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‘Fated boy,’ breathed Captain Vere, in tone so low as to be almost a whisper, ‘what have you done! But here, help me. ’

The twain raised the felled one from the loins up into a sitting position. The spare form flexibly acquiesced, but inertly. It was like handling a dead snake. They lowered it back. Regaining erectness, Captain Vere with one hand covering his face stood to all appearance as impassive as the object at his feet. Was he absorbed in taking in all the bearings of the event, and what was best not only now at once to be done, but also in the sequel? Slowly he uncovered his face; and the effect was as if the moon emerging from eclipse should reappear with quite another aspect than that which had gone into hiding. The father in him, manifested towards Billy thus far in the scene, was replaced by the military disciplinarian. In his official tone he bade the foretopman retire to a stateroom aft (pointing it out), and there remain till thence summoned. This order Billy in silence mechanically obeyed. Then going to the cabin door where it opened on the quarter-deck, Captain Vere said to the sentry without, ‘Tell somebody to send Albert here. ’ When the lad appeared, his master so contrived it that he should not catch sight of the prone one. ‘Albert,’ he said to him, ‘tell the surgeon I wish to see him. You need not come back till called. ’

When the surgeon entered—a self-poised character of that grave sense and experience that hardly anything could take him aback—Captain Vere advanced to meet him, thus unconsciously interrupting his view of Claggart, and interrupting the other’s wonted unceremonious salutation said, ‘Nay, tell me how it is with yonder man,’ directing his attention to the prostrate one.

The surgeon looked, and for all his self-command, somewhat startled at the abrupt revelation. On Claggart’s always pallid complexion thick black blood was now oozing from mouth and ear. To the gazer’s professional eyes it was unmistakably no living man that he saw.

‘Is it so, then?’ said Captain Vere, intently watching him. ‘I thought it. But verify it. ’ Whereupon the customary tests confirmed the surgeon’s first glance, who now looking up in unfeigned concern, cast a look of intense inquisitiveness upon his superior. But Captain Vere, with one hand to his brow, was standing motionless. Suddenly, catching the surgeon’s arm convulsively, he exclaimed, pointing down to the body, ‘It is the divine judgment of Ananias! Look!’

Disturbed by the excited manner he had never before observed in the Indomitable’s captain, and as yet wholly ignorant of the affair, the prudent surgeon nevertheless held his peace, only again looking an earnest interrogation as to what it was that had resulted in such a tragedy.

But Captain Vere was now again motionless, standing absorbed in thought. But again starting, he vehemently exclaimed, ‘Struck dead by an angel of God. Yet the angel must hang!’

At these interjections, incoherences to the listener as yet unapprised of the antecedent events, the surgeon was profoundly discomforted. But now, as recollecting himself, Captain Vere in less harsh tone briefly related the circumstances leading up to the event.

‘But come; we must dispatch,’ he added; ‘help me to remove him’ (meaning the body) ‘to yonder compartment’—designating one opposite where the foretopman remained immured. Anew disturbed by a request that, as implying a desire for secrecy, seemed unaccountably strange to him, there was nothing for the subordinate to do but comply.

‘Go now,’ said Captain Vere, with something of his wonted manner, ‘go now. I shall presently call a drumhead court. Tell the lieutenants what has happened, and tell Mr Morton’—meaning the captain of marines. ‘And charge them to keep the matter to themselves. ’