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Melville, Herman

"Billy Budd"

Brief speech indeed he had with the condemned one, but the genuine Gospel was less on his tongue than in his aspect and manner towards 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 towards the quarters of honor; 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 spiritualized now thro' late experiences so poignantly profound.


? ? ? ? Without volition as it were, as if indeed the ship's populace were but the vehicles of some vocal current electric, with one voice from alow and aloft came a resonant sympathetic 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 thro' stoic self-control or a sort of momentary paralysis induced by emotional shock, stood erectly rigid as a musket in the ship-armorer's rack.


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White Fang (page 78) Volume 12, No. 347, December 20, 1828 (page 8) Don Garcia of Navarre (page 37)