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Chapter 10
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 battery 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 ejaculate something hasty at the sailor, but checked
himself, and pointing down to the streaming soup, playfully tapped him
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 humourous, 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 official, impulsively giving him a sharp cut with the rattan,
vehemently exclaimed, "Look where you go!"
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