Chapter 16

by Herman Melville

　　This incident sorely puzzled Billy Budd. It was an entirely newexperience; the first time in his life that he had ever been personallyapproached in underhand intriguing fashion. Prior to this encounter hehad known nothing of the afterguardsman, the two men being stationedwide apart, one forward and aloft during his watch, the other on deckand aft.What could it mean? And could they really be guineas, those twoglittering objects the interloper had held up to his eyes? Where couldthe fellow get guineas? Why even spare buttons are not so plentiful atsea. The more he turned the matter over, the more he was non-plussed,and made uneasy and discomforted. In his disgustful recoil from anoverture which tho' he but ill comprehended he instinctively knew mustinvolve evil of some sort, Billy Budd was like a young horse fresh fromthe pasture suddenly inhaling a vile whiff from some chemical factory,and by repeated snortings tries to get it out of his nostrils and lungs.This frame of mind barred all desire of holding further parley with thefellow, even were it but for the purpose of gaining some enlightenmentas to his design in approaching him. And yet he was not without naturalcuriosity 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 deckallotted 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 uncertainwhether indeed it were he -- yonder chap about his own age chatting andlaughing in free-hearted way, leaning against a gun; a genial youngfellow enough to look at, and something of a rattlebrain, to allappearance. Rather chubby too for a sailor, even an afterguardsman. Inshort the last man in the world, one would think, to be overburthenedwith thoughts, especially those perilous thoughts that must needs belongto a conspirator in any serious project, or even to the underling ofsuch a conspirator.Altho' Billy was not aware of it, the fellow, with a sidelongwatchful glance had perceived Billy first, and then noting that Billywas looking at him, thereupon nodded a familiar sort of friendlyrecognition as to an old acquaintance, without interrupting the talk hewas engaged in with the group of smokers. A day or two afterwards,chancing in the evening promenade on a gun deck to pass Billy, heoffered a flying word of good-fellowship, as it were, which by itsunexpectedness, and equivocalness under the circumstances so embarrassedBilly 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 ineffectualspeculation into which he was led was so disturbingly alien to him, thathe did his best to smother it. It never entered his mind that here was amatter which from its extreme questionableness, it was his duty as aloyal blue-jacket to report in the proper quarter. And, probably, hadsuch a step been suggested to him, he would have been deterred fromtaking it by the thought, one of novice-magnanimity, that it would savorovermuch of the dirty work of a telltale. He kept the thing to himself.Yet upon one occasion, he could not forbear a little disburtheninghimself to the old Dansker, tempted thereto perhaps by the influence ofa balmy night when the ship lay becalmed; the twain, silent for the mostpart, sitting together on deck, their heads propped against thebulwarks. But it was only a partial and anonymous account that Billygave, the unfounded scruples above referred to preventing fulldisclosure to anybody. Upon hearing Billy's version, the sage Danskerseemed to divine more than he was told; and after a little meditationduring which his wrinkles were pursed as into a point, quite effacingfor the time that quizzing expression his face sometimes wore,"Didn't Isay so, Baby Budd?""Say what?" demanded Billy."Why, Jimmy Legs is down on you.""And what," rejoined Billy in amazement, "has Jimmy Legs to dowith that cracked afterguardsman?""Ho, it was an afterguardsman then. A cat's-paw, a cat's-paw!" Andwith that exclamation, which, whether it had reference to a light puffof air just then coming over the calm sea, or subtler relation to theafterguardsman there is no telling, the old Merlin gave a twistingwrench with his black teeth at his plug of tobacco, vouchsafing no replyto Billy's impetuous question, tho' now repeated, for it was his wont torelapse into grim silence when interrogated in skeptical sort as to anyof his sententious oracles, not always very clear ones, rather partakingof that obscurity which invests most Delphic deliverances from any quarter.Long experience had very likely brought this old man to that bitterprudence which never interferes in aught and never gives advice.