Billy Budd, Sailor
A young sailor pressed onto a King's ship, a master-at-arms who hated him without cause, and the single blow that the Articles of War could not forgive
Page 1
In the last years of the seventeen-nineties, when Britain was at war with Revolutionary France and the memory of mutiny was still fresh in every fleet, a merchant ship called the Rights-of-Man lay at anchor, waiting to be searched for men. Among her crew was a young foretopman everyone simply called Billy Budd — strong, good-humoured, handsome enough that sailors on every ship called him the Handsome Sailor, and so even-tempered that no one aboard had ever seen him angry. He had no family that he knew of; he had been found, as a baby, in a basket on a doorstep in Bristol, and the sea had raised him since. When the King's ship Bellipotent sent a boat to press men into naval service, her boarding officer looked over the Rights-of-Man's crew and chose Billy at once. The merchant captain was sorry to lose him and said so plainly. Billy, cheerful as always, waved goodbye to his shipmates and climbed down into the boat without complaint.
Page 2
Aboard the Bellipotent, Billy quickly became a favourite. He was quartered in the foretop with the topmen, did his work well and cheerfully, and settled disputes among the crew simply by being liked by everyone. The only thing that marred him was a strange fault: when he was surprised or deeply moved, his tongue would not obey him, and he stammered badly, though the rest of the time he spoke clearly enough. An old sailor called the Dansker, grizzled and wise in the ways of ships, took a liking to the young man and watched him with a kind of fond, knowing amusement, calling him 'Baby Budd.' One day Billy came to him troubled, saying that the ship's Master-at-Arms, John Claggart, seemed to watch him with an unfriendly eye, though Billy had done nothing to deserve it. The Dansker only looked at him sideways and said that Jemmy Legs — meaning Claggart — was down on him. Billy could not believe it, and said so.
Page 3
One day at the dinner hour, as the ship rolled, Billy's pannikin of soup spilled and ran across the deck in a long greasy stream, right at the moment Claggart happened to be passing through the mess. The Master-at-Arms stepped neatly over the spill, and for an instant something flickered across his pale face that was not quite anger. Then he smiled, tapped Billy lightly on the shoulder with his rattan cane, and said, in a tone that seemed almost kind, that it was a pity for so handsome a fellow to be so careless. He walked on. The other sailors laughed, delighted, for they thought it a joke in Billy's favour. Billy himself was pleased and relieved, certain now that the Dansker had been wrong about Claggart's dislike of him. But the old Dansker, watching from a nearby bench, only shook his head slowly and said nothing at all, for he alone had caught the look on Claggart's face before the smile covered it.
Page 4
One night, standing watch alone in the lee forechains, Billy was approached quietly by a strange sailor from the afterguard, a man he barely knew. Speaking low and fast, the man asked whether Billy would be willing to join 'two or three other good fellows' in some unnamed scheme, and pressed two gold coins into his hand, hinting of discontented men aboard who might rise up together. Billy, honestly bewildered and beginning to stammer with distress, did not fully understand what was being suggested, but something in it alarmed him, and he raised his voice and told the man roughly to get out or he would pitch him overboard. The afterguardsman slipped away into the dark at once. Shaken, Billy sought out the old Dansker and told him what had happened, half-ashamed, half-frightened, and asked what it could mean. The Dansker listened, said only that it was Jemmy Legs' doing after all, and advised Billy to say nothing more about it to anyone.
Page 5
Some days later, as the Bellipotent sailed alone after a brief chase of an enemy frigate, Claggart approached Captain Vere on the quarterdeck with a grave, respectful manner and asked for a private word. Once they stood apart from the crew, Claggart told the captain, in careful, regretful phrases, that he had reason to believe there was a dangerous conspiracy brewing among some of the men, and that Billy Budd — of all people, the very one everybody liked best — was at the heart of it. Vere, who thought well of Billy and found the charge hard to credit, grew impatient and suspicious of Claggart's manner rather than of Billy. Still, the accusation could not simply be waved away on a King's ship in wartime, with the memory of real fleet mutinies only a year or two old. Vere decided the matter must be settled at once, face to face, and sent for Billy to be brought to his cabin, with Claggart to come as well.
Page 6
In the cabin, with only the three of them present, Vere told Claggart to repeat his charge to Billy's face. Claggart did so, coldly and precisely, looking straight at Billy as he spoke. Billy, utterly stunned at being called a traitor by the very man who had seemed to smile at him over the spilled soup, tried to answer and could not. His throat worked, his face twisted, and no sound came — the old stammer had seized him entirely, exactly when he needed speech most. Vere, seeing his distress, spoke gently, telling him to take his time. But the strain was unbearable, and in one convulsive motion, without a word, Billy's arm shot out and he struck Claggart a single hard blow on the forehead. Claggart dropped straight down and did not move again. Vere and Billy stood over him in silence. After a moment Vere said quietly that the fellow was dead, and then, almost to himself, that it was the divine judgement on Ananias, but that Billy must hang for it.
Page 7
Captain Vere summoned a drumhead court of three officers to meet at once in the wardroom, for on a King's ship at sea, with the memory of mutiny fresh everywhere in the fleet, such things could not wait for a return to port. Billy was brought before them and told the plain truth: that Claggart had accused him falsely, that he had meant no mutiny, that the blow had come before he knew he had struck it. The officers plainly wished to find some way to spare him — his honest face and his evident horror at his own act moved them deeply, and privately not one of them believed he was any mutineer. But Vere, speaking with great feeling yet absolute firmness, argued that whatever Billy's heart, a blow that killed a superior officer, struck aboard ship in wartime, carried the penalty the Mutiny Act required, and that the court could not set private sympathy above the law they served. After long and troubled deliberation, the officers agreed, and the court condemned Billy to be hanged.
Page 8
Billy was confined in an open space between two guns on the lower deck, lightly guarded, to wait out the night before his execution. The ship's old chaplain came to sit with him, expecting to find him in despair, and was startled instead to find him calm, even at peace, lying quietly in the dim light with no fear on his face at all. The chaplain spoke to him gently of religion and of what might come after death, but found that Billy, though he listened respectfully, seemed to need none of it — he was simply ready, in his own plain way, untroubled by doctrine or dread alike. Seeing this, the old chaplain gave up trying to instruct him, and instead, moved by something he could not quite name, bent down and kissed Billy on the cheek before he left him. It was, the chaplain thought afterward, as near to a blessing as he knew how to give, and more than his sermons could have offered.
Page 9
At dawn the whole crew of the Bellipotent was mustered on the main deck and in the rigging to witness punishment, as the custom of the navy required. Billy was brought up and stood on deck in the grey early light, calm and unresisting, while the chaplain stood near him and the marines held their formal places. Before the signal was given, Billy looked toward the quarterdeck, where Vere stood rigid and pale among his officers, and spoke his last words clearly, with no trace of his old stammer at all. The whole crew heard him. Then, at the signal, he was run up to the fore yardarm. The sun, just clearing the horizon, broke full upon him as he rose, and the assembled sailors, watching in a silence broken only by the wash of the sea, saw him hang there, still and untroubled, with none of the struggle they had been told to expect. Not a man among them stirred or spoke until the officer of the watch gave the order to disperse.
Page 10
Billy's body, sewn simply into his own hammock with a weight of shot, was carried to the ship's side and committed to the sea, as is done when a sailor dies aboard ship. The crew stood bare-headed while the chaplain said the words, and then the sea closed over him and the Bellipotent sailed on, as ships must, toward the war that was still being fought. Soon afterward a distant engagement arose, and the ship that had been Billy's whole world for so short a time moved on into history, as King's ships did in those years. Later, a naval gazette printed a brief, garbled account of the affair, turning the story upside down and making Claggart out to be the wronged man and Billy a dangerous criminal, which was as untrue as anything could be. But among the sailors who had actually served with him, the spar from which he had been run up was never forgotten. Wherever it later turned up, in whatever ship, the man who had sailed with Billy would point it out to the others, and they kept track of it for years, the way sailors keep a piece of the Cross.
About this story
- Audience: general readers
Read Wonder Novels on your phone
Wonder Novels is available on Android. Get Wonder Novels on Google Play.