Chapter 8

by Herman Melville

　　The lieutenants and other commissioned gentlemen forming CaptainVere's staff it is not necessary here to particularize, nor needs it tomake any mention of any of the warrant-officers. But among thepetty-officers was one who having much to do with the story, may as wellbe forthwith introduced. His portrait I essay, but shall never hit it.This was John Claggart, the Master-at-arms. But that sea-title may tolandsmen seem somewhat equivocal. Originally, doubtless, thatpetty-officer's function was the instruction of the men in the use ofarms, sword or cutlas. But very long ago, owing to the advance ingunnery making hand-to-hand encounters less frequent and giving to nitreand sulphur the preeminence over steel, that function ceased; theMaster-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 thepopulous lower gun decks.Claggart was a man about five and thirty, somewhat spare and tall,yet of no ill figure upon the whole. His hand was too small and shapelyto have been accustomed to hard toil. The face was a notable one; thefeatures all except the chin cleanly cut as those on a Greek medallion;yet the chin, beardless as Tecumseh's, had something of strangeprotuberant heaviness in its make that recalled the prints of the Rev.Dr. Titus Oates, the historic deponent with the clerical drawl in thetime of Charles II and the fraud of the alleged Popish Plot. It servedClaggart in his office that his eye could cast a tutoring glance. Hisbrow was of the sort phrenologically associated with more than averageintellect; silken jet curls partly clustering over it, making a foil tothe pallor below, a pallor tinged with a faint shade of amber akin tothe hue of time-tinted marbles of old. This complexion, singularlycontrasting with the red or deeply bronzed visages of the sailors, andin part the result of his official seclusion from the sunlight, tho' itwas not exactly displeasing, nevertheless seemed to hint of somethingdefective or abnormal in the constitution and blood. But his generalaspect and manner were so suggestive of an education and careerincongruous with his naval function that when not actively engaged in ithe looked a man of high quality, social and moral, who for reasons ofhis own was keeping incog. Nothing was known of his former life. Itmight be that he was an Englishman; and yet there lurked a bit of accentin his speech suggesting that possibly he was not such by birth, butthrough naturalization in early childhood. Among certain grizzledsea-gossips of the gun decks and forecastle went a rumor perdue that theMaster-at-arms was a chevalier who had volunteered into the King'sNavy by way of compounding for some mysterious swindle whereof he hadbeen arraigned at the King's Bench. The fact that nobody couldsubstantiate this report was, of course, nothing against its secretcurrency. Such a rumor once started on the gun decks in reference toalmost anyone below the rank of a commissioned officer would, during theperiod assigned to this narrative, have seemed not altogether wanting incredibility to the tarry old wiseacres of a man-of-war crew. And indeeda man of Claggart's accomplishments, without prior nautical experience,entering the navy at mature life, as he did, and necessarily allotted atthe start to the lowest grade in it; a man, too, who never made allusionto his previous life ashore; these were circumstances which in thedearth of exact knowledge as to his true antecedents opened to theinvidious a vague field for unfavorable surmise.But the sailors' dog-watch gossip concerning him derived a vagueplausibility from the fact that now for some period the British Navycould so little afford to be squeamish in the matter of keeping up themuster-rolls, that not only were press-gangs notoriously abroad bothafloat and ashore, but there was little or no secret about anothermatter, namely that the London police were at liberty to capture anyable-bodied suspect, any questionable fellow at large and summarily shiphim to dockyard or fleet. Furthermore, even among voluntary enlistmentsthere were instances where the motive thereto partook neither ofpatriotic impulse nor yet of a random desire to experience a bit ofsea-life and martial adventure. Insolvent debtors of minor grade,together with the promiscuous lame ducks of morality found in the Navy aconvenient and secure refuge. Secure, because once enlisted aboard aKing's-ship, they were as much in sanctuary, as the transgressor of theMiddle Ages harboring himself under the shadow of the altar. Suchsanctioned irregularities, which for obvious reasons the Governmentwould hardly think to parade at the time, and which consequently, and asaffecting the least influential class of mankind, have all but droppedinto oblivion, lend color to something for the truth whereof I do notvouch, and hence have some scruple in stating; something I rememberhaving seen in print, though the book I can not recall; but the samething was personally communicated to me now more than forty years ago byan old pensioner in a cocked hat with whom I had a most interesting talkon the terrace at Greenwich, a Baltimore Negro, a Trafalgar man. It wasto this effect: In the case of a war-ship short of hands whose speedysailing was imperative, the deficient quota in lack of any other way ofmaking it good, would be eked out by draughts culled direct from thejails. For reasons previously suggested it would not perhaps be easy atthe present day directly to prove or disprove the allegation. Butallowed as a verity, how significant would it be of England's straits atthe time, confronted by those wars which like a flight of harpies roseshrieking from the din and dust of the fallen Bastille. That era appearsmeasurably clear to us who look back at it, and but read of it. But tothe grandfathers of us graybeards, the more thoughtful of them, thegenius of it presented an aspect like that of Camouns' Spirit of theCape, an eclipsing menace mysterious and prodigious. Not America wasexempt from apprehension. At the height of Napoleon's unexampledconquests, there were Americans who had fought at Bunker Hill who lookedforward to the possibility that the Atlantic might prove no barrieragainst the ultimate schemes of this French upstart from therevolutionary chaos who seemed in act of fulfilling judgement prefiguredin the Apocalypse.But the less credence was to be given to the gun-deck talk touchingClaggart, seeing that no man holding his office in a man-of-war can everhope to be popular with the crew. Besides, in derogatory comments uponanyone against whom they have a grudge, or for any reason or no reasonmislike, sailors are much like landsmen; they are apt to exaggerate orromance it.About as much was really known to the Indomitable's tars of theMaster-at-arms' career before entering the service as an astronomerknows about a comet's travels prior to its first observable appearancein the sky. The verdict of the sea quid-nuncs has been cited only by wayof showing what sort of moral impression the man made upon rudeuncultivated natures whose conceptions of human wickedness werenecessarily of the narrowest, limited to ideas of vulgar rascality, -- athief among the swinging hammocks during a night-watch, or the manbrokers and land-sharks of the sea-ports.It was no gossip, however, but fact, that though, as before hinted,Claggart upon his entrance into the navy was, as a novice, assigned tothe least honourable section of a man-of-war's crew, embracing thedrudgery, he did not long remain there.The superior capacity he immediately evinced, his constitutionalsobriety, ingratiating deference to superiors, together with a peculiarferreting genius manifested on a singular occasion; all this capped by acertain austere patriotism abruptly advanced him to the position ofMaster-at-arms.Of this maritime Chief of Police the ship's-corporals, so called,were the immediate subordinates, and compliant ones; and this, as is tobe noted in some business departments ashore, almost to a degreeinconsistent with entire moral volition. His place put variousconverging wires of underground influence under the Chief's control,capable when astutely worked thro' his understrappers, of operating tothe mysterious discomfort, if nothing worse, of any of the sea-commonalty.