great piece

58 SHOR‘TER NOVELS OF HERMAN MELVILLE

vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv

of bunting of all hues, and lavishly tucking it under his
master’s chin for an apron.

The mode of shaving among the Spaniards is a little
diﬁerent from what it is with other nations. They have a
basin, specially called a barber’s basin, which on one side is
scooped out, so as accurately to receive the chin, against which
it is closely held in lathering; which is done, not with a brush,
but with soap dipped in the water of the basin and rubbed
on the face.

In the present instance salt—water was used for lack of
better; and the parts lathered were only the upper lip, and
low down under the throat, all the rest being cultivated
beard.

These preliminaries being somewhat novel to Captain
Delano he sat curiously eyeing them, so that no conversation
took place, nor for the present did Don Benito appear disu
posed to renew any.

Setting down his basin, the negro searched among the
razors, as for the sharpest, and having found it, gave it an
additional edge by expertly stropping it on the ﬁrm, smooth,
oily skin of his open palm; he then made a gesture as if to
begin, but midway stood suspended for an instant, one hand
elevating the razor, the other professionally dabbling among
the bubbling suds on the Spaniard’s lank neck. Not un-
aﬁected by the close sight of the gleaming steel, Don Benito
nervously shuddered, his usual ghastliness was heightened by
the lather, which lather, again, was intensiﬁed in its hue by
the contrasting sootiness of the negro’s body. Altogether the
scene was somewhat peculiar, at least to Captain Delano, nor,
as he saw the two thus postured, could he resist the vagary,
that in the black he saw a headsman, and in the white, a man
at the block. But this was one of those antic conceits, appear-

353(17'0 CERENO _59-
ing and vanishing in a breath, from which, perhaps, the best
regulated mind is not free.

Meantime the agitation of the Spaniard had a little
loosened the bunting from around him, so that one broad
fold swept curtain—like over the chair-arm to the ﬂoor, re—
vealing, amid a profusion of armorial bars and ground-
colours—black, blue and yellow—a closed castle in a blood—
red ﬁeld diagonal with a lion rampant in a white.

“The castle and the lion,” exclaimed Captain Delano—
“Why, Don Benito, this is the ﬂag of Spain you use here.
It’s well it’s only I, and not the King, that sees this,” he
added with a smile, “but”-——turning toward the black,—
“it’s all one, I suppose, so the colours be gay,” which play—
ful remark did not fail somewhat to tickle the negro.

“Now, master,” he said, readjusting the ﬂag, and pressing
the head gently further back into the crotch of the chair;
“now master,” and the steel glanced nigh the throat.

Again Don Benito faintly shuddered.

“You must not shake so, master.—See, Don Amasa,
master always shakes when I shave him. And yet master
knows I never yet have drawn blood, though it’s true, if
master will shake so, I may some of these times. Now, mas-
ter,” he continued. “And now, Don Amasa, please go on
with your talk about the gale, and all that, master can hear,
and between times master can answer.”

“Ah yes, these gales,” said Captain Delano; “but the more
I think of your voyage, Don Benito, the more I wonder, not
at the gales, terrible as they must have been, but at the
disastrous interval following them. For here, by your
account, have you been these two months and more getting
from Cape Horn to St. Maria, a distance which I myself,
with a good wind, have sailed in a few days. True, you had
calms, and long ones, but to be becalmed for two months,

60 SHORTER NOVELS OF HERMAN MELVILLE
that is, at least, unusual. Why, Don Benito, had almost any
other gentleman told me such a story, I should have been
half disposed to a little incredulity.”

Here an involuntary expression came over the Spaniard,
similar to that just before on the deck, and whether it was
the start he gave, or a sudden gawky roll of the hull in the
calm, or a momentary unsteadiness of the servant’s hand,
however it was, just then the razor drew blood, spots of
which stained the creamy lather under the throat; imme-
diately the black barber drew back his steel, and remaining
in his professional attitude, back to Captain Delano, and face
to Don Benito, held up the trickling razor, saying, with a sort
of half humorous sorrow, “See, master,—you shook so—
here’s Babo’s ﬁrst blood.”

No sword drawn before James the First of England, no
assassination in that timid King’s presence, could have pro—
duced a more terriﬁed aspect than was now presented by Don
Benito.

Poor fellow, thought Captain Delano, so nervous he can’t
even bear the sight of barber’s blood; and this unstrung, sick
man, is it credible that I should have imagined he meant
to spill all my blood, who can’t endure the sight of one little
drop of his own? Surely, Amasa Delano, you have been
beside yourself this day. Tell it not when you get home,
sappy Amasa. Well, well, he looks like a murderer, doesn’t
he? More like as if himself were to‘ be done for. Well,
well, this day’s experience shall be a good lesson.

Meantime, while these things were running through the
honest seaman’s mind, the servant had taken the napkin from
his arm, and to Don Benito had said: “But answer Don
Amasa, please, master, while I wipe this ugly stuff off the
razor, and strop it again.”

As he said the words, his face was turned half round, so

{BENITO CERENO 6;
as to be alike visible to the Spaniard and the American, and
seemed by its expression to hint, that he was desirous, by
getting his master to go on with the conversation, consider—
ately to withdraw his attention from the recent annoying
accident. As if glad to snatch the offered relief, Don Benito
resumed, rehearsing to Captain Delano, that not only were
the calms of unusual duration, but the ship had fallen in with
obstinate currents and other things he added, some of which
were but repetitions of former statements, to explain how it
came to pass that the passage from Cape Horn to St. Maria
had been so exceedingly long, now and then mingling with
his words, incidental praises, less qualiﬁed than before, to
the blacks, for their general good conduct.

These particulars were not given consecutively, the servant
now and then using his razor, and so, between the intervals
of shaving, the story and panegyric went on with more than
usual huskiness.

To Captain Delano’s imagination, now again not wholly at
rest, there was something so hollow in the Spaniard’s manner,
with apparently some reciprocal hollowness in the servant’s
dusky comment of silence, that the idea ﬂashed across him,
that possibly master and man, for some unknown purpose,
were acting out, both in word and deed, nay, to the very
tremor of Don Benito’s limbs, some juggling play before
him. Neither did the suspicion of collusion lack apparent
support, from the fact of those whispered conferences before
mentioned. But then, what could be the object of enacting
this play of the barber before him? At last, regarding the
notion as a whimsy, insensibly suggested, perhaps, by the
theatrical aspect of Don Benito in his harlequin ensign, Cap~
tain Delano speedily banished it.

The shaving over, the servant bestirred himself with a
small bottle of scented waters, pouring a few drops on the

62 SHORTER NOVELS OF HERMAN MELVILLE
head, and then diligently rubbing; the vehemence of the
exercise causing the muscles of his face to twitch rather
strangely.

His next operation was with comb, scissors and brush;
going round and round, smoothing a curl here, clipping an
unruly whisker-hair there, giving a graceful sweep to the
temple—lock, with other impromptu touches evincing the hand
of a master, while, like any resigned gentleman in barber’s
hands, Don Benito bore all, much less uneasily, at least,
than he had done the razoring; indeed, he sat so pale and
rigid now, that the negro seemed a Nubian sculptor ﬁnishing
0E a white statue-head.

All being over at last, the standard of Spain removed,
tumbled up, and tossed back into the ﬂag-locker, the negro’s
Warm breath blowing away any stray hair which might have
lodged down his master’s neck; collar and cravat readjusted;
a speck of lint whisked off the velvet lapel; all this being
done, backing off a little space, and pausing with an ex-
pression of subdued self—complacency, the servant for a mo-
ment surveyed his master, as, in toilet at least, the creature
of his own tasteful hands.

Captain Delano playfully complimented him upon his
achievement 5 at the same time congratulating Don Benito.

But neither sweet waters, nor shampooing, nor ﬁdelity,
nor sociality, delighted the Spaniard. Seeing him relapsing
into forbidding gloom, and still remaining seated, Captain
Delano, thinking that his presence was undesired just then,
withdrew, on pretence of seeing Whether, as he had prophe-
sied, any signs of a breeze were visible.

Walking forward to the mainmast, he stood awhile think-
ing over the scene, and not without some undeﬁned mis-
givings, when he heard a noise near the cuddy, and turning,
saw the negro, his hand to his cheek. Advancing, Captain

BENITO CERENO 63
Delano perceived that the cheek was bleeding. He was
about to ask the cause, when the negro’s wailing soliloquy
enlightened him.

“Ah, when will master get better from his sickness; only
the sour heart that sour sickness breeds made him serve Babo
so; cutting Babo with the razor, because, only by accident,
Babo had given master one little scratch; and for the ﬁrst
time in so many a day, too. Ah, ah, ah,” holding his hand
to his face.

Is it possible, thought Captain Delano; was it to wreak in
private his Spanish spite against this poor friend of his, that
Don Benito, by his sullen manner, impelled me to with-
draw? Ah, this slavery breeds ugly passions in man! Poor
fellow!

He was about to speak in sympathy to the negro, but with
a timid reluctance he now re—entered the cuddy.

Presently master and man came forth; Don Benito leaning
on his servant as if nothing had happened.

But a sort of love-quarrel, after all, thought Captain
Delano.

He accosted Don Benito, and they slowly walked together.
They had gone but a few paces, when the steward—a tall,
rajah—looking mulatto, orientally set off with a pagoda turban
formed by three or four Madras handkerchiefs wound about
his head, tier on tier—approaching with a salaam, announced
lunch in the cabin.

On their way thither, the two captains were preceded by
the mulatto, who, turning round as he advanced, with con-
tinual smiles and bows, ushered them in, a display of ele-
gance which quite completed the insigniﬁcance of the small
bare—headed Babo, who, as if not unconscious of inferiority,
eyed askance the graceful steward. But in part, Captain
Delano imputed his jealous watchfulness to that peculiar

64 SHORTER NOVELS OF HERMAN MELVILLE
feeling which the full—blooded African entertains for the
adulterated one. As for the steward, his manner, if not
bespeaking much dignity of self—respect, yet evidenced his
extreme desire to please, which IS doubly meritorious, as at
once Christian and Chesterﬁeldian.

Captain Delano observed with interest that while the com—
plexion of the mulatto was hybrid, his physiognomy was
European; classically so.

“Don Benito,” whispered he, “I am glad to see this usher-
of-the-golden—rod of yours; the sight refutes an ugly remark
once made to me by a Barbados planter that when a mulatto
has a regular European face, look out for him, he is a devil.
But see, your steward here has features more regular than
King George’s of England; and yet there he nods, and bows,
and smiles, a king, indeed—the king of kind hearts and
polite fellows. What a pleasant voice he has, too?”

“He has, Seﬁor.”

“But, tell me, has he not, so far as you have known him,
always proved a good, worthy fellow?” said Captain Delano,
pausing, while with a ﬁnal genuﬂexion the steward dis—
appeared into the cabin; “come, for the reason just men-
tioned, I am curious to know.”

“Francesco is a good man,” rather sluggishly responded
Don Benito, like a phlegmatic appreciator, who would neither
ﬁnd fault nor ﬂatter.

“Ah, I thought so. For it were strange indeed, and not
very creditable to us White—skins, if a little of our blood
mixed with the African’s, should, far from improving the
latter’s quality, have the sad effect of pouring vitriolic acid
into black broth; improving the hue, perhaps, but not the
wholesomeness.”

“Doubtless, doubtless, Seﬁor, but”—glancing at Babo—
“not to speak of negroes, your planter’s remark I have heard

{BENITO CERENO 65
applied to the Spanish and Indian intermixtures in our
provinces. But I know nothing about the matter,” he list-
lessly added.

And here they entered the cabin.

The lunch was a frugal one. Some of Captain Delano’s
fresh ﬁsh and pumpkins, biscuit and salt beef, the reserved
bottle of cider, and the San Dominick’s last bottle of Canary.

As they entered, Francesco, with two or three coloured
aids, was hovering over the table giving the last adjustments.
Upon perceiving their master they withdrew, Francesco mak-
ing a smiling congé, and the Spaniard, Without condescend-
ing to notice it, fastidiously remarking to his companion that
he relished not superﬂuous attendance.

Without companions, host and guest sat down, like a child—
less married couple, at opposite ends of the table, Don Benito
waving Captain Delano to his place, and, weak as he was,
insisting upon that gentleman being seated before himself.

The negro placed a rug under Don Benito’s feet, and a
cushion behind his back, and then stood behind, not his
maSter’s chair, but Captain Delano’s. At ﬁrst, this a little
surprised the latter. But it was soon evident that, in taking
his position, the black was still true to his master; since by
facing him he could the more readily anticipate his slightest
want.

“This is an uncommonly intelligent fellow of yours, Don
Benito,” Whispered Captain Delano across the table.

“You say true, Seﬁor.”

During the repast, the guest again reverted to parts of
Don Benito’s story, begging further particulars here and
there. He inquired how it was that the scurvy and fever
should have committed such wholesale havoc upon the
whites, while destroying less than half of the blacks. As if
pthis question reproduced the whole scene of plague before

66 SHORTER NOVELS 0F HERMAN MELVILLE
W

the Spaniard’s eyes, miserably reminding him of his solitude
in a cabin where before he had had so many friends and
oﬂicers round him, his hand shook, his face became hueless,
broken words escaped; but directly the sane memory of the
past seemed replaced by insane terrors of the present. With
starting eyes he stared before him at vacancy. For nothing
was to be seen but the hand of his servant pushing the
Canary over towards him. At length a few sips served par-
tially to restore him. He made random reference to the
different constitutions of races, enabling one to oﬁer more
resistance to certain maladies than another. The thought
was new to his companion.

Presently Captain Delano, intending to say something to
his host concerning the pecuniary part of the business he
had undertaken for him, especially——since he was strictly
accountable to his owners—with reference to the new suit
of sails, and other things of that sort; and naturally pre—
ferring to conduct such affairs in private, was desirous that
the servant should withdraw, imagining that Don Benito
for a few minutes could dispense with his attendance. He,
however, waited awhile; thinking that, as the conversation
proceeded, Don Benito, without being prompted, would per»
ceive the propriety of the step.

But it was otherwise. At last catching his host’s eye,
Captain Delano, with a slight backward gesture of his thumb,
whispered, “Don Benito, pardon me, but there is an inter-
ference with the full expression of what I have to say to
you.”

Upon this the Spaniard changed countenance; which was
imputed to his resenting the hint, as in some way a reﬂection
upon his servant. After a moment’s pause, he assured his
guest that the black’s remaining with them could be of no
disservice, because since losing his oﬂicers he had made Babo

3ENITO CEREJ‘CO 67
(Whose original ofﬁce, it now appeared, had been captain of
the slaves) not only his constant attendant and companion,
but in all things his conﬁdant.

After this, nothing more could be said; though, indeed,
Captain Delano could hardly avoid some little tinge of
irritation upon being left ungratiﬁed in so inconsiderable a
Wish, by one, too, for whom he intended such solid services.
But it is only his querulousness, thought he; and so ﬁlling his
glass he proceeded to business.

The price of the sails and other matters was ﬁxed upon.
But While this was being done, the American observed that,
though his original offer of assistance had been hailed with
hectic animation, yet now when it was reduced to a business
transaction, indifference and apathy were betrayed. Don
Benito, in fact, appeared to submit to hearing the details
more out of regard to common propriety, than from any
impression that weighty beneﬁt to himself and his voyage
was involved.

Soon, this manner became still more reserved. The eEort
was vain to seek to draw him into social talk. Gnawed by
his splenetic mood, he sat twitching his beard, while to little
purpose the hand of his servant, mute as that on the wall,
slowly pushed over the Canary.

Lunch being over, they sat down on the cushioned tran-
som; the servant placing a pillow behind his master. The
long continuance of the calm had now aﬁected the atmos-
phere. Don Benito sighed heavily, as iffor breath.

“Why not adjourn to the cuddy,” said Captain Delano;
“there is more air there.” But the host sat silent and
motionless.

Meantime his servant knelt before him, with a large fan
of feathers. And Francesco, coming in on tiptoes, handed
the negro a little cup of aromatic waters, with which at

68 SHORTER NOVELS OF HERMAN MELVILLEW
intervals he chafed his master’s brow, smoothing the hair
along the temples as a nurse does a child’s. He spoke no
word. He only rested his eye on his master’s, as if, amid
all Don Benito’s distress, a little to refresh his spirit by the
silent sight of ﬁdelity.

Presently the ship’s bell sounded two o’clock, and through
the cabin—windows a slight rippling of the sea was discerned;
and from the desired direction.

“There,” exclaimed Captain Delano, “I told you so, Don
Benito, look!”

He had risen to his feet, speaking in a very animated tone,
with a view the more to rouse his companion. But though
the crimson curtain of the stern-window near him that
moment ﬂuttered against his pale cheek, Don Benito seemed
to have even less welcome for the breeze than the calm.

Poor fellow, thought Captain Delano, bitter experience
has taught him that one ripple does not make a wind, any
more than one swallow a summer. But he is mistaken for
once. I will get his ship in for him, and prove it.

Brieﬂy alluding to his weak condition, he urged his host
to remain quietly where he was, since he (Captain Delano)
would with pleasure take upon himself the responsibility of
making the best use of the wind.

Upon gaining the deck, Captain Delano started at the
unexpected ﬁgure of Atufal, monumentally ﬁxed at the
threshold, like one of those sculptured porters of black
marble guarding the porches of Egyptian tombs.

But this time the start was, perhaps, purely physical.
Atufal’s presence, singularly attesting docility even in sullen-
ness, was contrasted with that of the hatchet-polishers, who in
patience evinced their industry, while both spectacles showed,
that lax as Don Benito’s general authority might be, still,

BENITO CERENO 69
Whenever he chose to exert it, no man so savage or colossal
but must, more or less, bow.

Snatching a trumpet which hung from the bulwarks, with
a free step Captain Delano advanced to the forward edge of
the poop, issuing his orders in his best Spanish. The few
sailors and many negroes, all equally pleased, obediently set
about heading the ship toward the harbour.

While giving some directions about setting a lower stu’n’-
sail, suddenly Captain Delano heard a voice faithfully re-
peating his orders. Turning, he saw Babo, now for the time
acting, under the pilot, his original part of captain of the
slaves. This assistance proved valuable. Tattered sails and
warped yards were soon brought into some trim. And no
brace or halyard was pulled but to the blithe songs of the
inspirited negroes.

Good fellows, thought Captain Delano, a little training
would make fine sailors of them. Why see, the very women
pull and sing, too. These must be some of those Ashantee
negresses that make such capital soldiers, I’ve heard. But
who’s at the helm? I must have a good hand there.

He went to see.

The San Dominick steered with a cumbrous tiller, with
large horizontal pullies attached. At each pulley—end stood
a subordinate black, and between them, at the tiller-head, the
responsible post, a Spanish seaman, whose countenance
evinced his due share in the general hopefulness and con—
ﬁdence-at the coming of the breeze.

He proved the same man who had behaved with so shame-
faced an air on the Windlass.

“Ah,——-it is you, my man,” exclaimed Captain Delano—
“well, no more sheep’s—eyes now;—look straightforward and
keep the ship so. Good hand, I trust? And want to get into
the harbour, don’t you?”

70 SHORTER {NOVELS OF HERMAN MELVILLE

“Si Seﬁor,” assented the man with an inward chuckle,
grasping the tiller-head ﬁrmly. Upon this, unperceived by
the American, the two blacks eyed the sailor askance.

Finding all right at the helm, the pilot went forward to
the forecastle, to see how matters stood there.

The ship now had way enough to breast the current. With
the approach of evening, the breeze would be sure to freshen.

Having done all that was needed for the present, Captain
Delano, giving his last orders to the sailors, turned aft to
report affairs to Don Benito in the cabin; perhaps addition-
ally incited to rejoin him by the hope of snatching a moment’s
private chat while his servant was engaged upon deck.

From opposite sides, there were, beneath the poop, two
approaches to the cabin, one further forward than the other,
and consequently communicating with a longer passage,
Marking the servant still above, Captain Delano, taking the
nighest entrance—the one last named, and at whose porch
Atufal still stood—hurried on his way, till, arrived at the
cabin threshold, he paused an instant, a little to recover from
his eagerness. Then, with the words of his intended business
upon his lips, he entered. As he advanced toward the Span-
iard, on the transom, he heard another footstep, keeping time
with his. From the opposite door, a salver in hand, the
servant was likewise advancing.

“Confound the faithful fellow,” thought Captain Delano,
“what a vexatious coincidence.”

Possibly, the vexation might have been something differ-
ent, were it not for the buoyant conﬁdence inspired by the
breeze. But even as it was, he felt a slight twinge, from a
sudden involuntary association in his mind of Babo with
Atufal.

“Don Benito,” said he, “I give you joy; the breeze will
hold, and will increase. By the way, your tall man and

353077) CERENO 71
time-piece, Atufal, stands without. By your order, of
course?”

Don Benito recoiled, as if at some bland satirical touch,
delivered with such adroit garnish of apparent good-breeding
as to present no handle for retort.

He is like one ﬂayed alive, thought Captain Delano;
where may one touch him without causing a shrink?

The servant moved before his master, adjusting a cushion;
recalled to civility, the Spaniard stiﬁiy replied: “You are
right. The slave appears where you saw him, according to
my command; which is, that if at the given hour I am below,
he must take his stand and abide my coming.”

“Ah now, pardon me, but that is treating the poor fellow
like an ex-king denied. Ah, Don Benito,” smiling, “for all
the license you permit in some things, I fear lest, at bottom,
you are a bitter hard master.”

Again Don Benito shrank; and this time, as the good
sailor thought, from a genuine twinge of his conscience.

Conversation now became constrained. In vain Captain
Delano called attention to the now perceptible motion of the
keel gently cleaving the sea; with lack—lustre eye, Don Benito
returned words few and reserved.

By—and-by, the wind having steadily risen, and still blow-
ing right into the harbour, bore the San Dominick swiftly on.
Rounding a point of land, the sealer at distance came into
open View

Meantime Captain Delano had again repaired to the deck,
remaining there some time. Having at last altered the ship’s
course, so as to give the reef a wide berth, he returned for a
few moments below.

I will cheer up my poor friend, this time, thought he.

“Better and better, Don Benito,” he cried as he blithely
re—entered; “there will soon be an end to your cares, at least

72 SHORTER NOVELS 0F HERMAN MELVILLE
for awhile. For when, after a long, sad voyage, you know,
the anchor drops into the haven, all its vast weight seems
lifted from the captain’s heart. We are getting on famously,
Don Benito. My ship is in sight. Look through this side—
light here, there she is, all a—taunt-o! The Bachelor’:
Delight, my good friend. Ah, how this wind braces one up.
Come, you must take a cup Of coffee with me this evening.
My old steward will give you as ﬁne a cup as ever any sultan
tasted. What say you, Don Benito, will you?”

At ﬁrst, the Spaniard glanced feverishly up, casting a
longing look toward the sealer, while with mute concern his
servant gazed into his face. Suddenly the old ague of cold—
ness returned, and dropping back to his cushions he was silent.

“You do not answer. Come, all day you have been my
host; would you have hospitality all on one side?”

“I cannot go,” was the response.

“What? it will not fatigue you. The ships will lie to-
gether as near as they can, Without swinging foul. It will
be little more than stepping from deck to deck; which is but
as from room to room. Come, come, you must not refuse
me.”

“I cannot go,” decisively and repulsively repeated Don
Benko.

Renouncing all but the last appearance of courtesy, with
a sort of cadaverous sullenness, and biting his thin nails to
the quick, he glanced, almost glared, at his guest, as if
impatient that a stranger’s presence should interfere with the
full indulgence of his morbid hour. Meantime the sound of
the parted waters came more and more gurglingly and
merrily in at the windows; as reproaching him for his dark
spleen, as telling him that, sulk as he might, and go mad
with it, nature cared not a jot, since, whose fault was it,

pray?

BENITO CERENO 73

But the foul mood was now at its depth. as the fair wind
at its height.

There was something in the man so far beyond any mere
unsociality or sourness previously evinced, that even the for-
bearing good-nature of his guest could no longer endure it.
Wholly at a loss to account for such demeanour, and deeming
sickness with eccentricity, however extreme, no adequate
excuse, well satisﬁed, too, that nothing in his own conduct
could justify it, Captain Delano’s pride began to be roused.
Himself became reserved. But all seemed one to the
Spaniard. Quitting him, therefore, Captain Delano once
more went to the deck.

The ship was now within less than two miles of the sealer.
The whale—boat was seen darting over the interval.

To be brief, the two vessels, thanks to the pilot’s skill, ere
long in neighbourly style lay anchored together.

Before returning to his own vessel, Captain Delano had
intended communicating to Don Benito the practical details
of the proposed services to be rendered. But, as it was,
unwilling anew to subject himself to rebuffs, he resolved,
now that he had seen the San Dominic/e safely moored, im—
mediately to quit her, without further allusion to hospitality
or business. Indeﬁnitely postponing his ulterior plans, he
would regulate his future actions according to future cir—
cumstances. His boat was ready to receive him; but his host
still tarried below. Well, thought Captain Delano, if he has
little breeding, the more need to show mine. He descended
to the cabin to bid a ceremonious, and, it may be, tacitly re—
bukeful adieu. But to his great satisfaction, Don Benito,
as if he began to feel the weight of that treatment with which
his slighted guest had, not indecorously, retaliated upon him,
now supported by his servant, rose to his feet, and grasping

74 SHORTER NOVELS 0F HERMAN MELVILLE
Captain Delano’s hand, stood tremulous, too much agitated
to speak. But the good augury hence drawn was suddenly
dashed, by his resuming all his previous reserve, with aug-
mented gloom, as, with half-averted eyes, he silently reseated
himself on his cushions. With a corresponding return of his
own chilled feelings, Captain Delano bowed and withdrew.

He was hardly midway in the narrow corridor, dim as a
tunnel, leading from the cabin to the stairs, when a sound,
as of the tolling for execution in some jail—yard, fell on his
ears. It was the echo of the ship’s ﬂawed bell, striking the
hour, drearily reverberated in this subterranean vault.
Instantly, by a fatality not to be withstood, his mind, respon—
sive to the portent, swarmed with superstitious suspicions.
He paused. In images far swifter than these sentences, the
minutest details of all his former distrusts swept through
him.

Hitherto, credulous good-nature had been too ready to
furnish excuses for reasonable fears. Why was the Spaniard,
so superﬂuously punctilious at times, now heedless of com-
mon propriety in not accompanying to the side his departing
guest? Did indisposition forbid? Indisposition had not for—
bidden more irksome exertion that day. His last equivocal
demeanour recurred. He had risen to his feet, grasped his
guest’s hand, motioned toward his hat; then, in an instant,
all was eclipsed in sinister muteness and gloom. Did this
imply one brief, repentant relenting at the ﬁnal moment,
from some iniquitous plot, followed by remorseless return
to it? His last glance seemed to express a calamitous, yet
acquiescent farewell to Captain Delano for ever. Why de—
cline the invitation to Visit the sealer that evening? Or was
the Spaniard less hardened than the Jew, who refrained not
from supping at the board of him whom the same night he
meant to betray? What imported all those day—long enigmas

{BENITO CERENO 75
and contradictions, except they were intended to mystify,
preliminary to some stealthy blow? Atufal, the pretended
rebel, but punctual shadow, that moment lurked by the
threshold without. He seemed a sentry, and more. Who,
by his own confession, had stationed him there? Was the
negro now lying in wait?

The Spaniard behind—his creature before: to rush from
darkness to light was the involuntary choice.

The next moment, with clenched jaw and hand, he passed
Atufal, and stood unarmed in the light. As he saw his trim
ship lying peacefully at her anchor, and almost Within ordi-
nary call, as he saw his household boat, with familiar faces
in it, patiently rising and falling on the short waves by the
San Dominick’s side, and then, glancing about the decks
Where he stood, saw the oakum—pickers still gravely plying
their ﬁngers, and heard the low, buzzing whistle and in—
dustrious hum of the hatchet—polishers, still bestirring
themselves over their endless occupation; and more than all,
as he saw the benign aspect of Nature, taking her innocent
repose in the evening; the screened sun in the quiet camp
of the west shining out like the mild light from Abraham’s
tent; as his charmed eye and ear took in all these, with the
chained ﬁgure of the black, the clenched jaw and hand
relaxed. Once again he smiled at the phantoms Which had
mocked him, and felt something like a tinge of remorse, that,
by indulging them even for a moment, he should, by impli-
cation, have betrayed an almost atheist doubt of the ever-
watchful Providence above.

There was a few minutes’ delay, while, in obedience to
his orders, the boat was being hooked along to the gangway.
During this interval, a sort of saddened satisfaction stole over
Captain Delano, at thinking of the kindly oﬂices he had that
day discharged for a stranger. Ah, thought he, after good

26 SHORTER NOVELS OF HERMAN MELVILLE

actions one’s conscience is never ungrateful, however much
so the beneﬁted party may be.

Presently, his foot, in the ﬁrst act of descent into the boat,
pressed the first round of the side—ladder, his face presented
inward upon the deck. In the same moment, he heard his
name courteously sounded 5 and, to his pleased surprise, saw
Don Benito advancing—an-unwonted energy in his air, as if,
at the last moment, intent upon making amends for his
recent discourtesy. With instinctive good feeling, Captain
Delano, revoking his foot, turned and reciprocally advanced.
As he did so, the Spaniard’s nervous eagerness increased, but
his vital energy failed; so that, the better to support him,
the servant, placing his master’s hand on his naked shoulder,
and gently holding it there, formed himself into a sort of
crutch.

When the two captains met, the Spaniard again fervently
took the hand of the American, at the same time casting an
earnest glance into his eyes, but, as before, too much over-
come to speak. '

I have done him wrong, self-reproachfully thought Cap-
tain Delano, his apparent coldness has deceived me; in no
instance has he meant to offend.

Meantime, as if fearful that the continuance of the scene
might too much unstring his master, the servant seemed
anxious to terminate it. And so, still presenting himself as
a crutch, and walking between the two captains, he advanced
with them toward the gangway; while still, as if full of
kindly COntrition, Don Benito would not let go the hand of
Captain Delano, but retained it in his, across the black’s body.

Soon they were standing by the side, looking over into
the boat, whose crew turned up their curious eyes. Waiting
a moment for the Spaniard to relinquish his hold, the now
embarrassed Captain Delano lifted his foot, to overstep the

BENITO CERENO 77
threshold of the open gangway; but still Don Benito would
not let go his hand. And yet, with an agitated tone, he said,
“I can go no further; here I must bid you adieu. Adieu,
my dear, dear Don Amasa. Go—go! ” suddenly tearing his
hand loose, “go, and God guard you better than me, my best
friend.” >

Not unaffected, Captain Delano would now have lingered;
but catching the meekly admonitory eye of the servant, with
a hasty farewell he descended into his boat, followed by the
continual adieus of Don Benito, standing rooted in the
gangway.

Seating himself in the stern, Captain Delano, making a
last salute, ordered the boat shoved off. The crew had their
oars on end. The bowsman pushed the boat a sufﬁcient
distance for the oars to be lengthwise dropped. The instant
that was done, Don Benito sprang over the bulwarks, falling
at'the feet of Captain Delano, at the same time, calling
towards his ship, but in tones so frenzied, that none in the
boat could understand him. But, as if not equally obtuse,
three Spanish sailors, from three different and distant parts
of the ship, splashed into the sea, swimming after their
captain, as if intent upon his rescue.

The dismayed oﬂicer of the boat eagerly asked what this
meant. To which, Captain Delano, turning a disdainful
smile upon the unaccountable Benito Cereno, answered that,
for his part, he neither knew nor cared; but it seemed as if
the Spaniard had taken it into his head to produce the im—
pression among his people that the boat wanted to kidnap
him. “Or else—give way for your lives,” he wildly added,
starting at a clattering hubbub in the ship, above which rang
the tocsin of the hatchet—polishers; and seizing Don Benito
by the throat he added, “this plotting pirate means murder!”
'Here, in apparent veriﬁcation of the words, the servant, a

28 SHORTER NOVELS OF HERMAN MELVILLE

dagger in his hand, was seen on the rail overhead, poised,
in the act of leaping, as if with desperate ﬁdelity to befriend
his master to the last, while, seemingly to aid the black, the
three Spanish sailors were trying to clamber into the ham-
pered bow. Meantime, the whole host of negroes, as if
inﬂamed at the sight of their jeopardized captain, impended
in one sooty avalanche over the bulwarks.

All this, with what preceded, and what followed, occurred
with such involutions of rapidity, that past, present, and
future seemed one.

Seeing the negro coming, Captain Delano had ﬂung the
Spaniard aside, almost in the very act of clutching him, and,
by the unconscious recoil, shifting his place, with arms thrown
up, so promptly grappled the servant in his descent, that
with dagger presented at Captain Delano’s heart, the black
seemed of purpose to have leaped there as to his mark. But
the weapon was wrenched away, and the assailant dashed
down into the bottom of the boat, which now, with dis-
entangled oars, began to speed through the sea.

At this juncture, the left hand of Captain Delano, on one
side, again clutched the half—reclined Don Benito, heedless
that he was in a speechless faint, while his right foot, on the
other side, ground the prostrate negro, and his right arm
pressed for added speed on the after oar, his eye bent for-
ward, encouraging his men to their utmost.

But here, the ofﬁcer of the boat, who had at last succeeded
in beating 05 the towing Spanish sailors, and was now, with
face turned aft, assisting the bowsman at his oar, suddenly
called to Captain Delano, to see what the black was about;
While a Portuguese oarsman shouted to him to give heed to
What the Spaniard was saying.

Glancing down at his feet, Captain Delano saw the freed
hand of the servant aiming with a second dagger—a small

BENITO CERENO 79
one, before concealed in his wool—with this he was snakishly
writhing up from the boat’s bottom, at the heart of his
master, his countenance lividly vindictive, expressing the
centred purpose of his soul; while the Spaniard, half-
choked, was vainly shrinking away, with husky words, inco-
herent to all but the Portuguese.

That moment, across the long benighted mind of Captain
Delano, a ﬂash of revelation swept, illuminating in un—
anticipated clearness Benito Cereno’s whole mysterious
demeanour, with every enigmatic event of the day, as well
as the entire past voyage of the San Dominick. He smote
Babo’s hand down, but his own heart smote him harder.
With inﬁnite pity he withdrew his hold from Don Benito.
Not Captain Delano, but Don Benito, the black, in leaping
into the boat, had intended to stab.

Both the black’s hands were held, as, glancing up toward
the San Dominick, Captain Delano, now with the scales
dropped from his eyes, saw the negroes, not in misrule, not
in tumult, not as if frantically concerned for Don Benito,
but with mask torn away, ﬂourishing hatchets and knives, in
ferocious piratical revolt. Like delirious black dervishes, the
six Ashantees danced on the poop. Prevented by their foes
from springing into the water, the Spanish boys were hurry-
ing up to the topmost spars, while such of the few Spanish
sailors, not already in the sea, less alert, were descried, help-
lessly mixed in, on deck, with the blacks.

Meantime Captain Delano hailed his own vessel, ordering
the ports up, and the guns run out. But by this time the
cable of the San Dominic/e had been cut, and the fag—end,
in lashing out, whipped away the canvas shroud about the
beak, suddenly revealing, as the bleached hull swung round
toward the open ocean, death for the ﬁgurehead, in a human

80 SHORTER NOVELS OF HERMAN MELVILLE
skeleton; chalky comment on the chalked words below,
“Follow your leader.”

At the sight, Don Benito, covering his face, wailed out:
“ ’Tis he, Aranda! my murdered, unburied friend!”

Upon reaching the sealer, calling for ropes, Captain De~
lano bound the negro, who made no resistance, and had him
hoisted to the deck. He would then have assisted the now
almost helpless Don Benito up the side; but Don Benito, wan
as he was, refused to move, or be moved, until the negro
should have been ﬁrst put below out of View. When, pres—
ently assured that it was done, he no more shrank from the
ascent.

The boat was immediately despatched back to pick up the
three swimming sailors. Meantime, the guns were in readi-
ness, though, owing to the San Dominic/e having glided some—
what astern of the sealer, only the aftermost one could be
brought to bear. With this, they ﬁred six times; thinking
to cripple the fugitive ship by bringing down her spars. But
only a few inconsiderable ropes were shot away. Soon the
ship was beyond the guns’ range, steering broad out of the
bay, the blacks thickly clustering round the bowsprit, one
moment with taunting cries toward the whites, the next with
upthrown gestures hailing the now dusky expanse of ocean
——cawing crows escaped from the hand of the fowler.

The ﬁrst impulse was to slip the cables and give chase.
But, upon second thought, to pursue with Whale-boat and
yawl seemed more promising.

Upon inquiring of Don Benito what ﬁrearms they had
on board the Sam Dominic/c, Captain Delano was answered
that they had none that could be used; because, in the earlier
stages of the mutiny, a cabin—passenger, since dead, had se-
cretly put out of order the locks of what few muskets there
were. But with all his remaining strength, Don Benito en—

, EENITO CEREJ‘CO 81
treated the American not to give chase, either with ship or
boat, for the negroes had already proved themselves such
desPeradoes, that, in case of a present assault, nothing but a
total massacre of the whites could be looked for. But, re
garding this warning as coming from one whose spirit had
been crushed by misery, the American did not give up his
design.

The boats were got ready and armed. Captain Delano
ordered twenty—ﬁve men into them. He was going himself
when Don Benito grasped his arm.

“What! have you saved my life, Seﬁor, and are you now
going to throw away your own?”

The oﬂicers also, for reasons connected with their interests
and those of the voyage, and a duty owing to the owners,
strongly objected against their commander’s going. Weigh—
ing their remonstrances a moment, Captain Delano felt
bound to remain, appointing his chief mate—an athletic and
resolute man, who had been a privateer’s man, and, as his
enemies whispered, a pirate—to head the party. The more
to encourage the sailors, they were told, that the Spanish
captain considered his ship as good as lost, that she and her
cargo, including some gold and silver, were worth upwards
of ten thousand doubloons. Take her, and no small part
should be theirs. The sailors replied with a shout.

The fugitives had now almost gained an oﬂing. It was
nearly night; but the moon was rising. After hard, pro—
longed pulling, the boats came up on the ship’s quarters, at
a suitable distance laying upon their oars to discharge their
muskets. Having no bullets to return, the negroes sent their
yells. But, upon the second volley, Indian-like, they hurtled
their hatchets. One took off a sailor’s ﬁngers. Another
struck the Whale-boat’s bow, cutting 0H the rope there, and
remaining stuck in the gunwale, like a woodman’s axe.

82 SHORTER NOVELS OF HERJl/IJJ‘C MELVILLE
Snatching it, quivering from its lodgment, the mate hurled
it back. The returned gauntlet now stuck in the ship’s
broken quarter-gallery, and so remained.

The negroes giving too hot a reception, the whites kept a
more respectful distance. Hovering now just out of reach
of the hurtling hatchets, they, with a View to the close en-
counter which must soon come, sought to decoy the blacks
into entirely disarming themselves of their most murderous
weapons in a hand-to—hand ﬁght, by foolishly ﬂinging them,
as missiles, short of the mark, into the sea. But ere long
perceiving the stratagem, the negroes desisted, though not
before many of them had to replace their lost hatchets with
handspikes; an exchange which, as counted upon, proved in
the end favourable to the assailants.

Meantime, with a strong wind, the ship still clove the
water; the boats alternately falling behind, and pulling up,
to discharge fresh volleys

The ﬁre was mostly directed toward the stern, since there,
chieﬂy, the negroes, at present, were clustering. But to kill
or maim the negroes was not the object. To take them, with
the ship, was the object. To do it, the ship must be boarded 5
which could not be done by boats while she was sailing so
fast.

A thought now struck the mate. Observing the Spanish
boys still aloft, high as they could get, he called to them to
descend to the yards, and cut adrift the sails. It was done.
About this time, owing to causes hereafter to be shown, two
Spaniards, in the dress of sailors and conspicuously showing
themselves, were killed, not by volleys, but by deliberate
marksman’s shots, while, as it afterwards appeared, during
one of the general discharges, Atufal, the black, and the
Spaniard at the helm likewise were killed. What now, with

BENITO CEREINO 83
the loss of the sails, and loss of leaders, the ship became
unmanageable to the negroes.

With creaking masts she came heavily round to the wind;

the prow slowly swinging into view of the boats, its skele-
ton gleaming in the horizontal moonlight, and casting a
gigantic ribbed shadow upon the water. One extended arm
of the ghost seemed beckoning the whites to avenge it.
( “Follow your leader!” cried the mate; and, one on each
bow, the boats boarded. Scaling—spears and cutlasses crossed
hatchets and handspikes. Huddled upon the long-boat
amidships, the negresses raised a wailing chant, whose chorus
was the clash of the steel.

For a time, the attack wavered; the negroes wedging
themselves to beat it back; the half-repelled sailors, as yet
unable to gain a footing, ﬁghting as troopers in the saddle,
one leg sideways ﬂung over the bulwarks, and one without,
plying their cutlasses like carters’ whips. But in vain.
They were almost overborne, when, rallying themselves into
a squad as one man, with a huzza, they sprang inboard;
where, entangled, they involuntarily separated again. For a
few breaths’ space there was a vague, mufﬂed, inner sound
as of submerged sword-ﬁsh rushing hither and thither
through shoals of black—ﬁsh. Soon, in a reunited band, and
joined by the Spanish seamen, the whites came to the surface,
irresistibly driving the negroes toward the stern. But a bar-
ricade of casks and sacks, from side to side, had been thrown
up by the mainmast. Here the negroes faced about, and
though scorning peace or truce, yet fain would have had
a respite. But, without pause, overleaping the barrier, the
unﬂagging sailors again closed. Exhausted, the blacks now
fought in despair. Their red tongues lolled, wolf—like, from
their black mouths. But the pale sailors’ teeth were set; not

8_4 SHORTER NOVELS OF HERMAN MELVILLE
a word was spoken 5 and, in ﬁve minutes more, the ship was
won.

Nearly a score of the negroes were killed. Exclusive of
those by the balls, many were mangled; their wounds—-
mostly inﬂicted by the long—edged scaling-spears—resem—
bling those shaven ones of the English at Preston Pans, made
by the poled scythes of the Highlanders. On the other side,
none were killed, though several were wounded; some
severely, including the mate. The surviving negroes were
temporarily secured, and the ship, towed back into the
harbour at midnight, once more lay anchored.

Omitting the incidents and arrangements ensuing, sufﬁce
it that, after two days spent in reﬁtting, the two ships sailed
in company for Concepcion in Chili, and thence for Lima in
Peru 5 where, before the vice—regal courts, the whole affair,
from the beginning, underwent investigation.

Though, midway on the passage, the ill—fated Spaniard,
relaxed from constraint, showed some signs of regaining
health with free—will, yet, agreeably to his own foreboding,
shortly before arriving at Lima, he relapsed, ﬁnally becoming
so reduced as to be carried ashore in arms. Hearing of his
story and plight, one of the many religious institutions of the
City of Kings opened an hospitable refuge to him, where
both physician and priest were his nurses, and a member of
the order volunteered to be his one special guardian and con-
soler, by night and by day.

The following extracts, translated from one of the ofﬁcial
Spanish documents, will, it is hoped, shed light on the pre-
ceding narrative, as well as, in the ﬁrst place, reveal the true
port of departure and true history of the San Dominick’s
voyage, down to the time of her touching at the island of
Santa Maria.

BENITO CERENO 85

But, ere the extracts come, it may be well to preface them
with a remark.

The document selected, from among many others, for par-
tial translation, contains the deposition of Benito Cereno; the
ﬁrst taken in the case. Some disclosures therein were, at the
time, held dubious for both learned and natural reasons.
The tribunal inclined to the opinion that the deponent, not
undisturbed in his mind by recent events, raved of some
things which could never have happened. But subsequent
depositions of the surviving sailors, bearing out the revela—
tions of their captain in several of the strangest particulars,
gave credence to the rest. So that the tribunal, in its ﬁnal
decision, rested its capital sentences upon statements which,
had they lacked conﬁrmation, it would have deemed it but
duty to reject.

I, DON JOSE’ DE ABos AND PADILLA, His Majesty’s
Notary for the Royal Revenue, and Register of this Prov-
ince, and Notary Public of the Holy Crusade of this
Bishopric, etc.

Do certify and declare, as much as is requisite in law, that,
in the criminal cause commenced the twenty—fourth of the
month of September, in the year seventeen hundred and
ninety-nine, against the Senegal negroes of the ship San
Dominic/c, the following declaration before me was made.

Declaration of the ﬁrst witness, DON BENITO CERENO.

The same day, and month, and year, His Honour, Doctor
Juan Martinez de Dozas, Councillor of the Royal Audience
of this Kingdom, and learned in the law of this Intendancy,
ordered the captain of the ship San Dominick, Don Benito
Cereno, to appear; which he did in his litter, attended by the

86 SHORTER NOVELS OF HERMAN MELVILLE

wvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv-v

monk Infelez; of whom he received, before Don José- de
Abos and Padilla, Notary Public of the Holy Crusade, the
oath, which he took by God, our Lord, and a sign of the
Cross, under which he promised to tell the truth of what-
ever he should know and should be asked5—and being inter—
rogated agreeably to the tenor of the act commencing the
process, he said, that on the twentieth of May last, he set
sail with his ship from the port of Valparaiso, bound to that
of Callao, loaded with the produce of the country and
one hundred and sixty blacks, of both sexes, mostly belong—
ing to Don Alexandro Aranda, gentleman, of the city of
Mendoza, that the crew of the ship consisted of thirty—six
men, beside the persons who Went as passengers, that the
negroes were in part as follows:

[H ere, in the original, follows a list of some ﬁfty names,
descriptions, and ages, compiled from certain recovered docu—
ments of Aranda’s, and also from recollections of the de-
ponent, from which portions only are extracted]

—One, from about eighteen to nineteen years, named
José, and this was the man that waited upon his master, Don
Alexandro, and Who speaks well the Spanish, having served
him four or ﬁve years; . . . a mulatto, named Francesco,
the cabin steward, of a good person and voice, having sung in
the Valparaiso churches, native of the province of Buenos
Ayres, aged about thirty-ﬁve years. . . . A smart negro,
named Qago, Who had been for many years a grave—digger
among the Spaniards, aged forty—six years. . . . Four old
negroes, born in Africa, from sixty to seventy, but sound,
caulkers by trade, whose names are as followsz—the ﬁrst was
named Muri, and he was killed (as was also his son named
Diamelo); the second, Nacta; the third, Yola, likewise

BENITO CERENO 87
killed; the fourth, Ghofan, and six full-grown negroes,
aged from thirty to forty-ﬁve, all raw, and born among the
Ashantees—Martinqui, Yan, Lecbe, Mapenda, Yambaio,
Akim, four of whom were killed; . . . a powerful negro
named Atufal, who, being supposed to have been a chief in
Africa, his owners set great store by him. . . . And a small
negro of Senegal, but some years among the Spaniards, aged
about thirty, which negro’s name was Babo; . . . that he
does not remember the names of the others, but that still ex-
pecting the residue of Don Alexandro’s papers will be found,
Will then take due account of them all, and remit to the
court, . . . and thirty-nine women and children of all ages.

[After the catalogue, the deposition goes on a: follow::]

. . . That all the negroes slept upon deck, as is customary
in this navigation, and none wore fetters, because the owner,
his friend Aranda, told him that they were all tractable;
. . . that on the seventh day after leaving port, at three
o’clock in the morning, all the Spaniards being asleep except
the two ofﬁcers on the watch, who were the boatswain, Juan
Robles, and the carpenter, Juan Bautista Gayete, and the
helmsman and his boy, the negroes revolted suddenly,
wounded dangerously the boatswain and the carpenter, and
successively killed eighteen men of those who were sleeping
upon deck, some with handspikes and hatchets, and others by
throwing them alive overboard, after tying them; that of
the Spaniards upon deck, they left about seven, as he thinks,
alive and tied, to manoeuvre the ship and three or four more
who hid themselves, remained also alive. Although in the
act of revolt the negroes made themselves masters of the
hatchway, six or seven wounded went through it to the cock-
pit, without any hindrance on their part; that in the act of

88 SHORTER NOVELS OF HERMAN MELVILLE

revolt, the mate and another person, whose name he does
not recollect, attempted to come up through the hatchway,
but having been wounded at the onset, they were obliged to
return to the cabin; that the deponent resolved at break of
day to come up the companionway, where the negro Babo
was, being the ringleader, and Atufal, who assisted him, and
having spoken to them, exhorted them to cease committing
such atrocities, asking them, at the same time, what they
wanted and intended to do, offering, himself, to obey their
commands, that, notwithstanding this, they threw, in his
presence, three men, alive and tied, overboard; that they
told the deponent to come up, and that they would not kill
him, which having done, the negro Babo asked him whether
there were in those seas any-negro countries where they might
be carried, and he answered them. No, that the negro Babo
afterwards told him to carry them to Senegal, or to the
neighbouring islands of St. Nicholas; and he answered, that"
this was impossible, on account of the great distance, the
necessity involved of rounding Cape Horn, the bad condition
of the vessel, the want of provisions, sails, and water; but
that the negro Babo replied to him he must carry them in
any way, that they would do and conform themselves to
everything the deponent should require as to eating and
drinking; that after a long conference, being absolutely com-
pelled to please them, for they threatened him to kill all the
whites if they were not, at all events, carried to Senegal, he
told them that what was most wanting for the voyage was
water, that they would go near the coast to take it, and
hence they would proceed on their course, that the negro
Babo agreed to it, and the deponent steered toward the in—
termediate ports, hoping to meet some Spanish or foreign
vessel that would save them, that within ten or eleven days
they saw the land, and continued their course by it in the

2953(17’0 CERENO 89
vicinity of Nasca, that the deponent observed that the
negroes were now restless and mutinous, because he did not
effect the taking in of water, the negro Babo having required,
with threats, that it should be done, Without fail, the follow—
ing day; he told him he saw plainly that the coast was steep,
and the rivers designated in the maps were not to be found,
With other reasons suitable to the circumstances; that the
best way would be to go to the island of Santa Maria, Where
they might water and Victual easily, it being a desert island,
as the foreigners did; that the deponent did not go to Pisco,
that was near, nor make any other port of the coast, because
the negro Babo had intimated to him several times, that he
would kill all the whites the very moment he should perceive
any city, town, or settlement of any kind on the shores to
which they should be carried: that having determined to go
to the island of Santa Maria, as the deponent had planned,
for the purpose of trying whether, in. the passage or in the
island itself, they could ﬁnd any vessel that should favour
them, or whether he could escape from it in a boat to the
neighbouring coast of Arruco; to adopt the necessary means
he immediately changed his course, steering for the island;
that the negroes Babo and Atufal held daily conferences, in
which they discussed what was necessary for their design of
returning to Senegal, whether they were to kill all the
Spaniards, and particularly the deponent; that eight days
after parting from the coast of Nasca, the deponent being
on the watch a little after day—break, and soon after the
negroes had their meeting, the negro Babo came to the place
where the deponent was, and told him that he had deter-
mined to kill his master, Don Alexandro Aranda, both be—
cause he and his companions could not otherwise be sure of
their liberty, and that, to keep the seamen in subjection, he
wanted to prepare a warning of What road they should be

90 SHORTER NOVELS OF HERMAN MELVILLEW

made to take did they or any of them oppose him; and that,
by means of the death of Don Alexandro, that warning
would best be given; but, that what this last meant, the de—
ponent did not at the time comprehend, nor could not, fur-
ther than that the death of Don Alexandro was intended;
and moreover, the negro Babo proposed to the deponent to
call the mate Raneds, Who was sleeping in the cabin, before
the thing was done, for fear, as the deponent understood it,
that the mate, who was a good navigator, should be killed
with Don Alexandro and the rest; that the deponent, who
was the friend, from youth of Don Alexandro, prayed and
conjured, but all was useless; for the negro Babo answered
him that the thing could not be prevented, and that all the
Spaniards risked their death if they should attempt to frus-
trate his will in this matter, or any other; that, in this con-
ﬂict, the deponent called the mate, Raneds, who was forced
to go apart, and immediately the negro Babo commanded the
Ashantee Martinqui and the Ashantee Lecbe to go and com-
mit the murder; that those two went down with hatchets to
the berth of Don Alexandre; that, yet half alive and
mangled, they dragged him on deck; that they were going
to throw him overboard in that state, but the negro Babo
stopped them, bidding the murder be completed on the deck
before him, which was done, when, by his orders, the body
was carried below, forward; that nothing more was seen of
it by the deponent for three days; . . . that Don Alonzo
Sidonia, an old man, long resident at Valparaiso, and lately
appointed to a civil oﬂice in Peru, whither he had taken
passage, was at the time sleeping in the berth opposite Don
Alexandro’s; that, awakening at his cries, surprised by them,
and at the sight of the negroes with their bloody hatchets in
their hands, he threw himself into the sea through a win-
dow which was near him, and was drowned, without it being

BENITO CERENO 91
in the power of the deponent to assist or take him up; . . .
that, a short time after killing Aranda, they brought upon
deck his german-cousin, of middle—age, Don Francisco Masa,
of Mendoza, and the young Don Joaquin, Marques de
Aramboalaza, then lately from Spain, with his Spanish serv—
ant Ponce, and the three young clerks of Aranda, José Mo-
zairi, Lorenzo Bargas, and Hermenegildo Gandix, all of
Cadiz; that Don Joaquin and Hermenegildo Gandix, the
negro Babo for purposes hereafter to appear, preserved alive;
but Don Francisco Masa, José Mozairi, and Lorenzo Bargas,
with Ponce, the servant, beside the boatswain, Juan Robles,
the boatswain’s mates, Manuel Viscaya and Roderigo Hurta,
and four of the sailors, the negro Babo ordered to be thrown
alive into the sea, although they made no resistance, nor
begged for anything else but mercy 5 that the boatswain, Juan
Robles, who knew how to swim, kept the longest above
water, making acts of contrition, and, in the last words he
uttered, charged this deponent to cause mass to be said for
his soul to our Lady of Succour: . . . that, during the three
days which followed, the deponent, uncertain what fate had
befallen the remains of Don Alexandro, frequently asked the
negro Babo where they were, and, if still on board, whether
they were to be preserved for interment ashore, entreating
him so to order it; that the negro Babo answered nothing till
the fourth day, when at sunrise, the deponent coming or.
deck, the negro Babo showed him a skeleton, which had been
substituted for the ship’s proper figure—head, the image of
Christopher Colon, the discoverer of the New World ; that
the negro Babo asked him whose skeleton that was, and
whether, from its whiteness, he should not think it a White’s;
that, upon his covering his face, the negro Babo, coming
close, said words to this effect: “Keep faith with the blacks
from here to Senegal, or you shall in spirit, as now in body,

92 SHORTER NOVELS 0F HERMAN MELVILLE
follow your leader,” pointing to the prow, . . . that the
same morning the negro Babo took by succession each
Spaniard forward, and asked him whose skeleton that was,
and whether, from its whiteness, he should not think it a
White’s, that each Spaniard covered his face; that then to
each the negro Babo repeated the words in the ﬁrst place said
to the deponent; . . . that they (the Spaniards), being then
assembled aft, the negro Babo harangued them, saying that
he had now done all; that the deponent (as navigator for the
negroes) might pursue his course, warning him and all of
them that they should, soul and body, go the way of Don
Alexandro if he saw them (the Spaniards) speak or plot any—
thing against them (the negroes)——a threat which was re—
peated every day; that, before the events last mentioned,
they had tied the cook to throw him overboard, for it is not
known what thing they heard him speak, but ﬁnally the negro
Babo spared his life, at the request of the deponent, that a
few days after, the deponent, endeavouring not to omit any
means to preserve the lives of the remaining whites, spoke
to the negroes peace and tranquillity, and agreed to draw up
a paper, signed by the deponent and the sailors who could
Write, as also by the negro Babo, for himself and all the
blacks, in which the deponent obliged himself to carry them
to Senegal, and they not to kill any more, and he formally
to make over to them the ship, with the cargo, with which
they were for that time satisﬁed and quieted. . . . But the
next day, the more surely to guard against the sailors’ escape,
the negro Babo commanded all the boats to be destroyed but
the long-boat, which was unseaworthy, and another, a cutter
in good condition, which, knowing it would yet be wanted
for lowering the water casks, he had it lowered down into
the hold.

BENITO CERENO 93

[Various particulars of the prolonged and perplexed navi—
gation ensuing lzere follow, with incidents of a calamitous
calm, from which portion one passage is extracted, to win]

—That on the ﬁfth day of the calm, all on board suffering
much from the heat, and want of water, and ﬁve having died
in ﬁts, and mad, the negroes became irritable, and for a
chance gesture, which they deemed suspicious—though it
was harmless—made by the mate, Raneds, to the deponent,
in the act of handing a quadrant, they killed him; but that
for this they afterwards were sorry, the mate being the only
remaining navigator on board, except the deponent.

——That omitting other events, which daily'happened, and
which can only serve uselessly to recall past misfortunes and
conﬂicts, after seventy-three days’ navigation, reckoned from
the time they sailed from Nasca, during which they navigated
under a scanty allowance of water, and were afﬂicted with
the calms before mentioned, they at last arrived at the island
of Santa Maria, on the seventeenth of the month of August,
at about six o’clock in the afternoon, at which hour they cast
anchor very near the American ship, Bachelor’s Delight,
which lay in the same bay, commanded by the generous Cap—
tain Amasa Delano, but at six o’clock in the morning, they
had already descried the port, and the negroes became un-
easy, as soon as at distance they saw the ship, not having ex-
pected to see one there; that the negro Babo paciﬁed them,
assuring them that no fear need be had, that straightway he
ordered the ﬁgure on the bow to be covered with canvas, as
for repairs, and had the decks a little set in order; that for
a time the negro Babo and the negro Atufal conferred; that
the negro Atufal was for sailing away, but the negro Babo
would not, and, by himself, cast about what to do 3 that at!

94 SHORTER NOVELS OF HERMAN MELVILLE

last he came to the deponent, proposing to him to say and do
all that the deponent declares to have said and done to the
American captain; . . . that the negro Babo warned him
that if be varied in the least, or uttered any word, or gave any
look that should give the least intimation of the past events
or present state, he would instantly kill him, with all his
companions, showing a dagger, which he carried hid, saying
something which, as he understood it, meant that that dagger
would be alert as his eye; that the negro Babo then an‘
nounced the plan to all his companions, which pleased them;
that he then, the better to disguise the truth, devised many
expedients, in some of them uniting deceit and defence; that
of this sort was the device of the six Ashantees before named,
who were his bravos; that them he stationed on the break of
the poop, as if to clean certain hatchets (in cases, which were
part of the cargo), but in reality to use them, and distribute
them at need, and at a given word he told them that, among
other devices, was the device of presenting Atufal, his right—
hand man, as chained, though in a moment the chains could
be dropped; that in every particular he informed the de—
ponent what part he was expected to enact in every device,
and what story he was to tell on every occasion, always
threatening him with instant death if he varied in the least:
that, conscious that many of the negroes would be turbulent,
the negro Babo appointed the four aged negroes, who were
caulkers, to keep what domestic order they could on the
decks; that again and again he harangued the Spaniards
and his companions, informing them of his intent, and of his
devices, and of the invented story that this deponent was to
tell, charging them lest any of them varied from that story 3
that these arrangements were made and matured during the
interval of two or three hours, between their ﬁrst sighting
the ship and the arrival on board of Captain Amasa Delano;

__ BENITO CERESNO 95
that this happened at about half-past seven in the morning,
Captain Amasa Delano coming in his boat, and all gladly
receiving him; that the deponent, as well as he could force
himself, acting then the part of principal owner, and a free
captain of the ship, told Captain Amasa Delano, when called
upon, that he came from Buenos Ayres, bound to Lima, with
three hundred negroes; that off Cape Horn, and in a sub-
sequent fever, many negroes had died; that also, by similar

casualties, all the sea ofﬁcers and the greatest part of the crew
had died.

[And so the deposition goes on, circumstantially recount-
ing the ﬁctitious story dictated to the deponent hy Baho, and
through the deponent imposed upon Captain Delano; and
also recounting the friendly oﬂers of Captain Delano, with
other things, hut all of which is here omitted. After the
ﬁctitious, strange story, etc., the deposition proceeds:]

-—-That the generous Captain Amasa Delano remained on
board all the day, till he left the ship anchored at six o’clock
in the evening, deponent speaking to him always of his pre-
tended misfortunes, under the fore—mentioned principles,
without having had it in his power to tell a single word, or
give him the least hint, that he might know the truth and
state of things; because the negro Babo, performing the
oﬂice of an oﬂicious servant with all the appearance of sub-
mission of the humble slave, did not leave the deponent one
moment, that this was in order to observe the deponent’s
actions and words, for the negro Babo understands well the
Spanish; and besides, there were thereabout some others who
were constantly on the watch, and likewise understood the
Spanish; . . . that upon one occasion, while deponent was
standing on the deck conversing with Amasa Delano, by a
secret sign the negro Babo drew him (the deponent) aside,

96 SHORTER NOVELS OF HERMAN MELVILLE
the act appearing as if originating with the deponent; that
then, he being drawn aside, the negro Babo proposed to him
to gain from Amasa Delano full particulars about his ship,
and crew, and arms; that the deponent asked “For what?”
that the negro Babo answered he might conceive; that,
grieved at the prospect of What might overtake the generous
Captain Amasa Delano, the deponent at ﬁrst refused to ask
the desired questions, and used every argument to induce
the negro Babo to give up this new design; that the negro
Babo showed the point of his dagger; that, after the in-
formation had been obtained, the negro Babo again drew him
aside, telling him that that very night he (the deponent)
would be captain of two ships instead of one, for that, great
part of the American’ 3 ship’s crew being to be absent ﬁshing,
the six Ashantees, Without any one else, would easily take
it; that at this time he said other things to the same pur—
pose; that no entreaties availed; that before Amasa Delano’s
coming on board, no hint had been given touching the cap-
ture of the American ship: that to prevent this project the
deponent was powerless; . . . —that in some things his
memory is confused, he cannot distinctly recall every event;

. —that as soon as they had cast anchor at six of the clock
in the evening, as has before been stated, the American cap—
tain took leave to return to his vessel; that upon a sudden
impulse, which the deponent believes to have come from
God and his angels, he, after the farewell had been said,
followed the generous Captain Amasa Delano as far as the
gunwale, where he stayed, under the pretence of taking
leave, until Amasa Delano should have been seated in his
boat; that on shoving off, the deponent sprang from the
gunwale, into the boat, and fell into it, he knows not how,
God guarding him; that—

BENITO CEanxco 97
[Here, in the original, follows the account of what fur—
ther happened at the escape, and how the “San Dominick”
was retahen, and ofthe passage to the coast; including in the
recital many expressions of “eternal gratitude” to the “gen-
erous Captain Amasa Delano.” The deposition then proceeds
with recapitulatory remarks, and a partial renumeration of
the negroes, making record of their individual part in the
past events, with a ‘view to furnishing, according to command
of the court, the data whereon to found the criminal sentences
to he pronounced: From this portion is the following:]

—That he believes that all the negroes, though not in
the ﬁrst place knowing to the design of revolt, when it was
accomplished, approved it. . . . That the negro, José,
eighteen years old, and in the personal service of Don Alex—
andro, was the one who communicated the information to
the negro Babo, about the state of things in the cabin, before
the revolt, that this is known, because, in the preceding
midnight, he used to come from his berth, which was under
his master’s, in the cabin, to the deck where the ringleader
and his associates were, and had secret conversations with the
negro Babo, in which he was several times seen by the mate;
that, one night, the mate drove him away twice; . . . that
this same negro José, was the one who, without being com—
manded to do so by the negro Babo, as Lecbe and Martinqui
were, stabbed his master, Don Alexandro, after he had been
dragged half-lifeless to the deck, . . that the mulatto stew-
ard, Francesco, was of the ﬁrst band of revolters, that he was,
in all things, the creature and tool of the negro Babo, that,
to make his court, he, just before a repast in the cabin, pro
posed, to the negro Babo, poisoning a dish for the generous
Captain Amasa Delano; this is known and believed, because
the negroes have said it; but that the negro Babo, having

98 SHORTER NOVELS OF HERMAN MELVILLEW
another design, forbade Francesco; . . . that the Ashantee
Lecbe was one of the worst of them; for that, on the day
the ship was retaken, he assisted in the defence of her, with
a hatchet in each hand, with one of which he wounded, in
the breast, the chief mate of Amasa Delano, in the ﬁrst act
of boarding; this all knew; that, in sight of the deponent,
Lecbe struck, with a hatchet,‘Don Francisco Masa when, by
the negro Babo’s orders, he was carrying him to throw him
overboard, alive; beside participating in the murder, before
mentioned, of Don Alexandro Aranda, and others of the
cabin—passengers; that, owing to the fury with which the
Ashantees fought in the engagement with the boats, but this
Lecbe and Yan survived, that Yan was bad as Lecbe, that
Yan was the man who, by Babo’s command, willingly pre-
pared the skeleton of Don Alexandro, in a way the negroes
afterwards told the deponent, but which he, so long as
reason is left him, can never divulge; that Yan and Lecbe
were the two who, in a calm by night, riveted the skeleton
to the bow; this also the negroes told him; that the negro
Babo was he who traced the inscription below it; that the
negro Babo was the plotter from ﬁrst to last; he ordered
every murder, and was the helm and keel of the revolt;
that Atufal was his lieutenant in all; but Atufal, with his
own hand, committed no murder 5 nor did the negro Babo;
. that Atufal was shot, being killed in the ﬁght with the
boats, ere boarding; . . . that the negresses, of age, were
knowing to the revolt, and testiﬁed themselves satisﬁed at
the death of their master, Don Alexandro; that, had the
negroes not restrained them, they would have tortured to
death, instead of simply killing, the Spaniards slain by com-
mand of the negro Babo ; that the negresses used their utmost
inﬂuence to have the deponent made away with, that, in
the various acts of murder, they sang songs and danced—

BENITO CEREINO 99

not gaily, but solemnly; and before the engagement with
the boats, as well as during the action, they sang melancholy
songs to the negroes, and that this melancholy tone was more
inﬂaming than a different one would have been, and was so
intended; that all this is believed. because the negroes have
said it.
——That of the thirty-six men of the crew—exclusive of the
passengers (all of whom are now dead), which the depo-
nent had knowledge of—six only remained alive, with four
cabin—boys and ship—boys, not included with the crew; . . .
——that the negroes broke an arm of one of the cabin—boys
and gave him strokes with hatchets.

[Then follow various random disclosures referring to
various periods of time. The following are extracted]

—-That during the presence of Captain Amasa Delano
on board, some attempts were made by the sailors, and one
by Hermenegildo Gandix, to convey hints to him of the
true state of affairs; but that these attempts were ineffectual,
owing to fear of incurring death, and furthermore owing to
the devices which offered contradictions to the true state of
affairs; as well as owing to the generosity and piety of Amasa
Delano, incapable of sounding such wickedness; . . . that
Luys Galgo, a sailor about sixty years of age, and formerly
of the king’s navy, was one of those who sought to convey
tokens to Captain Amasa Delano; but his intent, though un—
discovered, being suspected, he was, on a pretence, made to
retire out of sight, and at last into the hold, and there was
made away with. This the negroes have since said, . . .
that one of the ship—boys feeling, from Captain Amasa De-
lano’s presence, some hopes of release, and not having
enough prudence, dropped some chance-word respecting his

Ioo SHORTER NOVELS OF HERM/IN MELVILLEW
expectations, which being overheard and understood by a
slave—boy with whom he was eating at the time, the latter
struck him on the head with a knife, inﬂicting a bad wound,
but of which the boy is now healing, that likewise, not long
before the ship was brought to anchor, one of the seamen,
steering at the time, endangered himself by letting the blacks
remark a certain unconscious hopeful expression in his coun-
tenance, arising from some cause similar to the above; but
this sailor, by his heedful after conduct, escaped 5 . . . that
these statements are made to show the court that from the
beginning to the end of the revolt, it was impossible for the
deponent and his men to act otherwise than they did; . . .
——that the third clerk, Hermenegildo Gandix, who before
had been forced to live among the seamen, wearing a sea—
man’s habit, and in all respects appearing to be one for the
time; he, Gandix, was killed by a musket—ball ﬁred through
a mistake from the American boats before boarding; having
ﬁn his fright ran up the mizzen—rigging, calling to the boats
—“don’t board,” lest upon their boarding the negroes should
kill him, that this inducing the Americans to believe he some
way favoured the cause of the negroes, they ﬁred two balls
at him, so that he fell wounded from the rigging, and was
drowned in the sea, . . . —that the young Don Joaquin,
Marques de Arambaolaza, like Hermenegildo Gandix, the
third clerk, was degraded to the ofﬁce and appearance of a
common seaman; that upon one occasion, when Don Joaquin
shrank, the negro Babo commanded the Ashantee Lecbe to
take tar and heat it, and pour it upon Don Joaquin’s hands;
. ——that Don Joaquin was killed owing to another mis-
take of the Americans, but one impossible to be avoided, as
upon the approach of the boats, Don Joaquin, with a hatchet
tied edge out and upright to his hand, was made by the
negroes to appear on the bulwarks; whereupon, seen with

BENITO CERENO 101
arms in his hands and in a questionable attitude, he was
shot for a renegade seaman; . . . —that on the person of
Don Joaquin was found secreted a jewel, which, by papers
that were discovered, proved to have been meant for the
shrine of our Lady of Mercy in Lima; a votive oEering,
beforehand prepared and guarded, to attest his gratitude,
when he should have landed in Peru, his last destination,
for the safe conclusion of his entire voyage from Spain,

. . —that the jewel, with the other effects of the late Don
Joaquin, is in the custody of the brethren of the Hospital
de Sacerdotes, awaiting the decision of the honourable court;

. . —that, owing to the condition of the deponent, as well
as the haste in which the boats departed for the attack, the
Americans were not forewarned that there were, among the
apparent crew, a passenger and one of the clerks disguised
by the negro Babo, . . . ——that, beside the negroes killed
in the action, some were killed after the capture and re—
anchoring at night, when shackled to the ring—bolts on deck,
that these deaths were committed by the sailors, ere they
could be prevented. That so soon as informed of it, Captain
Amasa Delano used all his authority, and, in particular with
his own hand, struck down Martinez Gola, who, having
found a razor in the pocket of an old jacket of his, which
one of the shackled negroes had on, was aiming it at the
negro’s throat; that the noble Captain Amasa Delano also
wrenched from the hand of Bartholomew Barlo, a dagger
secreted at the time of the massacre of the whites, with which
he was in the act of stabbing a shackled negro, who, the same
day, with another negro, had thrown him down and jumped
upon him, . . . —that, for all the events, befalling through
so long a time, during which the ship was in the hands of
the negro Babo, he cannot here give account; but that, what
he has said is the most substantial of what occurs to him at

102 SHORTER NOVELS 0F HERMAN MELVILLE
W

present, and is the truth under the oath which he has taken;
which declaration he afﬁrmed and ratiﬁed, after hearing it
read to him.

He said that he is twenty—nine years of age, and broken
in body and mind; that when ﬁnally dismissed by the court,
he shall not return home to Chili, but betake himself to
the monastery on Mount Agenia without; and signed with
his honour, and crossed himself, and, for the time, departed
as he came, in his litter, with the monk Infelez, to the Hos-
pital de Sacerdotes.

BENITO CERENO.

DOCTOR Rozns.

If the deposition of Benito Cereno has served as the key
to ﬁt into the lock of the complications which preceded it,
then, as a vault Whose door has been ﬂung back, the San
Dominick’s hull lies open to—day.

Hitherto the nature of this narrative, besides rendering
the intricacies in the beginning unavoidable, has more or less
required that many things, instead of being set down in the
order of occurrence, should be restrospectively, or irregularly
given; this last is the case with the following passages, which
will conclude the account:

During the long, mild voyage to Lima, there was, as
before hinted, a period during which Don Benito a little
recovered his health, or, at least in some degree, his tran—
quillity. Ere the decided relapse which came, the two cap—
tains had many cordial conversations—their fraternal un-
reserve in singular contrast with former Withdrawments.

Again and again, it was repeated, how hard it had been
to enact the part forced on the Spaniard by Babo.

“Ah, my dear Don Amasa,” Don Benito once said, “at
those very times when you thought me so morose and un-

BENITO CERENO 103
grateful—nay when, as you now admit, you half thought me
plotting your murder—at those very times my heart was
frozen; I could not look at you, thinking of what, both on
board this ship and your own, hung, from other hands, over
my kind benefactor. And as God lives, Don Amasa, I know
not whether desire for my own safety alone could have
nerved me to that leap into your boat, had it not been for the
thought that, did you, unenlightened, return to your ship,
you, my best friend, with all who might be with you, stolen
upon, that night, in your hammocks, would never in this
World have wakened again. Do but think how you walked
this deck, how you sat in this cabin, every inch of ground
mined into honey—combs under you. Had I dropped the
least hint, made the least advance toward an understanding
between us, death, explosive death—yours as mine—would
have ended the scene.”

“True, true,” cried Captain Delano, starting, “you saved
my life, Don Benito, more than I yours, saved it, too,
against my knowledge and will.”

“Nay, my friend,” rejoined the Spaniard, courteous even
to the point of religion, “God charmed your life, but you
saved mine. To think of some things you did—those smil-
ings and chattings, rash pointings and gesturings. For less
than these, they slew my mate, Raneds; but you had the
Prince of Heaven’s safe conduct through all ambuscades.”

“Yes, all is owing to Providence, I know; but the temper
of my mind that morning was more than commonly pleasant,
While the sight of so much suffering—more apparent than
real—added to my good nature, compassion, and charity,
happily interweaving the three. Had it been otherwise,
doubtless, as you hint, some of my interferences with the
blacks might have ended unhappily enough. Besides that,
those feelings I spoke of enabled me to get the better of

104. SHORTER NOVELS 0F HERMAN MELVILLE
W

momentary distrust, at times when acuteness might have cost
me my life, Without saving another’s. Only at the end did
my suspicions get the better of me, and you know how Wide
of the mark they then proved.”

“Wide, indeed,” said Don Benito, sadly; “you were with
me all day; stood with me, sat with me, talked with me,
looked at me, ate with me, drank with me; and yet, your
last act was to clutch for a villain, not only an innocent
man, but the most pitiable of all men. To such degree may
malign machinations and deceptions impose. So far may
even the best men err, in judging the conduct of one with
the recesses of Whose condition he is not acquainted. But
you were forced to it; and you were in time undeceived.
Would that, in both respects, it was so ever, and with all
men.”

“I think I understand you; you generalize, Don Benito;
and mournfully enough. But the past is passed; why
moralize upon it? Forget it. See, yon bright sun has for—
gotten it all, and the blue sea, and the blue sky; these have
turned over new leaves.”

“Because they have no memory,” he dejectedly replied,
“because they are not human.”

“But these mild trades that now fan your cheek, Don
Benito, do they not come with a human-like healing to you?
Warm friends, steadfast friends are the trades.”

“With their steadfastness they but waft me to my tomb,
Sefior,” was the foreboding response.

“You are saved, Don Benito,” cried Captain Delano,
more and more astonished and pained, “you are saved;
what has cast such a shadow upon you?”

“The negro.”

There was silence, while the moody man sat, slowly and

BEJU‘TO CERENO 105
unconsciously gathering his mantle about him, as if it were
a pall.

There was no more conversation that day.

But if the Spaniard’s melancholy sometimes ended in
muteness upon topics like the above, there were others upon
which he never spoke at all; on which, indeed, all his old
reserves were piled. Pass over the worst and, only to eluci-
date, let an item or two of these be cited. The dress so
precise and costly, worn by him on the day whose events
‘have been narrated, had not willingly been put on. And
that silver—mounted sword, apparent symbol of despotic
command, was not, indeed, a sword, but the ghost of one.
The scabbard, artiﬁcially stiffened, was empty.

As for the black—whose brain, not body, had schemed
and led the revolt, with the plot—his slight frame, inade—
quate to that which it held, had at once yielded to the su-
perior muscular strength of his captor, in the boat. Seeing
all was over, he uttered no sound, and could not be forced to.
His aspect seemed to say: since I cannot do deeds, I will
not speak words. Put in irons in the hold, with the rest,
he was carried to Lima. During the passage Don Benito
did not visit him. Nor then, nor at any time after, would
he look at him. Before the tribunal he refused. When
pressed by the judges he fainted. On the testimony of the
sailors alone rested the legal identity of Babo. And yet the
Spaniard would, upon occasion, verbally refer to the negro,
as has been shown; but look on him he would not, or could
not.

Some months after, dragged to the gibbet at the tail of a
mule, the black met his voiceless end. The body was burned
to ashes; but for many days, the head, that hive of subtlety,
ﬁxed on a pole in the Plaza, met, unabashed, the gaze of
the whites; and across the Plaza looked toward St. Barthol-

106 SHORTER {NOVELS OF HERMAN MELVILLE

omeW’s church, in Whose vaults slept then, as now, the re-
covered bones of Aranda, and across the Rimac bridge
looked toward the monastery, on Mount Agonia Without,
Where, three months after being dismissed by the court,
Benito Cereno, borne on the bier, did, indeed, follow his

leader.

(BARTLEBY T HE SCRIVENER
A STORY OF WALL STREET

First published anonymously in Putnam’: M ontkly Magazine, Novem«
ber, 1853.
Reprinted in “The Piazza Tales,” 1856.

BARTLEBY THE SCRIVENER
A Story of Wall Street

I AM a rather elderly man. The nature of my avocations
for the last thirty years has brought me into more than ordi—
nary contact with what would seem an interesting and some-
what singular set of men, of Whom as yet nothing that I
know of has ever been writtenz—I mean the law—copyists
or scriveners. I have known very many of them, profes-
sionally and privately, and if I pleased, could relate divers
histories, at which good—natured gentlemen might smile, and
sentimental souls might weep. But I waive the biographies
of all other scriveners for a few passages in the life of
Bartleby, who was a scrivener the strangest I ever saw or
heard of. While of other law—copyists I might write the
complete life, of Bartleby nothing of that sort can be done.
I believe that no materials exist for a full and satisfactory
biography of this man. It is an irreparable loss to litera—
ture}, Bartleby was one of those beings of Whom nothing is
ascertainable, except from the original sources, and in his
case those are very small. What my own astonished eyes
saw of Bartleby, that is all I know of him, except, indeed,
one vague report which will appear in the sequel.

l Ere introducing the scrivener, as he ﬁrst appeared to meg
it is ﬁt I make some mention of myself, my employés, my
business, my chambers, and general surroundings; because
some such description is indispensable to an adequate under-
standing of the chief character about to be presented.

Imprimis: I am a man who, from his youth upward, has

been ﬁlled with a profound conviction that the easiest way
109

no SHORTER NOVELS OF HERMAN MELVILLE
of life is the best. Hence, though I belong to a profession
proverbially energetic and nervous, even to turbulence, at
times, yet nothing of that sort have I ever suffered to invade
my peace. I am one of those unambitious lawyers who
never addresses a jury, or in any way raws down public
applause ; but in the cool tranquillity of a snug retreat, do
a snug business among rich men’s bonds and mortgages and
title-deeds. All who know me, consider me an eminently
safe man. The late John Jacob Astor, a personage little
given to poetic enthusiasm, had no hesitation in pronouncing
my ﬁrst grand point to be prudence; my next, method. I
do not speak it in vanity, but simply record the fact, that
I was not unemployed in my profession by the late John
Jacob Astor; a name which, I admit, I love to repeat, for
it hath a rounded and orbicular sound to it, and rings like
unto bullion. I will freely add, that I was not insensible to
the late John Jacob Astor’s good opinion.

Some time prior to the period at which this little history
begins, my avocations had been largely increased. The good
old ofﬁce, now extinct in the State of New York, of a Master
in Chancery, had been conferred upon me. It was not a
very arduous ofﬁce, but very pleasantly remunerative. I
seldom lose my temper, much more seldom indulge in dan-
gerous indignation at wrongs and outrages; but I must be
permitted to be rash here and declare, that I consider the
sudden and violent abrogation of the oﬂice of Master in
Chancery, by the new Constitution, as a premature
act, inasmuch as I had counted upon a life-lease of the
proﬁts, whereas I only received those of a few short years.
But this is by the way.

My chambers were upstairs at No. , Wall Street. At
one end they looked upon the white Wall of the interior of
a spacious sky-light shaft, penetrating the building from top )

 

 

BARTLEBY THE SCRIVEJ‘CER If!‘
to bottom. This View might have been considered rather
tame than otherwise, deﬁcient in what landscape painters
call “life.” But if so, the View from the other end of my
chambers offered, at least, a contrast, if nothing more. In
that direction my windows commanded an unobstructed View
of a lofty brick wall, black by age and everlasting shade;
which wall required no spy-glass to bring out its lurking
beauties, but for the beneﬁt of all near-sighted spectators,
was pushed up to within ten feet of my window panes.
Owing‘to the great height of the surrounding buildings, and
my chambers being on the second ﬂoor, the interval between
this wall and mine not a little resembled a huge square
cistern. .
had two persons as copyists in my employment, and a promis-
ing lad as an ofﬁce-boy. First, Turkey; second, Nippers;
third, Ginger Nut. These may seem names, the like of
which are not usually found in the Directory. In truth
they were nicknames, mutually conferred upon each/other
by my three clerks, and were deem expressive of their
respective persons or characters. Turkey was a short, pursy
Englishman of about my own age,\t’hat is, somewhere not
far from sixty. In the morning, one might say, his face
was of a ﬁne ﬂorid hue, but after twelve o’clock, meridian
—his dinner hour—it blazed like a grate full of Christmas
coals , and continued blazing—but, as it were, with a gradual
wane—till 6 o’clock P.M. or thereabouts, after which I saw
no more of the proprietor of the face, which, gaining its
meridian with the sun, seemed to set with it, to rise, cul-
minate, and decline the following day, with the like regu—
larity and undiminished glory. There are many singular
coincidences I have known in the course of my life, not the
least among which was the fact, that exactlv when Turkey

112 SHORTER NOVELS 0F HERMAN MELVILLEW

displayed his fullest beams from his red and radiant coun-
tenance, just then, too, at that critical moment, began the
daily period when I considered his business capacities as
seriously disturbed for the remainder of the twenty-four
hour‘s. Not that he was absolutely idle, or averse to busi—
ness then; far from it. The diﬂiculty was, he was apt to
be altogether too energetic.‘ There was a strange, inﬂamed,
ﬂurried, ﬂighty recklessness of activity about him. He would
be incautious in dipping his pen into his inkstand. All his
blots upon my documents, were dropped there after twelve
o’clock, meridian. Indeed, not only would he be reckless
and sadly given to making blots in the afternoon, but some
days he went further, and was rather noisy. At such times,
too, his face ﬂamed with augmented blazonry, as if cannel
coal had been heaped on anthracite. He made an unpleasant
racket with his chair; spilled his sand—box, in mending his
pens, impatiently split them all to pieces, and threw them
on the ﬂoor in a sudden passion, stood up and leaned over
his table, boxing his papers about in a most indecorous man—
ner, very sad to behold in an elderly man like him. Never—
theless, as he was in many ways a most valuable person to
me, and all the time before twelve o’clock, meridian, was
the quickest, steadiest creature, too, accomplishing a great
deal of“ work in a styFnoreasyTo be'matched—for these
reasons, I was Willing to overlook his eccentricities, though
indeed, occasionally, I remonstrated with him. I did this
very gently, however, because, though the civilest, nay, the
blandest and most reverential of men in the morning, yet
in the afternoon he was disposed, upon provocation, to be
slightly rash with his tongue, in fact, insolent. Now, valu—
ing his morning services as I did, and resolving not to lose
them—yet, at the same time, made uncomfortable by his
inﬂamed ways after twelve o’clock; and being a man of

BxIRTLEBY THE SCRIVENER 113
peace, unwilling by my admonitions to call forth unseemly
retorts from him—I took upon me, one Saturday noon (he
was always worse on Saturdays), to hint to him, very kindly,
that perhaps now that he was growing old, it might be well
to abridge his labours; in short, he need not come to my
chambers after twelve o’clock, but, dinner over, had best
go home to his lodgings and rest himself till tea-time. But
no 5 he insisted upon his afternoon devotions. His counte—
nance became intolerably fervid, as he oratorically assured
me—gesticulating, with a long ruler, at the other side of the
room—that if his services in the morning were useful, how
indispensable, then, in the afternoon?

“With submission, sir,” said Turkey on this occasion, “I
consider myself your right-hand man. In the morning I
but marshal and deploy my columns; but in the afternoon
I put myself at their head, and gallantly charge the foe,
thus!”—and he made a Violent thrust with the ruler.

“But the blots, Turkey,” intimated I.

“True,——but, with submission, sir, behold these hairs! I
am getting old. Surely, sir, a blot or two of a warm after—
noon is not to be severely urged against grey hairs. Old age
—even if it blot the page—is honourable. With submission,
sir, we 50!]; are getting old.”

This appeal to my fellow-feeling was hardly to be re~
sisted. At all events, I saw that go he would not. So I
made up my mind to let him stay, resolving, nevertheless,
to see to it, that during the afternoon he had to do with
my less important papers.

Nippers, the second on my list, was a whiskered, sallow,
and, upon the whole, rather piratical-looking young man
of about ﬁve and twenty. I always deemed him the Victim
of two evil powers—ambition and indigestion. The ambi—
tion was evinced by a certain impatience of the duties of a

114 SHORTER {NOVELS OF HERM/L’N MELVILLE

mere copyist—an unwarrantable usurpation of strictly pro-
fessional aﬁairs, such as the original drawing up of legal
documents. The indigestion seemed betokened in an occa-
sional nervous testiness and grinning irritability, causing the
teeth to audibly grind together over mistakes committed in
copying; unnecessary maledictions, hissed, rather than
spoken, in the heat of business; and especially by a continual
discontent with the height of the table where he worked.
Though of a very ingenious mechanical turn, Nippers could
never get this table to suit him. He put chips under it,
blocks of various sorts, bits of pasteboard, and at last went
so far as to attempt an exquisite adjustment by ﬁnal pieces
of folded blotting—paper. But no invention would answer.
If, for the sake of easing his back, he brought the table lid
at a sharp angle well up toward his chin, and wrote there
like a man using the steep roof of a Dutch house for his
desk—then he declared that it stopped the circulation in his
arms. If now he lowered the table to his waistbands, and
stooped over it in writing, then there was a sore aching in
his back. In short, the truth of the matter was, Nippers
knew not what he wanted. Or, if he wanted anything, it
Was to be rid of a scrivener’s table altogether. Among the
manifestations of his diseased ambition was a fondness he
had for receiving visits from certain ambiguous—looking fel-
lows in seedy coats, whom he called his clients. Indeed I
was aware that not only was he, at times, considerable of a
ward—politician, but he occasionally did a little business at
the Justices’ courts, and was not unknown on the steps of
the Tombs. I have good reason to believe, however, that
one individual who called upon him at my chambers, and
who, with a grand air, he insisted was his client, was no
other than a dun, and the alleged title-deed, a bill. But
with all his failings, and the annoyances he caused me, Nip-

BARTLEBY THE SCRIVENER :15

pers, like his compatriot Turkey, was a very useful man
to me, wrote a neat, swift hand 5 and, when he chose, was
not deﬁcient in a gentlemanly sort of deportment. Added
to this, he always dressed in a gentlemanly sort of way;
and so, incidentally, reﬂected credit upon my chambers.
Whereas with respect to Turkey, I had much ado to keep
him from being a reproach to me. His clothes were apt to
look oily and smell of eating—houses. He wore his panta-
loons very loose and baggy in summer. His coats were
execrable, his hat not to be handled. But while the hat was
a thing of indifference to me, inasmuch as his natural civility
and deference, as a dependent Englishman, always led him
to doﬁ it the moment he entered the room, yet his coat was
another matter. Concerning his coats, I reasoned with him;
but with no effect. The truth was, I suppose, that a man with
so small an income, could not afford to sport such a lustrous
face and a lustrous coat at one and the same time. As Nippers
once observed, Turkey’s money went chieﬂy for red ink. One
winter day I presented Turkey with a highly-respectable
looking coat of my own, a padded grey/coat, of a most com—
fortable warmth, and which buttoned straight up from the
knee to the neck. I thought Turkey would appreciate the
favour, and abate his rashness and obstreperousness of after-
noons. But no. I verily believe that buttoning himself up in
so downy and blanket—like a coat had a pernicious effect upon
him, upon the same principle that too much oats are bad
for horses. In fact, precisely as a rash, restive horse is said
to feel his oats, so Turkey felt his coat. It made him inso-
lent. He was a man whom prosperity harmed.

Though concerning the self-indulgent habits of Turkey I
had my own private surmises, yet touching Nippers I was
well persuaded that whatever might be his faults in other
respects, he was, at least, a temperate young man. But, in‘

116 SHORTER NOVELS OF HERMAN MELVILLEW
deed, nature herself seemed to have been his vintner, and
at his birth charged him so thoroughly with an irritable,
brandy-like disposition, that all subsequent potations were
needless. When I consider how, amid the stillness of my
chambers, Nippers would sometimes impatiently rise from
his seat, and stooping over his table, spread his arms wide
apart, seize the whole desk, and move it, and jerk it, with
a grim, grinding motion on the ﬂoor, as if the table were a
perverse voluntary agent, intent on thwarting and vexing
him; I plainly perceive that for Nippers. brandy and water
were altogether superﬂuous.

It was fortunate for me that, owing to its peculiar cause
——indigestion—the irritability and consequent nervousness
of Nippers, were mainly observable in the morning, while
in the afternoon he was comparatively mild. So that Tur—
key’s paroxysms only coming on about twelve o’clock, I
never had to do with their eccentricities at one time. Their
ﬁts relieved each other like guards. When Nipper’s was on,
' Turkey’s was off, and vice versa. This was a good natural
arrangement under the circumstances.

Ginger Nut, the third on my list, was a lad some twelve
years old. His father was a carman, ambitious of seeing his
son on the bench instead of a cart, before he died. So he
sent him to my oﬂice as student at law, errand boy, and
cleaner and sweeper, at the rate of one dollar a week. He
had a little desk to himself, but he did not use it much.
Upon inspection, the drawer exhibited a great array of the
shells of various sorts of nuts. Indeed, to this quick—witted
youth the whole noble science of the law was contained in a
nut-shell. Not the least among the employments of Ginger
Nut, as well as one which he discharged with the most alac—
rity, was his duty as cake and apple purveyor for Turkey
and N ippers. Copying law papers being proverbially a dry,

BARTLEBY THE SCRIVENER 117
husky sort of business, my two scriveners were fain to
moisten their mouths very often with Spitzenbergs to be had
at the numerous stalls nigh the Custom House and Post
Ofﬁce. Also, they sent Ginger Nut very frequently for'that
peculiar cake——small, ﬂat, round, and very spicy—after
which he had been named by them. Of a cold morning,
when business was but dull, Turkey would gobble up scores
of these cakes, as if they were mere wafers—indeed they
sell them at the rate of six or eight for a penny—the scrape
of his pen blending with the crunching of the crisp particles
in his mouth. Of all the ﬁery afternoon blunders and
ﬂurried rashness of Turkey, was his once moistening a gin—
ger-cake between his lips, and clapping it on to a mortgage
for a seal. I came within an ace of dismissing him then.
But he molliﬁed me by making an oriental bow and saying

—“With submission, sir, it was generous of me to ﬁnd you
in stationery on my own account.”

Now my original business—that of a conveyancer and title
hunter, and drawer-up of recondite documents of all sorts
——was considerably increased by receiving the master’s ofﬁce.
There was now great work for scriveners. Not only must
I push the clerks already with me, but I must have additional
help. In answer to my advertisement, a motionless young
man one morning stood upon my ofﬁce threshold, the door
being open, for it was summer. I can see that ﬁgure now—
pallidly neat, pitiably respectable, incurably forlorn! It
was Bartleby.

After a few words touching his qualiﬁcations, I engaged
him, glad to have among my corps of copyists a man of so
singularly sedate an aspect, which I thought might operate
beneﬁcially upon the ﬂighty temper of Turkey, and the
ﬁery one of Nippers.

I should have stated before that ground glass folding-

/

118 SHORTER NOVELS OF HERMAN MELVILLE
doors divided my premises into two parts, one of which was
occupied by my scriveners, the other by myself. According
to my humour I threw open these doors, or closed them.
I resolved to assign Bartleby a corner by the folding—doors,
but on my side of them, so as to have this quiet man within
easy call, in case any triﬂing thing was to be done. I placed
his desk close up to a small Side—window in that part of the
room, a window which originally had afforded a lateral
View of certain grimy back—yards and bricks, but which,
owing to subsequent erections, commanded at present no
view at all, though it gave some light. Within three feet
of the panes was a wall, and the light came down from far
above, between two lofty buildings, as from a very small
opening in a dome. Still further to a satisfactory arrange—
ment, I procured a high green folding screen, which might
entirely isolate Bartleby from my sight, though not remove
him from my voice. And thus, in a manner, privacy and
society were conjoined.

At ﬁrst Bartleby did an extraordinary quantity of writing.
As if long famishing for something to copy, he seemed to
gorge himself on my documents. There was no pause for
digestion. He ran a day and night line, copying by sun—light
and by candle~light. I should have been quite delighted
with his application, had he been cheerfully industrious.
But he wrote on silently, palely, mechanically.

It is, of course, an indispensable part of a scrivener’s busi-
ness to verify the accuracy of his copy, word by word. Where
there are two or more scriveners in an ofﬁce, they assist each
other in this examination, one reading from the copy, the
other holding the original. It is a very dull, wearisome, and
lethargic affair. I can readily imagine that to some sanguine
temperaments it would be altogether intolerable. For ex-
ample, I cannot credit that the mettlesome poet Byron would

BARTLEBY THE SCRIVEINER 119
have contentedly sat down with Bartleby to examine a law
document of, say ﬁve hundred pages, closely written in a
crimpy hand.

Now and then, in the haste of business, it had been my
habit to assist in comparing some brief document myself,
calling Turkey or Nippers for this purpose. One object I
had in placing Bartleby so handy to me behind the screen,
was to avail myself of his services on such trivial occasions.
It was on the third day, I think, of his being with me, and
before any necessity had arisen for having his own writing
examined, that, being much hurried to complete a small
affair I had in hand, I abruptly called to Bartleby. In my
haste and natural expectancy of instant compliance, I sat
with my head bent over the original on my desk, and my
right hand sideways, and somewhat nervously extended With
the copy, so that immediately upon emerging from his re-
treat, Bartleby might snatch it and proceed to business With-
out the least delay.

In this very attitude did I sit when I called to him,
rapidly stating What it was I wanted him to do—namely,
to examine a small paper with me. Imagine my surprise,
nay, my consternation, when without moving from his
privacy, Bartleby in a singularly mild, ﬁrm voice, replied,
“I would prefer not to.”

I sat awhile in perfect silence, rallying my stunned facul-
ties. Immediately it occurred to me that my ears had de—
ceived me, or Bartleby had entirely misunderstood my
meaning. I repeated my request in the clearest tone I could
assume. But in quite as clear a one came the previous reply,
“I would prefer not to.”

“Prefer not to,” echoed I, rising in high excitement, and
\crossing the room with a stride. “What do you mean? Arc

120 SHORTER NOVELS OF HERMAN MELVILLE
you moon—struck? I want you to help me compare this
sheet here—take it,” and I thrust it toward him.

“I would prefer not to,” said he.

I looked at him steadfastly. His face was leanly com—
posed; his grey eye dimly calm. Not a wrinkle of agitation
rippled him. Had there been the least uneasiness, anger,
impatience or impertinence in his manner, in other words,
had there been anything ordinarily human about him; doubt—
less I should have violently dismissed him from the prem—
ises. But as it was, I should have as soon thought of turn—
ing my pale plaster—of—paris bust of Cicero out of doors. I
stood gazing at him awhile, as he went on with his own
writing, and then reseated myself at my desk. This is very
strange, thought I. What had one best do? But my busi—
ness hurried me. I concluded to forget the matter for the
present, reserving it for my future leisure. So calling Nip—
pers from the other room, the paper was speedily examined.

A few days after this, Bartleby concluded four lengthy
documents, being quadruplicates of a week’s testimony taken
before me in my High Court of Chancery. It became neces—
sary to examine them. It was an important suit, and great
accuracy was imperative. Having all things arranged, I

~ called Turkey, Nipperyand Ginger Nut from the next room,

meaning to place the four copies in the hands of my four
clerks, while I should read from the original. Accordingly
Turkey, Nippers and Ginger Nut had taken their seats in a
row, each with his document in hand, when I called to
Bartleby to join this interesting group.

“Bartleby! quick, I am waiting.”

I heard a slow scrape of his chair legs on the uncarpeted
ﬂoor, and soon he appeared standing at the entrance of his
hermitage.

“What is wanted?” said he mildly.

BﬂRTLEBY THE SCRIVENER 121

“The copies, the copies,” said I hurriedly. “We are go-
ing to examine them. There”——and I held toward him
the fourth quadruplicate.

“I would prefer not to,” he said, and gently disappeared
behind the screen.

For a few moments I was turned into a pillar of salt,
standing at the head of my seated column of clerks. Re—
covering myself, I advanced toward the screen, and de-
manded the reason for such extraordinary conduct.

“Why do you refuse?”

“I would prefer not to.”

With any other man I should have ﬂown outright into a
dreadful passion, scorned all further words, and thrust him
ignominiously from my presence. But there was something
about Bartleby that not only strangely disarmed me, but in
a wonderful manner touched and disconcerted me. I began
to reason with him.

“These are your own copies we are about to examine.
It is labour saving to you, because one examination will an-
swer for your four papers. It is common usage. Every
copyist is bound to help examine his copy. Is it not so?
Will you not speak?‘ Answer!”

“I prefer not to,” he replied in a ﬂute-like tone: It
, seemed to me that while I had been addressing him, he care-
fully revolved every statement that I made, fully compre—
hended the meaning; could not gainsay the irresistible
conclusion; but, at the same time, some paramount consid-
eration prevailed with him to reply as he did.

“You are decided, then, not to comply with my request-—
a request made according to common usage and common
sense?”

He brieﬂy gave me to understand that on that point my
judgment was sound. Yes: his decision was irreversible.

122 SHORTER NOVELS OF HERMAN MELVILLE

It is not seldom the case that when a man is browbeaten
in some unprecedented and violently unreasonable way, he
begins to stagger in his own plainest faith. He begins, as
it were, vaguely to surmise that, wonderful as it may be,
all the justice and all the reason are on the other side. Ac-
cordingly, if any disinterested persons are present, he turns
to them for some reinforcement for his own faltering mind.

“Turkey,” said I, “what do you think of this? Am I not
right?”

“With submission, sir,” said Turkey, with his blandest
tone, “I think that you are.”

“Nippers,” said I, “what do you think of it?”

‘I think I should kick him out of the ofﬁce.”

(The reader of nice perceptions will here perceive that,
it being morning, Turkey’s answer is couched in polite and
tranquil terms but N ippers’s reply in ill—tempered ones. Or,
to repeat a previous sentence, Nippers’s ugly mood was on
duty, and Turkey’s off.)

“Ginger Nut,” said I, willing to enlist the smallest suf—
frage in my behalf, “what do you think of it?”

“I think, sir, he’s a little luny,” replied Ginger Nut, with
a grin.

“You hear what they say,” said I, turning towards the
screen, “come forth and do your duty.”

But he vouchsafed no reply. I pondered a moment in
sore perplexity. But once more business hurried me. I
determined again to postpone the consideration of this
dilemma to my future leisure. With a little trouble we
made out to examine the papers without Bartleby, though
at every page or two, Turkey deferentially dropped his
opinion that this proceeding was quite out of the common;
while Nippers, twitching in his chair with a dyspeptic nerv-
ousness, ground out between his set teeth occasional hissing

BARTLEBY THE SCRIVEJ‘CER 12}!
maledictions against the stubborn oaf behind the screen.
And for his (Nippers’s) part, this was the ﬁrst and the last
time he would do another man’s business without pay.

Meanwhile Bartleby sat in his hermitage, oblivious to
everything but his own peculiar business there.

Some days passed, the scrivener being employed upon an-
other lengthy work. His late remarkable conduct led me
to regard his ways narrowly. I observed that he never went
to dinner; indeed that he never went any where. As yet I
had never of my personal knowledge known him to be out-
side of my oﬂice. ﬁe was a perpetual sentry in the corner.
At about eleven o’clock though, in the morning, I noticed
that Ginger Nut would advance towards the opening in
Bartleby’s screen, as if silently beckoned thither by a gesture
invisible to me where I sat. The boy would then leave the
oﬂice jingling a few pence, and reappear with a handful
of ginger—nuts which he delivered in the hermitage, receiv-
ing two of the cakes for his trouble.

He lives, then, on ginger-nuts, thought I; never eats
a dinner, properly speaking; he must be a vegetarian then;
but no; he never eats even vegetables, he eats nothing but
ginger-nuts. My mind then ran on in reveries concerning
the probable effects upon the human constitution of living
entirely on ginger-nuts. Ginger—nuts are so called because
they contain ginger as one of their peculiar constituents, and
the ﬁnal ﬂavouring one. Now what was ginger? A hot,
spicy thing. Was Bartleby hot and spicy? Not at all. Gin-
ger, then, had no effect upon Bartleby. Probably he pre-
ferred it should have none.

Nothing so aggravates an earnest person as a passive re-
sistance. If the individual so resisted be of a not inhumane
temper, and the resisting one perfectly harmless in his
passivity; then, in the better moods of the former, he will

\ .

l

124 SHORTER NOVELS 0F HERMAN .MELVI-LLE
endeavour charitably to construe to his imagination what
proves impossible to be solved by his judgment. Even so,
for the most part, I regarded Bartleby and his ways. Poor
fellow! thought I, he means no mischief , it is plain he in—
tends no insolence; his aspect suﬂﬁciently evinces that his
eccentricities are involuntary. He is useful to me. I can
get along with him. If I turn him away, the chances are
he will fall in with some less indulgent employer, and then
he will be rudely treated, and perhaps driven forth miser-
ably to starve. Yes. Here I can cheaply purchase a delicious
self—approval. To befriend Bartleby; to humour him in his
strange Wilfulness, will cost me. little or nothing, while I lay
up in my soul what will eventually prove a sweet morsel
for my conscience. But this mood was not invariable with
me. The passiveness of Bartleby sometimes irritated me.
I felt strangely goaded on to encounter him in new opposi-
tion, to elicit some angry spark from him answerable to my
own. But indeed I might as well have essayed to strike
ﬁre with my knuckles against a bit of Windsor soap. But
one afternoon the evil impulse in me mastered me, and the
following little scene ensued:

“Bartleby,” said I, “when those papers are all copied, I
will compare them with you.”

“I would prefer not to.”

“How? Surely you do not mean to persist in that mulish
Vagary?”
, No answer.

I threw open the folding—doors near by, and turning upon
Turkey and Nippers, exclaimed in an excited manner:

“He says, a second time, he won’t examine his papers.
What do you think of it, Turkey?”

It was afternoon, be it remembered. Turkey sat glowing

BARTLEBY THE SCRIVENER 125
like a brass boiler, his bald head steaming, his hands reeling
among his blotted papers.

“Think of it?” roared Turkey, “I think I’ll just step be-
hind his screen, and black his eyes for him!”

So saying, Turkey rose to his feet and threw his arms
into a pugilistic position. He was hurrying away to make
good his promise, when I detained him, alarmed at the effect
of incautiously rousing Turkey’s combativeness after dinner.

“Sit down, Turkey,” said I, “and hear what Nippers has
to say. What do you think of it, Nippers? Would I not
be justiﬁed in immediately dismissing Bartleby?”

“Excuse me, that is for you to decide, sir. I think his
conduct quite unusual, and indeed unjust, as regards Turkey
and myself. But it may only be a passing whim.”

“Ah,” exclaimed I, “you have strangely changed your
mind then—you speak very gently of him now.”

“All beer,” cried Turkey; “gentleness is eﬁects of beer—
Nippers and I dined together to-day. You see how gentle
I am, sir. Shall I go and black his eyes?”

“You refer to Bartleby, I suppose. No, not to-day,
Turkey,” I replied; “pray, put up your ﬁsts.”

I closed the doors, and again advanced towards Bartleby.
I felt additional incentives tempting me to my fate. I
burned to be rebelled against again. I remembered that
Bartleby never left the ofﬁce.

“Bartleby,” said I, “Ginger Nut is away; just step round
to the Post Oﬂice, won’t you? (it was but a three minutes’
walk), and see if there is anything for me.”

“I would prefer not to.”

“You will not?”

“I prefer not.”

I staggered to my desk, and sat there in a deep study.
My blind inveteracy returned. Was there any other thing

x26 SHORTER NOVELS OF HERMAN MELVILLE

. in which I could procure myself to be ignominiously repulsed
by this lean, penniless Wight?—my himat added

thing is there, perfectly reasonable, that he will be sure to

refuse to do?

“Bartleby! ”

No answer.

“Bartleby,” in a louder tone.

No answer.

“Bartleby,” I roared.

Like a very ghost, agreeably to the laws of magical invo—
cation, at the third summons, he appeared at the entrance
of his hermitage.

“Go to the next room, and tell Nippers to come to me.”

“I prefer not to,” he respectfully and slowly said, and
mildly disappeared.

“Very good, Bartleby,” said I, in a quiet sort of serenely
severe self—possessed tone, intimating the unalterable pur—
pose of some terrible retribution very close at hand. At the
moment I half intended something of the kind. But upon
the whole, as it was drawing towards my dinner—hour, I
thought it best to put on my hat and walk home for the day,
suffering much from perplexity and distress of mind.

Shall I acknowledge it? The conclusion of this whole
business was, that it soon became a ﬁxed fact of my cham-
bers, that a pale young scrivener, by the name of Bartleby,
had a desk there; that he copied for me at the ’usual rate
of four cents a folio (one hundred words); but he was per-
manently exempt from examining the work done by him,
that duty being transferred to Turkey and Nippers, out of
compliment doubtless to their superior acuteness; moreover,
said Bartleby was never on any account to be despatched on
the most trivial errand of any sort; and that even if en-
treated to take upon him such a matter, it was generally

BAR‘T'LEBY THE SCRIVEJNER 127

vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv—V

understood that he would prefer not to—in other words,
that he would refuse point—blank.

As days passed on, I became considerably reconciled to
Bartleby. His steadiness, his freedom from all dissipation,
his incessant industry (except when he chose to throw him-
self into a standing revery behind his screen), his great still-
ness, his unalterableness of demeanour under all circum—
stances, made him a valuable acquisition. One prime thing
was this,—/ze was always there;——ﬁrst in the morning, con-
tinually through the day, and the last at night. I had a sin—
gular conﬁdence in his honesty. I felt my most precious
papers prefectly safe in his hands. Sometimes to be ‘s‘u‘f‘e I
could not, for the very soul of me, avoid falling into sudden
spasmodic passions with him. For it was exceeding difﬁcult
to bear in mind all the time those strange peculiarities, privi-
leges, and unheard of exemptions, forming the tacit stipu-
lations on Bartleby’s part under which he remained in my
oﬂice. Now and then, in the eagerness of despatching press-
ing business, I would inadvertently summon Bartleby, in a
short, rapid tone, to put his ﬁnger, say, on the incipient tie
of a bit of red tape with which I was about compressing some
papers. Of course, from behind the screen the usual answer,
“I prefer not to,” was sure to come; and then, how could
a human creature with the common inﬁrmities of our nature,
refrain from bitterly exclaiming upon such perverseness—
such unreasonableness. However, every added repulse of
this sort which I received only tended to lessen the 'prob-
ability of my repeating the inadvertence.

Here it must be said, that according to the custom of most
legal gentlemen occupying chambers in densely-populated
law buildings, there were several keys to my door. One was
kept by a woman residing in the attic, which person weekly
scrubbed and daily swept and dusted my apartments. An-

128 SHORTER r7‘(0VELS OF HERMAN MELVILLE
other was kept by Turkey for convenience sake. The third
I sometimes carried in my own pocket. The fourth I knew
not who had.

Now, one Sunday morning I happened to go to Trinity
Church, to hear a celebrated preacher, and ﬁnding myself
rather early on the ground, _I thought I would walk round
to my chambers for awhile. ‘Luckily I had my key with
me; but upon applying it to the lock, I found it resisted
by something inserted from the inside. Quite surprised, I
called out; when to my consternation a key was turned from
within; and thrusting his lean visage at me, and holding the
door 'ajar, the apparition of Bartleby appeared, in his shirt
sleeves, and otherwise in a strangely tattered dishabﬂk, say—
ing quietly that he was sorry, but he was deeply engaged
just then, and—preferred not admitting me at present. In
a brief word or two, he moreover added, that perhaps I had
better walk round the block two or three times, and by that
time he would probably have concluded his affairs.

N 0W, the utterly unsurmised appearance of Bartleby, ten—
anting my law—chambers of a Sunday morning, with his
cadaverously gentlemanly nonchalame, yet withal ﬁrm and
self—possessed, had such a strange effect upon me, that in—
continently I slunk away from my own door, and did as
desired. But not Without sundry twinges of impotent’re—
bellion against the mild eﬁrontery of this unaccountable
scrivener. Indeed, it was his wonderful mildness chieﬂy,
which not only disarmed me, but unmanned me, as it were.
For I consider that one, for the time, is in a way unmanned
when he tranquilly permits his hired clerk to dictate to him,
and order him away from his own premises. Furthermore,
I was full of uneasiness as to what Bartleby could possibly
be doing in my ofﬁce in his shirt sleeves, and in an otherwise
dismantled condition of a Sunday morning. Was anything

BARTLEBY THE SCRIVENER 129
amiss going on? Nay, that was out of the question. It was
not to be thought of for a moment that Bartleby was an im-
moral person. But What could he be doing there—copying?
Nay again, whatever might be his eccentricities, Bartleby
was an eminently decorous person. He would be the last
man to ’sit down to his desk in any state approaching to
nudity. Besides, it was Sunday; and there was something
about Bartleby that forbade the supposition that he would
by any secular occupation violate the proprieties of the day.

Nevertheless, my mind was not paciﬁed; and full of a
restless curiosity, at last I returned to the door. Without
hindrance I inserted my key, opened it, and entered. Bar-
tleby was not to be seen. I looked round anxiously, peeped
behind his screen; but it was very plain that he was gone.
Upon more closely examining the place, I surmised that for
an indeﬁnite period Bartleby must have ate, dressed, and
' slept in my oﬂice, and that too without plate, mirror, or bed.
The cushioned seat of a ricketty old sofa in one corner bore
the faint impress of a lean, reclining form. Rolled away
under his desk, I found a blanket; under the empty grate,
a blacking box and brush; on a chair, a tin basin, with soap and
a ragged towel; in a newspaper a few crumbs of ginger—nuts
and a morsel of cheese. Yes, thought I, it is evident enough
that Bartleby has been making his home here, keeping
bachelor’s hall all by himself. Immediately then the thought
came sweeping across me, What miserable friendlessness and
"loneliness are here revealed! His poverty is great; but his
solitude, how horrible! Think of it. Of a Sunday, Wall
street is deserted as Petra; and every night of every day it
is an emptiness. This building too, which of week-days
hums with industry and life, at nightfall echoes with sheer.
vacancy, and all through Sunday is forlorn. And here Bar—
tleby makes his home; sole spectator of a solitude which he

[30 SHORTER {NOVELS 0F HERM/{N MELVILLE

has seen all populous—a sort of innocent and transformed
Marius brooding among the ruins of Carthage!

For the ﬁrst time in my life a feeling of overpowering
stinging melancholy seized me. Before, I had never experi-
enced aught but a not-unpleasing sadness. The bond of a
common humanity now drew me irresistibly to gloom. A
fraternal melancholy! For’both I and Bartleby were sons
of Adam. I remembered the bright silks and sparkling
faces I had seen that day, in gala trim, swan-like sailing
down the Mississippi of Broadway; and I contrasted them
with the pallid copyist, and thought to myself, Ah, happi—
ness courts the light, so we deem the world is gay; but
misery hides aloof, so we deem that misery there is none.
These sad fancyings—chimeras, doubtless, of a sick and silly
brain—led on to other and more special thoughts, concern-
ing the eccentricities of Bartleby. Presentiments of strange
discoveries hovered round me. The scrivener’s pale form
appeared to me laid out, among uncaring strangers, in its
shivering winding sheet.

Suddenly I was attracted‘by Bartleby’s closed desk, the
key in open sight left in the lock.

I mean no mischief, seek the gratiﬁcation of no heartless
curiosity, thought I; besides, the desk is mine, and its con—
tents, too, so I will make bold to look within. Everything
was methodically arranged, the papers smoothly placed. The
pigeon holes were deep, and, removing the ﬁles of docu—
ments, I groped into their recesses. Presently I felt some—
thing there, and dragged it out. It was an old bandana
handkerchief, heavy and knotted. I opened it, and saw it
was a savings’ bank.

I now recalled all the quiet mysteries which I had noted
in the man. I remembered that he never spoke but to
answer, that though at intervals he had considerable time

BARTLEBY THE SCRIVENER lg

to himself, yet I had never seen him reading—no, not even
a newspaper; that for long periods he would stand look-
ing out, at his pale window behind the screen, upon the
dead brick wall; I was quite sure he never visited any re—
fectory or eating—house, While his pale face clearly indicated
that he never drank beer like Turkey, or tea and coffee
even, like other men; that he never went anywhere in par-
ticular that I could learn; never went out for a walk, unless
indeed that was the case at present; that he had declined
telling who he was, or whence he came, or Whether he
had any relatives in the world, that though so thin and
pale, he never complained of ill health. And more than
all, I remembered a certain unconscious air of pallid—how
shall I call it?—of pallid haughtiness, say, or rather an
austere reserve about him, which had positively awed me
into my tame compliance with his eccentricities, when I had
feared to ask him to do the slightest incidental thing for
me, even though I might know, from his long-continued
motionlessness, that behind his screen he must be standing
in one of those dead—wall reveries of his.

Revolving all these things, and coupling them with the
recently discovered fact that he made my ofﬁce his constant
abiding place and home, and not forgetful of his morbid
moodines‘s; revolving all these things, a prudential feeling
began to steal over me. My ﬁrst emotions had been those
of pure melancholy and sincerest pity; but just in propor-
tion as the forlornness of Bartleby grew and grew to my
imagination, did that same melancholy merge into fear, that
pity into repulsion. So true it is, and so terrible, too, that up
to a certain point the thought or sight of misery enlists
our best aﬁections; but, in certain special cases, beyond that
point it does not. They err who would assert that invariably
this is owing to the inherent selﬁshness of the human heart.

132 SHORTER NOVELS OF HERMAN MELVILLE
It rather proceeds from a certain hopelessness of remedy-
ing excessive and organic ill. To a sensitive being, pity is
not seldom pain. And when at last it is perceived that such
pity cannot lead to effectual succour, common sense bids the
soul be rid of it. What I saw that morning persuaded me
that the scrivener was the Victim of innate and incurable dis—
order. I might give alms to his body; but his body did
not pain him, it was his soul that suﬁered, and his soul I
could not reach. .

I did not accomplish the purpose of going to Trinity
Church that morning. Somehow, the things I had seen dis—
qualiﬁed me for the time from church-going. I walked
homeward, thinking what I would do with Bartleby.
Finally, I resolved upon thisz—I would put certain calm
questions to him the next morning, touching his history, &c.,
and if he declined to answer them openly and unreservedly
(and I supposed he would prefer not), then to give him a
twenty dollar bill over and above whatever I might owe
him, and tell him his services were no longer required, but
that if in any other way I could assist him, I would be happy
to do so, especially if he desired to return to his native place,
wherever that might be, I would willingly help to defray
the expenses. Moreover, if, after reaching home, he found
himself at any time in want of aid, a letter from him would
be sure of a reply.

The next morning came.

“Bartleby,” said I, gently calling to him behind his screen.

No reply.

“Bartleby,” said I, in a still gentler tone, “come here; I
am not going to ask you to do anything you would prefer
not to do—I simply wish to speak to you.”

Upon this he noiselessly slid into View.

“Will you tell me, Bartleby, where you were born?”

BdRTLEBY THE SCRIVENER I33

“I would prefer not to.”

“Will you tell me anything about yourself?”

“I would prefer not to.”

“But what reasonable objection can you have to speak to
me? I feel friendly towards you.”

He did not look at me while I spoke, but kept his glance
ﬁxed upon my bust of Qicero, which, as I then sat, was di-
rectly behind me, some six inches above my head.

“What is your answer, Bartleby?” said I, after waiting
a considerable time for a reply, during which his countenance
remained immovable, only there was the faintest conceivable
tremor of the white attenuated mouth.

“At present I prefer to give no answer,” he said, and
retired into his hermitage.

It was rather weak in me I confess, but his manner on this
occasion nettled me. Not only did there seem to lurk in it
a certain calm disdain, but his perverseness seemed ungrate—
ful, considering] the undeniable good usage and indulgence
he had received from me. ,

Again I sat ruminating what I should do. Mortiﬁed as
I was at his behaviour, and resolved as I had been to dismiss
him when I entered my ofﬁce, nevertheless I strangely felt
something superstitious knocking at my heart, and forbidding
me to carry out my purpose, and denouncing me for a villain
if I dared to breathe one bitter word against this forIOrnest
of mankind. At last, familiarly drawing my chair behind
his screen, I sat down and said: “Bartleby, never mind then
about revealing your history; but let me entreat you, as a
friend, to comply as far as may be with the usages of this
ofﬁce. Say now you will help to examine papers to—morrow
or next day: in short, say now that in a day or two you
will begin to be a little reasonable :——sav so. Bartleby.”

I34 SHORTER NOVELS 0F HERMAN MELVILLEﬁ

“At present I would prefer not to be a little reasonable,”
was his mildly cadaverous reply.

Just then the folding-doors opened, and Nippers ap-
proached. He seemed suffering from an unusually bad
night’s rest, induced by severer indigestion than common.
He overheard those ﬁnal words of Bartleby.

“Prefer not, eh?” gritted Nippers—“I’d prefer him, if
I were you, sir,” addressing me—“I’d prefer him; I’d give
him preferences, the stubborn mule! What is it, sir, pray,
that he prefer: not to do now?”

Bartleby moved not a limb.

“Mr. Nippers,” said I, “I’d prefer that you would with-
draw for the present.”

Somehow, of late I had got into the way of involuntarily
using this word “prefer” upon all sorts of not exactly suit—
able occasions. And I trembled to think that my contact
with the scrivener had already and seriously affected me
in a mental way. And what further and deeper aberration
might it not yet produce? This apprehension had not been
without eﬂicacy in determining me to summary means.

As Nippers, looking very sour and sulky, was departing,
Turkey blandly and deferentially approached.

“With submission, sir,” said he, “yesterday I was think-
ing about Bartleby here, and I think that if he would but
prefer to take a quart of good ale every day, it would do
much towards mending him, and enabling him to assist in
examining his papers.”

“So you have got the word, too,” said I, slightly excited.

“With submission, what word, sir,” asked Turkey, re-
spectfully crowding himself into the contracted space behind
the screen, and by so doing, making me jostle the scrivener.
“What word, sir?”

BARTLEBY THE SCRIVENER I35

“I would prefer to be left alone here,” said Bartleby,
as if oﬁended at being mobbed in his privacy.

“That’s the word, Turkey,” said L—“t/zat’: it.”

“Oh, prefer? oh, yes—queer word. I never use it myself.
But, sir, as I was saying, if he would but prefer—”

“Turkey,” interrupted I, “you will please withdraw.”

“Oh certainly, sir, if you prefer that I should.”

As he opened the folding—door to retire, Nippers at his
desk caught a glimpse of me, and asked whether I would
prefer to have a certain paper copied on blue paper or white.
He did not in the least roguishly accent the word prefer.
It was plain that it involuntarily rolled from his tongue.
I thought to myself, surely I must get rid of a demented
man, who already has in some degree turned the tongues, if
not the heads, of myself and clerks. But I thought it pru-
dent not to break the dismission at once.

The next day I noticed that Bartleby did nothing but
stand at his window in his dead—wall revery. Upon asking
him why he did not write, he said that he had decided upon
doing no more writing.

“Why, how now? what next?” exclaimed I, “do no more
writing?”

“No more.”

“And What is the reason?”

“Do you not see the reason for yourself?” he indiiferently
replied.

I looked steadfastly at him, and perceived that his eyes
looked dull and glazed. Instantly it occurred to me, that
his unexampled diligence in copying by his dim window for
the ﬁrst few weeks of his stay with me might have tempo-
rarily impaired his vision.

I was touched. I said something in condolence with him.
I hinted that, of course. he did wisely in abstaining from

136 SHORTER NOVELS 0F HERM/YN WELVILLEW
writing for a while, and urged him to embrace that oppor-
tunity of taking wholesome exercise in the open air. This,
however, he did not do. A few days after this, my other
clerks being absent, and being in a great hurry to despatch
certain letters by the mail, I thought that, having nothing else
earthly to do, Bartleby would surely be less inﬂexible than
usual, and carry these letters to the Post Office. But he
blankly declined. So, much to my inconvenience, I went
myself.

Still added days went by. Whether Bartleby’s eyes im—
proved or not, I could not say. To all appearance, I thought
they did. But when I asked him if they did, he vouchsafed
no answer. At all events, he would do no copying. At
last, in reply to my urgings, he informed me that he had
permanently given up copying.

“What!” exclaimed I; “suppose your eyes should get
entirely well—better than ever before—would you not copy
then?”

“I have given up copying,” he answered and slid aside.

He remained, as ever, a ﬁxture in my chamber. Nay—
if that were possible—he became still more of a ﬁxture than
before. What was to be done? He would do nothing in
the ofﬁce: why should he stay there? In plain fact, he had
now become a millstone to me, not only useless as a necklace,
but aﬂlictive to bear. Yet I was sorry for him. I speak less
than truth when I say that, on his own account, he occa—
sioned me uneasiness. If he would but have named a single
relative or friend, I would instantly have written, and urged
their taking the poor fellow away to some convenient re—
treat. But he seemed alone, absolutely alone in the universe.
A bit of wreckage in the mid—Atlantic. At length, necessities
connected with my business tyrannized over all other con—
siderations. Decently as I could, I told Bartleby that in

BJRTLEBY THE SCRIVENER 13]
six days’ time he must unconditionally leave the ofﬁce. I
warned him to take measures, in the interval, for procuring
some other abode. I offered to assist him in this endeavour,
if he himself would but take the ﬁrst step towards a re-
moval. “And when you ﬁnally quit me, Bartleby,” added I,
“I shall see that you go away not entirely unprovided. Six
days from this hour, remember.”

At the expiration of that period, I peeped behind the
screen, and lo! Bartleby was there.

I buttoned up my coat, balanced myself 5 advanced slowly
towards him, touched his shoulder, and said, “The time has
come, you must quit this place; I am sorry for you; here
is money; but you must go.”

“I would prefer not,” he replied, with his back still to--
wards me.

“You must.”

He remained silent.

Now I had an unbounded conﬁdence in this man’s com—
mon honesty. He had frequently restored to me sixpences
and shillings carelessly- dropped upon the ﬂoor, for I am
apt to be very reckless in such shirt—button affairs. The
proceeding then which followed will not be deemed ex-
traordinary.

“Bartleby,” said I, “I owe you twelve dollars on account;
here are thirty—two, the odd twenty are yours.——Will you
take it?” and I handed the bills towards him.

But he made no motion.

“I will leave them here then,” putting them under a
weight on the table. Then taking my hat and cane and
going to the door, I tranquilly turned and added—“After
you have removed your things from these ofﬁces, Bartleby,
you will of course lock the door—since every one is noW
gone for the day but you—and if you please, slip your key

138 SHORTER NOVELS OF HERJWJN MELVILLE
underneath the mat, so that I may have it in the morning.
I shall not see you again; so good—bye to you. If hereafter
in your new place of abode I can be of any service to you,
do not fail to advise me by letter. Good-bye, Bartleby, and
fare you well.”

But he answered not a word; like the last column of some
ruined temple, he remained standing mute and solitary in
the middle of the otherwise deserted room.

As I walked home in a pensive mood, my vanity got the
better of my pity. I could not but highly plume myself
on my masterly management in getting rid of Bartleby.
Masterly I call it, and such it must appear to any dispas—
sionate thinker. The beauty of my procedure seemed to
consist in its perfect quietness. There was no vulgar bully-
ing, no bravado of any sort, no choleric hectoring, no strid-
ing to and fro across the apartment, jerking out vehement
commands for Bartleby to bundle himself off with his
beggarly traps. Nothing of the kind. Without loudly bid—
ding Bartleby depart—as an inferior genius might have done
—I assumed the ground that depart he must; and upon that
assumption built all I had to say. The more I thought over
my procedure, the more I was charmed with it. Neverthe-
less, next morning, upon awakening, I had my doubts,—I
had somehow slept off the fumes of vanity. One of the
coolest and wisest hours a man has, is just after he awakes
in the morning. My procedure seemed as sagacious as ever,
—but only in theory. How it would prove in practice—
there was the rub. It was truly a beautiful thought to have
assumed Bartleby’s departure, but, after all, that assumption
was simply my own, and none of Bartleby’s. The great
point was, not whether I had assumed that he would quit
me, but whether he would prefer so to do. He was more a
man of preferences than assumptions.

BARTLEBY THE SCRIVENER 139

After breakfast, I walked down town, arguing the proba-
bilities pro and con. One moment I thought it would prove
a miserable failure, and Bartleby would be found all alive at
my oﬂice as usual; the next moment it seemed certain that
I should see his chair empty. And so I kept veering about.
At the corner of Broadway and Canal Street, I saw quite an
excited group of people standing in earnest conversation.

“I’ll take .odds he doesn’t,” said a voice as I passed.

“Doesn’t gOP—done! ” said I, “put up your money.”

I was instinctively putting my hand in my pocket to pro-
duce my own, when I remembered that this was an election
day. The words I had overheard bore no reference to Bar-
tleby, but to the success or non-success of some candidate
for the mayoralty. In my intent frame of mind, I had, as
it were, imagined that all Broadway shared in my excite-
ment, and were debating the same question with me. I
passed on, very thankful that the uproar of the street
screened my momentary absent—mindedness.

As I had intended, I was earlier than usual at my ofﬁce
door. I stood listening‘for a moment. All was still. He
must be gone. I tried the knob. The door was locked.
Yes, my procedure had worked to a charm; he indeed must
be vanished. Yet a certain melancholy mixed with this: I
was almost sorry for my brilliant success. I was fumbling
under the door mat for the key, which Bartleby was to have
left there for me, when accidentally my knee knocked against
a panel, producing a summoning sound, and in response a
voice came to me from within—“Not yet 5 I am occupied.”

It was Bartleby.

I was thunderstruck. For an instant I stood like the man
who, pipe in mouth, was killed one cloudless afternoon long
ago in Virginia, by summer lightning; at his own warm open
window he was killed, and remained leaning out there upon

I40 SHORTER NOVELS OF HERMAN JVIELVILLE

vvvvvyvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv

 

the dreamy afternoon, till some one touched him, and he
fell.

“Not gone!” I murmured at last. But again obeying that
wondrous ascendency which the inscrutable scrivener had
over me——and from which ascendency, for all my chaﬁng,
I could not completely escape—I slowly went down stairs
and out into the street, and’ While walking round the block,
considered what I should next do in this unheard—of per—
plexity. Turn the man out by an actual thrusting I could
not; to drive him away by calling him hard names would
not do; calling in the police was an unpleasant idea; and yet,
permit him to enjoy his cadaverous triumph over me,—this
too I could not think of. What was to be done? or, if nothing
could be done, was there anything further that I could
assume in the matter? Yes, as before I had prospectively
assumed that Bartleby would depart, so now I might retro-
spectively assume that departed he was. In the legitimate
carrying out of this assumption, I might enter my oﬂice in
a great hurry, and pretending not to see Bartleby at all,
walk straight against him as if he were air. Such a proceed—
ing would in a singular degree have the appearance of a
home-thrust. It was hardly possible that Bartleby could
withstand such an application of the doctrine of assumptions.
But, upon second thought, the success of the plan seemed
rather dubious. I resolved to argue the matter over with
him again.

“Bartleby,” said I, entering the oﬂice, with a quietly severe
expression, “1 am seriously displeased. I am pained, Bar—
tleby. I had thought better of you. I had imagined you of
such a gentlemanly organization, that in any delicate di-
lemma a slight hint would suﬁ’ice—in short, an assumption;
but it appears I am deceived. Why,” I added, unaffectedly

BARTLEBY THE SCRIVENER 14.?
starting, “you have not even touched that money yet,” point-
ing to it, just Where I had left it the evening previous.

He answered nothing.

“Will you, or will you not, quit me?” I now demanded
in a sudden passion, advancing close to him.

“I would prefer not to quit you,” he replied, gently em-
phasizing the not.

“What earthly right have you to stay here? Do you pay
any rent? Do you pay my taxes? Or is this property
yours?”

He answered nothing.

“Are you ready to go on and write now? Are your eyes
recovered? Could you copy a small paper for me this morn-
ing? or help examine a few lines? or step round to the Post
Ofﬁce? In a word, will you do any thing at all, to give a
colouring to your refusal to depart the premises?”

He silently retired into his hermitage.

I was now in such a state of nervous resentment that I
thought it but prudent to check myself, at present, from
further demonstrations. Bartleby and I were alone. I re-
membered the tragedy of the unfortunate Adams and the
still more unfortunate Colt in the solitary ofﬁce of the latter;
and how poor Colt, being dreadfully incensed by Adams,
and imprudently permitting himself to get wildly excited,
was at unawares hurried into his fatal act—an act which cer-
tainly no man could possibly deplore more than the actor
himself. Often it had occurred to me in my ponderings upon
the subject, that had that altercation taken place in the public
street, or at a private residence, it would not have terminated
as it did. It was the circumstance of being alone in a solitary
oﬂice, upstairs, of a building entirely unhallowed by human-
izing domestic associations—an uncarpeted oﬂ'ice, doubtless,
of a dusty, haggard sort of appearanceg—this it must have

I42 SHORTER NOVELS OF HERMAN MELVILLE
been, which greatly helped to enhance the irritable despera~
tion of the hapless Colt.

But when this old Adam of resentment rose in me and
tempted me concerning Bartleby, I grappled him and threw
him. How? Why, simply by recalling the divine injunc-
tion: “A new commandment give I unto you, that ye love
one another.” Yes, this it' was that saved me. Aside from
higher considerations, charity often operates as a vastly wise
and prudent principle——a great safeguard to its possessor.
Men have committed murder for jealousy’s sake, and anger’s
sake, and hatred’s sake, and selﬁshness’ sake, and spiritual
pride’s sake; but no man that ever I heard of, ever com—
mitted a diabolical murder 'for sweet charity’s sake. Mere
self—interest, then, if no better motive can be enlisted, should,
‘especially with high—tempered men, prompt all beings to
lcharity and philanthropy. At any rate, upon the occasion
iin question, I strove to drown my exasperated feelings
toward the scrivener by benevolently construing his conduct.
Poor fellow, poor fellow! thought I, he doesn’t mean any
thing; and besides, he has seen hard times, and ought to be
indulged.

I endeavoured also immediately to occupy myself, and at
the same time to comfort my despondency. I tried to fancy
that in the course of the morning, at such time as might prove.
agreeable to him, Bartleby, of his own free accord, would
emerge from his hermitage, and take up some decided line
of march in the direction of the door. But no. Half-past
twelve o’clock came, Turkey began to glow in the face,
overturn his inkstand, and become generally obstreperous;
Nippers abated down into quietude and courtesy; Ginger
Nut munched his noon apple, and Bartleby remained stand-
ing at his window in one of his profoundest dead-wall
reveries. Will it be credited? Ought I to acknowledge it?

wvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv

That afternoon I left the oﬂice without saying one further
word to him.

Some days now passed, during which at leisure intervals
I looked a little into “Edwards on the Will,” and “Priestley
on Necessity.” Under the circumstances, those books in—
duced a salutary feeling. Gradually I slid into the per—
suasion that these troubles of mine, touching the scrivener,
had been all predestinated from eternity, and Bartleby was
billeted upon me for some mysterious purpose of an all-Wise
Providence, which it was not for a mere mortal like me to
fathom. Yes, Bartleby, stay there behind your screen,
thought I; I shall persecute you no more; you are harmless
and noiseless as any of these old chairs; in short, I never
feel so private as when I know you are here. At least I see
it, I feel it; I penetrate to the predestinated purpose of my
life. I am content. Others may have loftier parts to enact;
but my mission in this world, Bartleby, is to furnish you
with oﬂice room for such period as you may see ﬁt to remain.

I believe that this wise and blessed frame of mind would
have continued with me had it not been for the unsolicited
and uncharitable remarks obtruded upon me by my pro-
fessional friends who visited the rooms. But thus it often is,
that the constant friction of illiberal minds wears out at last
the best resolves of the more generous. Though to be sure,
When I reﬂected upon it, it was not strange that people enter-
ing my oﬂice should be struck by the peculiar aspect of the
unaccountable Bartleby, and so be tempted to throw out some
sinister observations concerning him. Sometimes an attorney
having business with me, and calling at my oﬂice, and ﬁnding
no one but the scrivener there, would undertake to obtain
some sort of precise information from him touching my
whereabouts; but without heeding his idle ”talk, Bartleby
would remain standing immovable in the middle of the room.

144 SHORTER NOVELS 0F HERMIYN MELVILLE
So, after contemplating him in that position for a time, the
attorney would depart, no wiser than he came.

Also, when a Reference was going on, and the room full
of lawyers and witnesses and business was driving fast,
some deeply occupied legal gentleman present, seeing
Bartleby wholly unemployed, would request him to run
round to his (the legal gentleman’s) ofﬁce and fetch some
papers for him. Thereupon, Bartleby would tranquilly de-
cline, and yet remain idle as before. Then the lawyer would
give a great stare, and turn to me. And what could I say?
At last I was made aware that all through the circle of my
professional acquaintance, a whisper of wonder was running
round, having reference to the strange creature I kept at my
ofﬁce. This worried me very much. And as the idea came
upon me of his possibly turning out a long-lived man, and
keep occupying my chambers, and denying my authority;
and perplexing my visitors; and scandalizing my professional
reputation; and casting a general gloom over the premises;
keeping soul and body together to the last upon his savings
(for doubtless he spent but half a dime a day), and in the
end perhaps outlive me, and claim possession of my oﬂice
by right of his perpetual occupancy: as all these dark antic—
ipations crowded upon me more and more, and my friends
continually intruded their relentless remarks upon the appari-
tion in my room, a great change was wrought in me. I re-
solved to gather all my faculties together, and for ever rid
me of this intolerable incubus.

Ere revolving any complicated project, however, adapted
to this end, I ﬁrst simply suggested to Bartleby the propriety
of his permanent departure. In a calm and serious tone,
I commended the idea to his careful and mature considera-
tion. But. having taken three days to meditate upon it, he

BARTLEBY THE sgygaxzk ”,5
apprised me that his original determination remained the
same; in short, that he still preferred to abide with me.

What shall I do? I now said to myself, buttoning up my
coat to the last button. What shall I do? what ought I to do?
what does conscience say I should do with this man, or
rather ghost? Rid myself of him, I must; go, he shall.
But how? You will not thrust him, the poor, pale, passive
mortal,—you will not thrust such a helpless creature out of
your door? you will not dishonour yourself by such cruelty?
No, I will not, I cannot do that. Rather would I let him
live and die here, and then mason up his remains in the wall.
What then will you do? For all your coaxing, he will not
budge. Bribes he leaves under your own paper—weight on
your table; in short, it is quite plain that he prefers to cling
to you.

Then something severe, something unusual must be done.
What! surely you will not have him collared by a constable,
and commit his innocent pallor to the common jail? And
upon what ground could you procure such a thing to be done?
—a vagrant, is he? What! he a vagrant, a wanderer, who
refuses to budge? It is because he will not be a vagrant,
then, that you seek to count him a: a vagrant. That is too
absurd. No visible means of support: there I have him.
Wrong again: for indubitably he does support himself, and
that is the only unanswerable proof that any man can show of
his possessing the means so to do. No more then. Since he
will not quit me, I must quit him. I will change my oﬂices;
I Will move elsewhere 5 and give him fair notice, that if I
ﬁnd him on my new premises I Will then proceed against him
as a common trespasser.

Acting accordingly, next day I thus addressed him: “I ﬁnd
these chambers too far from the City Hall; the air is un-
wholesome. In a word, I propose to remove my oﬂices next

I46 SHORTER {NOVELS 0F HERMAN MELVILLE
week, and shall no longer require your services. I tell you
this now, in order that you may seek another place.”

He made no reply, and nothing more was said.

On the appointed day I engaged carts and men, proceeded
to my chambers, and having but little furniture, everything
was removed in a few hours. Throughout all, the scrivener
remained standing behind the screen, which I directed to be
removed the last thing. It was withdrawn, and being folded
up like a huge folio, left him the motionless occupant of
a naked room. I stood in the entry watching him a moment,
while something from within me upbraided me.

I re- -,entered with my hand in my pocket-—and——and my
heart 1n my mouth.

“Good—bye, Bartleby, I am going—good-bye, and God
some way bless you, and take that,” slipping something 1n
his hand. But it dropped upon the ﬂoor and then——strange
to say—I tore myself from him whom I had so longed to
be rid of.

Established in my new quarters, for a day or two I kept
the door locked, and started at every footfall in the passages.
When I returned to my rooms after any little absence, I
would pause at the threshold for an instant, and attentively
listen, ere applying my key. But these fears were needless.
Bartleby never came nigh me.

I thought all was going well, when a perturbed looking
stranger visited me, inquiring whether I was the person who
had recently occupied rooms at No. Wall street.

Full of forebodings, I replied that I was.

“Then sir,” said the stranger, who proved a lawyer, “you
are responsible for the man you left there. He refuses to
do any copying, he refuses to do anything; and he says he
prefers not to; and he refuses to quit the premises.”

“I am very sorry, sir,” said I, with assumed tranquillity,

 

BARTLEBY THE SCRIVENER 147
but an inward tremor, “but, really, the man you allude to
is. nothing to me—he is no relation or apprentice of mine,
that you should hold me responsible for him.”

“In mercy’s name, who is he?”

“I certainly cannot inform you. I know nothing about
him. Formerly I employed him as a copyist; but he has
done nothing for me now for some time past.”

“I shall settle him then,—good morning, sir.”

Several days passed, and I heard nothing more; and
though I often felt a charitable prompting to call at the
place and see poor Bartleby, yet a certain squeamishness
of I know not what withheld me.

All is over with him, by this time, thought I at last, when
through. another week no further intelligence reached me.
But coming to my room the day after, I found several per—
sons waiting at my door in a high state of nervous excitement.

“That’s the man—here he comes,” cried the foremost
one, whom I recognized as the lawyer who had previously
called upon me alone.

“You must take him away, sir, at once,” cried a portly
person among them, advancing upon me, and whom I knew to
be the landlord of N 0. Wall street. “These gentlemen,
my tenants, cannot stand it any longer; Mr. B ,” pointing
to the lawyer, “has turned him out of his room, and he now
persists in haunting the building generally, sitting upon the
banisters of the stairs by day, and sleeping in the entry by
night. Everybody here is concerned; clients are leaving the
oﬂices; some fears are entertained of a mob ; something you
must do, and that without delay.”

Aghast at this torrent, I fell back before it, and would
fain have locked myself in my new quarters. In vain I
persisted that Bartleby was nothing to me—no more than to
any one else there. In vain :—-—I was the last person knows

 

 

I48 SHORTER NOVELS 0F HERMAN MELVILLEW
to have anything to do with him, and they held me to the
terrible account. Fearful then of being exposed in the
papers (as one person present obscurely threatened) I con-
sidered the matter, and at length said, that if the lawyer
would give me a conﬁdential interview with the scrivener, in
his (the lawyer’s) own room, I would that afternoon strive
my best to rid them of the nuisance they complained of.

Going up stairs to my old haunt, there was Bartleby
silently sitting upon the banister at the landing.

“What are you doing here, Bartleby?” said I.

“Sitting upon the banister,” he mildly replied.

I motioned him into the lawyer’s room, who then left us.

“Bartleby,” said I, “are you aware that you are the cause
of great tribulation to me, by persisting in occupying the
entry after being dismissed from the ofﬁce?”

No answer.

“Now one of two things must take place. Either you
must do something, or something must be done to you.
Now what sort of business would you like to engage in?
Would you like to re—engage in copying for some one?”

“N o, I would prefer not to make any change.”

“Would you like a clerkship in a dry—goods store?”

“There is too much conﬁnement about that. No, I would
not like a clerkship; but I am not particular.”

“Too much conﬁnement,” I cried, “why you keep your—
self conﬁned all the time!”

“I would prefer not to take a clerkship,” he rejoined, as if
to settle that little item at once.

“How would a bartender’s business suit you? There is
no trying of the eyesight in that.”

“I would not like it at all, though, as I said before, I am
not particular.”

BARTLEBY THE SCRIVENER I49

His unwonted wordiness inspirited me. I returned to
the charge.

“Well then, would you like to travel through the country
collecting bills for the merchants? That would improve
your health.”

“No, I would prefer to be doing something else.”

“How then would going as a companion to Europe to
entertain some young gentleman with your conversation,—
how would that suit you?”

“Not at all. It does not strike me that there is anything
deﬁnite about that. I like to be stationary. But I am not
particular.”

“Stationary you shall be then,” I cried, now losing all
patience, and for the ﬁrst time in all my exasperating con—
nection with him fairly ﬂying into a passion. “If you do
not go away from these premises before night, I shall feel
bound—indeed I am bound—to—to—to quit the premises
myself!” I rather absurdly concluded, knowing not With
what possible threat to try to frighten his immobility into
compliance. Despairing of all further efforts, I was precip-
itately leaving him, when a ﬁnal thought occurred to me—
one which had not been wholly unindulged before.

“Bartleby,” said I, in the kindest tone I could assume
under such exciting circumstances, “will you go home with
me now—not to my oﬁice, but my dwelling—and remain
there till we can conclude upon some convenient arrangement
for you at our leisure? Come, let us start now, right away.”

“No: at present I would prefer not to make any change
at all.”

I answered nothing; but effectually dodging every one
by the suddenness and rapidity of my ﬂight, rushed from
the building, ran up Wall street toward Broadway, and then
jumping into the ﬁrst omnibus was soon removed from pur~

 

150 SHORTER NOVELS OF HERM/IN MELVILLE
suit. As soon as tranquillity returned I distinctly perceived
that I had now done all that I possibly could, both in
respect to the demands of the land-lord and his tenants, and
with regard to my own desire and sense of duty, to beneﬁt
Bartleby, and shield him from rude persecution. I now
strove to be entirely care-free and quiescent, and my con—
science justiﬁed me in the attempt, though indeed it was not
so successful as I could have wished. So fearful was I of
being again hunted out by the incensed landlord and his
exasperated tenants, that, surrendering my business to Nip—
pers, for a few days I drove about the upper part of the
town and through the suburbs, in my rockaway, crossed over
to Jersey City and Hoboken, and paid fugitive visits to
Manhattanville and Astoria. In fact I almost lived in my
rockaway for the time.

When again I entered my oﬂice, lo, a note from the land—
lord lay upon the desk. I opened it with trembling hands.
It informed me that the writer had sent to the police, and had
Bartleby removed to the Tombs as a vagrant. Moreover,
since I knew more about him than any one else, he wished
me to appear at that place, and make a suitable statement of
the facts. These tidings had a conﬂicting effect upon me.
At ﬁrst I was indignant, but at last almost approved. The
landlord’s energetic, summary disposition had led him to
adopt a procedure which I do not think I would have decided
upon myself 5 and yet as a last resort, under such peculiar
circumstances, it seemed the only plan.

As I afterwards learned, the poor scrivener, when told
that he must be conducted to the Tombs, offered not the
slightest obstacle, but in his own pale, unmoving way silently
acquiesced.

Some of the compassionate and curious byst: isrs joined
the party, and headed by one of the constables, arm—in—arm

BﬂRTLEBY THE SCRIVENER 151
with Bartleby the silent procession ﬁled its way through all
the noise, and heat, and joy of the roaring thoroughfares
at noon.

The same day I received the note I went to the Tombs,
or, to speak more properly, the Halls of Justice. Seeking
the right ofﬁcer, I stated the purpose of my call, and was
informed that the individual I described was indeed within.
I then assured the functionary that Bartleby was a perfectly
honest man, and greatly to be a compassionated (however
unaccountable) eccentric. I narrated all I knew, and closed
by suggesting the idea of letting him remain in as indulgent
conﬁnement as possible till something less harsh might be
done—though indeed I hardly knew what. At all events,
if nothing else could be decided upon, the alms—house must
receive him. I then begged to have an interview.

Being under no disgraceful charge, and quite serene and
harmless in all his ways, they had permitted him freely to
wander about the prison, and especially in the inclosed grass—
platted yards thereof. And so I found him there, standing
all alone in the quietest of the yards, his face toward a high
wall—while all around, from the narrow slits of the jail
windows, I thought I saw peering out upon him the eyes of
murderers and thieves.

“Bartleby! ” ,

“I know you,” he said, without looking round,—“and I
want nothing to say to you.”

“It was not I that brought you here, Bartleby,” said I,
keenly pained at his implied suspicion. “And to you, this
should not be so vile a place. Nothing reproachful attaches
to you by being here. And see, it is not so sad a place as one
might think. Look, there is the sky and here is the grass.”

“I knog-rgyhere I am,” he replied, but would say nothing
more, and so I left him.

152 SHORTER NOVELS OF HERMAN MELVILLE

As I entered the corridor again a broad, meat—like man
in an apron accosted me, and jerking his thumb over his
shoulder said—“Is that your friend?”

“Yes.”

“Does he want to starve? If he does, let him live on the
prison fare, that’s all.”

“Who are you?” asked I, not knowing what to make of
such an unoﬂicially speaking person in such a place.

“I am the grub-man. Such gentlemen as have friends
here, hire me to provide them with something good to eat.”

“Is this so?” said I, turning to the turnkey.

He said it was.

“Well then,” said I, slipping some silver into the grub-
man’s hands (for so they called him), “I want you to give
particular attention to my friend there; let him have the best
dinner you can get. And you must be as polite to him as
possible.”

“Introduce me, will you?” said the grub-man, looking at
me with an expression which seemed to say he was all impan
tience for an opportunity to give a specimen of his breeding.

Thinking it would prove of beneﬁt to the scrivener, I
acquiesced; and asking the grub-man his name, went up with
him to Bartleby.

“Bartleby, this is Mr. Cutlets; you will ﬁnd him very
useful to you.”

“Your sarvant, sir, your sarvant,” said the grub-man,
making a low salutation behind his apron. “Hope you ﬁnd
it pleasant here, sir 5—spacious grounds—~cool apartments,
sir—hope you’ll stay with us some time—try to make it
agreeable. May Mrs. Cutlets and I have the pleasure of
your company to dinner, sir, in Mrs. Cutlets’ private room?”

“I prefer not to dine to-day,” said Bartleby, turning away.
“It would disagree with me; I am unused to dinners.” So

BdR‘TLEBY THE SCRIVENER 153
saying, he slowly moved to the other side of the inclosure
and took up a position fronting the dead-wall.

“How’s this?” said the grub-man, addressing me with a
stare of astonishment. “He’s odd, ain’t he?”

“I think he is a little deranged,” said I, sadly.

“Deranged? deranged is it? Well now, upon my word,
I thought that friend of yourn was a gentleman forger; they
are always pale and genteel-like, them forgers. I can’t help
pity ’em—can’t help it, sir. Did you know Monroe Ed-
wards?” he added touchingly, and paused. Then, laying
his hand pityingly on my shoulder, sighed, “he died of the
consumption at Sing—Sing. So you weren’t acquainted with
Monroe?”

“N o, I was never socially acquainted with any forgers.
But I cannot stop longer. Look to my friend yonder. You
will not lose by it. I will see you again.”

Some few days after this, I again obtained admission to
the Tombs, and went through the corridors in quest of
Bartleby; but without ﬁnding him.

“I saw him coming from his cell not long ago,” said a
turnkey, “maybe he’s gone to loiter in the yards.”

So I went in that direction.

“Are you looking for the silent man?” said another turn-
key passing me. “Yonder he lies—sleeping in the yard
there. ’Tis not twenty minutes since I saw him lie down.”

The yard was entirely quiet. It was not accessible to the
common prisoners. The surrounding walls, of amazing
thickness, kept 0E all sounds behind them. The Egyptian
character of the masonry weighed upon me with its gloom.
But a soft imprisoned turf grew under foot. The heart of
the eternal pyramids, it seemed, wherein by some strange
magic, through the clefts grass-seed, dropped by birds, had
sprung.

154 SHORTER NOVELS OF HERMAN MELVILLE

Strangely huddled at the base of the wall—his knees
drawn up, and lying on his side, his head touching the cold
stones—I saw the wasted Bartleb . But nothing stirred.
I paused 5 HEW; stooped over, and saw
that his dim eyes were open, otherwise he seemed pro-
foundly sleeping. Something prompted me to touch him.
I felt his hand, when a tingling shiver ran up my arm and
down my spine to my feet.

The round face of the grub-man peered upon me now.
“His dinner is ready. Won’t he dine to—day, either? Or
does he live Without dining?”

“Lives without dining,” said I, and closed the eyes.

“Eh!-—He’s asleep, ain’t he?”

“With kings and counsellors,” murmured I.

There would seem little need for proceeding further in
this history. Imagination will readily supply the meagre
recital of poor Bartleby’s interment. But ere parting with
the reader, let me say, that if this little narrative has sufﬁ-
ciently interested him, to awaken curiosity as to who Bartleby
was, and what manner of life he led prior to the present
narrator’s making his acquaintance, I can only reply, that
in such curiosity I fully share—but am wholly unable to
gratify it. Yet here I hardly know whether I should divulge
one little item of rumour, which came to my ear a few
months after the scrivener’s decease. Upon what basis it
rested, I could never ascertain; and hence, how true it is I
cannot now tell. But inasmuch as this vague report has
not been without a certain strange suggestive interest to me,
however sad, it may prove the same with some others; and
so I will brieﬂy mention it. The report was this: that
Bartleby had been a subordinate clerk in the Dead Letter
Ofﬁce at Washington, from which he had been suddenly

BARTLEBY THE SCRIVESMER 155
removed by a change in the administration. When I think
over this rumour I cannot adequately express the emotions
which seize me. Dead letters! does it not sound like dead
men? Conceive a man by nature and misfortune prone to a
pallid hopelessness: can any business seem more ﬁtted to
heighten it than that of continually handling these dead
letters, and assorting them for the ﬂames? For by the cart-
load they are annually burned. Sometimes from out the
folded paper the pale clerk takes a ringt—the ﬁnger it was
meant for, perhaps, moulders in the grave; a bank—note sent
in swiftest charityz—he whom it would relieve, nor eats nor
hungers any more; pardon for those who died despairing;
hope for those who died unhoping; good tidings for those
who died stiﬂed by unrelieved calamities. On errands of life,
these letters speed to death.

Ah Bartleby! Ah humanity!

 

THE ENCANTADAS
OR
ENCHANTED ISLES

BY

SALVATOR R. TARNMOOR

First published in Putnam’s Monthly Magazine, March, April, May.

I 8 54.
Republished in “The Piazza Tales,” 1856.

THE EN CANTADAS,
OR ENCHANTED ISLES

Sketch First
THE ISLES AT LARGE

—“That may not he, said then the ferryman,

Least we unweeting hap to he fordonne;

I" or those same islands seeming now and than,

Are not ﬁrme land, nor any certein wonne,

But stragling plots which to and fro do ronne

In the wide waters,- therefore are they hight

The Wandering Islands; therefore do them shonne;
For they have oft drawne many a wandring wig/st
Into most deadly daunger and distressed flight,-
For whosoever once hath fastened

His foot thereon may never it secure

But wandreth evermore uncertain and unsure.”

“Darhe, dolefull, dreary, like a greedy grave,
That still for carrion carcasses doth crave,-
On top whereof ay dwelt the ghastly owl,
Shriehing his halefull note, which ever draoe
Far from that haunt all other cheerful fowl,
And all ahout it wandring ghosts did wayle and howl.”

TAKE ﬁve-and—twenty heaps of Cinders dumped here and
there in an outside city lot; imagine some of them magni-
ﬁed into mountains, and the vacant lot the sea; and you Will
have a ﬁt idea of the general aspect of the Encantadas, or
Enchanted Isles. A group rather of extinct volcanoes than
of isles; looking much as the world at large might, after a

penal conﬂagration.
159

160 SHORTER NOVELS OF HERMAN MELVILLE

It is to be doubted whether any spot of earth can, in deso—
lateness, furnish a parallel to this group. Abandoned ceme-
teries of long ago, old cities by piecemeal tumbling to their
ruin, these are melancholy enough; but, like all else which
has but once been associated with humanity they still awaken
in us some thoughts of sympathy, however sad. Hence,
even the Dead Sea, along with whatever other emotions it
may at times inspire, does not fail to touch in the pilgrim
some of his less unpleasurable feelings.

And as for solitariness; the great forests of the north,
the expanses of unnavigated waters, the Greenland ice-ﬁelds,
are the profoundest of solitudes to a human observer; still
the magic of their changeable tides and seasons mitigates
their terror; because, though unvisited by men, those forests
are visited by the May; the remotest seas reﬂect familiar stars
even as Lake Erie does; and in the clear air of a ﬁne Polar
day, the irradiated, azure ice shows beautifully as malachite.

But the special curse, as one may call it, of the Encantadas,
that which exalts them in desolation above Idumea and the
Pole, is that to them change never comes; neither the change
of seasons nor of sorrows. Cut by the Equator, they know
not autumn and they know not spring; while already reduced
to the lees of ﬁre, ruin itself can work little more upon them.
The showers refresh the deserts, but in these isles, rain
never falls. Like split Syrian gourds, left withering in the
sun, they are cracked by an everlasting drought beneath a
torrid sky. “Have mercy upon me,” the wailing spirit of
the Encantadas seems to cry, “and send Lazarus that he may
dip the tip of his ﬁnger in water and cool my tongue, for
I am tormented in this ﬂame.”

Another feature in these isles is their emphatic uninhabit-
ableness. It is deemed a ﬁt type of all—forsaken overthrow,
that the jackal should den in the wastes of weedy Babylon;

THE ENCAN‘TJDAS 16!
but the Encantadas refuse to harbour even the outcasts of
the beasts. Man and wolf alike disown them. Little but rep-
tile life is here found:—tortoises, lizards, immense spiders,
snakes, and the strangest anomaly of outlandish Nature,
the aguano. No voice, no low, no howl is heard; the chief
sound of life here is a hiss.

On most of the isles where vegetation is found at all,
it is more ungrateful than the blankness of Aracama.
Tangled thickets of wiry bushes, without fruit and without
a name, springing up among deep ﬁssures of calcined rock,
and treacherously masking them; or a parched growth of
distorted cactus trees.

In many places the coast is rock-bound, or more properly,
clinker—bound; tumbled masses of blackish or greenish stuﬁ
like the dross of an iron-furnace, forming dark clefts and
caves here and there, into which a ceaseless sea pours a fury
of foam; overhanging them with a swirl of grey, haggard
mist, amidst which sail screaming ﬂights of unearthly birds
heightening the dismal din. However calm the sea without,
there is no rest for these swells and those rocks, they lash and
are lashed, even when the outer ocean is most at peace with
itself. On the oppressive, clouded days such as are peculiar
to this part of the watery Equator, the dark vitriﬁed masses,
many of which raise themselves among white Whirlpools and
breakers in detached and perilous places off the shore, present
a most Plutonian sight. In no world but a fallen one could
such lands exist.

Those parts of the strand free from the marks of ﬁre
stretch away in wide level beaches of multitudinous dead
shells, with here and there decayed bits of sugar—cane, bam—
boos, and cocoanuts, washed upon this other and darker
world from the charming palm isles to the westward and
southward; all the way from Paradise to Tartarus; while

162 SHORTER NOVELS OF HERMAN MELVILLE
mixed with the relics of distant beauty you will sometimes
see fragments of charred wood and mouldering ribs of
wrecks. Neither will any one be surprised at meeting these
last, after observing the conﬂicting currents which eddy
throughout nearly all the Wide channels of the entire group.
The capriciousness of the tides of air sympathizes with those
of the sea. Nowhere is the Wind so light, baﬂiing, and every
way unreliable, and so given to perplexing calms, as at the
Encantadas. N igh a month has been spent by a ship going
from one isle to another, though but thirty miles between;
for owing to the force of the current, the boats employed
to tow barely suﬂice to keep the craft from sweeping upon
the cliffs, but do nothing toward accelerating her voyage.
Sometimes it is impossible for a vessel from afar to fetch up
with the group itself, unless large allowances for prospective
lee—way have been made ere its coming in sight. And yet,
at other times, there is a mysterious indraft, which irresistibly
draws a passing vessel among the isles, though not bound
to them.

True, at one period, as to some extent at the present day,
large ﬂeets of whalemen cruised for Spermaceti upon what
some seamen call the Enchanted Ground. But this, as in
due place will be described, was off the great outer isle of
Albemarle, away from the intricacies of the smaller isles,
where there is plenty of sea-room; and hence, to that vicinity,
the above remarks do not altogether apply; though even
there the current runs at times with singular force, shifting,
too, with as singular a caprice. Indeed, there are seasons
when currents quite unaccountable prevail for a great distance
round about the total group, and are so strong and irregular
as to change a vessel’s course against the helm, though sailing
at the rate of four or ﬁve miles the hour. The diﬁerence in
the reckonings of navigators produced by these causes, along

THE ENCANTﬂDﬂS 163
with the light and variable Winds, long nourished a persua-
sion that there existed two distinct clusters of isles in the
parallel of the Encantadas, about a hundred leagues apart.
Such was the idea of their earlier visitors, the Buccaneers;
and as late as I750, the charts of that part of the Paciﬁc
accorded with the strange delusion. And this apparent ﬂeet-
ingness and unreality of the locality of the isles was most
probably one reason for the Spaniards calling them the
Encantada, or Enchanted Group.

But not uninﬂuenced by their character, as they now con-
fessedly exist, the modern voyager will be inclined to fancy
that the bestowal of this name might have in part originated
in that air of spell—bound desertness which so signiﬁcantly
invests the isles. Nothing can better suggest the aspect of
once living things malignly crumbled from ruddiness into
ashes. Apples of Sodom, after touching, seem these isles.

However wavering their place may seem by reason of the
currents, they themselves, at least to one upon the shore,
appear invariably the same: ﬁxed, cast, glued into the very
body of cadaverous death.

Nor would the appellation, enchanted, seem misapplied in
still another sense. For concerning the peculiar reptile in-
habitant of these wilds—whose presence gives the group its
second Spanish name, Gallipagos—concerning the tortoises
found here, most mariners have long cherished a supersti-
tion, not more frightful than grotesque. They earnestly
believe that all wrecked sea—ofﬁcers, more especially com—
modores and captains, are at death (and in some cases, before
death) transformed into tortoises; thenceforth dwelling upon
these hot aridities, sole solitary Lords of Asphaltum.

Doubtless so quaintly dolorous a thought was originally
inspired by the woe-begone landscape itself, but more par-
ticularly, perhaps, by the tortoises. For apart from their

164 SHORTER NOVELS 0F HERMAN MELVILLE

 

strictly physical features, there is something strangely self-
condemned in the appearance of these creatures. Lasting
sorrow and penal hopelessness are in no animal form so sup-
pliantly expressed as in theirs; while the thought of their
wonderful longevity does not fail to enhance the impression.

Nor even at the risk of meriting the charge of absurdly
believing in enchantments, can I restrain the admission that
sometimes, even now, when leaving the crowded city to
wander out July and August among the Adirondack Moun—
tains, far from the inﬂuences of towns and proportionally
nigh to the mysterious ones of Nature; when at such times
I sit me down in the mossy head of some deep-wooded gorge,
surrounded by prostrate trunks of blasted pines, and recall,
as in a dream, my other and far—distant rovings in the baked
heart of the charmed isles; and remember the sudden
glimpses of dusky shells, and long languid necks protruded
from the leaﬂess thickets; and again have beheld the vitreous
inland rocks worn down and grooved into deep ruts by ages
and ages of the slow draggings of tortoises in quest of pools
of scanty water; I can hardly resist the feeling that in my
time I have indeed slept upon evilly enchanted ground.

Nay, such is the vividness of my memory, or the magic of
my fancy, that I know not whether I am not the occasional
victim of optical delusion concerning the Gallipagos. For
often in scenes of social merriment, and especially at revels
held by candle light in old—fashioned mansions—when the
shadows are thrown into the further recesses of an angular
and spacious room, making them put on a look of haunted
undergrowth of lonely woods—I have drawn the attention
of my comrades by my ﬁxed gaze and sudden change of air,
as I have seemed to see, slowly emerging from those
imagined solitudes, and heavily crawling along the ﬂoor, the

THE ENCANTﬂD/IS 165
ghost of a gigantic tortoise, with “Memento . . .” burn-
ing in live letters upon his back.

Shetch Second
TWO SIDES TO A TORTOISE

“Most ugly shape: and horrible aspeett,
Such a: Dame Nature .relfe mote feare to me,
Or shame, that ever :hould :o fowle defeat:
From her matt cunning hand eraaped bee,-
All dreadfull pourtraiat: of deformitee.

Ne wonder if there do a man appall;
For all that here at home we dreadfull hold
Be hat a: hug: to fearen hahe: withall
Compared to the creature: in there itler’ entrall

Fear naught, then raid the palmer, well aoized,
For there :ame monster: are not there indeed,
But are into these fearfull :hape: disguized.

And lifting up his vertuou: :taﬁ‘e on high,
Then all that dreadfull armie fatt gan ﬂye
Into great Zethy’: horom, where they hidden lye.”

IN View of the description given, may one be gay upon the
Encantadas? Yes: that is, find one the gaiety, and he will be
gay. And indeed, sackcloth and ashes as they are, the isles
are not perhaps unmitigated gloom. For While no spectator
can deny their claims to a most solemn and superstitious con-
sideration, no more than my ﬁrmest resolutions can decline
to behold the spectre—tortoise When emerging from its
shadowy recess, yet even the tortoise, dark and melancholy
as it is upon the back, still possesses a bright side; its calapee
or breast-plate being sometimes of a faint yellowish or golden

166 SHORTER NOVELS 0F HERM/IN MELVILLEW
tinge. Moreover, every one knows that tortoises as well as
turtles are of such a make, that if you but put them on their
backs you thereby expose their bright sides without the possi—
bility of their recovering themselves, and turning into view
the other. But after you have done this, and because you have
done this, you should not swear that the tortoise has no dark
side. Enjoy the bright, keep it turned up perpetually if you
can, but be honest and don’t deny the black. Neither should
he who cannot turn the tortoise from its natural position so
as to hide the darker and expose his livelier aspect, like a
great October pumpkin in the sun, for that cause declare the
creature to be one total inky blot. The tortoise is both black
and bright. But let us to particulars.

Some months before my ﬁrst stepping ashore upon the
group, my ship was cruising in its close Vicinity. One noon
we found ourselves off the South Head of Albemarle, and
not very far from the land. Partly by way of freak, and
partly by way of spying out so strange a country, a boat’s
crew was sent ashore, with orders to see all they could, and
besides, bring back whatever tortoises they could conveniently
transport.

It was after sunset when the adventurers returned. I
looked down over the ship’s high side as if looking down
over the curb of a well, and dimly saw the damp boat deep
in the sea with some unwonted weight. Ropes were dropped
over, and presently three huge antediluvian-looking tor-
toises, after much straining, were landed on deck. They
seemed hardly of the seed of earth. We had been abroad
upon the waters for ﬁve long months, a period amply suf-
ﬁcient to make all things of the land wear a fabulous hue to
the dreamy mind. Had three Spanish custom—house oﬂicers
boarded us then, it is not unlikely that I should have curi-
ously stared at them, felt of them, and stroked them much

THE ENCAN‘I’AD/IS ‘ 167
as savages observe civilized guests. But instead of three
custom-house oﬂicers, behold these really wondrous tortoises
——none of your schoolboy mud-turtles—but black as wid-
ower’s weeds, heavy as chests of plate, with vast shells medal—
lioned and orbed like shields, and dented and blistered like
shields that have breasted a battle—shaggy too, here and
there, with dark green moss, and slimy with the spray of
the sea. These mystic creatures, suddenly translated by night
from unutterable solitudes to our peopled deck, aﬂected me
in a manner not easy to unfold. They seemed newly crawled
forth from beneath the foundations of the world. Yea, they
seemed the identical tortoises whereon the Hindoo plants this
total sphere. With a lantern I inspected them more closely.
Such worshipful venerableness of aspect! Such furry green-
ness mantling the rude peelings and healing the ﬁssures of
their shattered shells. I no more saw three tortoises. They
expanded—became ‘transﬁgured. I seemed to see three
Roman Coliseums in magniﬁcent decay.

Ye oldest inhabitants of this or any other isle, said I, pray
give me the freedom of your three—walled towns.

The great feeling inspired by these creatures was that of
age :—dateless, indeﬁnite endurance. And, in fact, that any
other creature can live and breathe as long as the tortoise of
the Encantadas, I will not readily believe. Not to hint of
their known capacity of sustaining life, While going without
food for an entire year, consider that impregnable armour of
their living mail. What other bodily being possesses such a
citadel wherein to resist the assaults of Time?

As, lantern in hand, I scraped among the moss and beheld
the ancient scars of bruises, received in many a sullen fall
among the marly mountains of the isle-——scars strangely wid—
ened, swollen, half obliterate, and yet distorted like those
sometimes found in the bark of very hoary trees—I seemed

168 SHORTER NOVELS OF HERM/YN MELVILLE
W

an antiquary of a geologist, studying the bird tracks and
ciphers upon the exhumed slates trod by incredible creatures
whose very ghosts are now defunct.

As I lay in my hammock that night, overhead I heard the
slow, weary draggings of the three ponderous strangers along
the encumbered deck. Their stupidity or their resolution
was so great that they never went aside for any impediment.
One ceased his movements altogether just before the mid-
watch. At sunrise I found him butted like a battering—ram
against the immovable foot of the foremast, and still striv-
ing, tooth and nail, to force the impossible passage. That
these tortoises are the victims of a penal, or malignant, or
perhaps a downright diabolical enchanter, seems in nothing
more likely than in that strange infatuation of hopeless toil
which so often possesses them. I have known them in their
journeyings to ram themselves heroically against rocks and
long abide there, nudging, wriggling, wedging, in order to
displace them, and so hold on their inﬂexible path. Their
crowning curse is their drudging impulse to straightforward-
ness in a belittered world.

Meeting with no such hindrance as their companion did,
the other tortoises merely fell foul of small stumbling-
blocks, buckets, blocks, and coils of rigging; and at times in
the act of crawling over them would slip with an astounding
rattle to the deck. Listening to these draggings and concus-
sions, I thought me of the haunt from which they came; an
isle full of metallic ravines and gulches, sunk bottomlessly
into the hearts of splintered mountains, and covered for
many miles with inextricable thickets. I then pictured these
three straightforward monsters, century after century, writh-
ing through the shades, grim as blacksmiths; crawling so
slowly and ponderously, that not only did toadstools and all
fungous things grow beneath their feet, but a sooty moss

THE ENCANTJDAS I69
sprouted upon their backs. With them I often lost myself in
volcanic mazes; brushed away endless boughs of rotting
thickets; till ﬁnally in a dream I found myself sitting cross-
legged upon the foremost, a Brahmin similarly mounted
upon either side, forming a tripod of foreheads which up-
held the universal cope.

Such was the wild nightmare begot by my ﬁrst impression
of the Encantadas tortoise. But next evening, strange to
say, I sat down with my shipmates and made a merry repast
from tortoise steaks and tortoise stews; and supper over, out
knife, and helped convert the three mighty concave shells
into three fanciful soup—tureens, and polished the three ﬂat
yellowish calapees into three gorgeous salvers.

Sketch Third
ROCK RODONDO

“For they this hight the Roch of vile Repmach,
A dangerous and dreadfull place,
To which nor ﬁsh nor fowl did once approach,
But yelling meaws with sea-gulls hoars and hate
And cormoyrants with hirds of ravenous race,
Which still sit waiting on that dreadful clift.”

“With that the rolling sea resounding soft
In his hig vase them ﬁtly answered,

And on the Roch, the waves hreahing aloft,
A solemn meane unto them measured.”

“Then he the hoteman had row easily,
And let him heare some part of that rare melody.”

“Suddeinly an innumerahle flight
Of harmefull fowles ahout them ﬂuttering cride,

170 SHORTER 9(0VELS__ OF HﬁRMAJC MELVILIE

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And with their wiehed wing: them 0ft did :might
And .rore annoyed, groping in that griesly night.”

“Even all the nation of unfortunate
And fatal bird; ahout them ﬂoohed were.”

To go up into a high stone tower is not only a very ﬁne
thing in itself, but the very best mode of gaining a compre—
hensive View of the region round about. It is all the better
if this tower stand solitary and alone, like that mysterious
Newport one, or else be sole survivor of some perished castle.

Now, with reference to the Enchanted Isles, we are for-
tunately supplied With just such a noble point of observation
in a remarkable rock, from its peculiar ﬁgure called of old by
the Spaniards, Rock Rodondo, or Round Rock. Some two
hundred and ﬁfty feet high, rising straight from the sea ten
miles from land, with the Whole mountainous group to the
south and east, Rock Rodondo occupies, on a large scale, very
much the position which the famous Campanile or detached
Bell Tower of Saint Mark does with respect to the tangled
group of hoary ediﬁces around it.

Ere ascending, however, to gaze abroad upon the Encan-
tadas, this sea-tower itself claims attention. It is visible at
the distance of thirty miles; and, fully participating in that
enchantment which pervades the group, when ﬁrst seen afar
invariably is mistaken for a sail. Four leagues away, on a
golden, hazy noon, it seems some Spanish Admiral’s ship,
stacked up with glittering canvas. Sail ho! Sail ho! Sail
ho! from all three masts. But coming nigh, the enchanted
frigate is transformed apace into a craggy keep.

My ﬁrst visit to the spot was made in the grey of the
morning. With a View of ﬁshing, we had lowered three
boats, and pulling some two miles from our vessel found
ourselves, just before dawn of day, close under the moon-

THE ENC/INTADAS 17:
shadow of Rodondo. Its aspect was heightened, and yet
softened, by the strange double twilight of the hour. The
great full moon burned in the low west like a half-spent
beacon casting a soft mellow tinge upon the sea, like that cast
by a waning ﬁre of embers upon a midnight hearth; While
along the entire east the invisible sun sent pallid intimations
of his coming. The wind was light; the waves languid; the
stars twinkled with a faint eﬁulgence, all nature seemed su—
pine With the long night watch, and half~suspended in jaded
expectation of the sun. This was the critical hour to catch
Rodondo in his perfect mood. The twilight was just enough
to reveal every striking point, Without tearing away the dim
investiture of wonder.

From a broken, stair—like base, washed, as the steps of a
water—palace, by the waves, the tower rose in entablatures of
strata to a shaven summit. These uniform layers which com-
pose the mass form its most peculiar feature. For at their
lines of junction they project ﬂatly into encircling shelves,
from top to bottom, rising one above another in graduated
series. And as the eaves of any old barn or abbey are alive
with swallows, so were all these rocky ledges with unnum—
bered sea-fowl. Eaves upon eaves, and nests upon nests.
Here and there were long birdlime streaks of a ghostly white
staining the tower from sea to air, readily accounting for its
sail-like look afar. All would have been bewitchingly qui-
escent, were it not for the demoniac din created by the birds.
Not only were the eaves rustling with them, but they ﬂew
densely overhead, spreading themselves into a winged and
continually shifting canopy. The tower is the resort of
aquatic birds for hundreds of leagues around. To the north,
to the east, to the west, stretches nothing but eternal ocean;
so that the man—of—war hawk coming from the coasts of
North America, Polynesia, or Peru, makes his ﬁrst land at

I72 SHORTER NOVELS OF HERMAN MELVILLE

 

Rodondo. And yet though Rodondo be terra-ﬁrma, no land-
bird ever lighted on it. Fancy a red-robin or a canary there!
What a falling into the hands of the Philistines, when the
poor warbler should be surrounded by such locust—ﬂights of
strong bandit birds, with long bills cruel as daggers.

I know not where one can better study the Natural History
of strange sea-fowl than at Rodondo. It is the aviary of
Ocean. Birds light here which never touched mast or tree;
hermit-birds, which ever ﬂy alone, cloud-birds, familiar with
unpierced zones of air.

Let us ﬁrst glance low down to the lowermost shelf of
all, which is the widest too, and but a little space from high-
water mark. What outlandish beings are these? Erect as
men, but hardly as symmetrical, they stand all round the
rock like sculptured caryatides, supporting the next range of
eaves above. Their bodies are grotesquely misshapen; their
bills short; their feet seemingly legless; While the members
at their sides are neither ﬁn, Wing, nor arm. And truly
neither ﬁsh, ﬂesh nor fowl is the penguin; as an edible, per-
taining neither to Carnival nor Lent; without exception the
most ambiguous and least lovely creature yet discovered by
man. Though dabbling in all three elements, and indeed
possessing some rudimental claims to all, the penguin is at
home in none. On land it stumps; aﬂoat it sculls, in the air
it ﬂops. As if ashamed of her failure Nature keeps this
ungainly child hidden away at the ends of the earth, in the
Straits of Magellan and on the abased sea-story of Rodondo.

But look, what are yon woe-begone regiments drawn up
on the next shelf above? What rank and ﬁle of large strange
fowl? What sea Friars of Orders Grey? Pelicans. Their
elongated bills, and heavy leathern pouches, suspended
thereto, give them the most lugubrious expression. A pen-
sive race, they stand for hours together Without motion.

THE ENCANTADAS I73
Their dull, ashy plumage imparts an aspect as if they had
been powdered over with Cinders. A penitential bird indeed
——ﬁtly haunting the shores of the clinkered Encantadas—
whereon tormented Job himself might have well sat down
and scraped himself with potsherds.

Higher up now we mark the gony, or grey albatross,
anomalously so called, an unsightly unpoetic bird, unlike its
storied kinsman, which is the snow—white ghost of the
haunted Capes of Hope and Horn.

As we still ascend from shelf to shelf we ﬁnd the tenants
3f the tower serially disposed in order of their magnitude :—
gannets, black and speckled haglets, jays, sea—hens, sperm-
Whale-birds, gulls of all varieties:—thrones, princedoms,
powers, dominating one above another in senatorial array;
while sprinkled over all, like an ever-repeated ﬂy in a great
piece of broidery, the stormy petrel or Mother Cary’s chicken
sounds his continual challenge and alarm. That this mys-
terious humming—bird of ocean, which had it but brilliancy
of hue might from its evanescent liveliness be almost called
its butterﬂy, yet whose chirrup under the stern is ominous to
mariners as to the peasant the death—tick sounding from be—
hind the chimney—jam—should have its special haunt at the
Encantadas, contributes in the seaman’s mind not a little to
their dreary spell.

As day advances the dissonant din augments. With ear-
splitting cries the wild birds celebrate their matins. Each
moment, ﬂights push from the tower, and join the aerial
choir hovering overhead, while their places below are sup-
plied by darting myriads. But down through all this discord
of commotion I hear clear silver bugle-like notes unbrokenly
falling, like oblique lines of swift slanting rain in a cascading
shower. I gaze far up, and behold a snow-white angelic
thing, with one long lance—like feather thrust out behind.

I74 SHORTER {NOVELS OF HERMAN MELVILLE

It is the bright inspiriting Chanticleer of ocean, the beauteous
bird, from its bestirring whistle of musical invocation, ﬁtly
styled the “Boatswain’s Mate.”

The winged life clouding Rodondo on that well—remem—
bered morning, I saw had its full counterpart in the ﬁnny
hosts which people the waters at its base. Below the water-
line, the rock seemed one honey—comb of grottoes, affording
labyrinthine lurking places for swarms of fairy ﬁsh. All
were strange; many exceedingly beautiful; and would have
well graced the costliest glass globes in which goldﬁsh are
kept for a show. Nothing was more striking than the com—
plete novelty of many individuals of this multitude. Here
hues were seen as yet unpainted, and ﬁgures which are un-
engraved.

To show the multitude, avidity, and nameless fearlessness
and tameness of these ﬁsh, let me say that often, marking
through clear spaces of water—temporarily made so by the
concentric dartings of the ﬁsh above the surface—certain
larger and less unwary wights, which swam slow and deep,
our anglers would cautiously essay to drop their lines down
to these last. But in vain; there was no passing the upper—
most zone. No sooner did the hook touch the sea than a
hundred infatuates contended for the honour of capture.
Poor ﬁsh of Rodondo! in your victimized conﬁdence you are
of the number of those who inconsiderately trust while they
do not understand, human nature.

But the dawn is now fairly day. Band after band the sea-
fowl sail away to forage the deep for their food. The tower
is left solitary, save the ﬁsh caves at its base. Its birdlime
gleams in the golden rays like the whitewash of a tall light—
house, or the lofty sails of a cruiser. This moment, doubt—
less, while we know it to be a dead desert rock, other voyagers
are taking oaths it is a glad populous ship.

THE ENCANTAQAS I75

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But ropes now, and let us ascend. Yet soft, this is not so
easy.

Sketch Fourth
A PISGAH VIEW FROM THE ROCK

—“T}tat dons, [to lead: lzim to the big/text mount,
From whence, far of be unto him did 55010:”

 

IF you seek to ascend Rock Rodondo, take the following
prescription. Go three voyages round the world as a main-
royalman of the tallest frigate that ﬂoats; then serve a year
or two apprenticeship to the guides who conduct strangers up
the Peak of Teneriﬁe; and as many more, respectively, to a
rope-dancer, an Indian Juggler, and a Chamois. This done,
come and be rewarded by the View from our tower. How
we get there, we alone know. If we sought to tell others,
what the wiser were they? Sufﬁce it, that here at the summit
you and I stand. Does any balloonist, does the outlooking
man in the moon, take a broader view of space? Much thus,
one fancies, looks the universe from Milton’s celestial battle—
ments. A boundless watery Kentucky. Here Daniel Boone
would have dwelt content.

Never heed for the present yonder Burnt District of the
Enchanted Isles. Look edgeways, as it were, past them, to
the south. You see nothing; but permit me to point out the
direction, if not the place, of certain interesting objects in the
vast sea, which kissing this tower’s base, we behold unscrolling
itself towards the Antarctic Poles.

We stand now ten miles from the Equator. Yonder, to
the East, some six hundred miles, lies the continent; this
Rock being just about on the parallel of Quito.

Observe another thing here. We are at one of three ur.’

I76 SHORTER NOVELS OF HERMAN MELVILLE
inhabited clusters, which, at pretty nearly uniform distances
from the main, sentinel, at long intervals from each other,
the entire coast of South America. In a peculiar manner,
also, they terminate the South American character of country.
Of the unnumbered Polynesian chains to the westward, not
one partakes of the qualities of the Encantadas or Gallipagos,
the isles St. Felix and St. Ambrose, the isles Juan Fernandes
and Massafuero. Of the ﬁrst it needs not here to speak.
The second lie a little above the Southern Tropic; lofty, in-
hospitable, and uninhabitable rocks, one of which, presenting
two round hummocks connected by a low reef, exactly re-
sembles a huge double-headed shot. The last lie in the lati-
tude of 3 3°; high, wild and cloven. Juan Fernandes is suf-
ﬁciently famous without further description. Massafuero
is a Spanish name, expressive of the fact, that the isle so
called lies more without, that is, further off the main than its
neighbour Juan. This isle Massafuero has a very imposing
aspect at a distance of eight or ten miles. Approached in one
direction, in cloudy weather, its great overhanging height and
rugged contour, and more especially a peculiar slope of its
broad summits, give it much the air of a vast iceberg drifting
in tremendous poise. Its sides are split with dark cavernous
recesses, as an old cathedral with its gloomy lateral chapels.
Drawing nigh one of these gorges from sea after a long
voyage, and beholding some tatterdemalion outlaw, staff
in hand, descending its steep rocks towards you, conveys a
very queer emotion to a lover of the picturesque.

On ﬁshing parties from ships, at various times, I have
chanced to Visit each of these groups. The impression they
give to the stranger pulling close up in his boat under their
grim cliffs is, that surely he must be their ﬁrst discoverer,
such for the most part is the unimpaired . . . silence and
solitude. And here, by the way, the mode in which these

<THE ENCANTJDAS 177

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isles were really ﬁrst lighted upon by Europeans is not un-
worthy mention, especially as what is about to be said, like-
wise applies to the original discovery of our Encantadas.

Prior to the year I 563, the voyages made by Spanish ships
from Peru to Chili, were full of difﬁculty. Along this coast
the winds from the South most generally prevail; and it had
been an invariable custom to keep close in with the land, from
J. superstitious conceit on the part of the Spaniards, that were
they to lose sight of it, the eternal trade wind would waft
them into unending waters, from whence would be no re—
turn. Here, involved among tortuous capes and headlands,
shoals and reefs, beating too against a continual head wind,
often light, and sometimes for days and weeks sunk into
utter calm, the provincial vessels, in many cases, suffered the
extremest hardships, in passages, which at the present day
seem to have been incredibly protracted. There is on record
in some collections of nautical disasters, an account of one of
these ships, which starting on a voyage whose duration was
estimated at ten days, spent four months at sea, and indeed
never again entered harbour, for in the end she was cast
away. Singular to tell, this craft never encountered a gale,
but was the vexed sport of malicious calms and currents.
Thrice, out of provisions, she put back to an intermediate
port, and started afresh, but only yet again to return. Fre—
quent fogs enveloped her, so that no observation could be
had of her place, and once, when all hands were joyously an—
ticipating sight of their destination, lo! the vapours lifted and
disclosed the mountains from which they had taken their
ﬁrst departure. In the like deceptive vapours she at last
struck upon a reef, whence ensued a long series of calamities
too sad to detail.

It was the famous pilot, Juan Fernandes, immortalized by
the island named after him, who put an end to these coast-

178 SHORTER 3(0 VELS OF ngqlggx .MELVILLE

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ing tribulations, by boldly venturing the experiment—as De
Gama did before him with respect to Europe—of standing
broad out from land. Here he found the Winds favourable
for getting to the south, and by running westward till be-
yond .the inﬂuence of the trades, he regained the coast without
"difﬁculty, making the passage which, though in a high degree
circuitous, proved far more expeditious than the nominally
direct one. Now it was upon these new tracks, and about
the year I670 or thereabouts, that the Enchanted Isles and
the rest of the sentinel groups, as they may be called, were
discovered. Though I know of no account as to whether
any of them were found inhabited or no, it may be reasonably
concluded that they have been immemorial solitudes. But
let us return to Rodondo.

Southwest from our tower lies all Polynesia, hundreds of
leagues away; but straight west, on the precise line of his
parallel, no land rises till your keel is beached upon the
Kingsmills, a nice little sail of say ﬁve thousand miles.

Having thus by such distant references—with Rodondo
the only possible ones—settled our relative place on the sea,
let us consider objects not quite so remote. Behold the grim
and charred Enchanted Isles. This nearest crater—shaped
headland is part of Albemarle, the largest of the group,
being some sixty miles or more long, and ﬁfteen broad. Did
you ever lay eye on the real genuine Equator? Have you
ever, in the largest sense , toed the Line? Well, that identical
crater-shaped headland there, all yellow lava, is cut by the
Equator exactly as a knife cuts straight through the centre
of a pumpkin pie. If you could only see so far, just to one
side of that same headland, across yon low dykey ground,
you would catch sight of the isle of Narborough, the loftiest
land of the cluster; no soil whatever, one seamed clinker
from top to bottom 5 abounding in black caves like smithies;

THE ENCANTADAS 179
its metallic shore ringing under foot like plates of iron; its
central volcanoes standing grouped like a gigantic chimney—
stack.

Narborough and Albemarle are neighbours after a quite
curious fashion. A familiar diagram will illustrate this

strange neighbourhood.

Cut a channel at the above letter JOlnt, and the middle
transverse limb is Narborough, and all the rest is Albemarle.
Volcanic N arborough lies in the black jaws of Albemarle like
a wolf’s red tongue in his open mouth.

If now you desire the population of Albemarle, I will
give you, in round numbers, the statistics, according to the
most reliable estimates made upon the spot:

Men ......................... none
Ant-eaters ..................... unknown
Man-haters .................... unknown
Lizards ....................... 500,000
Snakes ....................... 500,000
Spiders ....................... 10,000,000
Salamanders ................... unknown
Devils ........................ do.
Making a clean total of ........... I 1,000,000

exclusive of an incomputable host of ﬁends, ant—eaters, man~
haters, and salamanders.

Albemarle opens his mouth towards the setting sun. His
distended jaws form a great bay, which Narborough, his
tongue divides into halves, one whereof is called Weather
Bay, the other Lee Bay; while the volcanic promontories ter-

I80 SHORTER {NOVELS 0F HERM/L‘N MELVILLE
minating his coasts are styled South Head and North Head.
I note this, because these Bays are famous in the annals of
the Sperm Whale Fishery. The whales come here at cer—
tain seasons to calve. When ships ﬁrst cruised hereabouts,
I am told, they used to blockade the entrance of Lee Bay,
-—-When, their boats going round by Weather Bay, passed
through Narborough channel,—and so had the Leviathans
very neatly in a pen.

The day after we took ﬁsh at the base of this Round
Tower, we had a ﬁne wind, and, shooting round the north
headland, suddenly descried a ﬂeet of full thirty sail, all
beating to windward like a squadron in line. A brave sight as
ever man saw. A most harmonious concord of rushing keels.
Their thirty kelsons hummed like thirty harp—strings, and
looked as straight whilst they left their parallel traces on
the sea. But there proved too many hunters for the game.
The ﬂeet looked up and went their separate ways out of
sight, leaving my own ship and two trim gentlemen of Lon-
don. These last, ﬁnding no luck either, likewise vanished;
and Lee Bay, with all its appurtenances, and without a rival,
devolved to us.

The way of cruising here is this. You keep hovering about
the entrance of the bay, in one beat and out the next. But
at times—not always, as in other parts of the group—a race-
horse of a current sweeps right across its mouth. So, with
all sails set, you carefully ply your tacks. How often, stand—
ing at the foremast head at sunrise, with our patient prow
pointed in between these isles, did I gaze upon that land, not
of cakes but of clinkers, not of streams of sparkling water,
but arrested torrents of tormented lava.

As the ship runs in from the open sea, Narborough pre-
sents its side in one dark craggy mass, soaring up some ﬁve or
six thousand feet, at which point it hoods itself in heavy

I

THE ENCdN‘TﬂDdS I8!
clouds, whose lowest level fold is as clearly deﬁned against
the rocks, as the snow-line against the Andes. There is dire
mischief going on in that upper dark. There toil the
demons of ﬁre, who at intervals irradiate the nights with a
strange spectral illumination for miles and miles around, but
unaccompanied by any further demonstration; or else, sud-
denly announce themselves by terriﬁc concussions, and the
full drama of a volcanic eruption. The blacker that cloud by
day, the more may you look for light by night. Often
whalemen have found themselves cruising nigh that burning
mountain when all aglow with a ball—room blaze. Or, rather,
glassworks, you may call this same Vitreous isle of Nar-
borough, with its tall chimney-stacks.

Where we still stand, here on Rodondo, we cannot see all

‘ the other isles, but it is a good place from which to point out

where they lie. Yonder, though, to the E.N.E., I mark a
distant dusky ridge. It is Abington Isle, one of the most
northerly of the group, so solitary, remote, and blank, it
looks like No—Man’s Land seen off our northern shore. I
doubt Whether two human beings ever touched upon that
spot. So far as yon Abington Isle is concerned, Adam and
his billions of posterity remain uncreated.

Ranging south of Abington, and quite out of sight behind
the long spire of Albemarle, lies James’s Isle, so called by
the early Buccaneers after the luckless Stuart, Duke of York.
Observe here, by the way, that, excepting the isles particu~
larized in comparatively recent times, and which mostly re-
ceived the names of famous Admirals, the Encantadas were
ﬁrst christened by the Spaniards; but these Spanish names
were generally effaced on English charts by the subsequent
christenings of the Buccaneers, who, in the middle of the
seventeenth century, called them after English noblemen
and kings. Of these loyal freebooters and the things which

182 SHORTER NOVELS OF HERM/{N MELVILLE
associate their name with the Encantadas, we shall hear anon.
Nay, for one little item, immediately; for between James’s
Isle and Albemarle, lies a fantastic islet, strangely known as
“Cowley’s Enchanted Isle.” But as all the group is deemed
enchanted, the reason must be given for the spell within a
spell involved by this particular designation. The name was
bestowed by that excellent Buccaneer himself, on his ﬁrst
visit here. Speaking in his published voyages of this spot,
he says—“My fancy led me to call it Cowley’s Enchanted
Isle, for we having had a sight of it upon several points of
the compass, it appeared always in so many different forms;
sometimes like a ruined fortiﬁcation, upon another point
like a great city,” etc. No wonder though, that among the
Encantadas all sorts of ocular deceptions and mirages should
be met.

That Cowley linked his name with this self—transforming
and bemocking isle, suggests the possibility that it conveyed
to him some meditative image of himself. At least, as is not
impossible, if he were any relative of the mildly thoughtful,
and self—upbraiding poet Cowley, Who lived about his time,
the conceit might seem unwarranted 5 for that sort of thing
evinced in the naming of this isle runs in the blood, and may
be seen in pirates as in poets.

Still south of James’s Isle lie Jervis Isle, Duncan Isle,
Crossman’s Isle, Brattle Isle, Wood’s Isle, Chatham Isle,
and various lesser isles, for the most part an archipelago of
aridities, without inhabitant, history, or hope of either in all
time to come. But not far from these are rather notable isles
-——Barrington, Charles’s, Norfolk, and Hood’s. Succeeding
chapters will reveal some ground for their notability.

THE ENCAJ‘CTADIYS I83

Vvvavvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv'vvvvvﬂ

Sketch Fifth
THE FRIGATE, AND SHIP “FLYAWAY”

“Looking for forth into the ocean wide,
A goodly ship with homzers bravely dight,
And ﬂag in her top-gallant I espide,
Through the main sea making her merry ﬂight.”

ERE quitting Rodondo, it must not be omitted that here,
in 1813, the US. frigate Essex, Captain David Porter,
came near leaving her bones. Lying becalmed one morning
with a strong current setting her rapidly towards the rock,
a strange sail was descried, which—not out of keeping with
alleged enchantments of the neighbourhood—seemed to be
staggering under a Violent wind, While the frigate lay life-
less as if spell—bound. But a light air springing up, all sail
was made by the frigate in chase of the enemy, as supposed
-——he being deemed an English whale—ship—but the rapidity
of the current was so great, that soon all sight was lost of
him, and at meridian the Essex, spite of her drags, was
driven so close under the foam—lashed cliffs of Rodondo
that for a time all hands gave her up. A smart breeze,
however, at last helped her off, though the escape was so
critical as to seem almost miraculous.

Thus saved from destruction herself, she now made use
of that salvation to destroy the other vessel, if possible.
Renewing the chase in the direction in which the stranger
had disappeared, sight was caught of him the following
morning. Upon being descried he hoisted American colours
and stood away from the Essex. A calm ensued; when,
still conﬁdent that the stranger was an Englishman, Porter
despatched a cutter, not to board the enemy, but drive back
his boats engaged in towing him. The cutter succeeded.

184 SHORTER NOVELS OF HERW/IN MELVILLE
Cutters were subsequently sent to capture him; the stranger
now showing English colours in place of American. But
when the frigate’s boats were within a short distance of their
hoped—for prize, another sudden breeze sprang up; the
stranger under all sail bore off to the westward, and ere night
Was hull down ahead of the Essex, which all this time lay
perfectly becalmed.

This enigmatic craft—American in the morning, and
English in the evening—her sails full of wind in a calm—
Was never again beheld. An enchanted ship no doubt. So
at least the sailors swore.

This cruise of the Essex in the Paciﬁc during the war of
18m, is perhaps the strangest and most stirring to be found
in the history of the American navy. She captured the
furthest wandering vessels; visited the remotest seas and
isles; long hovered in the charmed vicinity of the enchanted
group; and ﬁnally valiantly gave up the ghost ﬁghting two
English frigates in the harbour of Valparaiso. Mention is
made of her here for the same reason that the Buccaneers
will likewise receive record; because, like them, by long
cruising among the isles, tortoise—hunting upon their shores,
and generally exploring them; for these and other reasons,
the Essex is peculiarly associated with the Encantadas.

Here be it said that you have but three eye—witness author-
ities worth mentioning touching the Enchanted Isles:—
Cowley, the Buccaneer ( I684); Colnet, the whaling-ground
explorer (I798); Porter, the post captain (I813). Other
than these you have but barren, bootless allusions from some
few passing voyagers or compilers.

THE ENCAN‘TADAS 185"

v-Vvvwvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv

S k e t c h S i x t h
HARRINGTON ISLE AND THE BUCCANEERS

“Let u: all :eror'le hare :uhjectiort room,

And a: we he :on: of the earth 30 wide,

Let us our father’: heritage divide,

And challenge to ourselves our portion: dew
Of all the patrimony, which a few

Now hold on hugger-mugger in their hand.”

“Lord: of the world, and :0 will wander free,
Where—:0 u: lirteth, uncontroll’d of any.”

“How brave now we live, how jocund, how near the ﬁrst inheritance,
without fear, how free from little troubles!”

NEAR two centuries ago Barrington Isle was the resort of
that famous Wing of the West Indian Buccaneers, which,
upon their repulse from the Cuban waters, crossing the
Isthmus of Darien, ravaged the Paciﬁc side of the Spanish
colonies, and, with the regularity and timing of a modern
mail, waylaid the royal treasure ships plying between Manilla
and Acapulco. After the toils of piratic war, here they came
to say their prayers, enjoy their free—and—easies, count their
crackers from the cask, their doubloons from the keg, and
measure their silks of Asia with long Toledos for their
yard-sticks.

As a secure retreat, an undiscoverable hiding place, no
spot in those days could have been better ﬁtted. In the
centre of a vast and silent sea, but very little traversed,
surrounded by islands, Whose inhospitable aspect might well
drive away the chance navigator, and yet Within a few days’
sail of the opulent countries which they made their prey;

186 SHORTER NOVELS OF HERMJN MELVILLE
the unmolested Buccaneers found here that tranquillity which
they ﬁercely denied to every civilized harbour in that part
of the world. Here, after stress of weather, or a temporary
drubbing at the hands of their vindictive foes, or in swift
ﬂight with golden booty, those old marauders came, and lay
snugly out of all harm’s reach. But not only was the place
a harbour of safety, and a bower of ease, but for utility
in other things it was most admirable.

Barrington Isle is in many respects singularly adapted to
careening, reﬁtting, refreshing, and other seamen’s purposes.
Not only has it good water, and good anchorage, well shel-
tered from all winds by the high land of Albemarle, but it
is the least unproductive isle of the group. Tortoises good
for food, trees good for fuel, and long grass good for bed—
ding, abound here, and there are pretty natural walks, and
several landscapes to be seen. Indeed, though in its locality
belonging to the Enchanted group, Barrington Isle is so
unlike most of its neighbours that it would hardly seem of
kin to them.

“I once landed on its western side,” says a sentimental
voyager long ago, “where it faces the black buttress of
Albemarle. I walked beneath groves of trees; not Very
lofty, and not palm trees, or orange trees, or peach trees,
to be sure; but for all that, after long sea-faring very beau—
tiful to walk under, even though they supplied no fruit.
And here, in calm spaces at the heads of glades, and on the
shaded tops of slopes commanding the most quiet scenery—
what do you think I saw? Seats which might have served
Brahmins and presidents of peace societies. Fine old ruins
of what had once been symmetric lounges of stone and turf,
they bore every mark both of artiﬁcialness and age, and were
undoubtedly made'by the Buccaneers. One had been a long
sofa, with back and arms, just such a sofa as the poet Gray

THE EfMCzINTAD/lS 187
might have loved to throw himself upon, his Crebillon in
hand.

“Though they sometimes tarried here for months at a
time, and used the spot for a storing-place for spare spars,
sails, and casks; yet it is highly improbable that the buc-
caneers ever erected dwelling—houses upon the isle. They
never were here except their ships remained, and they would
most likely have slept on board. I mention this, because
I cannot avoid the thought that it is hard to impute the
construction of these romantic seats to any other motive
than one of pure peacefulness and kindly fellowship with
nature. That the buccaneers perpetrated the greatest out-
rages is very true; that some of them were mere cut-throats
is not to be denied; but we know that here and there among
their host was a Dampier, a Wafer, and a Cowley, and
likewise other men, whose worst reproach was their desper-
ate fortunes 5 whom persecution, or adversity, or secret and
unavengeable wrongs, had driven from Christian society to
seek the melancholy solitude or the guilty adventures of the
sea. At any rate, long as those ruins of seats on Barrington
remain, the most singular monuments are furnished to the
fact, that all of the buccaneers were not unmitigated mon-
sters.

“But during my ramble on the isle I was not long in dis—
covering other tokens, of things quite in accordance with
those wild traits, popularly—and no doubt truly enough—
imputed to the freebooters at large. Had I picked up
old sails and rusty hoops I would only have thought of the
ship’s carpenter and cooper. But I found old cutlasses and
daggers reduced to mere threads of rust, which doubtless
had stuck between Spanish ribs ere now. These were signs
of the murderer and robber, the reveller likewise had left
his trace. Mixed with shells, fragments of broken jars were

188 SHORTER 3(0 VELS orwgcigmdx MELVILLE
lying here and there, high up upon the beach. They were
precisely like the jars now used upon the Spanish coast for
the wine and Pisco spirits of that country.

“With a rusty dagger—fragment in one hand, and a bit of
a wine—jar in another, I sat me down on the ruinous green
sofa I have spoken of, and bethought me long and deeply
of these same buccaneers. Could it be possible, that they
robbed and murdered one day, revelled the next, and rested
themselves by turning meditative philosophers, rural poets,
and seat-builders on the third? Not very improbable, after
all. For consider the vacillations of a man. Still, strange
as it may seem, I must also abide by the more charitable
thought, namely, that among these adventurers were some
gentlemanly, companionable souls, capable of genuine tran—
quillity and virtue.”

Sketch Seventh
CHARLES’S ISLE AND THE DOG-KING

So with outragiou: cry,

A tlioumnd oillein: round about him :warmed
Out of the rock; and cave: adjoining nye;
Vile caitive wretc/zes, ragged, rude, deformed;
All t/zreetening dent/z, all in :traunge manner armed ;
Some wit/z unweldy cluox, some with long :pearer,
Some rusty knivex, :ome :taoe: in ﬁer warmd.

* * * * *
We will not be of any occupation,
Let :uclz vile 0455415, born to base vocation,
Drudge in the world, and for their living droyle,
W/zic/z have no wit to live wit/zouten toyle.

SOUTHWEST, of Barrington lies Charles’s Isle. And hereby
hangs a history which I gathered long ago from a shipmate
learned in all the lore of outlandish life.

THE EﬁLAJXTADﬂS 189

During the successful revolt of the Spanish provinces
from Old Spain, there fought on behalf of Peru a certain
Creole adventurer from Cuba, who by his bravery and good
fortune at length advanced himself to high rank in the
patriot army. The war being ended, Peru found herself
——like many valorous gentlemen—free and independent
enough, but with few shot in the locker. In other words,
she had not wherewithal to pay oif her troops. But the
Creole—I forget his name—volunteered to take his pay in
lands. So they told him he might have his pick of the
Enchanted Isles, which were then, as they still remain, the
nominal appanage of Peru. The soldier straightway em—
barks thither, explores the group, returns to Callao, and
says he will take a deed of Charles’s Isle. Moreover, this
deed must stipulate that thenceforth said Charles’s Isle is
not only the sole property of the Creole, but is forever
free of Peru, even as Peru of Spain. To be short, this ad—
venturer procures himself to be made in eﬁect Supreme
Lord of the Island, one of the princes of the powers of the
earth.*

He now sends forth a proclamation inviting subjects to his
as yet unpopulated kingdom. Some eighty souls, men and
women, respond, and being provided by their leader with
necessaries, and tools of various sorts, together with a few
cattle and goats, take ship for the promised land, the last
arrival on board, prior to sailing, being the Creole himself,
accompanied, strange to say, by a disciplined cavalry com-
pany of large grim dogs. These, it was observed on the
passage, refusing to consort with the emigrants, remained
aristocratically grouped around their master on the elevated

*The American Spaniards have long been in the habit of making presents of islands to
deserving individuals. The pilot Juan Fernandes procured a deed of the isle named after
him, and {or some years resided there before Selkirk came. It is supposed, however, that he
eventually contracted the blues upon his princely property, for after a time he returned to
the main. and as report goes, became a very garrulous barber in the city of Lima.

[90 SHOR‘TER NOVELS OF HERMJIM MELVILLEW
quarter—deck, casting disdainful glances forward upon the in—
ferior rabble there; much as from the ramparts, the soldiers
of a garrison thrown into a conquered town, eye the inglori—
ous citizen—mob over which they are set to watch.

Now Charles’s Isle not only resembles Barrington Isle
in being much more inhabitable than other parts of the
group, but it is double the size of Barrington; say forty or‘
ﬁfty miles in circuit.

Safely debarked at last, the company, under direction of
their lord and patron, forthwith proceeded to build their
capital city. They make considerable advance in the way
of walls of clinkers, and lava ﬂoors, nicely sanded with
cinders. On the least barren hills they pasture their cattle,
while the goats, those adventurers by nature, explore the far
inland solitudes for a scanty livelihood of lofty herbage.
Meantime, abundance of ﬁsh and an inexhaustible tribe of
tortoises, supply the adventurer’s other wants.

The disorders incident to settling all primitive regions,
in the present case were heightened by the peculiarly un—
toward character of many of the pilgrims. His Majesty
was forced at last to proclaim martial law, and actually
hunted and shot with his own hand several of his rebellious
subjects, who, with most questionable intentions, had clan-e
destinely encamped in the interior, whence they stole by
night, to prowl barefooted on tiptoe round the precincts of
the lava—palace. It is to be remarked, however, that prior
to such stern proceedings, the more reliable men had been
judiciously picked out for an infantry body—guard, subordi—
nate to the cavalry body-guard of dogs. But the state of
politics in this unhappy nation may be somewhat imagined
from the circumstance that all who were not of the body—
guard were downright plotters and malignant traitors. At
length the death penalty was tacitly abolished, owing to the

THE ENC/INTADJS 191
timely thought, that were strict sportsman’s justice to be dis-
pensed among such subjects, ere long the Nimrod King
would have little or no remaining game to shoot. The human
part of the life—guard was now disbanded, and set to work
cultivating the soil, and raising potatoes, the regular army
now solely consisting of the dog-regiment. These, as I
have heard, were of a singularly ferocious character, though
by severe training rendered docile to their master. Armed
to the teeth, the Creole now goes in state, surrounded by his
canine janizaries, whose terriﬁc bayings prove quite as serv—
iceable as bayonets in keeping down the surgings of revolt.

But the census of the isle, sadly lessened by the dispensa—
tion of justice, and not materially recruited by matrimony,
began to ﬁll his mind with sad mistrust. In some way the
population must be increased. Now, from its possessing a
little water, and its comparative pleasantness of aspect,
Charles’s Isle at this period was occasionally visited by for—
eign Whalers. These His Majesty had always levied upon
for port charges, thereby contributing to his revenue. But
now he had additional designs. By insidious arts he, from
time to time, cajoles sailors to desert their ships and enlist
beneath his banner. Soon as missed, their captains crave
permission to go and hunt them up. Whereupon His Maj—
esty ﬁrst hides them very carefully away, and then freely
permits the search. In consequence, the delinquents are
never found, and the ships retire without them.

Thus, by a two-edged policy of this crafty monarch, for-
eign nations were crippled in the number of their subjects,
and his own greatly multiplied. He then particularly
petted these renegado strangers. But alas for the deep-laid
schemes of ambitious princes, and alas for the vanity of
glory. As the foreign—born Pretorians of the Roman state,
unwisely introduced into the commonwealth, and still more

192 SHORTER NOVELS OF HERMAN MELVILLE
unwisely made favourites of the Emperors, at last insulted
and overturned the throne, even so these lawless mariners,
with all the rest of the body-guard and all the populace,
broke out into a terrible mutiny, and deﬁed their master. He
marched against them with all his dogs. A deadly battle
ensued upon the beach. It raged for three hours, the dogs
ﬁghting with determined valour, and the sailors reckless
of everything but victory. Three men and thirteen dogs
were left dead upon the ﬁeld, many on both sides were
wounded, and the king was forced to ﬂy with the remainder
of his canine regiment. The enemy pursued, stoning the
dogs with their master into the wilderness of the interior.
Discontinuing the pursuit, the victors returned to the village
on the shore, stove the spirit-casks, and proclaimed a Repub—
lic. The dead men were interred with the honours of war,
and the dead dogs ignominiously thrown into the sea. At
last, forced by stress of suffering, the fugitive Creole came
down from the hills and offered to treat for peace. But
the rebels refused it on any other terms than his uncondi—
tional banishment. Accordingly, the next ship that arrived
carried away the ex-king to Peru.

The history of the king of Charles’s Island furnishes an-
other illustration of the difﬁculty of colonizing barren islands
with unprincipled pilgrims.

Doubtless for a long time the exiled monarch, pensively
ruralizing in Peru, which aﬂ'brded him a safe asylum in his
calamity, watched every arrival from the Encantadas, to
hear news of the failure of the Republic, the consequent
penitence of the rebels, and his own recall to royalty. Doubt-
less he deemed the Republic but a miserable experiment
which would soon explode. But no, the insurgents had now
confederated themselves into a democracy neither Grecian,
Roman, nor American. Nay, it was no democracy at all,

THE ENCANTADAS 193
but a. permanent Riotocmcy, which gloried in having no law
but lawlessness. Great inducements being offered to deserters,
their ranks were swelled by accessions of scamps from every
ship which touched their shores. Charles’s Island was pro—
claimed the asylum of the oppressed of all navies. Each
runaway tar was hailed as a martyr in the cause of freedom,
and became immediately installed a ragged citizen of this
universal nation. In vain the captains of absconding sea-
men strove to regain them. Their new compatriots were
ready to give any number of ornamental eyes in their behalf.
They had few cannon, but their ﬁsts were not to be triﬂed
with. So, at last, it came to pass that no vessels acquainted
with the character of that country durst touch there, how-
ever sorely in want of refreshment. It became Anathema——
a sea Alsatia—the unassailed lurking-place of all sorts of
desperadoes, who in the name of liberty did just what they
pleased. They continually ﬂuctuated in their numbers.
SailOrs deserting ships at other islands—or in boats at sea
anywhere in that Vicinity—steered for Charles’s Isle as to
their sure home of refuge; While sated with the life of the
isle, numbers from time to time crossed the water to the
neighbouring ones, and there presenting themselves to
strange captains as shipwrecked seamen, often succeeded in
getting on board vessels bound to the Spanish coast; and
having a compassionate purse made up for them on landing
there.

One warm night during my ﬁrst visit to the group, our
ship was ﬂoating along the languid stillness, when some one
on the forecastle shouted “Light ho!” We looked and saw
a beacon burning on some obscure land off the beam. Our
third mate was not intimate with this part of the world.
Going to the captain he said, “Sir, shall I put OH in a boat?
“These must be shipwrecked men.”

194 SHOR‘TER NOVELS 0F HERM/IN MELVILLE

The captain laughed rather grimly, as, shaking his ﬁst
towards the beacon, he rapped out an oath and said—“No,
no, you precious rascals, you don’t juggle one of my boats
ashore this blessed night. You do well, you thieves—you
do benevolently to hoist a light yonder as on a dangerous
shoal. It tempts no wise man to pull off and see What’s
the matter, but bids him steer small and keep 03 shore—
that is, Charles’s Island; brace up, Mr. Mate, and keep the
light astern.”

Sketch Eighth
NORFOLK ISLE AND THE CHOLA WIDOW

“At last they in a island did espy

A seemly woman sitting hy the shore,

That with great sorrow and sad agony
Seemed some great misfortune to deplore,

And loud to them for suacor called eoermore."

“Black his eyes as the midnight shy,
White his neck as the driven snow,
Red his cheek as the morning light;—
Cold he lies in the ground below.

My love is dead,
Gone to his death-bed,
All under the cactus tree.”

FAR to the northeast of Charles’s Isle, sequestered from
the rest, lies Norfolk Isle, and, however insigniﬁcant to
most voyagers, to me, through sympathy, that lone island
has become a spot made sacred by the strongest trials of
humanity.

It was my ﬁrst Visit to the Encantadas. Two days had
been spent ashore in hunting tortoises. There was not time
to capture many; so on the third afternoon we loosed our
sails. We were just in the act of getting under way, the

THE ENCANTADAS 195
uprooted anchor yet suspended and invisibly swaying be-
neath the wave, as the good ship gradually turned her heel
to leave the isle behind, when the seaman who heaved with
me at the Windlass paused suddenly, and directed my atten—
tion to something moving on the land, not along the beach,
but somewhat back, ﬂuttering from a height.

In View of the sequel of this little story, be it here nar—
rated how it came to pass, that an object which partly from
its being so small was quite lost to every other man on board,
still caught the eye of my handspike companion. The rest
of the crew, myself included, merely stood up to our spikes
in heaving, Whereas, unwontedly exhilarated at every turn
of the ponderous Windlass, my belted comrade leaped atop
of it, with might and main giving a downward, thewey,
perpendicular heave, his raised eye bent in cheery animation
upon the slowly receding shore. Being high lifted above
all others was the reason he perceived the object, otherwise
unperceivable: and this elevation of his eye was owing to
the elevation of his spirits; and this again—for truth must
out—to a dram of Peruvian pisco, in guerdon for some
kindness done, secretly administered to him that morning
by our mulatto steward. Now, certainly, pisco does a deal
of mischief in the world; yet seeing that, in the present case,
it was the means, though indirect, of rescuing a human being
from the most dreadful fate, must we not also needs admit
that sometimes pisco does a deal of good?

Glancing across the water in the direction pointed out,
I saw some white thing hanging from an inland rock, per-
haps half a mile from the sea.

“It is a bird, a white-winged bird, perhaps a—no; it is——
it is a handkerchief!”

“Aye, a handkerchief!” echoed my comrade, and with a
louder shout apprised the captain.

126 SHORTER NOVELS 0F HERMAN MELVILLE

Quickly now—like the running out and training of a
great gun—the long cabin spy—glass was thrust through the
mizzen rigging from the high platform of the poop; where-
upon a human ﬁgure was plainly seen upon the inland rock,
eagerly waving towards us What seemed to be the handker-
chief.

Our captain was a prompt, good fellow. Dropping the
glass, he lustily ran forward, ordering the anchor to be
dropped again; hands to stand by a boat, and lower away.

In a half—hour’s time the swift boat returned. It went
with six and came with seven; and the seventh was a woman.

It is not artistic heartlessness, but I wish I could but draw
in crayons; for this woman was a most touching sight; and
crayons, tracing softly melancholy lines, would best depict
the mournful image of the dark-damasked Chola widow.

Her story was soon told, and though given in her own
strange language was as quickly understood, for our captain
from long trading on the Chilian coast was well versed in
the Spanish. A 65010, or half-breed Indian woman of Payta
in Peru, three years gone by, with her young new-wedded
husband Felipe, of pure Castilian blood, and her one only
Indian brother, Truxill, Hunilla had taken passage on the
main in a French Whaler, commanded by a joyous man;
which vessel, bound to the cruising grounds beyond the En-
chanted Isles, proposed passing close by their vicinity. The
object of the little party was to procure tortoise oil, a ﬂuid
which for its great purity and delicacy is held in high esti—
mation wherever known; and it is well known all along
this part of the Paciﬁc coast. With a chest of clothes, tools,
cooking utensils, a rude apparatus for trying out the oil,
some casks of biscuit, and other things, not omitting two
favourite dogs, of which faithful animal all the Cholos are
very fond, Hunilla and her companions were safely landed

THE ENCJNEDAS 197
at their chosen place; the Frenchman, according to the con-
tract made ere sailing, engaged to take them off upon re-
turning from a four months’ cruise in the westward seas;
which interval the three adventurers deemed quite sufﬁcient
for their purposes.

On the isle’s lone beach they paid him in silver for their
passage out, the stranger having declined to carry them at
all except upon that condition; though willing to take every
means to insure the due fulﬁlment of his promise. Felipe
had striven hard to have this payment put OH to the period
of the ship’s return. But in vain. Still, they thought they
had, in another way, ample pledge of the good faith of
the Frenchman. It was arranged that the expenses of the
passage home should not be payable in silver, but in tor—
toises; one hundred tortoises ready captured to the returning
captain’s hand. These the Cholos meant to secure after their
own work was done, against the probable time of the French—
man’s coming back; and no doubt in prospect already felt,
that in those hundred tortoises—now somewhere ranging
in the isle’s interior—they possessed one hundred hostages.
Enough: the vessel sailed; the gazing three on shore an—
swered the loud glee of the singing crew; and ere evening,
the French craft was hull down in the distant sea, its masts
three faintest lines which quickly faded from Hunilla’s eye.

The stranger had given a blithesome promise, and had
anchored it with oaths; but oaths and anchors equally will
drag; nought else abides on ﬁckle earth but unkept promises
of joy. Contrary winds from out unstabled skies, or con-
trary moods of his more varying mind, or shipwreck and
sudden death in solitary waves; whatever was the cause, the
blithe stranger never was seen again.

Yet, however dire a calamity was here in store, misgiv—
ings of it ere due time never disturbed the Cholos’s busy

198 SHORTER NOVELS OF HERMAN MELVILLE
WWW

mind, now all intent upon the toilsome matter which had
brought them hither. Nay, by swift doom coming like the
thief at night, ere seven weeks went by, two of the little
party were removed from all anxieties of land or sea. No
more they sought to gaze with feverish fear, or still more
feverish hope, beyond the present’s horizon line, but into
the furthest future their own silent spirits sailed. By per—
severing labour beneath that burning sun, Felipe and Truxill
had brought down to their hut many scores of tortoises, and
tried out the oil, when, elated with their good success, and
to reward themselves for such hard work, they, too hastily,
made a catamaran, or Indian raft, much used on the Spanish
main, and merrily started a ﬁshing trip just without a long
reef with many jagged gaps, running parallel with the shore,
about half a mile from it. By some bad tide or hap—or
natural negligence of joyfulness (for though they could not
be heard, yet by their gestures they seemed singing at the
time), forced in deep water against that iron bar—the ill-
made catamaran was overset, and came all to pieces, when,
dashed by broad—chested swells between their broken logs and
the sharp teeth of the reef, both adventurers perished before
Hunilla’s eyes.

Before Hunilla’s eyes they sank. The real woe of this
event passed before her sight as some sham tragedy on the
stage. She was seated on a rude bower among the withered
thickets, crowning a lofty cliﬁ, a little back from the beach.
The thickets were so disposed, that in looking upon the sea
at large she peered out from among the branches as from
the lattice of a high balcony. But, upon the day we speak
of here, the better to watch the adventure of those two
hearts she loved, Hunilla had withdrawn the branches to one
side and held them so. They formed an oval frame through
which the bluey boundless sea rolled like a painted one. And

THE ENCANTADAS 199
there, the invisible painter painted to her View the wave—
tossed and disjointed raft, its once level logs slantingly up—
heaved, as raking masts, and the four struggling arms undis—
tinguishable among them; and then all subsided into smooth-
ﬂowing creamy waters, slowly drifting the splintered wreck;
while ﬁrst and last, no sound of any sort was heard. Death
in a silent picture; a dream of the eye; such vanishing shapes
as the mirage shows.

So instant was the scene, so trance—like its mild pictorial
eﬂ’ect, so distant from her blasted tower and her common
sense of things, that Hunilla gazed and gazed, nor raised
a ﬁnger or a wail. But as good to sit thus dumb, in stupor
staring on that dumb show, for all that otherwise might be
done. With half a mile of sea between, could her two en—
chanted arms aid those four fated ones? The distance long,
the time one sand. After the lightning is beheld, what fool
shall ever stay the thunderbolt? Felipe’s body was washed
ashore, but Truxill’s never came; only his gay, braided hat
of golden straw—that same sunﬂower thing he waved to
her, pushing from the strand—and now, to the last gallant,
it still saluted her. But Felipe’s body ﬂoated to the marge,
with one arm encirclingly outstretched. Lock— jawed in grim
death, the lover-husband softly clasped his bride—true to
her even in death’s dream. Ah, Heaven, when man thus
keeps his faith, wilt thou be faithless who created the faith—
ful one? But they cannot break faith who never plighted it.

It needs not to be said What nameless misery now wrapped
the lonely Widow. In telling her own story she passed this
almost entirely over, simply recounting the event. Construe
the comment of her features as you might; from her mere
words little would you have weened that Hunilla was her-
self the heroine of her tale. But not thus did she defraud
us of our tears. All hearts bled that grief could be so brave.

200 SHORTER NOVELS OF HERMAN MELVILLE

She but showed us her soul’s lid, and the strange ciphers
thereon engraved; all within, with pride’s timidity, was with-
held. Yet was there one exception. Holding out her small
olive hand before our captain, she said in mild and slowest
Spanish, “Seﬁor, I buried him 5” then paused, struggled as
against the writhed coilings of a snake, and cringing sud-
denly, leaped up, repeating‘in impassioned pain, “I buried
him, my life, my soul!”

Doubtless it was by half-unconscious, automatic motions
of her hands, that this heavy-hearted one performed the
ﬁnal ofﬁces for Felipe, and planted a rude cross of withered
sticks—no green ones might be had—at the head of that
lonely grave, where rested now in lasting uncomplaint and
quiet haven he whom untranquil seas had overthrown.

But some dull sense of another body that should be in-
terred, of another cross that should hallow another grave—-
unmade as yet; some dull anxiety and pain touching her
undiscovered brother now haunted the oppressed Hunilla.
Her hands fresh from the burial earth, she slowly went
back to the beach, with unshaped purposes wandered there,
her spellbound eye bent upon the incessant waves. But they
bore nothing to her but a dirge, which maddened her to
think that murderers should mourn. As time went by, and
these things came less dreamingly to her mind, the strong
persuasions of her Romish faith, which sets peculiar store
by consecrated urns, prompted her to resume in waking
earnest that pious search which had but been begun as in
somnambulism. Day after day, Week after week, she trod
the cindery beach, till at length a double motive edged every
eager glance. With equal longing she now looked for
the living and the dead 5 the brother and the captain; alike
vanished, never to return. Little accurate note of time had
Hunilla taken under such emotions as were hers, and little,

THE ENC/IN‘I’ADAS 20!
outside herself, served for calendar or dial. As to poor
Crusoe in the self-same sea, no saint’s bell pealed forth the
lapse of week or month; each day went by unchallenged; no
Chanticleer announced those sultry dawns, no lowing herds
those poisonous nights. All wonted and steadily recurring
sounds, human or humanized by sweet fellowship with man,
but one stirred that torrid trance,——the cry of dogs 5 save
which nought but the rolling sea invaded it, an all pervading
monotone, and to the widow that was the least loved voice
she could have heard.

No wonder that as her thoughts now wandered to the
unreturning ship, and were beaten back again, the hope
against hope so struggled in her soul, that at length she
desperately said, “Not yet, not yet, my foolish heart runs
on too fast.” She she forced patience for some further
weeks. But to those whom earth’s sure indraft draws, pa-
tience or impatience is still the same.

Hunilla now sought to settle precisely in her mind, to
an hour, how long it was since the ship had sailed; and
then, with the same precision, how long a space remained
to pass. But this proved impossible. What present day or
month it was she could not say. Time was her labyrinth,
in which Hunilla was entirely lost.

And now follows-—

Against my own purposes a pause descends upon me here.
One knows not whether nature doth not impose some secrecy
upon him who has been privy to certain things. At least,
it is to be doubted whether it be good to blazon such. If
some books are deemed most baneful and their sale forbid,
how then With deadlier facts, not dreams of doting men?
Those whom books will hurt will not be proof against events.
Events, not books, should be forbid. But in all things man
sows upon the wind, which bloweth just there whither it

202 SHORTER NOVELS OF HERMAN MELVILLE

listeth, for ill or good man cannot know. Often ill comes
from the good, as good from ill.

When Hunilla—

Dire sight it is to see some silken beast long dally with a
golden lizard ere she devour. More terrible, to see how
feline Fate will sometimes dally with a human soul, and by
a nameless magic make it repulse one sane despair with
another which is but mad. Unwittingly I imp this cat-like
thing, sporting with the heart of him who reads; for if he
feel not, he does read in vain.

-—“The ship sails this day, to—day,” at last said Hunilla
to herself ; “this gives me certain time to stand on, without
certainty I go mad. In loose ignorance I have hoped and
hoped, now in ﬁrm knowledge I will but wait. Now I live
and no longer perish in bewilderings. Holy Virgin, aid me!
Thou wilt waft back the ship. Oh, past length of weary
weeks—all to be dragged over—to buy the certainty of to—
day, I freely give ye, though I tear ye from me!”

As mariners tossed in tempest on some desolate ledge
patch them a boat out of the remnants of their vessel’s
wreck, and launch it in the self-same waves—see here
Hunilla, this lone shipwrecked soul, out of treachery invok—
ing trust. Humanity, thou strong thing. I worship thee,
not in the laurelled victor, but in this vanquished one.

Truly, Hunilla leaned upon a reed, a real one; no meta—
phor; a real Eastern reed. A piece of hollow cane, drifted
from unknown isles, and found upon the beach, its once
jagged ends rubbed smoothly even as by sand—paper; its
golden glazing gone. Long ground between the sea and
land, upper and nether stone, the unvarnished substance was
ﬁled bare, and wore another polish now, one with itself,
the polish of its agony. Circular lines at intervals cut all
round this surface, divided it into six panels of unequal

THE ENCANTADAS 203
length. In the ﬁrst were scored the days, each tenth one
marked by a longer and deeper notch, the second was scored
for the number of sea-fowl eggs for sustenance, picked out
from the rocky nests; the third, how many ﬁsh had been
caught from the shore; the fourth, how many small tortoises
found inland; the ﬁfth, how many days of sun; the sixth,
of clouds, which last, of the two, was the greater one. Long
night of busy numbering, misery’s mathematics, to weary her
too—wakeful soul to sleep; yet sleep for that Was none.

The panel of the days was deeply worn, the long tenth
notches half eEaced, as alphabets of the blind. Ten thousand
times the longing widow had traced her ﬁnger over the
bamboo—dull ﬂute, which played on, gave no sound—as if
counting birds ﬂown by in air, would hasten tortoises creep-
ing through the woods.

After the one hundred and eightieth day no further mark
was seen; that last one was the faintest, as the ﬁrst the
deepest.

“There were more days,” said our Captain; “many, many
more; why did you not go on and notch them too, Hunilla?”

“Senor, ask me not.”

“And meantime, did no other vessel pass the isle?”

“Nay, Seﬁor;———but—”

“You do not speak; but what, Hunilla?”

“Ask me not, Seﬁor.”

“You saw ships pass, far away; you waved to them; they
passed on,—was that it, Hunilla?”

“Seﬁor, be it as you say.”

Braced against her woe, Hunilla would not—durst not—
trust the weakness of her tongue. Then when our Captain
asked whether any whale—boats had

But no, I will not ﬁle this thing complete for scoﬂing souls
to quote, and call it ﬁrm proof upon their side. The half

 

204 SHOR‘TER NOVELS 0F HERMAN MELVILLE
shall here remain untold. Those two unnamed events which
befell Hunilla on this isle, let them abide between her and
her God. In nature, as in law, it may be libellous to speak
some truths.

Still, how it was that, although our vessel had lain three
days anchored nigh the isle, its one human tenant should
not have discovered us till just upon the point of sailing,
never to revisit so lone and far a spot; this needs explaining
ere the sequel come.

The place where the French captain had landed the little
party was on the farther and opposite end of the isle. There
too it was that they had afterwards built their hut. Nor did
the widow in her solitude desert the spot where her loved
ones had dwelt with her, and where the dearest of the twain
now slept his last long sleep, and all her plaints awaked him
not, and he of husbands the most faithful during life.

Now, high broken land rises between the opposite ex—
tremities of the isle. A ship anchored at one side is invisible
from the other. Neither is the isle so small but a consider-
able company might wander for days through the wilderness
of one side, and never be seen, or their halloos heard, by
any stranger holding aloof on the other. Hence Hunilla,
who naturally associated the possible coming of ships with
her own part of the isle, might to the end have remained
quite ignorant of the presence of our vessel, were it not for
a mysterious presentiment, borne to her, so our mariners
averred, by this isle’s enchanted air. Nor did the widow’s
answer undo the thought.

“How did you come to cross the isle this morning then,
Hunilla?” said our Captain.

“Seﬁor, something came ﬂitting by me. It touched my
check, my heart, Seﬁor.”

“What do you say, Hunilla?”

THE ENC/{NTAD/IS ~_ 205

“I have said, Seﬁor; something came through the air.”

It was a narrow chance. For when in crossing the isle
Hunilla gained the high land in the centre, she must then
for the ﬁrst have perceived our masts, and also marked that
their sails were being loosed, perhaps even heard the echoing
chorus of the Windlass song. The strange ship was about to
sail, and she behind. With all haste she now descends the
height on the hither side, but soon loses sight of the ship
among the sunken jungles at the mountain’s base. She
struggles on through the withered branches, which seek at
every step to bar her path, till she comes to the isolated
rock, still some way from the water. This she climbs, to re—
assure herself. The ship is still in plainest sight. But now,
worn out with over tension, Hunilla all but faints; she fears
to step down from her giddy perch, she is feign to pause,
there where she is, and as a last resort catches the turban from
her head, unfurls and waves it over the jungles towards us.

During the telling of her story the mariners formed a
voiceless circle round Hunilla and the Captain, and when at
length the word was given to man the fastest boat, and pull
round to the isle’s thither side, to bring away Hunilla’s chest
and the tortoise—oil—such alacrity of both cheery and sad
obedience seldom before was seen. Little ado was made.
Already the anchor had been recommitted to the bottom and
the ship swung calmly to it.

But Hunilla insisted upon accompanying the boat as indis—
pensable pilot to her hidden hut. So, being refreshed with
the best the steward could supply, she started with us. Nor
did ever any wife of the most famous admiral in her hus-
band’s barge receive more silent reverence of respect, than
poor Hunilla from this boat’s crew.

Rounding many a vitreous cape and bluff, in two hours’
time we shot inside the fatal reef 5 wound into a secret cove,

206 SHORTER NOVELS OF HERMAN MELVILLE
looked up along a green many-gabled lava wall, and saw the
island’s solitary dwelling.

It hung upon an impending cliff, sheltered on two sides
by tangled thickets, and half—screened from View in front by
juttings of the rude stairway, which climbed the precipice
from the sea. Built of canes, it was thatched with long,
mildewed grass. It seemed an abandoned hayrick, whose
haymakers were now no more. The roof inclined but one
way; the eaves coming to within two feet of the ground.
And here was a simple apparatus to collect the dews, or rather
doubly—distilled and ﬁnest winnowed rains, which, in mercy
or in mockery, the night skies sometimes drop upon these
blighted Encantadas. All along beneath the eave, a spotted
sheet, quite weather—stained, was spread, pinned to short,
upright stakes, set in the shallow sand. A small clinker,
thrown into the cloth, weighed its middle down, thereby
straining all moisture into a calabash placed below. This
vessel supplied each drop of water ever drunk upon the
isle by the Cholos. Hunilla told us the calabash would
sometimes, but not often, be half ﬁlled over-night. It held
six quarts, perhaps. “But,” said she, “we were used to
thirst. At Sandy Payta, Where I live, no shower from
heaven ever fell, all the water there is brought on mules
from the inland vales.”

Tied among the thickets were some twenty moaning tor-
toises, supplying Hunilla’s lonely larder; while hundreds of
vast tableted black bucklers, like displaced, shattered tomb—
stones of dark slate, were also scattered round. These were
the skeletOn backs of those great tortoises from which Felipe
and Truxill had made their precious oil. Several large cala-
bashes and two goodly kegs were ﬁlled with it. In a pot
near by were the caked crusts of a quantity which had been

THE ENCANTADJS 207
permitted to evaporate. “They meant to have strained it OE
next day,” said Hunilla, as she turned aside.

I forgot to mention the most singular sight of all, though
the ﬁrst that greeted us after landing; memory keeps not in
all things to the order of occurrence.

Some ten small, soft-haired, ringleted dogs, of a beautiful
breed, peculiar to Peru, set up a concert of glad welcomings
when we gained the beach, which was responded to by Hu—
nilla. Some of these dogs had, since her widowhood, been
born upon the isle, the progeny of the two brought from
Payta. Owing to the jagged steeps and pitfalls, tortuous
thickets, sunken clefts and perilous intricacies of all sorts in
the interior, Hunilla, admonished by the loss of one favour-
ite among them, never allowed these delicate creatures to fol—
low her in her occasional bird’s—nests climbs and other wan-
derings, so that, through long habituation, they oEered not
to follow, when that morning she crossed the land; and
her own soul was then too full of other things to heed their
lingering behind. Yet, all along she had so clung to them,
that, besides what moisture they lapped up at early day-
break from the small scoop-holes among the adjacent rocks,
she had shared the dew of her calabash among them; never
laying by any considerable store against those prolonged and
utter droughts, which in some disastrous seasons warp these
isles.

Having pointed out, at our desire, what few things she
would like transported to the ship—her chest, the oil, not
omitting the live tortoises which she intended for a grateful
present to our Captain—we immediately set to work, carry-
ing them to the boat down the long, sloping stair of deeply-
shadowed rock. While my comrades were thus employed, I
looked, and Hunilla had disappeared.

It was not curiosity alone, but, it seems to me, something

208 SHORTER NOVELS OF HERM/IN MELVILLE
different mingled with it, which prompted me to drop my
tortoises and once more gaze slowly around. I remembered
the husband buried by Hunilla’s hands. A narrow pathway
led into a dense part of the thickets. Following it through
many mazes, I came out upon a small, round, open space,
deeply chambered there.

The mound rose in the middle, a bare heap of ﬁnest sand,
like that unverdured heap found at the bottom of an hour—
glass run out. At its head stood the cross of withered sticks;
the dry, peeled bark still fraying from it; its transverse limb
tied up with rope, and forlornly adroop in the silent air.

Hunilla was partly prostrate upon the grave; her dark
head bowed, and lost in her long, loosened Indian hair; her
hands extended to the cross—foot, with a little brass cruciﬁx
clasped between; a cruciﬁx worn featureless, like an ancient
graven knocker long plied in vain. She did not see me, and
I made no noise but slid aside and left the spot.

A few moments, ere all was ready for our going, she
reappeared among us. I looked into her eyes, but saW no
tear. There was something which seemed strangely haughty
in her air, and yet it was the air of woe. A Spanish and an
Indian grief, which would not visibly lament. Pride’s height
in vain abased to proneness on the rock; nature’s pride sub—
duing nature’s torture.

Like pages the small and silken dogs surrounded her, as
she slowly descended towards the beach. She caught the
two most eager creatures in her arms:——“Mia Teeta! Mia
Tomoteeta!” and fondling them, inquired how many could
we take on board.

The mate commanded the boat’s crew; not a hard-hearted
man, but his way of life had been such that inmost things,
even in the smallest, simple utility was his leading motive.

“We cannot take them all, Hunilla; our supplies are

THE ENCANTADAS 209
short; the Winds are unreliable; we may be a good many
days going to Tombez. So take those you have, Hunilla;
but no more.”

She was in the boat; the oarsmen too were seated; all
save one, who stood ready to push 0E and then spring him-
self. With the sagacity of their race, the dogs now seemed
aware that they were in the very instant of being deserted
upon a barren strand. The gunwales of the boat were high;
its prow—presented inland—was lifted; so, owing to the
water, which they seemed instinctively to shun, the dogs
could not well leap into the little craft. But their busy
paws hard scraped the prow, as it had been some farmer’s
door shutting them out from shelter in a winter storm. A
clamorous agony of alarm. They did not howl, or whine;
they all but spoke.

“Push off! Give way!” cried the mate. The boat gave
one heavy drag and lurch, and next moment shot swiftly
from the beach, turned on her heel, and sped. The dogs
ran howling along the water’s marge; now pausing to gaze
at the ﬂying boat, then motioning as if to leap in chase, but
mysteriously withheld themselves; and again ran howling
along the beach. Had they been human beings hardly would
they have more vividly inspired the sense of desolation. The
oars were plied as confederate feathers of two Wings. No
one spoke. I looked back upon the beach, and then upon
Hunilla, but her face was set in a stern dusky calm. The
dogs crouching in her lap vainly licked her rigid hands.
She never looked behind her; but sat motionless, till we
turned a promontory of the coast and lost all sights and
sounds astern. She seemed as one who, having experienced
the sharpest of mortal pangs, was henceforth content to have
all lesser heartstrings riven, one by one. To Hunilla, pain
seemed so necessary, that pain in other beings—though by

210 SHORTER NOVELS OF HERMAN MELVILLE
love and sympathy made her own—was unrepiningly to be
borne. A heart of yearning in a frame of steel. A heart of
earthly yearning, frozen by the frost which falleth from
the sky.

The sequel is soon told. After a long passage, vexed by
calms and baﬂiing winds, we made the little port of Tombez
in Peru, there to recruit the ship. Payta was not very distant.
Our captain sold the tortoise oil to a Tombez merchant;
and adding to the silver a contribution from all hands, gave
it to our silent passenger, who knew not what the mariners
had done.

The last seen of lone Hunilla she was passing into Payta
town, riding upon a small gray ass; and before her on the
ass’s shoulders, she eyed the jointed workings of the beast’s
armorial cross.

S he t e h Nin t h
HOOD’S ISLE AND THE HERMIT OBERLUS

“That darhemrne glen they enter, where they ﬁnd
That eur:ed man low :itting on the ground,
Mu:ing full :adly in hi: :ullein mind,-

Hi: grie:ly loehe: long grouen and unbound,
Di:ordered hong ahout hi: :houlder: round,

And hid hi: face, through which hi: hollow eyne
Looht deadly dull, and :tared a: a:tound,-

Hi: raw—hone eheehe:, through penurie and pine,
Were :hronhe into the jawe:, a: he did never dine.
Hi: garment: nought hut many ragged elout:,
With thorne: together find and patched read:,
The which hi: nahed :ide: he wrapt ahoutn”

To southeast of Crossman’s Isle lies Hood’s Isle, or
McCain’s Beclouded Isle; and upon its south side is a
vitreous cove with a wide strand of dark pounded black lava,

THE ENCAN‘I’AD/IS 21 I
called Black Beach, or Oberlus’s Landing. It might ﬁtly
have been styled Charon’s.

It received its name from a wild white creature who spent
many years here; in the person of a European bringing into
this savage region qualities more diabolical than are to be
found among any of the surrounding cannibals.

About half a century ago, Oberlus deserted at the above-
named island, then, as now, a solitude. He built himself
a den of lava and clinkers, about a mile from the Landing,
subsequently called after him, in a vale, or expanded gulch,
containing here and there among the rocks about two acres
of soil capable of rude cultivation; the only place on the isle
not too blasted for that purpose. Here he succeeded in rais-
ing a sort of degenerate potatoes and pumpkins, which from
time to time he exchanged with needy whalemen passing, for
spirits or dollars.

His appearance, from all accounts, was that of the victim
of some malignant sorceress; he seemed to have drunk of
Circe’s cup; beast—like; rags insufﬁcient to hide his nakedness;
his befreckled skin blistered by continual exposure to the
sun; nose ﬂat; countenance contorted, heavy, earthy; hair
and beard unshorn, profuse, and of a ﬁery red. He struck
strangers much as if he were a volcanic creature thrOWn up
by the same convulsion which exploded into sight the isle.
All bepatched and coiled asleep in his lonely lava den among
the mountains, he looked, they say, as a heaped drift of
withered leaves, torn from autumn trees, and so left in
some hidden nook by the whirling halt for an instant of a
ﬁerce night—Wind, which then ruthlessly sweeps on, some-
were else to repeat the capricious act. It is also reported to
have been the strangest sight, this same Oberlus, of a sultry,
cloudy morning, hidden under his shocking old black tar-
paulin hat, hoeing potatoes among the lava. So warped and

212 SHORTER NOVELS 0F HERMAN MELVILLE
WWW—WW

crooked was his strange nature, that the very handle of his
hoe seemed gradually to have shrunk and twisted in his
grasp, being a wretched bent stick, elbowed more like a
savage’s war-sickle than a civilized hoe—handle. It was his
mysterious custom upon a ﬁrst encounter with a stranger
ever to present his back; possibly, because that was his better
side, since it revealed the least. If the encounter chanced in
his garden, as it sometimes did—the new—landed strangers
going from the sea—side straight through the gorge, to hunt
up the queer green—grocer reported doing business here—
Oberlus for a time hoed on, unmindful of all greeting, jovial
or bland; as the curious stranger would turn to face him,
the recluse, hoe in hand, as diligently would avert himself;
bowed over, and sullenly revolving round his murphy hill.
Thus far for hoeing. When planting, his whole aspect and
all his gestures were so malevolently and uselessly sinister
and secret, that he seemed rather in act of dropping poison
into wells than potatoes into soil. But among his lesser and
more harmless marvels was an idea he ever had, that his
visitors came equally as well led by longings to behold the
mighty hermit Oberlus in his royal state of solitude, as simply
to obtain potatoes, or ﬁnd whatever company might be upon
a barren isle. It seems incredible that such a being should
possess such vanity; a misanthrope be conceited; but he really
had his notion; and upon the strength of it, often gave him—
self amusing airs to captains. But after all, this is somewhat
of a piece with the well—known eccentricity of some convicts,
proud of that very hatefulness which makes them notorious.
At other times, another unaccountable whim would seize
him, and he would long dodge advancing strangers round the
clinkered corners of his hut, sometimes like a stealthy bear,
he would slink through the withered thickets up the moun—
tains, and refuse to see the human face.

THE EWCANTADAS 2:3

Except his occasional visitors from the sea—for a long
period—the only companions of Oberlus were the crawling
tortoises; and he seemed more than degraded to their level,
having no desires for a time beyond theirs, unless it were
for the stupor brought on by drunkenness. But suﬂiciently
debased as he appeared, there yet lurked in him, only await—
ing occasion for discovery, a still further proneness. Indeed
the sole superiority of Oberlus over the tortoises was his
possession of a larger capacity of degradation, and along
with that, something like an intelligent will to it. More—
over, what is about to be revealed, perhaps will show, that
selﬁsh ambition, or the love of rule for its own sake, far
from being the peculiar inﬁrmity of noble minds, is shared
by beings which have no mind at all. No creatures are so
selﬁshly tyrannical as some brutes; as any one who has
observed the tenants of the pasture must occasionally have
observed.

“This island’s mine by-Sycorax my mother,” said Oberlus
to himself, glaring round upon his haggard solitude. By
some means, barter or theft—for in those days ships at
intervals still kept touching at his Landing—he obtained an
old musket, with a few charges of powder and ball.
Possessed of arms, he was stimulated to enterprise, as a tiger
that ﬁrst feels the coming of its claws. The long habit of
sole dominion over every object round him, his almost un—
broken solitude, his never encountering humanity except on
terms of misanthropic independence, or mercantile craftiness,
and even such encounters being comparatively but rare; all
this must have gradually nourished in him a vast idea of his
own importance, together With a pure animal sort of scorn
for all the rest of the universe.

The unfortunate Creole, who enjoyed his brief term of
royalty at Charles’s Isle, was perhaps in some degree in~

214 SHORTER NOVELS OF HERW/{N MELVILLEW

ﬂuenced by not unworthy motives; such as prompt other
adventurous spirits to lead colonists into distant regions and
assume political pre-eminence over them. His summary
execution of many of his Peruvians is quite pardonable, con—
sidering the desperate characters he had to deal with; while
his offering canine battle to the banded rebels seems under the
circumstances altogether just. But for this King Oberlus
and what shortly follows, no shade of palliation can be given.
He acted out of mere delight in tyranny and cruelty, by
virtue of a quality in him inherited from Sycorax his mother.
Armed now with that shocking blunderbuss, strong in the
thought of being master of that horrid isle, he panted for a
chance to prove his potency upon the ﬁrst specimen of
humanity which should fall unbefriended into his hands.

Nor was he long Without it. One day he spied a boat upon
the beach, with one man, a negro, standing by it. Some dis—
tance 0E was a ship, and Oberlus immediately knew how
matters stood. The vessel had put in for wood, and the
boat’s crew had gone into the thickets for it. From a con-
venient spot he kept watch of the boat, till presently a strag-
gling company appeared loaded with billets. Throwing
these on the beach, they again went into the thickets, while
the negro proceeded to load the boat.

Oberlus now makes all haste and accosts the negro, who,
aghast at seeing any living being inhabiting such a solitude,
and especially so horriﬁc a one, immediately falls into a
panic, not at all lessened by the ursine suavity of Oberlus,
who begs the favour of assisting him in his labours. The
negro stands with several billets on his shoulder, in act of
shouldering others; and Oberlus, with a short cord concealed
in his bosom, kindly proceeds to lift those other billets to
their place. In so doing he persists in keeping behind the
negro, who rightly suspicious of this, in vain dodges about to

THE ENCANTﬂD/{S 215
gain the front of Oberlus; but Oberlus dodges also; till at
last, weary of this bootless attempt at treachery, or fearful of
being surprised by the remainder of the party, Oberlus runs
off a little space to a bush, and fetching his blunderbuss,
savagely demands the negro to desist work and follow him.
He refuses. Whereupon, presenting his piece, Oberlus snaps
at him. Luckily the blunderbuss misses ﬁre; but by this
time, frightened out of his wits, the negro, upon a second
intrepid summons, drops his billets, surrenders at discretion,
and follows on. By a narrow deﬁle familiar to him, Oberlus
speedily removes out of sight of the water.

On their way up the mountains, he exultingly informs the
negro, that henceforth he is to work for him, and be his
slave, and that his treatment would entirely depend on his
future conduct. But Oberlus, deceived by the ﬁrst impulsive
cowardice of the black, in an evil moment slackens his
vigilance. Passing through a narrow way, and perceiving his
leader quite off his guard, the negro, a powerful fellow,
suddenly grasps him in his arms, throws him down, wrests
his musketoon from him, ties his hands with the monster’s
own cord, shoulders him, and returns with him down to the
boat. When the rest of the party arrive, Oberlus is carried
on board the ship. This proved him an Englishman and
a smuggler—a sort of craft not apt to be over-charitable.
Oberlus is severely whipped, then handcuffed, taken ashore,
and compelled to make known his habitation and produce his
property. His potatoes, pumpkins, and tortoises, with a pile
of dollars he had hoarded from his mercantile operations,
were secured on the spot. But While the too vindictive smug-
glers were busy destroying his but and garden, Oberlus
makes his escape into the mountains, and conceals himself
there in impenetrable recesses, only known to himself, till
the ship sails, when he ventures back, and by means of an

216 SHOR‘TER NOVELS OF HERMJN MELVILLE
old ﬁle which he sticks into a tree, contrives to free himself
from his handcuffs.

Brooding among the ruins of his hut, and the desolate
clinkers and extinct volcanoes of this outcast isle, the insulted
misanthrope now meditates a signal revenge upon humanity,
but conceals his purposes. Vessels still touch the Landing
at times; and by and by Oberlus is enabled to supply them
with some vegetables.

Warned by his former failure in kidnapping strangers,
he now pursues a quite different plan. When seamen come
ashore, he makes up to them like a free—and—easy comrade,
invites them to his hut, and with whatever affability his red-
haired grimness may assume, entreats them to drink his
liquor and be merry. But his guests need little pressing;
and so, soon as rendered insensible, are tied hand and foot,
and pitched among the clinkers, are there concealed till the
ship departs, when—ﬁnding themselves entirely dependent
upon Oberlus, alarmed at his changed demeanour, his savage
threats, and above all that shocking blunderbuss—they will—
ingly enlist under him, becoming his humble slaves, and
ObCl‘llIS the most incredible of tyrants. So much so, that
two or three perish beneath his initiating process. He sets
the remainder—four of them—to breaking the caked soil,
transporting upon their backs loads of loamy earth, scooped
up in moist clefts among the mountains; keeps them on the
roughest fare, presents his piece at the slightest hint of
insurrection; and in all respects converts them into reptiles at
his feet; plebeian garter-snakes to this Lord Anaconda.

At last, Oberlus contrives to stock his arsenal with four
rusty cutlasses, and an added supply of powder and ball
intended for his blunderbuss. Remitting in good part the
labour of his slaves, he now approves himself a man——or
rather devil—of great abilities in the way of cajoling or

THE ENCANTADJS 217
coercing others into acquiescence with his own ulterior de-
signs, however at ﬁrst abhorrent to them. But indeed, pre—
pared for almost any eventual evil by their previous lawless
life, as a sort of ranging Cow—Boys of the sea, which had
dissolved within them the whole moral man, so that they
were ready to concrete in the ﬁrst oﬁered mould of baseness
now; rotted down from manhood by their hopeless misery
on the isle, wonted to cringe in all things to their lord, him—
self the worst of slaves; these wretches were now become
wholly corrupted to his hands. He used them as creatures
of an inferior race; in short, he gaﬂies his four animals, and
makes murderers of them; out of cowards ﬁtly manufactur—
Ing bravos.

Now, sword or dagger, human arms are but artiﬁcial claws
and fangs, tied on like false spurs to the ﬁghting cock. So,
we repeat, Oberlus, czar of the isle, gaﬂies his four subjects;
that is, with intent of glory, puts four rusty cutlasses into
their hands. Like any other autocrat, he had a noble army
now.

It might be thought a servile war would hereupon ensue.
Arms in the hands of trodden slaves? how indiscreet of
Emperors, Oberlus! Nay, they had but cutlasses—sad old
scythes enough—he a blunderbuss, which by its blind scatter—
ings of all sorts of boulders, clinkers and other scoria would
annihilate all four mutineers, like four pigeons at one shot.
Besides, at ﬁrst he did not sleep in his accustomed hut; every
lurid sunset, for a time, he might have been seen wending
his way among the riven mountains, there to secrete himself
till dawn in some sulphurous pitfall, undiscoverable to his
gang, but ﬁnding this at last too troublesome, he now each
evening tied his slaves hand and foot, hid the cutlasses, and
thrusting them into his barracks, shut to the door, and lying

218 SHORTER NOVELS 0F HERMIL'N MELVILLEW
down before it, beneath a rude shed lately added, slept out
the night, blunderbuss in hand.

It is supposed that not content with daily parading over a
cindery solitude at the head of his ﬁne army, Oberlus now
meditated the most active mischief; his probable object being
to surprise some passing ship touching at his dominions,
massacre the crew, and run away with her to parts unknown.
While these plans were simmering in his head, two ships
touch in company at the isle, on the opposite side to his, when
his designs undergo a sudden change.

The ships are in want of vegetables, which Oberlus prom-
ises in great abundance, provided they send their boats round
to his landing, so that the crews may bring the vegetables
from his garden, informing the two captains, at the same
time, that his rascals—slaves and soldiers—had become so
abominably lazy and good—for-nothing of late, that he could
not make them work by ordinary inducements, and did not
have the heart to be severe with them.

The arrangement was agreed to, and the boats were sent
and hauled upon the beach. The crews went to the lava but;
but to their surprise nobody was there. After waiting till
their patience was exhausted, they returned to the shore,
when lo, some stranger—not the Good Samaritan either—
seems to have very recently passed that way. Three of the
boats were broken in a thousand pieces, and the fourth was
missing. By hard toil over the mountains and through the
clinkers, some of the strangers succeeded in returning to that
side of the isle where the ships lay, when fresh boats are sent
to the relief of the rest of the hapless party.

However, amazed at the treachery of Oberlus, the two
captains, afraid of new and still more mysterious atrocities,—
and indeed, half imputing such strange events to the enchant-
ments associated with these isles,—perceive no security but

THE EJ‘CCJNT/IDAS 219
in instant ﬂight; leaving Oberlus and his army in quiet pos—
session of the stolen boat.

On the eve of sailing they put a letter in a keg, giving
the Paciﬁc Ocean intelligence of the aﬁair, and moored the
keg in the bay. Some time subsequent, the keg was opened
by another captain chancing to anchor there, but not until
after he had dispatched a boat round to Oberlus’s Landing.
As may be readily surmised, he felt no little inquietude till
the boat’s return; when another letter was handed him, giv-
ing Oberlus’s version of the aﬁair. This precious document
had been found pinned half—mildewed to the clinker wall of
the sulphurous and deserted hut. It ran as follows; showing
that Oberlus was at least an accomplished writer, and no
mere boor; and what is more, was capable of the most tristful
eloquence.

“Sir: I am the most unfortunate ill-treated gentleman that
lives. I am a patriot, exiled from country by the cruel hand
of tyranny.

“Banished to these Enchanted Isles, I have again and again
besought captains of ships to sell me a boat, but always have
been refused, though I offered the handsomest prices in
Mexican dollars. At length an opportunity presented of
possessing myself of one, and I did not let it slip.

“I have been long endeavouring by hard labour and much
solitary suﬁering to accumulate something to make myself
comfortable in a virtuous though unhappy old age; but at
various times have been robbed and beaten by men professing
to be Christians.

“To-day I sail from the Enchanted group in the good boat
Charity bound to the Feejee Isles.

“FATHERLESS OBERLUS.

“RS—Behind the clinkers, nigh the oven, you will ﬁnd
the old fowl. Do not kill it; be patient, I leave it setting,

220 SHORTER {NOVELS OF HERMAN MELVILLE
if it shall have any chicks, I hereby bequeathe them to you,
whoever you may be. But don’t count your chicks before
they are hatched.”

The fowl proved a starveling rooster, reduced to a sitting
posture by sheer debility.

Oberlus declares that he was bound to the Feejee Isles;
but this was only to throw pursuers on a false scent. For
after a long time he arrived, alone in his open boat, at Guay-
aquil. As his miscreants were never again beheld on Hood’s
Isle, it is supposed, either that they perished for want of
water on the passage to Guayaquil, or, what is quite as prob-
able, were thrown overboard by Oberlus, when he found
the water growing scarce.

From Guayaquil Oberlus proceeded to Payta; and there,
with that nameless witchery peculiar to some of the ugliest
animals, wound himself into the affections of a tawny dam—
sel; prevailing upon her to accompany him back to his En-
chanted Isle, which doubtless he painted as a Paradise of
ﬂowers, not a Tartarus of clinkers.

But unfortunately for the colonization of Hood’s Isle
with a choice variety of animated nature, the extraordinary
and deliVish aspect of Oberlus made him to be regarded in
Payta as a highly suspicious character. So that being found
concealed one night, with matches in his pocket, under the
hull of a small vessel just ready to be launched, he was seized
and thrown into jail.

The jails in most South American towns are generally of
the least wholesome sort. Built of huge cakes of sunburnt
brick, and containing but one room, without windows or
yard, and but one door heavily grated with wooden bars, they
present both within and without the grimmest aspect. As
public ediﬁces they conspicuously stand upon the hot and
dusty Plaza, offering to view, through the gratings, their

THE ENCANT/IDAS 221
villainous and hopeless inmates, burrowing in all sorts of
tragic squalor. And here, for a long time, Oberlus was
seen 5 the central ﬁgure of a mongrel and assassin band, a
creature whom it is religion to detest, since it is philanthropy
to hate a misanthrope.

Note—They who may be disposed to question the possibility of the character above
depicted, are referred to the 2d vol. of Porter’s Voyage into the Paciﬁc, where they will
recognize many sentences, for expedition’s sake derived verbatim from thence, and incor-
porated here; the main difference—save a few passing reﬂections—between the two
accounts being, that the present writer had added to Porter’s facts accessory ones picked
up in the Pacific from reliable sources; and where facts conﬂict, has naturaly preferred
his own authorities to Porter’s. As, for instance, his authorities place Oberlus on Hood’s
Isle: Porter’s, on Charles’s Isle. The letter found in the but is also somewhat different,
for while at the Encantadas he was informed that not only did it evince a certain clerkliness,
but was full of the strangest satiric effrontery which does not adequately appear in Porter’s
version. I accordingly altered it to suit the general character of its author.

S 16 e t c 12 T e n t I;
RUNAWAYS, CASTAWAYS, SOLITAIRES, GRAVESTONES, ETC.

“And all about old :toc/é: and 512455 of trees,
Wlwreon nor fruit nor leaf was ever seen,
Did lmng upon the ragged knotty knew,
On w/zic/z Izad many wretc/Lw [ranged been.”

SOME relics of the hut of Oberlus partially remain to this
day at the head of the clinkered valley. Nor does the
stranger wandering among other of the Enchanted Isles fail
to stumble upon still other solitary abodes, long abandoned to
the tortoise and the lizard. Probably few parts of earth have
in modern times sheltered so many solitaries. The reason
is, that these isles are situated in a distant sea, and the vessels
which occasionally visit them are mostly all Whalers, or ships
bound on dreary and protracted voyages, exempting them in
a good degree from both the oversight and the memory of
human law. Such is the character of some commanders and
some seamen, that under these untoward circumstances, it is

222 SHORTER NOVELS OF HERMAN MELVILLEW
quite impossible but that scenes of unpleasantness and discord
should occur between them. A sullen hatred of the tyrannic
ship will seize the sailor, and he gladly exchanges it for the
isles, which though blighted as by a continual sirocco and
burning breeze, still offer him in their labyrinthine interior,
a retreat beyond the possibility of capture. To ﬂee the ship
in any Peruvian or Chilian port, even the smallest and most
rustical, is not unattended with great risk of apprehension,
not to speak of jaguars. A reward of ﬁve pesos sends ﬁfty
dastardly Spaniards into the woods, who with long knives
scour them day and night in eager hopes of securing their
prey. Neither is it, in general, much easier to escape pursuit
at the isles of Polynesia. Those of them which have felt a
civilizing inﬂuence present the same difﬁculty to the runaway
with the Peruvian ports. The advanced natives being quite
as mercenary and keen of knife and scent as the retrograde
Spaniards, while, owing to the bad odour in which all
Europeans lie in the minds of aboriginal savages who have
chanced to hear aught of them, to desert the ship among
primitive Polynesians, is, in most cases, a hope not unforlorn.
Hence the Enchanted Isles become the voluntary tarrying
places of all sorts of refugees, some of whom too sadly ex—
perience the fact that ﬂight from tyranny does not of itself
insure a safe asylum, far less a happy home.

Moreover, it has not seldom happened that hermits have
been made upon the isles by the accidents incident to tortoise-
hunting. The interior of most of them IS tangled and difﬁ-
cult of passage beyond description, the air is sultry and
stiﬂing, an intolerable thirst 1s provoked, for which no run-
ning stream oﬁers its kind relief. In a few hours, under an
equatorial sun, reduced by these causes to entire exhaustion,
woe betide the straggler at the Enchanted Isles! Their
extent is such as to forbid an adequate search unless weeks

THE ENCANTADJS 223

vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv

are devoted to it. The impatient ship waits a day or two;
when, the missing man remaining undiscovered, up goes a
stake on the beach, with a letter of regret, and a keg of
crackers and another of water tied to it, and away sails the
craft.

Nor have there been wanting instances where the inhu-
manity of some captains has led them to wreak a secure
revenge upon seamen Who have given their caprice or pride
some singular oEence. Thrust ashore upon the scorching
marl, such mariners are abandoned to perish outright, unless
by solitary labours they succeed in discovering some precious
dribblets of moisture oozing from a rock or stagnant in a
mountain pool.

I was well acquainted with a man, Who, lost upon the Isle
of Narborough, was brought to such extremes by thirst, that
at last he only saved his life by taking that of another being.
A large hair—seal came upon the beach. He rushed upon
it, stabbed it in the neck, and then throwing himself upon the
panting body quaﬁed at the living wound; the palpitations
of the creature’s dying heart injecting life into the drinker.

Another seaman thrust ashore in a boat upon an isle at
which no ship ever touched, owing to its peculiar sterility
and the shoals about it, and from which all other parts of
the group were hidden; this man feeling that it was sure
death to remain there, and that nothing worse than death
menaced him in quitting it, killed two seals, and inﬂating
their skins, made a ﬂoat, upon which he transported himself
to Charles’s Island, and joined the republic there.

But men not endowed with courage equal to such desperate
attempts, ﬁnd their only resource in forthwith seeking for
some watery place, however precarious or scanty; building
a hut; catching tortoises and birds; and in all respects pre—

224. SHORTER NOVELS OF HERM/IJ‘C MELVILLEW
paring for hermit life, till tide or time, or a passing ship,
arrives to ﬂoat them OE.

At the foot of precipices on many of the isles, small rude
basins in the rocks are found, partly ﬁlled with rotted rubbish
or vegetable decay, or overgrown with thickets, and some-
times a little moist; which, upon examination, reveal plain
tokens of artiﬁcial instruments employed in hollowing them
out, by some poor castaway or still more miserable runaway.
These basins are made in places Where it was supposed some
scanty drops of dew might exude into them from the upper
crevices.

The relics of hermitages and stone basins are not the only
signs of vanishing humanity to be found upon the isles. And
curious to say, that spot which of all others in settled com—
munities is most animated, at the Enchanted Isles presents
the most dreary of aspects. And though it may seem very
strange to talk of post—ofﬁces in this barren region, yet post-
ofﬁces are occasionally to be found there. They consist of a
stake and bottle. The letters being not only sealed, but
corked. They are generally deposited by captains of Nan«
tucketers for the beneﬁt of passing ﬁsherman, and contain
statements as to what luck they had in whaling or tortoise—
hunting. Frequently, however, long months and months,
Whole years glide by and no applicant appears. The stake
rots and falls, presenting no very exhilarating object.

If now it be added that grave—stones, or rather grave-
boards, are also discovered upon some of the isles, the picture
will be complete.

Upon the beach of James’s Isle for many years was to be
seen a rude ﬁnger—post pointing inland. And perhaps taking
it for some signal of possible hospitality in this otherwise
desolate spot—some good hermit living there with his maple
dish——the stranger would follow on in the path thus indi-

weanedmmms 225

 

cated, till at last he would come out in a noiseless nook, and
ﬁnd his only welcome, a dead man; his sole greeting the
inscription over a grave: “Here, in 1813, fell in a daybreak
duel, a Lieutenant of the U.S. frigate Essex, aged twenty—
one: attaining his majority in death.”

It is but ﬁt that—like those old monastic institutions of
Europe, whose inmates go not out of their own walls to be
inurned, but are entombed there where they die—the En—
cantadas too should bury their own dead, even as the great
general monastery of earth does hers.

It is known that burial in the ocean is a pure necessity of
sea—faring life, and that it is only done when land is far
astern, and not clearly visible from the bow. Hence, to
vessels cruising in the vicinity of the Enchanted Isles, they
afford a convenient Potter’s Field. The interment over,
some good—natured forecastle poet and artist seizes his paint—
brush, and inscribes a doggerel epitaph. When after a long
lapse of time, other good—natured seamen chance to come
upon the spot, they usually make a table of the mound, and
quaﬂ: a friendly can to the poor soul’s repose.

As a specimen of these epitaphs take the followmg, found
in a bleak gorge of Chatham Isle :—

“012 Brother Jack, a; you par: 5y,
A: you are now, .ro once we: l.
.1th :0 game am! ﬂat :0 gay,
But now, elect, tlzey’oe xtopped my pay.
No more I peep out of my blink”,
Here I 5ee—tucked in with clinken!”

‘i'féa.

i 1".

 

BILLY ‘BUDD, FORE TOPMAN

WHAT BEFELL HIM IN THE YEAR OF
THE GREAT MUTINY

Begun—Friday, November 16, 1888.
Revision begun—March 2, 1889.
Finished—April 19, I891.

DEDICATED
TO
JACK CHASE

ENGLISHMAN

WHEREVER THAT GREAT HEART MAY NOW BE
HERE ON EARTH OR HARBOURED IN PARA‘
DISE. CAPTAIN OF THE MAINTOP IN THE YEAR
1843 IN THE U.s. FRIGATE “UNITED STATES”

Preface

THE year 1797, the year of this narrative, belongs to a
period which, as every thinker now feels, involved a crisis
for Christendom not exceeded in its undetermined momen—
tousness at the time by any other era whereof there is record.
The opening proposition made by the Spirit of that Age *
involved rectiﬁcation of the Old World’s hereditary wrongs.
In France, to some extent, this was bloodily effected. But
what then.P Straightway the Revolution itself became a
wrongdoer, one more oppressive than the kings. Under
Napoleon it enthroned upstart kings, and initiated that pro—
longed agony of continual war whose ﬁnal throe was Water—
loo. During those years not the wisest could have foreseen
that the outcome of all would be what to some thinkers ap—
parently it has since turned out to be—a political advance
along nearly the Whole line for Europeans.

Now, as elsewhere hinted, it was something caught from
the Revolutionary Spirit that at Spithead emboldened the
man-of—war’s men to rise against real abuses, long-standing
ones, and afterwards at the Nore to make inordinate and ag—
gressive demands—successful resistance to which was con~
ﬁrmed only when the ringleaders were hung for an admoni‘
tory spectacle to the anchored ﬂeet. Yet in a way analogous
to the operation of the Revolution at large—the Great
Mutiny, though by Englishmen naturally deemed mon-
strous at the time, doubtless gave the ﬁrst latent prompting
to most important reforms in the British navy.

*Crosed out; was one hailed by the noblest men of it. Even the dry tinder of
a Wordsworth took ﬁre.

BILLY BUDD, FORE TOPMAN

WHAT BEFELL HIM IN THE YEAR OF THE
GREAT MUTINY, ETC.

CHAPTER I

(An inside Narrative)

IN the time before steamships, or then more frequently
than now, a stroller along the docks of any considerable
seaport would occasionally have his attention arrested by a
group of bronzed marines, man-of—war’s men or merchant—
sailors in holiday attire ashore on liberty. In certain in—
stances they would ﬂank, or, like a bodyguard, quite sur—
round some superior ﬁgure of their own class, moving along
with them like Aldebaran among the lesser lights of his
constellation. That signal object was the “Handsome Sailor”
of the less prosaic time, alike of the military and merchant
navies. With no perceptible trace of the vainglorious about
him, rather with the oil-hand unaffectedness of natural re-
gality, he seemed to accept the spontaneous homage of his
shipmates. A somewhat remarkable instance recurs to me.
In Liverpool, now half a century ago I saw under the shadow
of the great dingy street—wall of Prince’s Dock (an obstruc—
tion long since removed) a common sailor, so intensely
black that he must needs have been a native African of the
unadulterated blood of Ham. A symmetric ﬁgure, much
above the average in height. The two ends of a gay silk
handkerchief thrown loose about the neck danced upon the
displayed ebony of his chest; in his ears Were big hoops of

229

230 SHORTER NOVELS OF HERMAN MELVILLE

gold, and a Scotch Highland bonnet with a tartan band set
off his shapely head.

It was a hot noon in July, and his face, lustrous with per-
spiration, beamed with barbaric good-humour. In jovial
sallies right and left, his white teeth ﬂashing into View, he
rollicked along, the centre of a company of his shipmates.
These were made up of such an assortment of tribes and
complexions as would have well ﬁtted them to be marched
up by Anacharsis Cloots before the bar of the ﬁrst French
Assembly as Representatives of the Human Race. At each"
spontaneous tribute rendered by the wayfarers to this black .
pagod of a fellow—the tribute of a pause and stare, and less
frequent an exclamation—the motley retinue showed that
they took that sort of pride in the evoker of it which the
Assyrian priests doubtless showed for their grand sculptured
Bull when the faithful prostrated themselves. To return—

If in some cases a bit of a nautical Murat in setting forth
his person ashore, the Handsome Sailor of the period in ques-
tion evinced nothing of the dandiﬁed Billy—be—Damn—an
amusing character all but extinct now, but occasionally to be
encountered, and in a form yet more amusing than the origi-
nal, at the tiller of the boats on the tempestuous Erie Canal
or, more likely, vapouring in the groggeries along the tow-
path. Invariably a proﬁcient in his perilous calling, he was
also more or less of a mighty boxer or wrestler. It Was
strength and beauty. Tales of his prowess were recited.
Ashore he was the champion; aﬂoat the spokesman; on every
suitable occasion always foremost. Close—reefing topsails in
a gale, there he was—astride the weather yard—arm-end,
foot in “stirrup,” both hands tugging at the “ear—ring” as at
a bridle, in very much the attitude of the young Alexander
curbing the ﬁery Bucephalus. A superb ﬁgure, tossed up as

{BILLY BUDD, FORETOPM/YN 231
by the horns of Taurus against the thunderous sky, cheerily
ballooning to the strenuous ﬁle along the spar.

The moral nature was seldom out of keeping with the
physical make. Indeed, except as toned by the former, the
comeliness and power, always attractive in masculine perfec-
tion, hardly could have drawn the sort of homage the Hand-
some Sailor, in some examples, received from his less gifted
associates.

Such a cynosure, at least in aspect, and something such too
in nature, though with important variations made apparent
as the story proceeds, was welkin—eyed Billy Budd, or Baby
Budd—as more familiarly, under circumstances hereafter
to be given, he at last came to be called—aged twenty—one,
a foretopman of the ﬂeet towards the close of the last dec-
ade of the eighteenth century. It was not very long prior
to the time of the narration that follows, that he had end
tered the King’s Service, having been impressed on the
Narrow Seas from a homeward—bound English merchant-
man into a seventy-four outward—bound, H.M.S. Indomim—
He; which ship, as was not unusual in those hurried days,
had been obliged to put to sea short of her proper comple~
ment of men.‘ Plump upon Billy at ﬁrst sight in the gang-
way the boarding ofﬁcer, Lieutenant Ratcliﬁe, pounced, even
before the merchantman’s crew formally was mustered on
the quarter-deck for his deliberate inspection. And him
only he elected. For whether it was because the other
men when ranged before him showed to ill advantage after
Billy, or Whether he had some scruples in View of the
merchantman being rather short—handed; however it might
be, the ofﬁcer contented himself with his ﬁrst spontaneous
choice. To the surprise of the ship’s company, though much
to the Lieutenant’s satisfaction, Billy made no demur. But

232 SHORTER NOVELS OF HERM/IN MELVILLE

indeed any demur would have been as idle as the protest
of a goldﬁnch popped into a cage.

Noting this uncomplaining asquiescence, all but cheerful
one might say, the shipmates turned a surprised glance of
silent reproach at the sailor. The shipmaster was one of
those worthy mortals found in every vocation,—even the
humbler ones,—the sort of person whom everybody agrees
in calling “a respectable man.” And—nor so strange to
report as it may appear to be—though a ploughman of the
troubled waters, life—long contending with the intractable
elements, there was nothing this honest soul at heart loved
better than simple peace and quiet. For the rest, he was
ﬁfty or thereabouts, a little inclined to corpulence, a pre-
possessing face, unwhiskered, and of an agreeable colour—
a rather full face, humanely intelligent in expression. On
a fair day with a fair Wind and all going well, a certain
musical chime in his voice seemed to be the Veritable un—
obstructed outcome of the innermost man. He had much
prudence, much conscientiousness, and there were occasions
when these Virtues were the cause of overmuch disquietude
in him. On a passage, so long as his craft was in any prox—
imity to land, there was no sleep for Captain Graveling.
He took to heart those serious responsibilities not so heavily
borne by some shipmasters.

Now, while Billy Budd was down in the forecastle, get—
ting his kit together, the Indomitable’: Lieutenant—burly
and bluﬂ, nowise disconcerted by Captain_Graveling’s omit—
ting to profer the customary hospitalities Eran occasion so
unwelcome to him; an omission simply caused by preoccupa-
tion of thought—unceremoniously invited himself into the
cabin, and also to a ﬂask from the spirit locker, a re—
ceptacle Which his experienced eye instantly discovered. In
fact, he was one of those sea—dogs in whom all the hard—

BILLY .‘BUDD, FORE‘TOPMAN 233
ship and peril of naval life in the great prolonged wars of
his time never impaired the natural instinct for sensuous
enjoyment. His duty he always faithfully did; but duty
is sometimes a dry obligation, and he was for irrigating its
aridity Whensoever possible with a fertilizing decoction of
strong waters. For the cabin’s proprietor there was nothing
left but to play the part of the enforced host with what—
ever grace and alacrity were practicable. As necessary ad—
juncts to the ﬂask he silently placed tumbler and water-jug
before the irrepressible guest. But excusing himself from
partaking just then, he dismally watched the unembarrassed
oﬂicer deliberately diluting his grog a little, then tossing it
off in three swallows, pushing the empty tumbler away,
yet not so far as to be beyond easy reach, at the same time
settling himself in his seat and smacking his lips with high
satisfaction, looking straight at the host.

These proceedings over the Master broke the silence, and
there lurked a rueful reproach in the tone of his voice:
“Lieutenant, you are going to take my best man from me,
the jewel of ’em.”

“Yes, I know,” rejoined the other, immediately drawing
back the tumbler preliminary to a replenishing; “Yes, I
know. Sorry.”

“Beg pardon, but you don’t understand, Lieutenant. See
here now. Before I shipped that young fellow, my fore-
castle was a rat—pit of quarrels. It was black times, I tell
you, aboard the “Rights” here. I was worried to that de—
gree my pipe had no comfort for me. But Billy came;
and it was like a Catholic priest striking peace in an Irish
shindy. Not that he preached to them or said or did any—
thing in particular, but a virtue went out of him, sugaring
the sour ones. They took to him like hornets to treacle; all
\but the bluﬁer of the gang, the big shaggy chap with the

2§4 SHORTER NOVELS 0F HERMAN MELVILLE _

ﬁre-red Whiskers. He, indeed, out of envy perhaps of the
newcomer, and thinking such a “sweet and pleasant fellow,”
as he [mockingly designated him to the others, could hardly
have the spirit of a game—cock, must needs bestii' himself in
trying to get up an ugly row with him. Billy forebore
with him and reasoned withhim in a pleasant way—he is
something like myself, Lieutenant, to whom aught like a
quarrel is hateful—but nothing served. So, in the second
dog-watch one day the Red-Whiskers, in the presence of the
others, under pretence of showing Billy just whence a sirloin
steak was cut—for the fellow had once been a butcher-—
insultingly gave him a dig under the ribs. Quick as light—
ning Billy let ﬂy his arm. I dare say he never meant to do
quite as much as he did, but anyhow he gave the burly fool
a terrible drubbing. It took about half a minute, I should
think. And, Lord bless you, the lubber was astonished at
the celerity. And will you believe it, Lieutenant, the Red-
Whiskers now really loves Billy—loves him, or is the biggest
hypocrite that ever I heard of. But they all love him.
Some of ’em do his washing, darn old trousers for him; the
carpenter is at odd times making a pretty little chest of
drawers for him. Anybody will do anything for Billy Budd; ”
and it’s the happy family here. Now, Lieutenant, if that
young fellow goes—I know how it will be aboard the
“Rig/21:5.” Not again very soon shall I, coming up from
dinner, lean over the capstan smoking a quiet pipe-s—no, not
very soon again, I think. Ay, Lieutenant, you are going to
take away the jewel of ’em; you are going to take away my
peacemaker.” And with that the good soul had really some
ado in checking a rising sob.

“Well,” answered the Lieutenant, who had listened with
amused interest to all this, and now waxing merry with his
tipple, “Well, blessed are the peacemakers, especially the

{BILLY rBUDD, FORETOPMAN 235
ﬁghting peacemakers! And such are the seventy—four beau—
ties, some of which you see poking their noses out of the
portholes of yonder warship lying-to there for me,” pointing
through the cabin window at the Indomimble. “But cour—
age! don’t look so down—hearted, man. Why, I pledge you
in advance the royal approbation. Rest assured that His
Majesty will be delighted to know that in a time when his
hard—tack is not sought for by sailors with such avidity as
should be; a time also when some shipmasters privily resent
the borrowing from them of a tar or two for the service,
His Majesty, I say, will be delighted to learn that one ship—
master, at least, cheerfully surrenders to the King the ﬂower
of his ﬂock: a sailor who with equal loyalty makes no dissent.
-—-But where’s my beauty? Ah,” looking through the cabin’s
open door. “Here he comes 5 and, by Jove—lugging along
his chest—Apollo with his portmanteau! “My man,”
stepping out to him, “you can’t take that big box on board
a warship. The boxes there are mostly shot—boxes. Put up
your duds in a bag, lad. Boot and saddle for the cavalry-
man, bag and hammock for the man-of-war’s man.”

The transfer from chest to bag was made. And, after
seeing his man into the cutter, and then following him down,
the Lieutenant pushed off from the Rig/zts—of-Man. That
was the merchant ship’s name, though by her master and
crew abbreviated in sailor fashion into the “Rights.” The
hard-headed Dundee owner was a staunch admirer of
Thomas Paine, whose book in rejoinder to Burke’s arraign-
ment of the French Revolution had then been published for
some time and had gone everywhere. In christening his ves-
sel after the title of Paine’s volume, the man of Dundee
was something like his contemporary shipowner, Stephen
Girard of Philadelphia, whose sympathies alike With his na~

236 SHORTER NOVELS 0F HERM/IN WELVILLE
tive land and its liberal philosophies he evinced by naming
his ships after Voltaire, Diderot, and so forth.

But now, when the boat swept under the merchantman’s
stern, and ofﬁcer and oarsmen were noting,——some bitterly
and others with a grin,—the name emblazoned there; just
then it was that the new recruit jumped up from the bow
Where the coxswain had directed him to sit, waving his hat
to his silent shipmates sorrowfully looking over at him from
the taﬁrail, and bade the lads a genial good—bye. Then
making a salutation as to the ship herself, “And good—bye
to you too, old Rig/zir—of—Mam!”

“Down, Sir,” roared the Lieutenant, instantly assuming all
the rigour of his rank, though with difﬁculty repressing a
smile.

To be sure, Billy’s action was a terrible breach of naval
decorum. But in that decorum he had never been instructed;
in consideration of which the Lieutenant would hardly have
been so energetic in reproof but for the concluding farewell
to the ship. This he rather took as meant to convey a covert
sally on the new recruit’s part—a sly slur at impressment in
general, and that of himself in especial. And yet, more
likely, if satire it was in effect, it was hardly so by intention,
for Billy (though happily endowed with the gaiety of high
health, youth and a free heart) was yet by no means of a
satirical turn. The will to it and the sinister dexterity were
alike wanting. To deal in double meaning and insinuations
of any sort was quite foreign to his nature.

As to his enforced enlistment—that he seemed to take
pretty much as he was wont to take any vicissitude of weather.
Like the animals, though no philosopher, he was, Without
knowing it, practically a fatalist. And, it may be, that he
rather liked this adventurous turn in his affairs which prom-
ised an opening into novel scenes and martial excitements.

TBILLY BUDD, FORETOPM/IN 237
_ Aboard the I ndomimble our merchant—sailor was forthwith
rated as an able seaman, and assigned to the starboard watch
of the foretop. He was soon at home in the service, not at
all disliked for his unpretentious good looks and his rather
genial happy-go—lucky air. No merrier man in his mess; in
marked contrast to certain other individuals included like
himself among the impressed portions of the ship’s company;
for these when not actively employed were sometimes—and
more particularly in the last dog-watch, when the drawing
near of twilight induced revery—apt to fall into a saddish
mood which in some partook of sullenness. But they were
not so young as our foretopman, and no few of them must
have known a hearth of some sort, others may have had wives
and children left, too probably, in uncertain circumstances,
and hardly any but must have acknowledged kith and kin,
While for Billy, as will shortly be seen, his entire family was
practically invested in himself.

CHAPTER II

THOUGH our new-made foretopman was well received in
the top and on the gun—decks, hardly here was he that cyno—
sure he had previously been among those minor ship’s com-
panies 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 com—
plexion, but where, thanks to his seagoing, 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

238 SHORTER NOVELS OF HERMAN WELVILLE

factitious life, the abrupt transition from his former and
simpler sphere to the ampler and more knowing world of
a great war—ship—this might well have abashed him had
there been any conceit or vanity in his composition. Among
her miscellaneous multitude, the Indomimble mustered sev—
eral 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 posi-
tion 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 intelli-
gent 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 in—
stances 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 hal-
yards 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

.‘BILLY fBUDD, FORE‘I'OPM/{N 233

vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv

 

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 evi-
dent 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 that kind and degree of intelligence which goes
along with the unconventional rectitude of a sound human
creature—one to whom not as yet had been proffered the
questionable apple of knowledge. He was illiterate. He
could not read, but he could sing, and like the illiterate night-
ingale 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.

H0 SHORTER NOVELS OF HERMJJ‘C MELVILLE

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 “ﬁd-
dlers’ green,” his simple nature remained unsophisticated by
those moral obliquities which are not in every case incompar-
able with that manufacturable thing known as respectability.
But are sailors, 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 pro—
ceed from Viciousness than from exuberance of vitality after
long restraint, frank manifestations in accordance with nat—
ural law. By his original constitution aided by the cooperat—
ing 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 cor—
roborate the doctrine of man’s fall—a doctrine now popu—
larly ignored—it is observable that where certain virtues pris—
tine and unadulterate peculiarly characterize anybody in the
external uniform of civilization, 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 trans—
mitted 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 civilized, 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

BILLY BUDD, FORETOPMAN 24.1

vvvvvvvvvvvvv v v vvvv vvvv v vvvvvv vvv vvvvvvvvvvvvvvv

out of his latitude in the Rome of the Caesars, still appropri~
ately holds:—

“Faithful in word and thought,
What has Thee, F ahian, to the city hrought.”

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, other—
wise singularly musical, as if expressive of the harmony
within, was apt to develop an organic hesitancy,—in fact ‘
more or less of a stutter on 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.

CHAPTER [II

AT the time of Billy Budd’s arbitrary enlistment into the
Indomitahle that ship was on her way to join the Mediter—
ranean ﬂeet. N 0 long time elapsed before the junction was
effected. As one of that ﬂeet the seventy—four participated
in its movements: though at times on account of her superior

242 SHORTER NOVELS OF HERMAN MELVILLEW
sailing qualities, in the absence of frigates, despatched on
separate duty as a scout—and at times on less temporary
service. But with all this the story has little concernment,
restricted as it is to the inner life of one particular ship
and the career of an individual sailor.

It was the summer of 1797. In April of that year had
occurred the commotion at ‘Spithead followed in May by a
second and yet more serious outbreak in the ﬂeet at the
N ore. The latter is known, and without exaggeration in the
epithet, as the Great lVlutiny. It was indeed a demonstra—
tion more menacing to England than the contemporary mani—
festoes and conquering and proselyting armies of the French
Directory.

To the Empire, the Nore Mutiny was What a strike in
the ﬁre—brigade would be to London threatened by general
arson. In a crisis when the Kingdom might well have
anticipated the famous signal that some years later pub-
lished along the naval line of battle what it was that upon
occasion England expected of Englishmen; Man was the
time when at the mast—heads of the three-deckers and
seventy—fours moored in our own roadstead—a ﬂeet, the
right arm of a Power then all but the sole free conservative
one of the Old World, the blue—jackets, to be numbered by
thousands, ran up with hurras the British colours with the
union and cross wiped out; by that cancellation transmut—
ing the ﬂag of founded law and freedom deﬁned, into the
enemy’s red meteor of unbridled and unbounded revolt.
Reasonable discontent growing out of practical grievances
in the ﬂeet had been ignited into irrational combustion as
by live cinders blown across the Channel from France in
ﬂames.

The event converted into irony for a time those spirited
strains of Dibdin—as a song—writer no mean auxiliary to

BILLY ‘BUDD, FORETOPJVIAN 243
the English Government—at the European conjuncture,
strains celebrating, among other things, the patriotic devo-
tion of the British tar:

“And as for my life, ’23": the King’s!”

Such an episode in the Island’s grand naval story her
naval historians naturally abridge; one of them (G. P. R.
James) candidly acknowledging that fain would he pass it
over did not “impartiality forbid fastidiousness.” And yet
his mention is less a narration than a reference, having to
do hardly at all with details. Nor are these readily to be
found in the libraries. Like some other events in every
age befalling states everywhere, including America, the
Great Mutiny was of such character that national pride
along with views of policy would fain shade it oﬂ" into the
historical background. Such events cannot be ignored, but
there is a considerate way of historically treating them.
If a well—constituted individual refrains from blazoning
aught amiss or calamitous in his family, a nation in the like
circumstance may without reproach be equally discreet.

Though after parleyings between Government and the
ring—leaders, and concessions by the former as to some glar—
ing abuses, the ﬁrst uprising—that at Spithead—with difﬁ-
culty was put down, or matters for a time paciﬁed, yet at
the Nore the unforseen renewal of insurrection on a yet
larger scale, and emphasized in the conferences that ensued ‘
by demands deemed by the authorities not only inadmissible
but aggressively insolent, indicated, if the red flag did not
suﬂiciently do so, what was the spirit animating the men.
Final suppression, however, there was, but only made 1308‘
sible perhaps by the unswerving loyalty of the marine corps,
and a voluntary resumption of loyalty among inﬂuential sec-

244. SHORTER NOVELS 0F HERMAN MELVILLE
tions of the crews. To some extent the Nore Mutiny may
be regarded as analogous to the distempering irruption of
contagious fever in a frame constitutionally sound, and
which anon throws it off.

At all events, of these thousands of mutineers were some
of the tars who not, so very long afterwards—whether
wholly prompted thereto by patriotism, or pugnacious in—
stinct, or by both,——helped to win a coronet for Nelson at
the Nile, and the naval crown of crowns for him at Tra—
falgar. To the mutineers those battles, and especially Tra-
falgar, were a plenary absolution, and a grand one, for
all that goes to make up scenic naval display is heroic mag—
niﬁcence in arms. Those battles, especially Trafalgar, stand
unmatched in human annals.

CHAPTER IV

Concerning “The greatut sailor riﬂe: t/w world began”——TENNYSON.

IN this matter of writing, resolve as one may to keep to
the main road, some bypaths have an enticement not readily
to be withstood. Beckoned by the genius of Nelson, I am
going to err into such a bypath. If the reader will keep
me company I shall be glad. At the least we can promise
ourselves that pleasure which is wickedly said to be in sin-
ning, for a literary sin the divergence will be.

Very likely it is no new remark that the inventions of
our time have at last brought about a change in sea warfare
in degree corresponding to the revolution in all warfare ef—
fected by the original introduction from China into Europe
of gunpowder. The ﬁrst European ﬁrearm, a clumsy con—
trivance, was, as is well known, scouted by no few of the
knights as a base implement, good enough peradventure
for weavers too craven to stand up crossing steel with steel

vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv

in frank ﬁght. But as ashore knightly valour, though
shorn of its blazonry, did not cease with the knights, neither
on the seas, though nowadays in encounters there a certain
kind of displayed gallantry be fallen out of date as hardly
applicable under changed circumstances, did the nobler
qualities of such naval magnates as Don John of Austria,
Doria, Van Tromp, Jean Bart, the long line of British ad-
mirals and the American Decaturs of 1812 become obsolete
with their wooden walls.

Nevertheless, to anybody who can hold the Present at
its worth without being inappreciative of the Past, it may
be forgiven, if to such an one the solitary old hulk at Ports—
mouth, Nelson’s Victory, seems to ﬂoat there, not alone as
the decaying monument of a fame incorruptible, but also as
a poetic reproach, softened by its picturesqueness, to the
M om'tor: and yet mightier hulls of the European ironsides.
And this not altogether because such craft are unsightly,
unavoidably lacking the symmetry and grand lines of the old
battleships, but equally for other reasons.

There are some, perhaps, who while not altogether inac-
cessible to that poetic reproach just alluded to, may yet on
behalf of the new order be disposed to parry it; and this to
the extent of iconoclasm, if need be. For example, prompted
by the sight of the star inserted in the Victory’: deck design—
ing the spot where the Great Sailor fell, these martial utili-
tarians may suggest considerations implying that Nelson’s
ornate publication of his person in battle was not only un-
necessary, but not military, nay, savoured of foolhardiness
and vanity. They may add, too, that at Trafalgar it was in
effect nothing less than a challenge to death: and death came;
and that but for his bravado the victorious admiral might
possibly have survived the battle, and so, instead of having
his sagacious dying injunction overruled by his immediate

246 SHORTER NOVELS OF HERM/IN WELVILLE
successor in command, he himself when the contest was
decided might have brought his shattered ﬂeet to anchor, a
proceeding which might have averted the deplorable loss of
life by shipwreck in the elemental tempest that followed the
martial one.

Well, should we set aside the more disputable point
Whether for various reasons it was possible to anchor the
ﬂeet, then plausibly enough the Benthamites of war may urge
the above.

But it might have lean is but boggy ground to build on.
And certainly in foresight as to the larger issue of an en—
counter, and anxious preparation for it—buoying the deadly
way and mapping it out, as at Copenhagen—few commanders
have been so painstakingly circumspect as this reckless de-
clarer of his person in ﬁght.

Personal prudence, even when dictated by quite other than
selﬁsh considerations, is surely no special virtue in a military
man; while an excessive love of glory, exercising to the
uttermost heartfelt sense of duty, is the ﬁrst. If the name
of Wellington is not so much a trumpet to the blood as the
simpler name of N elson, the reason for this may be inferred
from the above. Alfred in his funeral ode on the victor of
Waterloo ventures not to call him the greatest soldier of all
time, though in the same ode he invokes Nelson as “the
greatest sailor since the world began.”

At Trafalgar, Nelson, on the brink of opening the ﬁght,
sat down and wrote his last brief will and testament. If
under the presentiment of the most magniﬁcent of all vic-
tories, to be crowned by his own glorious death, a sort of
priestly motive led him to dress his person in the jewelled
vouchers of his own shining deeds; if thus to have adorned
himself for the altar and the sacriﬁce were indeed vainglory,
then aﬁectation and fustian is each truly heroic line in the

{BILLY BUDD, FORE‘TOPJVIAN 241
great epics and dramas, since in such lines the poet but em-
bodies in verse those exaltations of sentiment that a nature
like Nelson, the opportunity being given, vitalizes into acts.

CHAPTER V

THE outbreak at the Nore was put down. But not every
grievance was redressed. If the contractors, for example,
were no longer permitted to ply some practices peculiar to
their tribe everywhere, such as providing shoddy cloth,
rations not sound, or false in the measure; not the less im-
pressment, for one thing, went on. By custom sanctioned for
centuries, and judicially maintained by a Lord Chancellor
as late as Mansﬁeld, that mode of manning the ﬂeet, a mode
now fallen into a sort of abeyance but never formally re-
nounced, it was not practicable to give up in those years. Its
abrogation would have crippled the indispensable ﬂeet, one
wholly under canvas, no steam-power, its innumerable sails
and thousands of cannon, everything, in short, worked by
muscle alone; a ﬂeet the more insatiate in demand for men,
because then multiplying its ships of all grades against con-
tingencies present and to come of the convulsed Continent.

Discontent foreran the Two Mutinies, and more or less it
lurkingly survived them. Hence it was not unreasonable to
apprehend some return of trouble, sporadic or general. One
instance of such apprehensions: In the same year With this
story, Nelson, then Vice-Admiral Sir Horatio, being with the
ﬂeet 0H the Spanish coast, was directed by the Admiral in
command to shift his pennant from the Captain to the
T harem; and for this reason: that the latter ship having
newly arrived in the station from home where it had taken
part in the Great Mutiny, danger was apprehended from the
temper of the men; and it was thought that an ofﬁcer like

248 SHORTER NOVELS OF HERJl/IJN MELVILLE
Nelson was the one, not indeed to terrorize the crew into
base subjection, but to win them by force of his mere presence
back to an allegiance, if not as enthusiastic as his own, yet
as true. So it was that for a time on more than one quarter—
deck anxiety did exist. At sea precautionary vigilance was
strained against relapse. At short notice an engagement
might come on. When it did, the lieutenants assigned to
batteries felt it incumbent on them in some instances to stand
with drawn swords behind the men working the guns.

But on board the seventy-four in which Billy now swung
his hammock, very little in the manner of the men and noth—
ing obvious in the demeanour of the officers would have sug—
gested to an ordinary observer that the Great Mutiny was a
recent event. In their general bearing and conduct the com—
missioned ofﬁcers of a war—ship naturally take their tone from
the commander, that is if he has that ascendency of character
that ought to be his.

Captain the Honourable Edward Fairfax Vere, to give his
full title, was a bachelor of forty or thereaBOuts, a sailor of
distinction, even in a time proliﬁc of renowned seamen.
Though allied to the higher nobility, his advancement had
not been altogether owing to inﬂuences connected with that
circumstance. He had seen much service, been in various
engagements, always acquitting himself as an oﬂicer mindful
of the welfare of his men, but never tolerating an infraction
of discipline; thoroughly versed in the science of his pro—
fession, and intrepid to the verge of temerity, though never
injudiciously so. For his gallantry in the West Indian
waters as ﬂag-lieutenant under Rodney in that Admiral’s
crowning victory, over De Grasse, he was made a post-
captain.

Ashore in the garb of a civilian, scarce any one would have
taken him for a sailor, more especially that he never gar—

BILLY BUDD, FORETOPJVI/IIM 249
nished unprofessional talk with nautical terms, and grave in
his bearing, evinced little appreciation of mere humour. It
was not out of keeping with these traits that on a passage
when nothing demanded his paramount action, he was the
most undemonstrative of men. Any landsman observing
this gentleman not conspicuous by his stature and wearing no
pronounced insignia, emerging from his retreat to the open
deck, and noting the silent deference of the ofﬁcers retiring
to leeward, might have taken him for the King’s guest, a
civilian aboard the King’s ship, some highly honourable dis—
creet envoy on his way to an important post. But, in fact,
this unobtrusivness of demeanour may have proceeded from
a certain unaffected modesty of manhood sometimes accom—
panying a resolute nature, a modesty evinced at all times not
calling for pronounced action, and which shown in any rank
of life suggests a virtue aristocratic in kind.

As with some others engaged in various departments of
the world’s more heroic activities, Captain Vere, though prac—
tical enough upon occasion, would at times betray a certain
dreaminess of mood. Standing alone on the weather-side of
the greater deck, one hand holding by the rigging, he would
absently gaze OE at the black sea. At the presentation to
him then of some minor matter interrupting the current of
his thoughts, he would show more or less irascibility, but
instantly he would control it.

In the navy he was popularly known by the appellation—-
Starry Vere. How such a designation happened to fall upon
one Who, whatever his sturdy qualities, was Without any bril—
liant ones, was in this wise: a favourite kinsman, Lord Den—
ton, a free-handed fellow, had been the ﬁrst to meet and
congratulate him upon his return to England from the West
Indian cruise; and but the day previous turning over a copy
of Andrew Marvell’s poems had lighted, not for the ﬁrst

EEO SHORTER NO VELS OF_»HERMAJ\(aMELVILLE

time, however, upon the lines entitled “Appleton House,”
the name of one of the seats of their common ancestor, a
hero in the German wars of the seventeenth century, in
which poem occur the lines,

“T/zis ’tis to luwe been from the ﬁrst
In a domestic neat/en nursed,
Under tlze discipline severe
Of Fairfax and the starry Vere.”

And so, upon embracing his cousin fresh from Rodney’s
Victory, wherein he had played so gallant a part, brimming
over with just family pride in the sailor of their house, he
exuberantly exclaimed, “Give ye joy, Ed; give ye joy, my
starry Vere!” This got currency, and the novel preﬁx
serving in familiar parlance readily to distinguish the
Indomitable’s Captain from another Vere, his senior, a dis—
tant relative, an oﬁ’icer of like rank in the navy, it remained
permanently attached to the surname.

CHAPTER VI

IN View of the part that the commander of the Indomi—
table plays in scenes shortly to follow, it may be well to ﬁll
out that sketch of him outlined in the previous chapter.
Aside from his qualities as a sea-oﬂicer Captain Vere was an
exceptional character. Unlike no few of England’s re—
nowned sailors, long and arduous service with signal devotion
to it, had not resulted in absorbing and salting the entire
man. He had a marked leaning towards everything in-
tellectual. He loved books, never going to sea without a
newly replenished library, compact but of the best. The
isolated leisure, in some cases so wearisome, falling at inter-
vals to commanders even during a war—cruise, never was

BILLY 3UDD, FORETOPMAN 25!
tedious to Captain Vere. With nothing of that literary taste
which less heeds the thing conveyed than the vehicle, his
bias was towards those books to which every serious mind of
superior order occupying any active post of authority in the
world, naturally inclines; books treating of actual men and
events, no matter of what era—history, biography and uncon—
ventional writers, who, free from cant and convention, like
Montaigne, honestly, and in the spirit of common sense,
philosophize upon realities.

In this love of reading he found conﬁrmation of his own
more reserved thoughts—conﬁrmation which he had vainly
sought in social converse, so that as touching most funda—
mental topics, there had got to be established in him some
positive convictions which he forefelt would abide in him
essentially unmodiﬁed so long as his intelligent part remained
unimpaired. In View of the humbled position in which his
lot was cast, this was well for him. His settled convictions
were as a dyke against those invading waters of novel opin-
ion social, political, and otherwise, which carried away as in
a torrent no few minds in those days, minds by nature not
inferior to his own. While other members of that aristocracy
to which by birth he belonged were incensed at the inno—
vators mainly because their theories were inimical to the
privileged classes, Captain Vere disinterestedly opposed them
because they seemed to him incapable of embodiment in last—
ing institutions, but at war with the peace of the world and
the good of mankind.

With minds less stored than his and less earnest, some
ofﬁcers of his rank, with whom at times he would necessarily
consort, found him lacking in 'the companionable quality,
a dry and bookish gentleman as they deemed. Upon any
chance withdrawal from their company one would be apt to
say to another something like this: “Vere is a noble fellow,

252 SHORTER NOVELS OF HERMAN MELVILLE
Starry Vere. ’Spite the gazettes, Sir Horatio is at bottom
scarce a better seaman or ﬁghter. But between you and me
now, don’t you think there is a queer streak of the pedantic
running through him? Yes, like the King’s yarn in a coil
of navy-rope?”

Some apparent ground there was for this sort of conﬁ-
dential criticism 5 since not only did the Captain’s discourse
never fall into the jocosely familiar, but in illustrating any
point touching the stirring personages and events of the
time, he would cite some historic character or incident of
antiquity with the same easy air that he would cite from the
moderns. He seemed unmindful of the circumstance that
to his bluﬁ company such remote allusions, however perti-
nent they might really be, were altogether alien to men
whose reading was mainly conﬁned to the journals. But
considerateness in such matters is not easy to natures consti-
tuted like Captain Vere’s. Their honesty prescribes to them
directness, sometimes far—reaching, like that of a migratory
fowl that in its ﬂight never heeds When it crosses a frontier.

CHAPTER VII

THE lieutenants and other commissioned gentlemen form—
ing Captain Vere’s staff it is not necessary here to particular—
ize nor needs it to make mention of any of the warrant-
oﬂicers. But among the petty oﬂicers was one who, having
much to do with the story, may as well be forthwith intro-
duced. This portrait I essay, but shall never hit it.

This was John Claggart, the master—at-arms. But that
sea—title may to landsmen seem somewhat equivocal. Orig-
inally, doubtless, that petty—oﬂicer’s function was the in-
struction of the men in the use of arms, sword, or cutlass.
But very long ago, owing to the advance in gunnery making

{BILLY BUDD, FORE‘TOPJVIAN 253
hand—to-hand encounters less frequent—and giving to nitre
and sulphur the pre-eminence over steel—that function
ceased; the master-at—arms of a great war-ship becoming a
sort of Chief of Police charged, among other matters, with
the duty of preserving order on the populous lower gun-
decks.

Claggart was a man of about ﬁve—and-thirty, somewhat
spare and tall yet of no ill ﬁgure upon the whole. His hand
was too small and shapely to have been accustomed to hard
toil. The face was a notable one; the features, all except the
chin, cleanly cut as those on a Greek medallion; yet the chin,
beardless as Tecumseh’s, had something of the strange pro—
tuberant heaviness in its make that recalled the prints of the
Rev. Dr. Titus Oates, the historical deponent with the
clerical drawl in the time of Charles II, and the fraud of the
alleged Popish Plot. It served Claggart in his ofﬁce that his
eye could cast a tutoring glance. His brow was of the sort
phrenologically associated with more than average intellect;
silken jet curls partly clustering over it, making a foil to the
pallor below, a pallor tinged with a faint shade of amber
akin to the hue of time—tinted marbles of old.

This complexion singularly contrasting with the red or
deeply bronzed visages of the sailors, and in part the result
of his oﬂicial seclusion from the sunlight, though it was not
exactly displeasing, nevertheless seemed to hint of something
defective or abnormal in the constitution and blood. But
his general aspect and manner were so suggestive of an edu—
cation and career incongruous with his naval function, that
when not actively engaged in it he looked like a man of high
quality, social and moral, who for reasons of his own was
keeping incog. Nothing was known of his former life. It
might be that he was an Englishman, and yet there lurked
a bit of accent in his speech suggesting that possibly he was

254. SHORTER NOVELS OF HERMAN MELVILLE
not such by birth, but through naturalization in early child-
hood. Among certain grizzled sea—gossips of the gun—decks
and forecastle went a rumour perdue that the master—at-arms
was a Chevalier who had volunteered into the King’s navy by
way of compounding for some mysterious swindle whereof
he had been arraigned at the King’s bench. The fact that
nobody could substantiate this report was, of course, nothing
against its secret currency. Such a rumour once started on
the gun—decks in reference to almost any one below the rank
of a commissioned officer would, during the period assigned
to this narrative, have seemed not altogether wanting in
credibility to the tarry old wiseacres of a man—of—war crew.
And indeed a man of Claggart’s accomplishments, without
prior nautical experience entering the navy at mature life,
as he did, and necessarily allotted at the start to the lowest
grade in it, a man, too, Who never made allusion to his
previous life ashore; these were circumstances which in the
dearth of exact knowledge as to his true antecedents opened
to the invidious a vague ﬁeld for unfavourable surmise.

But the sailors’ dog-watch gossip concerning him derived
a vague plausibility from the fact that now, for some period,
the British Navy could so little aﬁord to be squeamish in the
matter of keeping up the muster-rolls, that not only were
press—gangs notoriously abroad both aﬂoat and ashore, but
there was little or no secret about another matter, namely,
that the London police were at liberty to capture any able—
bodied suspect, and any questionable fellow at large, and
summarily ship him to the dock—yard or ﬂeet. Furthermore,
even among voluntary enlistments, there were instances
where the motive thereto partook neither of patriotic impulse
nor yet of a random desire to experience a bit of sea—life and
martial adventure. Insolvent debtors of minor grade, to-
gether with the promiscuous lame ducks of morality, found

.‘BILLY BUDD, FORE‘I‘OPJVIAJ‘C 255
in the navy a convenient and secure refuge. Secure, because
once enlisted aboard a King’s—Ship, they were as much in
sanctuary, as the transgressor of the middle ages harbouring
himself under the shadow of the altar. Such sanctioned
irregularities, which for obvious reasons the Government
would hardly think to parade at the time—and which con—
sequently, and as affecting the least inﬂuential class of man-
kind, have all but dropped into oblivion—lends colour to
something for the truth whereof I do not vouch, and hence
have some scruple in stating; something I remember having
seen in print, though the book I cannot recall; but the same
thing was personally communicated to me now more than
forty years ago by an old pensioner in a cocked hat, with
whom I had a most interesting talk on the terrace at Green-
wich, a Baltimore negro, a Trafalgar man. It was to this
effect: In the case of a war-ship short of hands, whose speedy
sailing was imperative, the deﬁcient quota, in lack of any
other way of making it good, would be eked out by drafts
called direct from the jails. For reasons previously sug-
gested it would not perhaps be very easy at the present day
directly to prove or disprove the allegation. But allowed as
a verity, how signiﬁcant would it be of England’s straits at
the time, confronted by those wars which, like a ﬂight of
harpies, rose shrieking from the din and dust of the fallen
Bastille. That era appears measurably clear to us who look
back at it, and but read of it. But to the grandfathers of us
greybeards, the thoughtful of them, the genius of it pre-
sented an aspect like that of Camoen’s “Spirit of the Cape,”
an eclipsing menace, mysterious and prodigious. Not Amer-
ica even was exempt from apprehension. At the height of
Napoleon’s unexampled conquests, there were Americans
who had fought at Bunker Hill, who looked forward to the
possibility that the Atlantic might prove no barrier against

256 SHORTER NOVELS OF HERMJN MELVILLE
the ultimate schemes of this portentous upstart from the
revolutionary chaos, who seemed in act of fulﬁlling the judg-
ment preﬁgured in the Apocalypse.

But the less credence was to be given to the gun—deck talk
touching Claggart, seeing that no man holding his ofﬁce in
a man—of—war can ever hope to be popular with the crew.
Besides, in derogatory comments upon any one against Whom
they have a grudge, or for any reason or no reason mislike,
sailors are much like landsmen: they are apt to exaggerate
or romance it.

About as much was really known to the I ndomitable’s tars
of the Master—at—arms’ career before entering the service as
an astronomer knows about a comet’s travels prior to its ﬁrst
observable appearance in the sky. The verdict of the sea
guid nunc’s has been cited only by way of showing what sort
of moral impression the man made upon rude uncultivated
natures whose conceptions of human wickedness were neces-
sarily of the narrowest, limited to ideas of vulgar rascality,
I—a thief among the swinging hammocks during a night—
watch, or the man—brokers and land—sharks of the seaports.

It was no gossip, however, but fact, that though, as before
hinted,‘\Claggart'upon his entrance into the navy was, as a
novice, assigned to the least honourable section of a man—of—
war’s crew, embracing the drudges, he did not long remain
there.

The superior capacity he immediately evinced, his consti-
tutional sobriety, his ingratiating deference to superiors,
together With a peculiar ferreting genius manifested on a
singular occasion, all this capped by a certain austere patriot-
ism, abruptly advanced him to the position of Master—at-
arms."

Of thismaritime Chief of Police the ship’s-corporals, so
called, were the immediate subordinates, and compliant ones 5 -

BILLY BUDD, FORE‘TOPMAN 257
and this—as is to be noted in some business departments
ashore—almost to a degree inconsistent with entire moral
volition. His place put various converging wires of under-
ground inﬂuence under the Chief’s control, capable when
astutely worked through his understrappers of operating to
the mysterious discomfort, if nothing worse, of any of the
sea-commonalty.

CHAPTER VIII

LIFE in the foretop well agreed with Billy Budd. There,
when not actually engaged on the yards yet higher aloft,
the topmen, who as such had been picked out for youth and
activity, constituted an aerial club, lounging at ease against
the smaller stun’sails rolled up into cushions, spinning yarns
like the lazy gods, and frequently amused with what was
going on in the busy world of the decks below. No wonder
then that a young fellow of Billy’s disposition was well con-
tent in such society. Giving no cause of offence to anybody,
he was always alert at a call. So in the merchant service it
had been with him. But now such punctiliousness in duty
was shown that his topmates would sometimes good—
naturedly laugh at him for it. This heightened alacrity had
its cause, namely, the impression made upon him by the ﬁrst
formal gangway—punishment he had ever witnessed, which
befell the day following his impressment. It had been in-
curred by a little fellow, young, a novice, an after-guardsman
absent from his assigned post when the ship was being put
about, a dereliction resulting in a rather serious hitch to that
manoeuvre, one demanding instantaneous promptitude in
letting go and making fast. When Billy saw the culprit’s
naked back under the scourge gridironed with red welts,
and worse, when he marked the dire expression in the

£58 SHORTER NOVELS OF HERMAN WELVILLE

liberated man’s face, as with his woolen shirt ﬂung over him
by the executioner, he rushed forward from the spot to bury
himself in the crowd, Billy was horriﬁed. He resolved that
never through remissness would he make himself liable to
such a visitation, or do or omit aught that might merit even
verbal reproof. What then was his surprise and concern
when ultimately he found himself getting into petty trouble
occasionally about such matters as the stowage of his bag,
or something amiss in his hammock, matters under the police
oversight of the ship’s-corporals of the lower decks, and
which brought down on him a vague threat from one of them.

So heedful in all things as he was, how could this be?
He could not understand it, and it more than vexed him.
When he spoke to his young topmates about it, they were
either lightly incredulous, or found something comical in
his unconcealed anxiety. “Is it your bag, Billy?” said one;
“well, sew yourself up in it, Billy boy, and then you’ll be
sure to know if anybody meddles with it.”

Now there was a veteran aboard who, because his years
began to disqualify him for more active work, had been
recently assigned duty as mainmast—man in his watch, look—
ing to the gear belayed at the rail round about that great
spar near the deck. At off—times the foretopman had picked
up some acquaintance with him, and now in his trouble it
occurred to him that he might be the sort of person to go to
for wise council. He was an old Dansker long anglicized in
the service, of few words, many wrinkles and some honour-
able scars. His Wizened face, time—tinted and weather—
stormed to the complexion of an antique parchment, was
here and there peppered blue by the chance explosion of a
gun—cartridge in action. He was an A gamemnon—man;
some two years prior to the time of this story having served
under Nelson, when but Sir Horatio, in that ship immortal

’vvvvvvvvvvvVVYVVYVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVYYVVVVVVVVVVVV

in naval memory, and which, dismantled and in part broken
up to her bare ribs, is seen a grand skeleton in Hayden’s
etching. As one of a boarding—party from the Agamemnon
he had received a cut slantWise along one temple and cheek,
leaving a long pale scar like a streak of dawn’s light falling
athwart the dark visage. It was on account of that scar and
the affair in which it was known that he had received it, as
well as from his blue—peppered complexion, that the Dansker
went among the Indom/itaéle’s crew by the name of “Board—
her—in—the—smoke.”

Now the ﬁrst time that his small weazel-eyes happened
to light on Billy Budd, a certain grim internal merriment set
all his ancient wrinkles into antic play. Was it that his
eccentric unsentimental old sapience, primitive in its kind,
saw, or thought it saw, something which in contrast with the
war—ship’s environment looked oddly incongruous in the
Handsome Sailor? But after slyly studying him at intervals,
the old Merlin’s equivocal merriment was modiﬁed. For
now when the twain would meet, it would start in his face
a quizzing sort of look, but it would be but momentary, and
sometimes replaced by an expression of speculative query as
to What might eventually befall a nature like that, dropped
into a world not without some man-traps and against Whose
subtleties simple courage lacking experience and address and
without any touch of defensive ugliness, is of little avail;
and where such innocence as man is capable of does yet, in a
moral emergency, not always sharpen the faculties or en-
lighten the will.

However it was, the Dansker in his ascetic way rather
took to Billy. Nor was this only because of a certain phil—
osophic interest in such a character. There was another
cause. While the old man’s eccentricities, sometimes bor-
dering on the ursine, repelled the juniors, Billy, undeterred

260 SHORTER NOVELS 0F HERMAN MELVILLE
thereby, would make advances, never passing the old A ga-
menmon—man without a salutation marked by that respect
which is seldom lost on the aged, however crabbed at times,
or whatever their station in life. There was a vein of dry
humour, or what not, in the mast—man; and whether in freak
of patriarchal irony touching Billy’s youth and athletic
frame, or for some other and more recondite reason, from
the ﬁrst in addressing him he always substituted Baby for
Billy. The Dansker, in fact, being the originator of the
name by which the foretopman eventually became known
aboard ship.

Well then, in his mysterious little difﬁculty going in quest
of the wrinkled one, Billy found him 0E duty in a dog-
watch ruminating by himself, seated on a shot—box of the
upper gun—deck, now and then surveying with a somewhat
cynical regard certain of the more swaggering promenaders
there. Billy recounted his trouble, again wondering how
it all happened. The salt seer attentively listened, accom-
panying the foretopman’s recitals with queer twitchings of
his wrinkles and problematical little sparkles of his small
ferret eyes. Making an end of his story, the foretopman
asked, “And now, Dansker, do tell me what you think of it.”

The old man, shoving up the front of his tarpaulin and
deliberately rubbing the long slant scar at the point Where it
entered the thin hair, laconically said, “Baby Budd, Jimmy
Legs” (meaning the master-at—arms) “is down on you.”

“Jimmy Legs!” ejaculated Billy his welkin eyes expand-
ing; “What for? Why he calls me the sweet end pleasant
young fellow, they tell me.”

“Does he so?” grinned the grizzled one, then said, “Ay,
Baby Lad, a sweet voice has Jimmy Legs.”

“No, not always. But to me he has. I seldom pass him
but there comes a pleasant word.”

.‘BILLY BUDD, FORETOPMAN 261

“And that’s because he’s down upon you, Baby Budd.”

Such reiteration, along with the manner of it (incompre-
hensible to a novice), disturbed Billy almost as much as the
mystery for which he had sought explanation. Something
less unpleasingly oracular he tried to extract. But the old
sea-chiron, thinking perhaps that for the nonce he had
suﬂiciently instructed his young Achilles, pursed his lips,
gathered all his wrinkles together, and would commit him—
self to nothing further.

Years, and those experiences which befall certain shrewder
men subordinated life—long to the Will of superiors, all this
had developed in the Dansker the pithy guarded cynicism
that was his leading characteristic.

CHAPTER IX

THE next day an incident served to conﬁrm Billy Budd
in his incredulity as to the Dansker’s strange summing up of
the case submitted.

The ship at noon going large before the Wind was rolling
on her course, and he, below at dinner and engaged in some
sportful talk with the members of his mess, chanced in a
sudden lurch to spill the entire contents of his soup—pan
upon the new scrubbed deck. Claggart, the master-at—arms,
ofﬁcial rattan in hand, happened to be passing along the bat—
tery, in a bay of which the mess was lodged, and the greasy
liquid streamed just across his path. Stepping over it, he
was proceeding on his way without comment, since the matter
was nothing to take notice of under the circumstances, when
he happened to observe who it was that had done the spilling.
His countenance changed. Pausing, he was about to ejac—
ulate something hasty at the sailor, but checked himself, and
pointing down to the streaming soup, playfully tapped him

262 SHORTER NOVELS OF HERMAN MELVILLEW
from behind with his rattan, saying, in a low musical voice,
peculiar to him at times, “Handsomely done, my lad! And
handsome is as handsome did it, too!” and with that passed
on. Not noted by Billy as not coming within his View was
the involuntary smile, or rather grimace, that accompanied
Claggart’s equivocal words. Aridly it drew down the thin
corners of his shapely mouth. But everybody taking his
remark as meant for humorous, and at which therefore as
coming from a superior they were bound to laugh, “with
counterfeited glee” acted accordingly; and Billy tickled, it
may be, by the allusion to his being the handsome sailor,
merrily joined in; then addressing his messmates exclaimed,
“There now, who says that Jimmy Legs is down on me!”

“And who said he was, Beauty?” demanded one Donald
with some surprise. Whereat the foretopman looked a little
foolish, recalling that it was only one person, Board-her—in~
the—smoke, who had suggested what to him was the smoky
idea that this master—at—arms was in any peculiar way hostile
to him. Meantime that functionary resuming his path must
have momentarily worn some expression less guarded than
that of the bitter smile and, usurping the face from the
heart, some distorting expression perhaps—for a drummer-
boy, heedlessly frolicking along from the opposite direction,
and chancing to come into light collision with his person was
strangely disconcerted by his aspect. Nor was the impression
lessened when the oﬂicial, impulsively giving him a sharp
cut with the rattan, vehemently exclaimed, “Look where
you go!”

CHAPTER X

WHAT was the matter with the Master-at—arms? And,
be the matter what it might, how could it have direct rela—

BILLY QUDD, FORETOPMAJC 263
tion to Billy Budd, with whom prior to the aﬁair of the
spilled soup he had never come into any special contact,
ofﬁcial or otherwise? What indeed could the trouble have to
do With one so little inclined to give offence as the merchant-
ship’s pacemaker, even him who in Claggart’s own phrase
was “The sweet and pleasant young fellow”? Yes, why
should Jimmy Legs, to borrow the Dansker’s expression, be
down on the Handsome Sailor?

But at heart and not for nothing, as the late chance en—
counter may indicate to the discerning, down on him, secretly
down on him, he assuredly was.

Now to invent something touching the more private career
of Claggart—something involving Billy Budd, of which
something the latter should be wholly ignorant, some ro—
mantic incident implying that Claggart’s knowledge of the
young blue—jacket began at some period anterior to catching
sight of him on board the seventy—four—all this, not so
difﬁcult to do, might avail in a more or less interesting way
to account for Whatever enigma may appear to lurk in the
case. But, in fact, there was nothing of the sort. And yet
the cause, necessarily to be assumed as the sole one assignable,
is in its very realism as much charged with that prime element
of Radcliﬂian romance, the mysterious, as any that the in—
genuity of the author of the “Mysteries of Udolpho” could
devise. For What can more partake of the mysterious than
an antipathy spontaneous and profound such as is evoked in
certain exceptional mortals by the mere aspect of some other
mortal, however harmless he may beP—if not called forth
by that very harmlessness itself.

Now there can exist no irritating juxtaposition of dissimilar
personalities comparable to that which is possible aboard a
great war-ship fully manned and at sea. There, every day,
among all ranks. almost everv man comes into more or less

264 SHORTER x0 VELS 0F HERMAN .MEL VILLE

 

of contact with almost every other man. Wholly there to
avoid even the sight of an aggravating object one must needs
give it Jonah’s toss, or jump overboard himself. Imagine
how all this might eventually operate on some peculiar
human creature the direct reverse of a saint?

But for the adequate comprehending of Claggart by a
normal nature, these hints are insuﬂicient. To pass from a
normal nature to him one must cross “The deadly space
between,” and this is best done by indirection.

Long ago an honest scholar, my senior, said to me in refer-
ence to one who like himself is now no more, a man so un—
impeachably respectable that against him nothing was ever
openly said, though among the few something was whis—
pered, “Yes, X is a nut not to be cracked by the tap
of a lady’s fan. You are aware that I am the adherent of no
organized religion, much less of any philosophy built into a
system. Well, for all that, I think that to try and get into
X , enter his labyrinth and get out again, Without a clue
derived from some source other than what is known as
knowledge of the world—that were hardly possible, at least
for me.”

“Why,” said I, “X , however singular a study to some,
is yet human, and knowledge of the world assuredly implies
the knowledge of human nature, and in most of its varieties.”

“Yes, but a superﬁcial knowledge of it, serving ordinary
purposes. But for anything deeper, I am not certain whether
to know the world and to know human nature be not two
distinct branches of knowledge, which while they may co—
exist in the same heart, yet either may exist with little or
nothing of the other. Nay, in an average man of the world,
his constant rubbing with it blunts that ﬁne spiritual insight
indispensable to the understanding of the essential in certain
exceptional characters, whether evil ones or good. In a

 

 

 

BILLY BUDD, FORETOPMJN 265
matter of some importance I have seen a girl wind an old
lawyer about her little ﬁnger. Nor was it the dotage of
senile love. Nothing of the sort. But he knew law better
than he knew the girl’s heart. Coke and Blackstone hardly
shed so much light into obscure spiritual places as the
Hebrew prophets. And who were they? Mostly recluses.”

At the time my inexperience was such that I did not quite
see the drift of all this. It may be that I see it now. And,
indeed, if that lexicon which is based on Holy Writ were
any longer popular, one might with less diﬂiculty deﬁne and
denominate certain phenomenal men. . . As it is, one must
turn to some authority not liable to the charge of being
tinctured with the Biblical element.

In a list of deﬁnitions included in the authentic translation
of Plato, a list attributed to him, occurs this: “Natural
Depravity: a depravity according to nature.” A deﬁnition
which though savouring of Calvinism by no means involves
Calvin’s dogma as to total mankind. Evidently its intent
makes it applicable but to individuals. Not many are the
examples of this depravity which the gallows and jail supply.
At any rate, for notable instances,——since these have no
vulgar alloy of the brute in them, but invariably are
dominated by intellectuality,—one must go elsewhere. Civi-
lization, especially if of the austerer sort, is auspicious to it.
It folds itself in the mantle of respectability. It has its
certain negative Virtues serving as silent auxiliaries. It never
allows wine to get within its guard. It is not going too far
to say that it is without Vices or small sins. There is a
phenomenal pride in it that excludes them from anything.
Never mercenary or avaricious. In short, the depravity here
meant partakes nothing of the sordid or sensual. It is serious,
but free from acerbity. Though no ﬂatterer of mankind it
never speaks ill of it.

266 SHORTER NOVELS OF HERMAN MELVILLE

But the thing which in eminent instances signalizes so
exceptional a nature is this: though the man’s even temper
and discreet bearing would seem to intimate a mind peculiarly
subject to the law of reason, not the less in his soul’s recesses
he would seem to riot in complete exemption from that law,
having apparently little to do with reason further than to
employ it as an ambidexter implement for effecting the irra—
tional. That is to say: towards the accomplishment of an
aim which in wantonness of malignity would seem to partake
of the insane, he will direct a cool judgment sagacious and
sound.

These men are true madmen, and of the most dangerous
sort, for their lunacy is not continuous, but occasional;
evoked by some special object; it is secretive and self-con-
tained: so that when most active it is, to the average mind,
not distinguished from sanity, and for the reason above sug—
gested that whatever its aims may be (and the aim is never
disclosed) the method and the outward proceeding is always
perfectly rational.

Now something such was Claggart, in whom was the mania
of an evil nature, not engendered by vicious training or cor-
rupting books or licentious living, but born with him and
innate, in short, “a depravity according to nature.”

Can it be this phenomenon, disowned or not acknowledged,
that in some criminal cases puzzles the courts? For this
cause have our juries at times not only to endure the pro-
longed contentions of lawyers with their fees, but also the
yet more perplexing strife of the medical experts with theirs?
And why leave it to them? Why not subpoena as well the
clerical proﬁcients? Their vocation bringing them into
peculiar contact with so many human beings, and sometimes
in their least guarded hour, in interviews very much more
conﬁdential than those of physician and patient; this would

BILLY BUDD, FORETOPJM/IIM 267

ﬁvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvﬁ

seem to qualify them to know something about those in-
tricacies involved in the question of moral responsibility;
whether in a given case, say, the crime proceeded from manis
in the brain or rabies of the heart. As to any differences
among themselves which clerical proﬁcients might develop
on the stand, these could hardly be greater than the direct
contradictions exchanged between the remunerated medical
experts.

Dark sayings are these, some will say. But why? It is
because they somewhat savour of Holy Writ in its phrase
“mysteries of iniquity.”

The point of the story turning on the hidden nature of the
Master-at—arms has necessitated this chapter. With an added
hint or two in connection with the incident at the mess, the
resumed narrative must be left to vindicate as it may, its
own credibility.

CHAPTER XI
(Pale ire, envy and despair)

THAT Claggart’s ﬁgure was not amiss, and his face, save
the chin, well moulded, has already been said. Of these
favourable points he seemed not insensible, for he was not
only neat but careful in his dress. But the form of Billy
Budd was heroic; and if his face was without the intellectual
look of the pallid Claggart’s, not the less was it lit, like his,
from within, though from a different source. The bonﬁre in
his heart made luminous the rose-tan in his cheek.

In View of the marked contrast between the persons of
the twain, it is more than probable that when the Master—at—
arms in the scene last given applied to the sailor the proverb
H amisoma is as handsome does he there let escape an ironic
inkling, not caught by the young sailors who heard it, as to

’268 SHORTER N0 VEL§_0F HERMﬂN MELVILLE
what it was that had ﬁrst moved him against Billy, namely,
his signiﬁcant personal beauty.

Now envy and antipathy, passions irreconcilable in reason,
nevertheless in fact may spring conjoined like Chang and
Eng in one birth. Is Envy then such a monster? Well,
though many an arraigned mortal has in hopes of mitigated
penalty pleaded guilty to horrible actions, did ever anybody
seriously confess to envy? Something there is in it uni-
versally felt to be more shameful than even felonious crime.
And not only does everybody disown it, but the better sort
are inclined to incredulity when it is in earnest imputed to
an intelligent man. But since its lodgment is in the heart,
not the brain, no degree of intellect supplies a guarantee
against it. But Claggart’s was no vulgar form of the pas-
sion. Nor, as directed toward Billy Budd, did it partake of
that streak of apprehensive jealousy which marred Saul’s
visage perturbedly brooding on the comely young David.
Claggart’s envy struck deeper. If askance he eyed the good
looks, cheery health and frank enjoyment of young life in
Billy Budd, it was because these happened to go along with
a nature that, as Claggart magnetically felt, had in its sim—
plicity never willed malice or experienced the reactionary bite
_of__that_serpent. To him, the spirit lodged within Billy, and
looking out from his welkin eyes as from windows—that
ineffability it was which made the dimple in his dyed cheeks,
suppled his joints, and dancing in his yellow curls made him
pre-eminently the Handsome Sailor. One person excepted,
the Master—at-arms was perhaps the only man in the ship in—
tellectually capable of adequately appreciating the moral
phenomenon presented in Billy Budd, and the insight but in—
tensiﬁed his passion, which, assuming various secret forms
within him, at times assumed that of cynic disdain—disdain
of innocence. To be nothing more than innocent! Yet in an

BILLY TBUDDE FORETOPMAN 269
aesthetic way he saw the charm of it, the courageous free-and—
easy temper of it, and fain would have shared it, but he de-
spaired of it.

With no power to annul the elemental evil in himself,
though readily enough he could hide it; apprehending the
good, but powerless to be it; a nature like Claggart’s, sur—
charged with energy as such natures almost invariably are,
what recourse is left to it but to recoil upon itself and like
the scorpion for which the Creator alone is responsible, act
out to the end the part allotted it.

Passion, and passion in its profoundest, is not a thing de-
manding a palatial stage whereon to play its part. Down
among the groundlings, among the beggars and rakers of the
garbage, profound passion is enacted. And the circumstances
that provoke it, however trivial or mean, are no measure of
its power. In the present instance the stage is a scrubde gun—
deck, and one of the external provocations a man-of—war’s
man’s spilled soup.

Now when the Master-at-arms noticed whence came that
greasy ﬂuid streaming before his feet, he must have taken
it—to some extent wilfully perhaps—not for the mere ac—
cident it assuredly was, but for the sly escape of a spon—
taneous feeling on Billy’s part more or less answering to the
antipathy on his own. In effect a foolish demonstration he
must have thought, and very harmless, like the futile kick of
a heifer, which yet were the heifer a shod stallion would not
be so harmless. Even so was it that into the gall of envy
Claggart infused the vitriol of his contempt. But the inci—
dent conﬁrmed to him certain tell-tale reports purveyed to
his ear by Squawk, one of his more cunning corporals, a griz-
zled little man, so nicknamed by the sailors on account of his
squeakv voice and sharp visage ferreting about the dark cor—

27o SHORTER NOVELS OF HERMAN MELVILLEﬁ
ners of the lower decks after interlopers, satirically suggest-
ing to them the idea of a rat in a cellar.

Now his chief’s employing him as an implicit tool in lay-
ing little traps for the worriment of the foretopman—for it
was from the Master-at—arms that the petty persecutions
heretofore adverted to had proceeded—the corporal, having
naturally enough concluded that his master could have no
love for the sailor, made it his business, faithful understrap—
per that he was, to ferment the ill blood by perverting to his
chief certain innocent frolics of the good-natured foretop—
man, besides inventing for his master sundry contumelious
epithets he claimed to have overheard him let fall. The
Master-at—arms never suspected the veracity of these reports,
more especially as to the epithets, for he Well knew how
secretly unpopular may become a Master-at—arms—at least a
Master—at—arms of those days, zealous in his function—
how the blue—j ackets shot at him in private their raillery and
wit, the nickname by which he goes among them (Jimmy
Legs) implying under the form of merriment their cherished
direspect and dislike.

But in View of the greediness of hate for provocation, it
hardly needed a purveyor to feed Claggart’s passion. An
uncommon prudence is habitual with the subtler depravity,
for it has everything to hide. And in case of any merely
suspected injury its secretiveness voluntarily cuts it 0E from
enlightenment or disillusion 3 and not unreluctantly, action is
taken upon surmise as upon certainty. And the retaliation is
apt to be in monstrous disproportion to the supposed offence;
for when in anybody was revenge in its exactions aught else
but an inordinate usurer? But how with Claggart’s con-
science? For though consciences are unlike as foreheads,
every intelligence, not including the Scriptural devils who
“believe and tremble,” has one. But Claggart’s conscience

‘BILLY BUDD, FORE‘TOPJVIAN 27:
being but the lawyer to his will, made ogres of triﬂes, prob-
ably arguing that the motive imputed to Billy in spilling the
soup just when he did, together with the epithets alleged—
these, if nothing more, made a strong case against him; nay,
justiﬁed animosity into a sort of retributive righteousness.
The Pharisee is the Guy Fawkes prowling in the hid cham-
bers underlying some natures like Claggart’s. And they
can really form no conception of an unreciprocated malice.
Probably, the Master—at—arms’ clandestine persecutions of
Billy were started to try the temper of the man, but they had
not developed any quality in him that enmity could make
ofﬁcial use of, or ever pervert into even plausible self-justi-
ﬁcation, so that the occurrence at the mess, petty if it were,
was a welcome one to that peculiar conscience assigned to be
the private mentor of Claggart; and for the rest, not im—
probably it put him upon new experiments.

CHAPTER XII

NOT many days after the last incident narrated, something
befell Billy Budd that more gravelled him than aught that
had previously occurred.

It was a warm night for the latitude; and the foretopman,
whose watch at the time was properly below, was dozing on
the uppermost deck whither he had ascended from his hot
hammock—one of hundreds suspended so closely wedged
together over a lower gun-deck that there was little or no
swing to them. He lay as in the shadow of a hill-side
stretched under the lee of the booms, a piled ridge of spare
spars, and among which the ship’s largest boat, the launch,
was stowed. Alongside of three other slumberers from
below, he lay near one end of the booms Which approached
from the foremast; his station aloft on duty as a foretopman

272 SHORTER NOVELS OF HERMAN MELVILLE
being just over the deck station of the forecastlemen entitling
him according to usage to make himself more or less at home
in that neighbourhood.

Presently he was stirred into semi-consciousness by some-
body, who must have previously sounded the sleep of the
others, touching his shoulder, and then as the foretopman
raised his head, breathing 'into his ear in a quick whisper,
“Slip into the lee fore—chains, Billy; there is something in
the wind—don’t speak. Quick. I will meet you there,” and
disappeared.

Now Billy—like sundry other essentially good-natured
ones—had some of the weakness inseparable from essential
good nature, and among these was a reluctance, almost an
incapacity of plumply saying no to an abrupt proposition not
obviously absurd, on the face of it, nor obviously unfriendly,
nor iniquitous. And being of warm blood he had not the
phlegm to negative any proposition by unresponsive inaction.
Like his sense of fear, his apprehension as to aught outside
of the honest and natural was seldom very quick. Besides,
upon the present occasion, the drowse from his sleep still
hung upon him.

However it was, he mechanically rose and, sleepily won~
dering what could be in the wind, betook himself to the desig-
nated place, a narrow platform, one of six, outside of the
high bulwarks and screened by the great dead-eyes and mul—
tiple columned lanyards of the shrouds and back-stays; and,
in a great war-ship of that time, of dimensions commensurate
to the ample hull’s magnitude, a tarry balcony, in short,
overhanging the sea, and so secluded that one mariner of the
Indomitable, a non—conformist old tar of serious turn, made
it even in daytime his private oratory.

In this retired nook the stranger soon joined Billy Budd.
There was no moon as yet; a haze obscured the star—light.

BILLY QUDD, FORE‘TOPJMAN 273
He could not distinctly see the stranger’s face. Yet from
something in the outline and carriage, Billy took him to be,
and correctly, for one of the afterguard.

“Hist Billy!” said the man, in the same quick cautionary
whisper as before; “You were impressed, weren’t you?
Well, so was I,” and he paused as to mark the eEect. But
Billy, not knowing exactly what to make of this, said nothing.
Then the other: “We are not the only impressed ones, Billy.
There’s a gang of us. Couldn’t you—help—at a pinch?”

“What do you mean?” demanded Billy here shaking off
his drowse.

“Hist, hist!” the hurried whisper now growing husky,
“see here,” and the man held up two small objects faintly
twinkling in the night light; “See, they are yours, Bill, if
you’ll only—”

But Billy here broke in, and in his resentful eagerness to
deliver himself his vocal inﬁrmity somewhat intruded,
“D—D-Damme, I don’t know What you are d-driving at, or
what you mean, but you had better g—g-go where you be-
long!” For the moment the fellow, as confounded, did not
stir; and Billy, springing to his feet, said, “If you d—don’t
start, I’ll t-t—toss you back over the r—rail!” There was no
mistaking this, and the mysterious emissary decamped, dis-
appearing in the direction of the mainmast in the shadow of
the booms.

“Hallo, what’s the matter?” here came growling from a
forecastleman awakened from his deck-doze by Billy’s raised
voice. And as the foretopman reappeared and was recog-
nized by him; “Ah, Beauty, is it you? Well, something must
have been the matter for you st—st—stuttered.”

“Oh,” rejoined Billy, now mastering the impediment; “I
found an afterguardsman in our part of the ship here and I
bid him be off where he belongs.”

274 SHORTER NOVELS OF HERJWJN MELVILLE

“And is that all you did about it, foretopman?” gruﬂly de—
manded another, an irascible old fellow of brick—coloured
Visage and hair, and who was known to his associate fore-
castlemen as Red Pepper.

“Such sneaks I should like to marry to the gunner’s daugh-
ter!” by that expression meaning that he would like to sub-
ject them to disciplinary castigation over a gun.

However, Billy’s rendering of the matter satisfactorily ac-
counted to these inquirers for the brief commotion, since of
all the sections of a ship’s company the forecastlemen, vet-
erans for the most part, and bigoted in their sea—prejudices,
are the most jealous in resenting territorial encroachments,
especially on the part of any of the after guard, of whom
they have but a sorry opinion, chieﬂy landsmen, never going
aloft except to reef or furl the mainsail, and in no Wise com-
petent to handle a marlingspike or turn in a dead-eye, say.

CHAPTER XIII

THIS incident sorely puzzled Billy Budd. It was an en-
tirely new experience—the ﬁrst time in his life that he had
ever been personally approached in underhanded 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 the was non—
plussed, and made uneasy and discomﬁted. In his disgust-
ful recoil from an overture which, though he but ill com~

SBILLY BUDD, FORETOPJMAN 275
prehended, 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 trying 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 de—
sign 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 recognized 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 laugh—
ing in a 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 one
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 acquaint-
ance, 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 un-

226 SHORTER NOVELS 0F HERMAN M'ELVILLE

cxpectedness, 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 in-
effectual speculations into which he was led were so dis—
turbingly 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 disbur-
thening himself to the old Dansker, tempted thereto perhaps
by the inﬂuence of a balmy night when the ship lay be-
calmed 5 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 eﬂacing for the time that quiz—
zing expression his face sometimes wore—answered: “Didn’t
I say so, Baby Budd?”

“Say what?” demanded Billy.

“Why, Jimmy Leg: is down on you.”

“And what,” rejoined Billy in amazement, “has Jimmy
Leg: to do with that cracked afterguardsman?”

“Ho, it was an afterguardsman, then: a cat’s—paw, only a
cat’s-paw!” And with that exclamation, which, whether it
had reference to a light puﬁ of air just then coming over

BILLY QUDD, FORE‘TOPJVIAN 2.77
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—vouchsaﬂng no reply
to Billy’s impetuous question, though now repeated, 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, but rather partaking of that obscurity which
invests most Delphic deliverances from any quarter.

CHAPTER XIV

LONG experience had very likely brought this old man to
that bitter prudence which never interferes in aught, and
never gives advice.

Yes, despite the Dansker’s pithy insistence as to the Mas-
ter-at—arms being at the bottom of these strange experiences
of Billy on board the Indomimble, the young sailor was
ready to ascribe them to almost anybody but the man who,
to use Billy’s own expression, “always had a pleasant word
for him.” This is to be wondered at. Yet not so much
to be wondered at. In certain matters, some sailors even in
mature life, remain unsophisticated enough. But a young
seafarer of the disposition of our athletic foretopman is yet
very much of a child—man. And yet a child’s utter innocence
is but its blank ignorance, and the innocence more or less
wanes as intelligence waxes. But in Billy Budd intelligence,
such as it was, had advanced, while yet his simple-minded-
ness remained for the most part unaffected. Experience is
a teacher indeed; yet did Billy’s years make his experience
small. Besides, he had none of that intuitive knowledge of
the bad which in natures not good or incompletely so, fore-
runs experience, and therefore may pertain, as in some in-
stances it too clearly does pertain, even to youth

278 SHORTER NOVELS OF HERMAN MELVILLE

And What could Billy know of man except of man as a
mere sailor? And the old—fashioned sailor, the veritable
man-before—the—mast—the sailor from boyhood up—he,
though indeed of the same species as a landsman, is in some
respects singularly distinct from him. The sailor is frank—
ness, the landsman i‘s ﬁnesse. Life is not a game with the
sailor, demanding the long head 3 no intricate game of chess
Where few moves are made in straightforwardness, and ends
are attained by indirection; an oblique, tedious, barren game
hardly worth that poor candle burnt out in playing it.

Yes, as a class, sailors are in character a juvenile race.
Even their deviations are marked by juvenility. And this
more especially holding true with the sailors of Billy’s time.
Then, too, certain things which apply to all sailors, do more
pointedly operate here and there upon the junior one. Every
sailor, too, is accustomed to obey orders without debating
them; his life aﬂoat is externally ruled for him; he is not
brought into that promiscuous commerce with mankind
Where unobstructed free agency on equal terms—equal
superﬁcially, at least-—soon teaches one that unless upon
occasion he exercises a distrust keen in proportion to the
fairness of the appearance, some foul turn may be served
him. A ruled, undemonstrative distrustfulness is so habitual,
not with business—men so much, as with men who know their
kind in less shallow relations than business, namely certain
men-of—the—world, that they come at last to employ it all
but unconsciously, and some of them would very likely feel .
real surprise at being charged with it as one of their general
characteristics.

BILLY" BUDD, FORETOPJMA‘N 279

Fvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv

CHAPTER XV

BUT after the little matter at the mess Billy Budd no
more found himself in strange trouble at times about his
hammock or his clothes—bag, or what not. While, as to that
smile that occasionally sunned him, and the pleasant passing
word: these were, if not more frequent, yet if anything more
pronounced than before.

But for all that, there were certain other demonstrations
now. When Claggart’s unobserved glance happened to light
on belted Billy rolling along the upper gun-deck in the
leisure of the second dog-watch, exchanging passing broad»
sides of fun with other young promenaders in the crowd;
that glance would follow the cheerful Sea Hyperion with
a settled meditative and melancholy expression—his eyes
strangely suffused with incipient feverish tears. Then would
Claggart look like the man of sorrows. Yes, and sometimes
the melancholy expression would have in it a touch of soft
yearning, as if Claggart could even have loved Billy but for
fate and ban. But this was an evanescence, and quickly re-
pented of, as it were, by an immitigable look, pinching and
shrivelling the Visage into the momentary semblance of a
wrinkled walnut. But sometimes, catching sight in advance
of the foretopman coming in his direction, he would, upon
their nearing, step aside a little to let him pass, dwelling
upon Billy for the moment with the glittering dental satire
of a Guise. Yet, upon an abrupt unforeseen encounter, a red
light would ﬂash forth from his eye, like a spark from an
anvil in a dusky smithy. That quick ﬁerce light was a strange
one, darted from orbs which in repose were of a colour
nearest approaching a deeper Violet, the softest of shades.

Though some of these caprices of the pit could not but

280 SHORTER NOVELS OF HERMAN MELVILLEW
be observed by their object, yet were they beyond the con—
struing of such a nature. And the thews of Billy were
hardly comparable with that sort of sensitive spiritual or-
ganization which in some cases instinctively conveys to ignor-
ant innocence an admonition of the proximity of the malign.
He thought the Master-at-arms acted in a manner rather
queer at times. That was all. But the occasional frank air ,
and pleasant word went for what they purported to be—the ’
young sailor never having heard as yet of the “too fair-
spoken man.”

Had the foretopman been conscious of having done or
said anything to provoke the ill will of the ofﬁcial, it would
have been diﬁerent with him, and his sight might have been
purged if not sharpened.

So was it with him in yet another matter. Two minor
oﬂicers, the Armourer, and Captain of the Hold, with whom
he had never exchanged a word, his position on the ship not
bringing him into contact with them, these men now for the
ﬁrst began to cast upon Billy—when they chanced to en—
counter him—that peculiar glance which evidences that the
man from whom it comes has been some way tampered with,
and to the prejudice of him upon whom the glance lights.
Never did it occur to Billy as a thing to be noted, or a thing
suspicious—though he well knew the fact that the Armourer
and Captain of the Hold, with the ship’s yeoman, apothe-
cary, and others of that grade, were by naval usage, mess—
mates of the Master-at-arms; men with ears convenient to
his conﬁdential tongue.

But the general popularity that our Handsome Sailor’s
manly forwardness upon occasion, and irresistible good
nature, indicating no mental superiority tending to excite an
invidious feeling; this good will on the part of most of his
ship-mates made him the less to concern himself about such

{BILLY QUDD, FORE‘TOPMAN 281
mute aspects toward him as those whereto allusion has just
been made.

As to the afterguardsman, though Billy for reasons al—
ready given, necessarily saw little of him, yet when the two
did happen to meet, invariably came the fellow’s off-hand
cheerful recognition, sometimes accompanied by a passing
pleasant word or two. Whatever that equivocal young per-
son’s original design may really have been, or the design of
which he might have been the deputy, certain it was from
his manner upon these occasions, that he had wholly dropped
it.

It was as if his precocity of crookedness (and every vulgar
villain is precocious) had for once deceived him, and the
man he had sought to entrap as a simpleton had, through
his very simplicity, baﬂied him.

But shrewd ones may opine that it was hardly possible
for Billy to refrain from going up to the afterguardsman
and bluntly demanding to know his purpose in the initial
interview, so abruptly closed in the fore-chains. Shrewd
ones may also think it but natural in Billy to set about sound-
ing some of the other impressed men of the ship in order
to discover what basis, if any, there was for the emissary’s
obscure suggestions as to plotting disaffection aboard. The
shrewd may so think. But something more, or rather, some-
thing else than mere shrewdness is perhaps needful for the
due understanding of such a character as Billy Budd’s.

As to Claggart, the monomania in the man—if that indeed
it were—as involuntarily disclosed by stars in the manifesta-
tions detailed, yet in general covered over by his self—con—
tained and rational demeanour; this, like a subterranean ﬁre
was eating its way deeper and deeper in him. Something
decisive must come of it.

282 SHORTER NOVELS OF HERMAN MELVILLE

vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv

CHAPTER XVI

AFTER the mysterious interview in the fore-chains—the
one so abruptly ended there by Billy—nothing especially
germane to the story occurred until the events now about
to be narrated. I _

Elsewhere it has been said that owing to the lack of
frigates (of course better sailors than line—of—battle ships)
in the English squadron up the Straits at that period, the
Indomitaéle was occasionally employed not only as an avail-
able substitute for a scout, but at times on detached service
of more important kind. This was not alone because of her
sailing qualities, not common in a ship of her rate, but quite
as much, probably, that the character of her commander—it
was thought—specially adapted him for any duty where,
under unforeseen difﬁculties, a prompt initiative might have
to be taken in some matter demanding knowledge and ability
in addition to those qualities employed in good seamanship.
It was on an expedition of the latter sort, a somewhat distant
one, and when the Indomitable was almost at her furthest
remove from the ﬂeet, that in the latter part of an after—
noon-watch she unexpectedly came in sight of a ship of the
enemy. It proved to be a frigate. The latter—perceiving
through the glass that the Weight of men and metal would
be heavily against her—invoking her light heels, crowded on
sail to get away. After a chase urged almost against hope—
and lasting until about the middle of the ﬁrst dog-watch
she signally succeeded in effecting her escape.

Not long after the pursuit had been given up, and ere the
excitement incident thereto had altogether waned away, the
Master—at—arms, ascending from his cavernous sphere, made
his appearance (cap in hand) by the mainmast: respectfully

BILLY BUDD, FORETOPMAN 283
awaiting the notice of Captain Vere—then solitary walking
the weather-side of the quarter—deck—doubtless somewhat
chafed at the failure of the pursuit. The spot where Clag~
gart stood was the place allotted to the men of lesser grades
when seeking some more particular interview either with the
oﬂicer-of—the—deck or the Captain himself. But from the
latter it was not often that a sailor or petty—oﬂicer of those
days would seek a hearing; only some exceptional cause,
would, according to established custom, have warranted that.

Presently, just as the Commander, absorbed in his re—
ﬂections, was on the point of turning aft in his promenade,
he became sensible of Claggart’s presence, and saw the doﬂed
cap held in deferential expectancy. Here be it said that
Captain Vere’s personal knowledge of this petty-oﬂ‘icer had
only begun at the time of the ship’s last sailing from home,
Claggart then for the ﬁrst, in transfer from a ship detained
for repairs, supplying on board the I ndomitable the place of
a previous Master—at—arms disabled and ashore.

No sooner did the Commander observe who it was that
now so deferentially stood awaiting his notice, than a
peculiar expression came over him. It was not unlike that
which uncontrollably Will ﬂit across the countenance of one
at unawares encountering a person, who, though known to
him, indeed, has hardly been long enough known for thor—
ough knowledge, but something in whose aspect nevertheless
now, for the ﬁrst time, provokes a vaguely repellent distaste.
Coming to a stand and resuming much of his wonted oﬂ‘icial
manner, save that a sort of impatience lurked in the intona—
tion of the opening word, he said, “Well? What is it, Master—
at—arms?”

With the air of a subordinate grieved at the necessity of
being a messenger of ill tidings, and while conscientiously
determined to be frank, yet equally resolved upon shunning

284 SHORTER NOVELS OF HERMAN MELVILLEW
overstatement, Claggart at this invitation, or rather summons
to disburthen, spoke up. What he said, conveyed in the
language of no uneducated man, was to the effect following
if not altogether in these words, namely, that during the
chase and preparations for the possible encounter he had
seen enough to convince him that at least one sailor aboard
was a dangerous character in a ship mustering some who not
only had taken a guilty part in the late serious trouble, but
others also who, like the man in question, had entered His
Majesty’s service under another form than enlistment.

At this point Captain Vere, with some impatience, inter-
rupted him:

“Be direct, man, say impressed men.”

Claggart made a gesture of subservience and proceeded.
Quite lately he (Claggart) had begun to suspect that some
sort of movement prompted by the sailor in question was
covertly going on, but he had not thought himself warranted
in reporting the suspicion so long as it remained indistinct.
But from what he had that afternoon observed in the man
referred to, the suspicion of something clandestine going on
had advanced to a point less removed from certainty. He
deeply felt—he added—the serious responsibility assumed
in making a report involving such possible consequences to
the individual mainly concerned, besides tending to augment
those natural anxieties which every naval commander must
feel in' view of the extraordinary outbreak so recent as those
which, he sorrowfully said it, it needed not to name.

Now at the ﬁrst breaching of the matter Captain Vere,
taken by surprise, could not wholly dissemble his disquietude,
but as Claggart went on, the former’s aspect changed into
restiveness under something in the testiﬁer’s manner in giv-
ing his testimony. However, he refrained from interrupt-
ing him. And Claggart, continuing, concluded with this:

BILLY BUDD, FORE‘TOPMAN 28;

“God forbid, your honour, that the I ndomitable’: should
be the experience of the———”

“Never mind that!” here peremptorily broke in the su-
perior, his face altering with anger instantly, divining the
ship that the other was about to name, one in which the
N ore Mutiny assumed a singularly tragical character that for
a time jeopardized the life of its Commander. Under the
circumstances he was indignant at the purposed allusion.
When the commissioned oﬂicers themselves were on all oc-
casions very heedful how they referred to the recent events,
——for a petty—ofﬁcer unnecessarily to allude to them in the
presence of his Captain, this struck him as a most immodest
presumption. Besides, to his quick sense of self—respect, it
even looked under the circumstances something like an at-
tempt to alarm him. Nor at that was he Without some sur-
prise that one who, so far as he had hitherto come under his
notice, had shown considerable tact in his function, should in
this particular evince such lack of it.

But these thoughts and kindred dubious ones ﬂitting across
his mind were suddenly replaced by an intuitional surmise,
which though as yet obscure in form, served practically to
affect his reception of the ill tidings. Certain it is that, long
versed in everything pertaining to the complicated gun-deck
life (which like every other form of life has its secret mines
and dubious side; the side popularly disclaimed), Captain
Vere did not permit himself to be unduly disturbed by the
general tenor of his subordinate’s report. Furthermore, if
in view of recent events prompt action should be taken at
the ﬁrst palpable sign of recurring insubordination-—-f0r all
that, not judicious would it be, he thought, to keep the idea
of lingering disaffection alive by undue forwardness in cred-
iting an informer, even if his own subordinate, and charged
With police surveillance of the crew. This feeling would

286 SHORTER NOVELS OF HERMAN MELVILLEW
not perhaps have so prevailed with him were it not that upon
a prior occasion the patriotic zeal ofﬁcially evinced by Clag«
gart had somewhat irritated him as appearing rather super-
sensible and strained. Furthermore, something even in the
oﬂicial’s self—possessed and somewhat ostentatious manner in
making his speciﬁcations strangely reminded him of a bands—
man, a perjured witness in a capital case before a court-
martial ashore of which when a lieutenant he, Captain Vere,
had been a member.

Now the peremptory check given to Claggart in the mat-
ter of the arrested allusion was quickly followed up by this:
“You say that there is at least one dangerous man aboard.
Name him.”

“William Budd, a foretopman, your honour—~”

“William Budd,” repeated Captain Vere with unfeigned
astonishment, “and mean you the man our Lieutenant Rat—
cliﬁe took from the merchantman not very long ago—the
young fellow who seems to be so popular with the men—
Billy, the Handsome Sailor, as they call him?”

“The same, your honour, but for all his youth and good
looks, a deep one. Not for nothing does he insinuate him-
self into the good will of his shipmates, since at the least
they will at a pinch say a good word for him at all hazards.
Did Lieutenant Ratcliﬁe happen to tell your honour of that
adroit ﬂing of Budd’s jumping up in the Cutter’s bow under
the merchantman’s stern when he was being taken off? It
is even masqued by that sort of good—humoured air that at
heart he resents his impressment. You have but noted his
fair cheek. A man— —trap may be under his ﬁne ruddy-tipped
daisies.”

Now the Handsome Sailor, as a signal ﬁgure among the
crew, had naturally enough attracted the Captain’s attention
from the ﬁrst. Though in general not very demonstrative

BILLY .‘BUDD, FORETOPJVIAN 287
to his ofﬁcers, he had congratulated Lieutenant Ratcliffe
upon his good fortune in lighting on such a ﬁne specimen
of the genus homo who, in the nude, might have posed for a
statue of young Adam before the fall.

As to Billy’s adieu to the ship Rights—of—Mzm, which the
boarding lieutenant had indeed reported to him, Captain
Vere,—but in a deferential way—more as a good story than
aught else,—though mistakenly understanding it as a satiric
sally, had but thought so much the better of the impressed
man for it; as a military sailor, admiring the spirit that could
take an arbitrary enlistment so merrily and sensibly. The
foretopman’s conduct, too, so far as it had fallen under the
Captain’s notice had conﬁrmed the ﬁrst happy augury, while
the new recruit’s qualities as a sailor—man seemed to be such
that he had thought of recommending him to the executive
ofﬁcer for promotion to a place that would more frequently
bring him under his own observation, namely, the captaincy
of the mizzen—top, replacing there in the star—board watch
a man not so young whom partly for that reason he deemed
less ﬁtted for the post. Be it parenthesized here that
since the mizzen—top—men have not to handle such breadths
of heavy canvas as the lower sailors on the main—mast
and fore—mast, a young man if of the right stuff not only
seems best adapted to duty there, but, in fact, is generally
selected for the captaincy of that top, and the company
under him are light hands, and often but striplings. In sum,
Captain Vere had from the beginning deemed Billy Budd
to be what in the naval parlance of the times was called a
“King’s éargain,” that is to say, for His Britannic Majesty’s
navy a capital investment at small outlay or none at all.

After a brief pause—during which the reminiscences above
mentioned passed vividly through his mind—he weighed
the import of Claggart’s last suggestion, conveyed in the

288 SHOR‘TER NOVELS OF HERMAN MELVILLE
phrase, “pitfall under the clover,” and the more he Weighed
it the less reliance he felt in the informer’s good faith. Sud-
denly he turned upon him: “Do you come to me, Master-
at-arms, with so foggy a tale? As to Budd, cite me an act or
spoken word of his conﬁrmatory of what you here in general
charge against him. Stay,” drawing nearer to him, “heed
what you speak. Just now and in a case like this, there is a
yard—arm-end for the false-Witness.”

“Ah, your honour!” sighed Claggart mildly shaking his
shapely head as in sad deprecation of such unmerited sever~
ity of tone. Then bridling—erecting himself as in Virtuous
self-assertion, he circumstantially alleged certain words and
acts, which collectively if credited, led to presumptions mor—
tally inculpating Budd, and for some of these averments,
he added, substantiating proof was not far.

With grey eyes now impatient and distrustful, essaying to
fathom to the bottom Claggart’s calm Violet ones, Captain
Vere again heard him out; then for the moment stood rumi-
nating. The mood he evinced, Claggart—himself for the
time liberated from the other’s scrutiny—steadily regarded
with a look diﬂicult to render:-—a look curious of the opera-
tion of his tactics, a look such as might have been that of the
spokesman of the envious children of Jacob deceptively im-
posing upon the troubled patriarch the blood-dyed coat of
young Joseph.

Though something exceptional in the moral quality of
Captain Vere made him, in earnest encounter with a fellow~
man, a veritable touchstone of that man’s essential nature,
yet now as to Claggart and what was really going on in him
his feeling partook less of intuitional conviction than of
strong suspicion clogged by strange dubieties. The per-
plexity he evinced proceeded less from aught touching the
man informed against—as Claggart doubtless opined—than

' ﬁlLLY BUDD, FORETOPMAJ‘C 289
from considerations how best to act in regard to the informer.
At ﬁrst, indeed, he was naturally for summoning that sub-
stantiation of his allegations which Claggart said was at
hand. But such a proceeding would result in the matter at
once getting abroad—which—in the present stage of it, he
thought, might undesirably affect the ship’s company. If
Claggart was a false witness,——that closed the affair. And
therefore, before trying the accusation, he would ﬁrst prac—
tically test the accuser; and he thought this could be done
in a quiet undemonstrative way.

The measure he determined upon involved a shifting of
the scene—a transfer to a place less exposed to observation
than the broad quarter-deck. For although the few gun-
room ofﬁcers there at the time had, in due observance of
naval etiquette, withdrawn to leeward the moment Captain
Vere had begun his promenade on the deck’s weather side;
and though during the colloquy with Claggart they of course
ventured not to diminish the distance, and though through-
out the interview Captain Vere’s voice was far from high,
and Claggart’s silvery and low; and the Wind in the cordage
and the wash of the sea helped the more to put them beyond
ear-shot; nevertheless, the interview’s continuance already
had attracted observation from some topmen aloft, and other
sailors in the waist or further forward.

Having now determined upon his measures, Captain Vere
forthwith took action. Abruptly turning to Claggart he
asked, “Master-at—arms, is it now Budd’s watch aloft?”

“No, your honour.” Whereupon—“Mr. Wilkes,” sum-
moning the nearest midshipman, “tell Albert to come to me.”
Albert was the Captain’s hammock-boy, a sort of sea-valet in
whose discretion and ﬁdelity his master had much conﬁdence
The lad appeared. “You know Budd the foretopman?”

“I do, Sir.”

290 SHORTER .‘NOVELS OF HERMAN MELVILLE

vvvvvvvvVVVVVVvVYVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVW

 

“Go ﬁnd him. It is his watch OE. Manage to tell him
out of ear—shot that he is wanted aft. Contrive it that he
speaks to nobody. Keep him in talk yourself. And not
till you get well aft here, not till then, let him know that
the place where he is wanted is my cabin. You understand.
Go.-—Master—at-arms, show yourself on the decks below,
and when you think it time’for Albert to be coming with
his man, stand by quietly to follow the sailor in.”

CHAPTER XVII

Now when the foretopman found himself closeted, as it
were, in the cabin with the Captain and Claggart, he was
surprised enough. But it was a surprise unaccompanied by
apprehension or distrust. To an immature nature, essen—
tially honest and humane, forewarning intimations of subtler
danger from one’s kind come tardily, if at all. The only
thing that took shape in the young sailor’s mind was this:
“Yes, the Captain, I have always thought, looks kindly upon
me. I wonder if he’s going to make me his coxswain. I
should like that. And maybe now he is going to ask the
Master-at-arms about me.”

“Shut the door there, sentry,” said the commander.
“Stand without and let nobody come in.-——Now, Master—at-
arms, tell this man to his face What you told of him to me,”
and stood prepared to scrutinize the mutually confronting
Visages.

With the measured step and calm collected air of an asy~
lum physician approaching in the public hall some patient
beginning to show indications of a coming paroxysm, Clag—
gart deliberatley advanced Within short range of Billy, and
mesmerically looking him in the eye, brieﬂy recapitulated the
accusation.

'BILLY_-13_UDD, FORETOPJVI/IJC 29:

Not at ﬁrst did Billy take it in. When he did the rose-
tan of his cheek looked struck as by white leprosy. He stood
like one impaled and gagged. Meanwhile the accuser’s eyes,
removing not as yet from the blue, dilated ones, underwent
a phenomenal change, their wonted rich violet colour blur-
ring into a muddy purple. Those lights of human intelli-
' gence losing human expression, gelidly protruding like the
alien eyes of certain uncatalogued creatures of the deep.

The ﬁrst mesmeric glance was one of surprised fascination;
the last was the the hungry lurch of the torpedo—ﬁsh.

“Speak, man!” said Captain Vere to the transﬁxed one,
struck by his aspect even more than by Claggart’s, “Speak!
defend yourself.” Which appeal caused but a strange, dumb
gesturing and gurgling in Billy, amazement at such an ac-
cusation so suddenly sprung on inexperienced nonage; this,
and it may be horror at the accuser, serving to bring out his
lurking defect, and in this instance for the time intensifying
it into a convulsed tongue—tie; while the intent head and en-
tire form straining forward in an agony of ineffectual eager—
ness to obey the injunction to speak and defend himself, gave
an expression to the face like that of a condemned Vestal
priestess in the moment of her being buried alive, and in the
ﬁrst struggle against suffocation.

Though at the time Captain Vere was quite ignorant of
Billy’s liability to vocal impediment, he now immediately di-
vined it, since vividly Billy’s aspect recalled to him that of a
bright young schoolmate of his whom he had seen struck by
much the same startling impotence in the act of eagerly ris—
ing in the class to be foremost in response to a testing ques-
tion put to it by the master. Going close up to the young
sailor, and laying a soothing hand on his shoulder, he said.
“There is no hurry, my boy. Take your time, take your
time.” Contrary to the eﬂect intended, these words, so

292 SHORTER NOVELS 0F HERMAN MELVILLE
fatherly in tone, doubtless touching Billy’s heart to the quick,
prompted yet more violent eﬁorts at utterance—eﬁorts soon
ending for the time in conﬁrming the paralysis, and bringing
to the face an expression which was as a cruciﬁxion to behold.
The next instant, quick as the ﬂame from a discharged can—
non at night—his right arm shot out and Claggart dropped
to the deck. Whether intentionally, or but owing to the
young athlete’s superior height, the blow had taken effect
full upon the forehead, so shapely and intellectual-looking
a feature in the Master-at-arms; so that the body fell over
lengthwise, like a heavy plank tilted from erectness. A
gasp or two and he lay motionless.

“Fated boy,” breathed Captain Vere in a tone so low as to
be almost a whisper, “what have you done! But here, help
me.”

The twain raised the felled one from the loins up into a
sitting position. The spare form ﬂexibly acquiesced, but in-
ertly. It was like handling a dead snake. They lowered it
back. Regaining erectness, Captain Vere with one hand
covering his face stood to all appearance as impassive as to
the object at his feet. Was he absorbed in taking in all the
bearings of the event, and what was best not only now at
once to be done, but also in the sequel? Slowly he uncovered
his face; forthwith the effect was as if the moon, emerging
. from eclipse, should reappear with quite another aspect than
that which had gone into hiding. The father in him, mani—
fested towards Billy thus far in the scene, was replaced by
the military disciplinarian. In his ofﬁcial tone he bade the
foretopman retire to a state-room aft, (pointing it out), and
there remain till thence summoned. This order Billy in si—
lence mechanically obeyed. Then, going to the cabin door
Where it opened on the quarter-deck, Captain Vere said to
the sentry without, “Tell somebody to send Albert here.”

QILLY TBUDD, FORE‘TOPM/IN 293
When the lad appeared his master so contrived it that he
should not catch sight of the prone one. “Albert,” he said
to him, “tell the surgeon I wish to see him. You need not
come back till called.”

When the surgeon entered—a self-poised character of
that grave sense and experience that hardly anything could
take him aback—~Captain Vere advanced to meet him, thus
unconsciously interrupting his view of Claggart and inter-
rupting the other’s wonted ceremonious salutation, said,
“Nay, tell me how it is with yonder man,” directing his at-
tention to the prostrate one.

The surgeon looked, and for all his self-command, some-
what started at the abrupt revelation. On Claggart’s always
pallid complexion, thick black blood was now oozing from
mouth and ear. To the gazer’s professional eyes it was un-
mistakably no living man that he saw.

“Is it so, then?” said Captain Vere intently watching him.
“I thought it. But verify it.” Whereupon the customary
tests conﬁrmed the surgeon’s ﬁrst glance, who now looking up
in unfeigned concern, cast a look of intense inquisitiveness
upon his superior. But Captain Vere, with one hand to his
brow, was standing motionless. Suddenly, catching the sur-
geon’s arm convulsively, he exclaimed pointing down to the
body,—-“It is the divine judgment of Ananias! Look!”

Disturbed by the excited manner he had never before ob-
served in the Indomitable’: Captain, and as yet wholly ig- I
norant of the aﬂair, the prudent surgeon nevertheless held
his peace, only again looking an earnest interrogation as to
what it was that had resulted in such a tragedy.

But Captain Vere was now again motionless, standing ab—
sorbed in thought. Once again starting, he vehemently ex-
claimed—“Struck dead by an angel of God. Yet the angel
must hang!”

294 SHORTER NOVELS OF HERMAN MELVILLE

At these interjections, incoherences to the listener as yet
unapprised of the antecedent events, the surgeon was pro—
foundly discomﬁted. But now, as recollecting himself,
Captain Vere in less harsh tone brieﬂy related the circum-
stances leading up to the event.

“But come, we must despatch,” he added, “help me to
remove him (meaning the body) to yonder compartment”—
designating one opposite where the foretopman remained
immured. Anew disturbed by a request that, as implying a
desire for secrecy, seemed unaccountably strange to him,
there was nothing for the subordinate to do but comply.

“Go now,” said Captain Vere, with something of his
wonted manner, “Go now. I shall presently call a drum-
head court. Tell the lieutenants What has happened, and tell
Mr. Morton”—meaning the captain of marines. “And
charge them to keep the matter to themselves.”

Full of disquietude and misgivings, the surgeon left the
cabin. Was Captain Vere suddenly affected in his mind, or
was it but a transient excitement brought about by so strange
and extraordinary a happening? As to the drum-head court,
it struck the surgeon as impolitic, if nothing more. The
thing to do, he thought, was to place Billy Budd in conﬁne-
ment, and in a way dictated by usage, and postpone further
action in so extraordinary a case to such time as they should
again join the squadron, and then transfer it to the Admiral.
He recalled the unwonted agitation of Captain Ver‘e and his
exciting exclamations so at variance with his normal manner.
Was he unhinged? But assuming that he was, it were not so
susceptible of proof. What then could he do? No worse
trying situation is conceivable than that of an oﬁicer subordi—
nated under a Captain whom he suspects to be, not mad in—
deed, but yet not quite unaffected in his intellect. To argue
his order to him would be insolence. To resist him would be

BILLY BUDD,_F0RET_0_1:JVI_AJ( 295
mutiny. In obedience to Captain Vere he communicated to
the lieutenants and captain of marines what had happened;
saying nothing as to the Captain’s state. They stared at
him in surprise and concern. Like him they seemed to think
that such a matter should be reported to the Admiral.

Who in the rainbow can draw the line where the Violet tint
ends and the orange tint begins? Distinctly we see the dif—
ference of the colour, but Where exactly does the ﬁrst one
visibly enter into the other? So with sanity and insanity. In
pronounced cases there is no question about them. But in
some cases, in various degrees supposedly less pronounced, to
draw the line of demarkation few will undertake, though for
a fee some professional experts will. There is nothing nam-
able but that some men will undertake to do for pay. In
other words, there are instances where it is next to impossible
to determine whether a man is sane or beginning to be other-
wise.

Whether Captain Vere, as the surgeon professionally sur-
mised, was really the sudden Victim of any degree of aberra-
tion, one must determine for himself by such light as this
narrative may aﬁord.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE unhappy event which has been narrated could not
have happened at a worse juncture. For it was close on the
heel of the suppressed insurrections, an after-time very criti-
cal to naval authority, demanding from every English sea-
commander two qualities not readily interfusable—prudence
and rigour. Moreover, there was something crucial in the
case.

In the jugglery of circumstances preceding and attending
the event on board the Indomimble and in the light of that

296 SHORTER NOVELS OF HERMAN MELVILLE
martial code whereby it was formally to be judged, innocence
and guilt, personiﬁed in Claggart and Budd, in effect changed
places.

In the legal view the apparent Victim of the tragedy was
he who had sought to victimize a man blameless; and the in-
disputable deed of the latter, navally regarded, constituted
the most heinous of military crimes. Yet more. The es-
sential right and wrong involved in the matter, the clearer
that might be, so much the worse for the responsibility of a
loyal sea—commander, inasmuch as he was authorized to de-
termine the matter on that primitive legal basis.

Small wonder then that the I ndomitable’: Captain, though
in general a man of rigid decision, feltthat circumspectness
not less than promptitude was necessary. Until he could de—
cide upon his course, and in each detail; and not only so, but
until the concluding measure was upon the point of being en—
acted he deemed it advisable, in view of all the circumstances,
to guard as much as possible against publicity. Here he may
or may not have erred. Certain it is, however, that subse-
quently in the conﬁdential talk of more than one or two gun-
rooms and cabins he was not a little criticized by some oﬂicers,
a fact imputed by his friends, and vehemently by his cousin
Jack Denton, to professional jealousy of Starry Vere. Some
imaginative ground for invidious comment there was. The
maintenance of secrecy in the matter, the conﬁning all knowl-'
edge of it for a time to the place where the homicide 0c—
curred—the quarter-deck cabin; in these particulars lurked
some resemblance to the policy adopted in those tragedies of
the palace which have occurred more than once in the capital
founded by Peter the Barbarian, great chieﬂy by his crimes.

The case was such that fain would the Indomitable’s Cap-
tain have deferred taking any action whatever respecting it
further than to keep the foretopman a close prisoner till the

BILLY BUDD, FORETOPJ/I/IN 297
ship rejoined the squadron, and then submitting the matter
to the judgment of his Admiral.

But a true military oﬂicer is, in one particular, like a true

monk. Not with more of self—abnegation will the latter keep
his vows of monastic obedience than the ’former his vows of
allegiance to martial duty.
7 Feeling that unless quick action were taken on it, the deed
of the foretopman, as soon as it should be known on the
gun—decks, would tend to awaken any slumbering embers of
the Nore among the crews—a sense of the urgency of the
case overruled in Captain Vere all other considerations. But
though a conscientious disciplinarian, he was no lover of au-
thority for mere authority’s sake. Very far was he from
embracing opportunities for monopolizing to himself the
perils of moral responsibility, none at least that could prop—
erly be referred to an ofﬁcial superior, or shared with him by
his ofﬁcial equals or even subordinates. So thinking, he was
glad it would not be at variance with usage to turn the matter
over to a summary court of his own oﬂ'icers, reserving to him-
self, as the one on whom the ultimate accountability would
rest, the right of maintaining a supervision of it, or formally
or informally interposing at need. Accordingly a drum—head
court was summarily convened, he electing the individuals
composing it, the First Lieutenant, the Captain of Marines,
and the Sailing Master.

In associating an ofﬁcer of marines with the sea-lieutenants
in a case having to do with a sailor, the Commander perhaps
deviated from general custom. 'gHe was prompted thereto
by the circumstances that he took that soldier to be a judicious
person, thoughtful and not altogether incapable of gripping
with a diﬂicult case unprecedented in his prior experience.
Yet even as to him he was not without some latent misgiv—
ing, for withal he was an extremely good—natured man, an

298 SHORTER NOVELS OF HERMAN MELVILLEW
enj oyer of his dinner, a sound sleeper, and inclined to obesity.
The sort of man who, though he would always maintain his
manhood in battle, might not prove altogether reliable in a
moral dilemma involving aught of the tragic. 0As to the
First Lieutenant and the Sailing Master, Captain Vere could
not but be aware that though honest natures, of approved gal—
lantry upon occasion, their intelligence was mostly conﬁned
to the matter of active seamanship, and the ﬁghting demands
of their profession. "’ The court was held in the same cabin
Where the unfortunate affair had taken place. This cabin, the
Commander’s, embraced the entire area under the poop—deck.
Aft, and on either side, was a small state—room—the one
room temporarily a jail, and the other a dead-house—and a
yet smaller compartment leaving a space between, expanding
forward into a goodly oblong of length coinciding with the
ship’s beam. A sky-light of moderate dimension was over—
head, and at each end of the oblong space were two sashed
port—hole windows, easily converitable back into embrasures
for short cannonades.

All being quickly in readiness, Billy Budd was arraigned,
Captain Vere necessarily appearing as the sole witness in the
case, and as such temporarily sinking his rank, though singu—
larly maintaining it in a matter apparently trivial, namely,
that he testiﬁed from the ship’s weather-side, with that object
having caused the court to sit on the lee-side. Concisely he
narrated all that had led up to the catastrophe, omitting
nothing in Claggart’s accusation and deposing as to the
manner in which the prisoner had received it. At this
testimony the three ofﬁcers glanced with no little surprise at
Billy Budd, the last man they would have suspected, either
of mutinous design alleged by Claggart, or of the undeniable
deed he himself had done. The First Lieutenant, taking
judicial primacy and turning towards the prisoner, said, “Cap-

BILLY BUDD, FORETOPMIIN 299
tain Vere has spoken. Is it or is it not as Captain Vere says?”
In response came syllables not so much impeded in the
utterance as might have been anticipated. They were these:

“Captain Vere tells the truth. It is just as Captain Vere
says, but it is not as the Master—at—arms said. I have eaten
the King’s bread and I am true to the King.”

“I believe you, my man,” said the witness, his voice in-
dicating a suppressed emotion not otherwise betrayed.

“God will bless you for that, your honour!” not without
stammering said Billy, and all but broke down. But imme—
diately was recalled to self—control by another question, with
which the same emotional diﬂiculty of utterance came: “No,
there was no malice between us. I never bore malice against
the Master-at—arms. I am sorry that he is dead. I did not
mean to kill him. Could I have used my tongue I would
not have struck him. But he foully lied to my face, and in
the presence of my Captain, and I had to say something, and
I could only say it with a blow. God help me!”

In the impulsive above-board manner of the frank one the
court saw conﬁrmed all that was implied in words which just
previously had perplexed them, coming as they did from the
testiﬁer to the tragedy, and promptly following Billy’s im—
passioned disclaimer of mutinous intent—Captain Vere’s
words, “I believe you, my man.”

Next it was asked of him whether he knew of or suspected
aught savouring of incipient trouble (meaning a mutiny,
though the explicit term was avoided) going on in any section
of the ship’s company.

The reply lingered. This was naturally imputed by the
court to the same vocal embarrassment which had retarded
or obstructed previous answers. But in main it was other—
wise here, the question immediately recalling to Billy’s mind
the interview with the afterguardsman in the fore—chains.

300 SHORTER NOVELS 0F HERMAN MELVILLE

But an innate repugnance to playing a part at all approaching
that of an informer against one’s own shipmates—the same
erring sense of uninstructed honour which had stood in the
way of his reporting the matter at the time; though as a
loyal man-of—war man it was incumbent on him and failure so
to do charged against him and, proven, would have subjected
him to the heaviest of penalties. This, with the blind feeling
now his, that nothing really was being hatched, prevailing
with him. When the answer came it was a negative.

“One question more,” said the ofﬁcer of marines now ﬁrst
speaking and with a troubled earnestness. “You tell us that
what the Master-at-arms said against you was a lie. Now
why should he have so lied, so maliciously lied, since you
declare there was no malice between you?”

At that question unintentionally touching on a spiritual
sphere wholly obscure to Billy’s thoughts, he was nonplussed,
evincing a confusion indeed that some observers, such as can
be imagined, would have construed into involuntary evidence
of hidden guilt. Nevertheless he strove some way to answer,
but all at once relinquished the vain endeavour, at the same
time turning an appealing glance towards Captain Vere as
deeming him his best helper and friend. Captain Vere, who
had been seated for a time, rose to his feet, addressing the
interrogator. “The question you put to him comes naturally
enough. But can he rightly answer itP—or anybody
else? unless indeed it be he who lies within there,” desig~
nating the compartment where lay the corpse. “But the
prone one there will not rise to our summons. In effect
though, as it seems to me, the point you make is hardly
material. Quite aside from any conceivable motive actuating
the Master—at—arms, and irrespective of the provocation of
the blow, a martial court must needs in the present case con—
ﬁne its attention to the blow’s consequence, which conse-

BILLY EUDD, FORE‘T'OPMAN 301

vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv

quence is to be deemed not otherwise than as the striker’s
deed!”

This utterance, the full signiﬁcance of which it was not at
all likely that Billy took in, nevertheless caused him to turn
a wistful, interrogative look towards the speaker, a look in its
dumb expressiveness not unlike that which a dog of generous
breed might turn upon his master, seeking in his face some
elucidation of a previous gesture ambiguous to the canine
intelligence. Nor was the same utterance without marked
eﬁect upon the three oﬂicers, more especially the soldier.
Couched in it seemed to them a meaning unanticipated, in-
volving a prejudgment on the speaker’s part. It served to
augment a mental disturbance previously evident enough.

The soldier once more spoke, in a tone of suggestive
dubiety addressing at once his associates and Captain Vere:
“Nobody is present—none of the ship’s company, I mean,
who might shed lateral light, if any is to be had, upon What
remains mysterious in this matter.”

“That is thoughtfully put,” said Captain Vere 3 “I see your
drift. Ay, there is a mystery; but to use a Scriptural phrase,
it is ‘a mystery of iniquity,’ a matter for only psychologic
theologians to discuss. But What has a military court to do
With it? Not to add that for us any possible investigation
of it is cut OE by the lasting tongue—tie of him in yonder,”
again designating the mortuary state—room. “The prisoner’s
deed. With that alone we have to do.”

To this, and particularly the closing reiteration, the marine
soldier, knowing not how aptly to reply, sadly abstained from
saying aught. The First Lieutenant, who at the outset had
not unnaturally assumed primacy in the court, now over-
rulingly instructed by a glance from Captain Vere (a glance
more effective than words), resumed that primacy. Turning
to the prisoner: “Budd,” he said, and scarce in eauable tones,

302 SHORTER {NOVELS OF HERMAN MELVILLE
“Budd, if you have aught further to say for yourself, say
it now.”

Upon this the young sailor turned another quick glance
towards Captain Vere, then, as taking a hint from that aspect,
a hint conﬁrming his own instinct that silence was now best,
replied to the Lieutenant, “I have said all, Sir.”

The marine—the same who had been the sentinel without
the cabin—door at the time that the foretopman, followed by
the Master-at—arms, entered it—he, standing by the sailor
throughout their judicial proceedings, was now directed to
take him back to the after compartment originally assigned
to the prisoner and his custodian. As the twain disappeared
from View, the three oﬂicers, as partially liberated from some
inward constraint associated with Billy’s mere presence—
simultaneously stirred in their seats. They exchanged looks
of troubled indecision, yet feeling that decide they must, and
Without long delay 5 for Captain Vere was for the time sitting
unconsciously with his back towards them, apparently in one
of his absent fits, gazing out from a sashed port—hole to
Windward upon the monotonous blank of the twilight sea.
But the court’s silence continuing, broken only at moments
by brief consultations in low earnest tones, this seemed to
assure him and encourage him. Turning, he to—and—fro
paced the cabin athwart; in the returning ascent to Windward,
climbing the slant deck in the ship’s lee roll; without know—
ing it symbolizing thus in his action a mind resolute to sur—
mount diﬂiculties even if against primitive instincts strong as
the wind and the sea. Presently he came to a stand before
the three. After scanning their faces he stood less as muster—
ing his thoughts for expression, than as one in deliberating
how best to put them to well—meaning men not intellectually
mature—men with whom it was necessary to demonstrate
certain principles that were axioms to himself. Similar im-

.‘BILLY BUDD, FORE‘TOPJVIAN 303
patience as to talking is perhaps one reason that deters some
minds from addressing any popular assemblies; under which
head is to be classed most legislatures in a Democracy. V

When speak he did, something both in the substance of
what he said and his manner of saying it, showed the inﬂuence
of unshared studies, modifying and tempering the practical
training of an active career. This, along with his phrase—
ology now and then, was suggestive of the grounds Whereon
rested that imputation of a certain pedantry socially alleged
against him by certain naval men of Wholly practical cast,
captains who nevertheless would frankly concede that His
Majesty’s Navy mustered no more eﬂicient ofﬁcers of their
grade than “Starry Vere.”

What he said was to this effect: “Hitherto I have been but
the witness, little more; and I should hardly think now to
take another tone, that of your coadjutor, for the time, did
I not perceive in you—at the crisis too—a troubled hesitancy,
proceeding, I doubt not, from the clashing of military duty
with moral scruple—scruple vitalized by compassion. For
the compassion, how can I otherwise but share it. But,
mindful of paramount obligation, I strive against scruples
that may tend to enervate decision. Not, gentlemen, that I
hide from myself that the case is an exceptional one. Specu—
latively regarded, it well might be referred to a jury of
casuists. But for us here, acting not as casuists or moralists,
it is a case practical and under martial law practically to be
dealt with.

“But your scruples! Do they move as in a dusk? Chal-
' lenge them. Make them advance and declare themselves.
Come now—do they import something like this: If, mindless
of palliating circumstances, we are bound to regard the death
of the Master-at-arms as the prisoner’s deed, then does that
deed constitute a capital crime whereof the penalty is a

304. SHORTER NOVELS OF HERMAN MELVILLE
mortal one? But in natural justice is nothing but the prison-
er’s overt act to be considered? Now can we adjudge to
summary and shameful death a fellow-creature innocent
before God, and whom we feel to be so?——-Does that state
it aright? You sign sad assent. Well, I, too, feel that, the
full force of that. It is Nature. But do these buttons that
we wear attest that our allegiance is to Nature? No, to the
King. Though the ocean, which is inviolate Nature
primeval, though this be the element where we move and
have our being as sailors, yet as the King’s oﬂ'icers lies our
duty 1n a sphere correspondingly natural? So little is that
true, that 1n receiving our commissions we in the most im—
portant regards ceased to be natural free— —agents. When war
is declared, are we the commissioned ﬁghters previously con—
sulted? We ﬁght at command. If our judgments approve
the war, that is but coincidence. So in other particulars. So
now, would it be so much we ourselves that would condemn
as it would be martial law operating through us? For that
law and the rigour of it, we are not responsible. Our vowed
responsibility is in this: That however pitilessly that law may
operate, we nevertheless adhere to it and administer it.

“ “But the exceptional in the matter moves the heart within
you. Even so, too, is mine moved. But let not warm hearts
betray heads that should be cool.’ Ashore 1n a criminal case
will an upright judge allow himself when off the bench to be
waylaid by some tender kinswoman of the accused seeking
to touch him with her tearful plea? Well, the heart here is
as that piteous woman. The heart is the feminine in man,
and hard though it be, she must here be ruled out.”

He paused, earnestly studying them for a moment, then

resumed.
‘\ “But something 1n your aspect seems to urge that it is not
solely that heart that moves in you, but also the conscience,

BILLY $UDD, FORETOPM/IJ‘C 30—5
the private conscience. Then, tell me whether or not, occupy-
ing the position we do, private conscience should not yield
to that imperial one formulated in the code under which
alone we oﬂicially proceed?” ”

Here the three men moved in their seats, less convinced.
than agitated by the course of an argument troubling but the
more the spontaneous conﬂict within. Perceiving which, the
speaker paused for a moment; then abruptly changing his
tone, went on:

“To steady us a bit, let us recur to the facts—In war-time
at sea a man—of—war’s man strikes his superior in grade, and
the blow kills. Apart from its effect, the blow itself is,
according to the Articles of War, a capital crime. Further
more—”

“Ay, Sir,” emotionally broke in the ofﬁcer of marines, “in
one sense it was. But surely Budd purposed neither mutiny
nor homicide.”

“Surely not, my good man. And before a court less arbi~
trary and more merciful than a martial one that plea would
largely extenuate. At the Last Assizes it shall acquit. But
how here? We proceed under the law of the Mutiny Act.
In feature no child can resemble his father more than that
Act resembles in spirit the thing from which it derives—-
War. In His Majesty’s service—-in this ship indeed—there
are Englishmen forced to ﬁght for the King against their
will. Against their consicence, for aught we know. Though
as their fellow—creatures some of us may appreciate their
position, yet as Navy oﬂicers, What reck we of it? Still less
recks the enemy. Our impressed men he would fain cut
down in the same swath with our volunteers. As regards
the enemy’s naval conscripts, some of whom may even share
our own abhorrence of the regicidal French Directory, it is
the same on our side. War looks but to the frontage, the

306 SHOR‘TER NOVELS OF HERMAN MELVILLE

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appearance. And the Mutiny Act, War’s child, takes after
the father. Budd’s intent or non-intent is nothing to the
purpose.

“But while, put to it by those anxieties in you which I can-
not but respect, I only repeat myself—while thus strangely
we prolong proceedings that should be summary, the enemy
may be sighted and an engagement result. We must do,
and one of two things must we do—condemn or let go.”

\\ “Can we not convict and yet mitigate the penalty?” asked
the junior Lieutenant here speaking, and falteringly, for the
ﬁrst time.

“Lieutenant, Were that clearly lawful for us under the cir-
cumstances, consider the consequences of such clemency.
The people” (meaning the ship’s company) “have native
sense, most of them are familiar with our naval usage and
tradition, and how would they take it?” Even could you ex-
plain to them—which our oﬂicial position forbids—they,
long moulded by arbitrary discipline, have not that kind of
intelligent responsiveness that might qualify them to compre—
hend and discriminate. N o, to the people the foretopman’s
deed, however it be worded in the announcement, will be
plain homicide committed in a ﬂagrant act of mutiny. What
penalty for that should follow, they know. But it does not
follow. Why? they will ruminate.‘\‘You know what sailors
are. Will they not revert to the recent outbreak at the N ore?
Ay, they know the Well—founded alarm—the panic it struck
throughout England. Your clement sentence they would
account pusillanimous. They would think that we ﬂinch,
that we are afraid of themlafraid of practising a lawful
rigour singularly demanded at this juncture lest it should
provoke new troubles. What shame to us such a conjecture
on their part, and how deadly to discipline. You see then
whither, prompted by duty and the law, I steadfastly drive.

BILLY BUDD, FORE‘TOPM/IN 0

But I beseech you, my friends, do not take me amiss. I feel
as you do for this unfortunate boy. But did he know our
hearts, I take him to be of that generous nature that he would
feel even for us on whom in this military necessity so heavy
a compulsion is laid.”

With that, crossing the deck, he resumed his place by the
sashed port—hole, tacitly leaving the three to come to a deci-
sion. On the cabin’s opposite side the troubled court sat
silent. Loyal lieges, plain and practical, though at bottom
they dissented from some points Captain Vere had put to
them, they were without the faculty, hardly had: the incli—
nation to gainsay one whom they felt to be an earnest man—
one, too, not less their superior in mind than in naval rank.
But it is not improbable that even such of his words as were
not without inﬂuence over them, less came home to them
than his closing appeal to their instinct as sea-oﬂ‘icers, in the
forethought he threw out as to the practical consequences to
discipline (considering the unconﬁrmed tone of the ﬂeet at
the time)—should a man—of—war’s man’s Violent killing at sea
of a superior in grade be allowed to pass for aught else than
a capital crime, demanding prompt inﬂiction of the penalty?

Not unlikely they were brought to something more or less
akin to that harassed frame of mind which in the year I842
actuated the commander of the U.S. brig—of—war Samar:
to resolve .(under the so-called Articles of War—Articles
modelled upon the English Mutiny Act) to resolve upon the
execution at sea of a midshipman and two petty—oﬂicers as
mutineers designing the seizure of the brig. Which reso-
lution was carried out, though in a time of peace and within
not many days’ sail of home. An act vindicated by a naval
court of inquiry subsequently convened ashore—history, and
here cited without comment. True, the circumstances on
board the S'omers were different from those on board the

.

£8 SHORTER NOVELS OF HERMAN MELVILLE
I ndomitalile. But the urgency felt, well-warranted or other-
wise, was much the same.

Says a writer whom few know, “Forty years after a battle
it is easy for a non-combatant to reason about how it ought
to have been fought. It is another thing personally and
under ﬁre to direct the ﬁghting while involved in the obscur—
ing smoke of it. Much so With respect to other emergencies
involving considerations both practical and moral, and when
it is imperative promptly to act. The greater the fog, the
more it imperils the steamer, and speed is put on though at
the hazard of running somebody down. Little ween the
snug card—players in the cabin of the responsibilities of the
sleepless man on the bridge.” ‘ V

In brief, Billy Budd was formally convicted and sentenced
to be hung at the yard—arm in the early morning-watch, it
being now night. Otherwise, as is customary in such cases,
the sentence would forthwith have been carried out. In
war—time on the ﬁeld or in the ﬂeet, a mortal punishment
decreed by a drum—head court—on the ﬁeld sometimes de—
creed by but a nod from the General—follows without a
delay on the heel of conviction without appeal.

CHAPTER XIX

IT was Captain Vere himself who, of his own motion, com-
municated the ﬁnding of the court to the prisoner ; for that
purpose going to the compartment Where he was in cuStody,
and bidding the marine there to withdraw for the time.

Beyond the communication of the sentence, what took
place at this interview was never known. But, in View of the
character of the twain brieﬂy closeted in that state-room, each
radically sharing in the rarer qualities of one nature—so rare,

H

EILLY BUDD, FORETOPJVIANL £02

indeed, as to be all but incredible to average minds however
much cultivated—some conjectures may be ventured.

It would have been in consonance with the spirit of our
Captain Vere should he on this occasion have concealed noth—
ing from the condemned one—should he indeed have
frankly disclosed to him the part he himself had played in
bringing about the decision, at the same time revealing his
actuating motives. On Billy’s side it is not improbable that
such a confession would have been received in much the same
spirit that prompted it. Not without a sort of joy indeed he
might have appreciated the brave opinion of him implied in
his Captain making such a conﬁdant of him. Nor as to the
sentence itself could he have been insensible that it was
imparted to him as to one not afraid to die. Even more
may have been. Captain Vere in the end may have
developed the passion sometimes latent under an exterior
stoical or indifferent. He was old enough to have been
Billy’s father. The austere devotee of military duty, letting
himself melt back into What remains primeval in our for--
malized humanity, may in the end have caught Billy to heart,
even as Abraham may have caught young Isaac on the brink
of resolutely offering him up in obedience to the exacting
behest. But there is no telling the sacrament—seldom if in
any case revealed to the gadding world wherever under cir-
cumstances at all akin to those here attempted to be set
forth—two of great Nature’s nobler'order embrace. There
is privacy at the time, inviolable to the survivor, and holy
oblivion (the sequel to each diviner magnanimity) providen-
tially covers all at last. ,

The ﬁrst to encounter Captain Vere in the act of leaving
the compartment was the senior Lieutenant. The face he
beheld, for the moment one expressive of the agony of the
strong, was to that ofﬁcer, though a man of ﬁfty, a startling

310 SHORTER NOVELS OF HERMAN MELVILLE
revelation. That the condemned one suffered less than he
who mainly had effected the condemnation, was apparently
indicated by the former’s exclamation in the scene soon per-
force to be touched upon.

Of a series of incidents Within a brief term rapidly fol-
lowing each other, the adequate narration may take up a
term less brief, especially if explanation or comment here and
there seem requisite to the better understanding of such
incidents. Between the entrance into the cabin of him Who
never left it alive, and him who when he did leave it left it
as one condemned to die; between this and the closeted inter~
View just given, less than an hour and a half had elapsed.
It was an interval long enough, however, to awaken specu—
lations among no few of the ship’s company as to What it
was that could be detaining in the cabin the Master—at—arms
and the sailor, for it was rumoured that both of them had
been seen to enter it and neither of them had been seen to
emerge. This rumour had got abroad upon the gun—decks
and in the tops; the people of a great war-ship being in one
respect like Villagers, taking microscopic note of every un—
toward movement or non—movement going on. When there-
fore in weather not at all tempestuous all hands were called
in the second dog—watch, a summons under such circum-
stances not usual in those hours, the crew were not Wholly
unprepared for some announcement extraordinary, one hav—
ing connection, too, with the continued absence of the two
men from their wonted haunts.

There was a moderate sea at the time; and the moon,
newly risen and near to being at its full, silvered the White
spar—deck wherever not blotted by the clear-cut shadows
horizontally thrown of ﬁxtures and moving men. On either
side of the quarter—deck the marine guard under arms was
drawn up; and Captain Vere, standing up in his place sur-

TBILLY ‘BUDD, FORETOPQMAN 311
rounded by all the ward-room ofﬁcers, addressed his men.
In so doing his manner showed neither more nor less than
that properly pertaining to his supreme position aboard his
own ship. In clear terms and concise he told them what
had taken place in the cabin; that the Master-at—arrns was
dead; that he who had killed him had been already tried by
a summary court and condemned to death; and that the
execution would take place in the early morning watch. The
word mutiny was not named in what he said. He refrained,
too, from making the occasion an opportunity for any preach—
ment as to the maintenance of discipline, thinking, perhaps,
that under existing "circumstances in the navy the consequence
of violating discipline should be made to speak for itself.

Their Captain’s announcement was listened to by the
throng of standing sailors in a dumbness like that of a seated
congregation of believers in Hell listening to the clergyman’s
announcement of his Calvinistic text.

At the close, however, a confused murmur went up. It
began to wax all but instantly, then, at a sign, was pierced
and suppressed by shrill Whistles of the Boatswain and his
mates piping “Down one watch.”

To be prepared for burial Claggart’s body was delivered
to certain petty—ofﬁcers of his mess. And here, not to clog
the sequel with lateral matters, it may be added that at a
suitable hour, the Master—at—arms was committed to the sea
with every funeral honour properly belonging to his naval
grade.

In this proceeding, as in every public one growing out of
the tragedy, strict adherence to usage was observed. Nor in
any point could it have been at all deviated from, either with
respect to Claggart or Billy Budd, without begetting un-
desirable speculations in the ship’s company, the sailors, and

312 SHORTER NOVELS 0F HERMAN MELVILLE
more particularly the men-of—war’s men, being of all men
the greatest sticklers for usage.

For similar cause all communication between Captain Vere
and the condemned one ended with the closeted interview
already given, the latter being now surrendered to the ordi-
nary routine preliminary to the end. This transfer under
guard from the Captain’s quarters was effected without un-
usual precautions—at least no Visible ones.

If possible, not to let the men so much as surmise that
their ofﬁcers anticipate aught amiss from them, is the tacit
rule in a military ship. And the more that some sort of
trouble should really be apprehended, the more do the
oﬂicers keep that apprehension to themselves; though not the
less unostentatious vigilance may be augmented.

In the present instance the sentry placed over the prisoner
had strict orders to let no one have communication with him
but the Chaplain. And certain unobtrusive measures were
taken absolutely to insure this point.

CHAPTER XX

IN a seventy-four of the old order the deck known as the
upper gun-deck was the one covered over by the spar-deck,
which last, though not Without its armament, was for the
most part exposed to the weather. In general it was at all
hours free from hammocks 5 those of the crew swinging on
the lower gun-deck, and berth-deck, the latter being not only
a dormitory but also the place for the stowing of the sailors’
bags, and on both sides lined With the large chests or movable
pantries of the many messes of the men.

On the starboard side of the Indomitaéle’: upper gun—
deck, behold Billy Budd under sentry lying prone in irons
in one of the bays formed by the regular spacing of the

BILLY BUDD, FORE‘TOPMAZM 313
guns comprising the batteries on either side. All these pieces
were of the heavier calibre of that period. Mounted on
lumbering wooden carriages, they were hampered with
cumbersome harness of breeching and strong side~tackles for
running them out. Guns and carriages, together with the
long rammers and shorter lintstocks lodged in loops overhead
-——all these, as customary, were painted black; and the heavy
hempen breechings, tarred to the same tint, wore the like
livery of the undertakers. In contrast with the funereal tone
of these surrounding the prone sailor’s exterior apparel,
white jumper and white duck trousers, each more or less
soiled, dimly glimmered in the obscure light of the bay like
a patch of discoloured snow in early April lingering at some
upland cave’s black mouth. In eﬁect he is already in his
shroud or the garments that shall serve him in lieu of one.
Over him, but scarce illuminating him, two battle—lanterns
swing from two massive beams of the deck above. Fed with
the oil supplied by the war—contractors (whose gains, honest
or otherwise, are in every land an anticipated portion of the
harvest of death), with ﬂickering splashes of dirty yellow
light they pollute the pale moonshine all but ineﬁectually
struggling in obstructed ﬂecks through the open ports from
which the tompined cannon protrude. Other lanterns at
intervals serve but to bring out somewhat the obscurer bays
which, like small confessionals or side-chapels in a cathedral,
branch from the long, dim—vasted, broad aisle between the
two batteries of that covered tire.

Such was the deck where now lay the Handsome Sailor.
Through the rose—tan of his complexion, no pallor could
have shown. It would have taken days of sequestration
from the winds and the sun to have brought about the eﬂace-
ment of that young sea-bloom. But the skeleton in the
cheek—bone at the point of its angle was just beginning

314 SHORTER NOVELS OF HERMAN MELVILLE
delicately to be deﬁned under the warm—tinted skin. In
fervid hearts self—contained some brief experiences devour
our human tissue as secret ﬁre in a ship’s hold consumes
cotton in the bale.

But now, lying between the two guns, as nipped in the
vice of fate, Billy’s agony, mainly proceeding from a gener—
ous young heart’s virgin experience of the diabolical incarnate
and effective in some men—the tension of that agony was
over now. It survived not the something healing in the
closeted interview with Captain Vere. Without movement,
he lay as in a trance, that adolescent expression previously
noted as his, taking on something akin to the look of a
slumbering child in the cradle when the warm hearth—glow
of the still chamber of night plays on the dimples that at
whiles mysteriously form in the cheek, silently coming and
going there. For now and then in the gyved one’s trance,
a serene happy light born of some wandering reminiscence
or dream would diffuse itself over his face, and then wane
away only anew to return.

The Chaplain coming to see him and ﬁnding him thus, and
perceiving no sign that he was conscious of his presence,
attentively regarded him for a space, then slipping aside,
withdrew for the time, peradventure feeling that even he,
the minister of Christ, though receiving his stipend from
wars, had no consolation to proﬁer which could result in a
peace transcending that which he beheld. But in the small
hours he came again. And the prisoner, now awake to his
surroundings, noticed his approach, and civilly, all but cheer—
fully, welcomed him. But it was to little purpose that in
the interview following the good man sought to bring Billy
Budd to some Godly understanding that he must die, and
at dawn. True, Billy himself freely referred to his death as
a thing close at hand; but it was something in the way that

BILLY BUDD, FORETOPMAJ‘C 315
children will refer to death in general, who yet among their
other sports will play a funeral with hearse and mourners.
Not that like children Billy was incapable of conceiving what
death really is. No, but he was wholly without irrational
fear of it, a fear more prevalent in highly civilized com—
munities than those so-called barbarous ones which in all
respects stand nearer to unadulterate Nature. And, as else—
where said, a barbarian Billy radically was; as much so, for
all the costume, as his countrymen the British captives, living
trophies made to march in the Roman triumph of German-
icus. Quite as much so as those later barbarians, young men
probably, and picked specimens among the earlier British cons
verts to Christianity, at least nominally such, and taken to
Rome (as to-day converts from lesser isles of the sea may
be taken to London), of whom the Pope of that time, admir-
ing the strangeness of their personal beauty—so unlike the
Italian stamp, their clear, ruddy complexions and curled
ﬂaxen locks, explained, “Angles” (meaning in English the
modern derivative)—“Angels do you call them? And is it
because they look so like angels?” Had it been later in
time one would think that the Pope had in mind Fra Angel—
ico’s seraphs, some of Whom, plucking apples in gardens of
Hesperides, have the faint rose-bud complexion of the more
beautiful English girls.

CHAPTER XXI

IF in vain the kind Chaplain sought to impress the young
barbarian with ideas of death akin to those conveyed in the
skull, dial and cross—bones on old tombstones; equally futile
to all appearances were his eﬁorts to bring home to him the
thought of salvation and a Saviour. Billy listened, but less
out of awe or reverence, perhaps, than from a certain natural

316 SHORTER NOVELS OF HERMAN MELVILLE
politeness; doubtless at bottom regarding all that in much
the same way which most mariners of his class take any dis-
course abstract or out of the common tone of the workaday
world. And this sailor Way of taking clerical discourse is
not wholly unlike the way in which the pioneer of Christian—
ity—full of transcendant miracles—was received long ago
on tropic isles by any superior savage so called: a Tahaitian
say of Captain Cook’s time or shortly after that time. Out
of natural courtesy he received but did not appreciate. It
was like a gift placed in the palm of an out—stretched hand
upon which the ﬁngers do not close.

But the I ndomitable’: Chaplain was a discreet man possess—
ing the good sense of a good heart. So he insisted not in his
vocation here. At the instance of Captain Vere, a lieutenant
had apprised him of pretty much of everything as to Billy;
and since he felt that innocence was even a better thing than
religion wherewith to go to judgment, he reluctantly with—
drew; but in his emotion not Without performing an act
strange enough in an Englishman, and under the circum—
stances yet more so in any regular priest. Stooping over, he
kissed on the fair cheek his fellow man, a felon in martial
law, one who, though in the conﬁnes of death, he felt he
could never convert to a dogma; nor for all that he did fear
for his future.

Marvel not that, having been made acquainted with the
young sailor’s essential innocence, the worthy man lifted not
a ﬁnger to avert the doom of such a martyr to martial disci—
pline. So to do would not only have been as idle as in-
VOking the desert, but would also have been an audacious
transgression of the bounds of his function—one as exactly
prescribed to him by military law as that of any other naval
ofﬁcer. Bluntly put, a chaplain 15 the minister of the Prince
of Peace serving in the host of the God of War—Mars.

‘BILLY fBUDD, FORE‘J’OPJVIAJ‘C 317
As such, he is as incongruous as a musket would be on
the altar at Christmas. Why then is he there? Because he
indirectly~ subserves‘ the purpose attested by the cannon;
because, too, he lends the sanction of the religion of the meek
to that which practically is the abrogation of everything but
force.*

CHAPTER XXII

THE night so luminous on the spar-deck, but otherwise
on the cavernous ones below—levels so very like the tiered
galleries in a coal—mine—the luminous night passed away.
Like the prophet in the chariot disappearing in heaven and
dropping his mantle to Elisha, the withdrawing night trans~
ferred 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 bell 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 diﬁer-
ent 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 Whisper, and few spake at all. Captain Vere——
as before, the central ﬁgure among the assembled com-

* Melville notes on this passage: “An irruption of heretic thought hard to suppress."

318 SHORTER NOVELS OF HERMAN MELVILLE

missioned officers—~5tood 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 afterwardsythat in this ﬁnal
scene the good man evinced little or nothing of the per-
functory. Brief speech indeed he had with the condemned
one, but the genuine gospel was less on his tongue than in his
aspect and manner towards him. The ﬁnal preparations per—
sonal 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 towards the
quarters of honour; syllables, too, delivered in the clear mel-
ody 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, spiritualized now
through late experiences so poignantly profound.

Without volition, as it were, as if indeed the ship’s popu-—
lace were the vehicles of some vocal electric current, 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

BILLY BUDD, FORE‘TOPM/LN 319
stoic self-control or a sort of momentary paralysis induced
by emotional shock, stood erectly rigid as a musket in the
ship— —armour ’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 singu-
larity 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 so scientiﬁcally conducted—and, under special
orders, I myself directed how Budd’s was to be effected—-
any movement following the completed suspension and orig—
inating 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.”

ézo SHORTER NOVELS OF HERMAN MELVILLE

“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. As for me, I do not with my present knowledge:
pretend to account for it at all. EVCn 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 spring—even under that hypothesis, how account for the
phenomenon that followed?”

“You admit, then, that the absence of spasmodic move-
ment 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 meta—
physical, in short, Greek. But,” abruptly changing his tone,
“there is a case in the sick—bay which I do not care to leave
to my assistants. Begging your pardon, but excuse me.”
And rising from the mess he formally withdrew.

BILLY BUDD, FORE‘I'OPMAN 32f

vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv

CHAPTER XXIII

THE silence at the moment of execution, and for a moment
or two continuing thereafter (but emphasized 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
emphasized silence was gradually disturbed by a sound not
easily to be here 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 remote—
ness 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 in that it seemed to indicate some capri-
cious 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 oﬂicer—of—the—deck.

Now each proceeding that follows a mortal sentence pro-

322 SHORTER NOVELS OF HERMAN MELVILLE
nounced at sea by a drum-head court is characterized by
a 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 ofﬁces of the sea—undertakers, the Sail-maker’s Mates,
were 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 heardf—blended now
with another so inarticulate sound proceeding from certain
larger sea—fowl, whose 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 scream-
ing 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
cracked requiem of their cries.

Upon sailors as superstitious as those of the age preceding
ours—all men—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 a mere animal greed for prey,
was big with no prosaic signiﬁcance An uncertain movement
began among them, 1n 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 some signal

BILLY BUDD, FORETOPMAN 323
peremptoriness in it. True martial discipline long continued
superinduces in an average man a sort of impulse of docility,
whose operation at the oﬂicial tone of command much re-
sembles in its promptitude the eﬁect of an instinct.

The drum—beat dissolved the multitudefdistributing most
of them along the batteries of the two covered gun—decks.
There, as wont, the gun crews stood by their respective can-
non 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 Lieu—
tenants 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 of 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 authorized 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 consequence
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 with 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 alloted them when
not at the guns.

224 SHORTER NOVELS OF HERMAN MELVILLE

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

CHAPTER XXIV

THE symmetry of form attainable in pure ﬁction cannot
so readily be achieved in a narration essentially having less
to do with fable than with fact. Truth uncompromisingly
told will always have its ragged edges; hence the conclusion
of such a narration is apt to be less ﬁnished than an archi—
tectural ﬁnial.

How it fared with the Handsome Sailor during the year
of the great mutiny has been faithfully given. But though
properly the story ends With his life, something in way of
a sequel will not be amiss. Three brief chapters will suﬂice.

In the general re—christening under the Directory of the
craft originally forming the navy of the French Monarchy,
the St. Louis line—of—battle ship was named the At/zéiste.
Such a name, like some other substituted ones in the Revo—
lutionary ﬂeet, While proclaiming the inﬁdel audacity of the
ruling power, was yet (though not so intended to be) the
aptest name, if one consider it, ever given to a war—ship;
far more so, indeed, than the Devastation or the E rim: (the
Hell) and similar names bestowed upon ﬁghting ships.

On the return passage to the full English ﬂeet from the
detached cruise during which occurred the events already
recorded, the I ndomitable fell in with the Atlzéiste. An en—
gagement ensued; during which Captain Vere, in the act of
putting his ship alongside the enemy with a View of throwing
his boarders across the bulwarks, was hit by a musket—ball

{BILLY BUDD, FORE‘T'OPMAN 315
from a port-hole of the enemy’s main cabin. More than
disabled, he dropped to the deck and was carried below to
the same cock—pit where some of his men already lay. The
senior Lieutenant took command. Under him the enemy
was ﬁnally captured, and though much crippled, was by rare
good fortune successfully taken into Gibraltar, an English
fort not very distant from the scene of the ﬁght. There
Captain Vere with the rest of the wounded was put ashore.
He lingered for some days, but the end came. Unhappily
he was cut OE too early for the Nile and Trafalgar. The
spirit that, in spite of its philosophic austerity, may yet have
indulged in the most secret of all passions——ambition—never
attained to the fulness of fame.

Not long before death, while lying under the inﬂuence of
that magical drug which, in soothing the physical frame,
mysteriously operates on the subtler element in man, he was
heard to murmur words inexplicable to his attendant—“Billy
Budd, Billy Budd.” That these were not the accents of
remorse, would seem clear from what the attendant said to
the Indomitable’s potent senior ofﬁcer of marines, who, as
the most reluctant to condemn of the members of the drum-
head court, too well knew (though here he kept the knowl-
edge to himself) who Billy Budd was.

CHAPTER XXV

SOME few weeks after the execution, among other matters
under the main head of N aw: from the Mediterranean, there
appeared in one naval chronicle of the time, an authorized
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

326 SHORTER NOVELS OF HERMAN MELVILLE
the writer, served to deﬂect and in part to falsify them. The
account was as follows :—

“On the tenth of the last month a deplorable occurrence
took place on board H.M.S. Indomimlyle. John Claggart,
the ship’s Master—at—arms, discovering that some sort of plot
was incipient among an inferior section of the ship’s com-
pany, 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 sug-
gest that, though mustered into the service under an English
name, the assassin was no Englishman but one of those aliens
adopting 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 gentle-
men, the eﬂiciency 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 the late Dr. Johnson, that patriotism is
the last refuge of a scoundrel.

“The criminal paid the penalty of his crime. The promp-
titude of the punishment has proved salutary. Nothing amiss
is now apprehended aboard the H .M .S. Indomitable.”

ﬂlLLY BUDD, FORE‘TOPJVIdN 327

v—vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv

 

The above item appearing in a publication, now long ago
superannuated and forgotten in all that hitherto has stood in
human record, to attest what manner of men respectively
were John Claggart and Billy Budd.*

CHAPTER XXVI

EVERYTHING is for a season remarkable in navies. Any
tangible object associated with some striking incident of the
service is converted into a monument. The spar from which
the foretopman was suspended was for some few years kept
trace of by the bluejackets. Then knowledge followed it
from ship to deck—yard, and again from deck—yard to ship,
still pursuing it even when at last reduced to a mere deck-
yard boom. To them a chip of it was as a piece of the Cross.
Ignorant though they were of the real facts of the happening,
and not thinking but that the penalty was unavoidably in-
ﬂicted from the naval point of View, for all that they instinc-
tively felt that Billy was a sort of man as incapable of mutiny
as of wilful murder. They recalled the fresh young image
of the Handsome Sailor, that face never deformed by a sneer
or subtler vile freak of the heart within! This impression
of him was doubtless deepened by the fact that he was gone,
and in a measure mysteriously gone. On the gun—decks of
the Indomitaéle the general estimate of his nature and its
unconscious simplicity eventually found rude utterance from
another foretopman, one of his own watch, gifted as some
sailors are with an artless poetic temperament. Those tarry
hands made some lines which, after circulating among the
ship~board crew for a while, ﬁnally were rudely printed at

* An author’s note, crossed out, here appears in the original MS. It reads: Here ends a

story not unwarranted in this incongruous world of ours—innocence and inﬁrmity, spiritual
depravity and fair respite

328 SHORTER NOVELS OF HERMAN MELVILLE

vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv

Portsmouth as a ballad. The title given to it was the sailor’s
own:

BILLY IN THE DARBIES

Good of the Chaplain to enter Lone Bay

And down on his marrow-hone: here and pray

F or the likes just 0’ me, Billy Budd,-—But looh:
Through the port comes the. moon-shine astray!

It tip: the guard’s autlass and silver: this noch;

But ’twill die in the dawning of Billy’s last day.

A jewel-bloch they’ll ,mahe of me to-morrow,
Pendant pearl from the yard-arm-end

Lihe the ear-drop I gave to Bristol Molly—-

O, ’tis me, not the sentence, they’ll suspend.

Ay, Ay, all is up,- and I must up too

Early in the morning, aloft from alow.

On an empty stomach, now, never it would do.
They’ll give me a nihhle—hit o’ hisauit ere I go.
Sure, a messmate will reach me the last parting cup;
But, turning heads away from the hoist and the helay,
Heaven knows who will have the running of me up!
No pipe to those halyardsﬁhut aren’t it all sham?
A hlur’s in my eyes, it is dreaming that I am.

A hatchet to my panzer? all adrift to go?

The drum roll to grog, and Billy never hnow?

But Donald he has promised to stand hy the plank,-
So I’ll shahe a friendly hand ere I sinh.

But—no! It is dead then I’ll he, come to think.—

I remember Taﬁ‘ the Welshman when he sanh.

And his aheeh it was lihe the hudding pinh.

But me, they’ll lash me in hammoah, drop me deep
Fathom: down, fathom: down, how I’ll dream fast asleep.
I feel it stealing now. Sentry, are you there?

Just ease these darhies at the wrist.

And roll me over fair.

I am sleepy, and the oozy weeds ahout me twist.

END OF BOOK
April 19, 189:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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