The night so luminous on the spar-deck (otherwise on the cavernous ones
below--levels so like the tiered galleries in a coal-mine) passed away.
Like the prophet in the chariot disappearing in heaven and dropping his
mantle to Elisha, the withdrawing night transferred 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[8] bells_ 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 different 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 whispers, and few spake at all. Captain Vere--as before,
the central figure among the assembled commissioned officers--stood 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 afterwards, that in this final
scene the good man evinced little or nothing of the perfunctory. Brief
speech indeed he had with the condemned one, but the genuine Gospel was
less on his tongue than in his aspect and manner toward him. The final
preparations personal 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 toward
the quarters of honour; syllables, too, delivered in the clear melody 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,
spiritualised now through late experiences so poignantly profound.
Without volition, as it were, as if indeed the ship’s populace were the
vehicles of some vocal current-electric, 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 stoic self-control or a
sort of momentary paralysis induced by emotional shock, stood erectly
rigid as a musket in the ship-armourer’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.