|
Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
||||
 |
||||
|
Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
||||
|
|
||||
|
51 Britannic Majesty’s Navy a capital investment at small outlay or none at all. After a brief pause during which the reminiscences above mentioned passed vividly through his mind and he weighed the import of Claggart’s last suggestion conveyed in the phrase “man- trap under his daisies,” and the more he weighed it the less reliance he felt in the informer’s good faith, suddenly he turned upon him and in a low voice: “Do you come to me, Master-at-arms, with so foggy a tale? As to Budd, cite me an act or spoken word of his confirmatory of what you in general charge against him. Stay,” drawing nearer to him, “heed what you speak. Just now, and in a case like this, there is a yard-arm-end for the false-witness.” “Ah, Your Honor!” sighed Claggart, mildly shaking his shapely head as in sad deprecation of such unmerited severity of tone. Then, bridling-erecting himself as in virtuous self-assertion, he circumstantially alleged certain words and acts, which collectively, if credited, led to presumptions mortally inculpating Budd. And for some of these averments, he added, substantiating proof was not far. With gray eyes impatient and distrustful essaying to fathom to the bottom Claggart’s calm violet ones, Captain Vere again heard him out; then for the moment stood ruminating. The mood he evinced, Claggart-himself for the time liberated from the other’s scrutiny- steadily regarded with a look difficult to render,- a look curious of the operation of his tactics, a look such as might have been that of the spokesman of the envious children of Jacob deceptively imposing upon the troubled patriarch the blood-dyed coat of young Joseph. Though something exceptional in the moral quality of Captain Vere made him, in earnest encounter with a fellow-man, a veritable touch-stone of that man’s essential nature, yet now as to Claggart and what was really going on in him, his feeling partook less of intuitional conviction than of strong suspicion clogged by strange dubieties. The perplexity he evinced proceeded less from aught touching the man informed against-as Claggart doubtless opined- than from considerations how best to act in regard to the informer. At first indeed he was naturally for summoning that substantiation of his allegations which Claggart said was at hand. But such a proceeding would result in the matter at once getting abroad, which in the present stage of it, he thought, might undesirably affect the ship’s company. If Claggart was a false witness,- that closed the affair. And therefore before trying the accusation, he would first practically test the |
