{"id":"01KG6G84WY6WHVZC0JHCT92PS6","cid":"bafkreihb273pjcpmdggljlierz6c2jqky7hkce72xpmoqro2u6dv5aklz4","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":1236,"extracted_at":"2026-01-30T03:48:16.150Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 2","source_file":"01KG6FXSCNX5F3D880P3YP3PKR","start_line":1174,"text":"one of a boarding-party from the _Agamemnon_ he had received a cut\r\nslantwise along one temple and cheek, leaving a long pale scar like a\r\nstreak of dawn’s light falling athwart the dark visage. It was on\r\naccount of that scar and the affair in which it was known that he had\r\nreceived it, as well as from his blue-peppered complexion, that the\r\nDansker went among the _Indomitable’s_ crew by the name of\r\n‘Board-her-in-the-smoke.’\r\n\r\nNow the first time that his small weasel eyes happened to light on Billy\r\nBudd, a certain grim internal merriment set all his ancient wrinkles\r\ninto antic play. Was it that his eccentric unsentimental old sapience,\r\nprimitive in its kind, saw, or thought it saw, something which in\r\ncontrast with the warship’s environment looked oddly incongruous in the\r\nHandsome Sailor? But after slyly studying him at intervals, the old\r\nMerlin’s equivocal merriment was modified by now. For now when the twain\r\nwould meet, it would start in his face a quizzing sort of look, but it\r\nwould be but momentary and sometimes replaced by an expression of\r\nspeculative query as to what might eventually befall a nature like that,\r\ndropped into a world not without some man-traps and against whose\r\nsubtleties simple courage lacking experience and address and without any\r\ntouch of defensive ugliness, is of little avail; and where such\r\ninnocence as man is capable of does yet in a moral emergency not always\r\nsharpen the faculties or enlighten the will.\r\n\r\nHowever it was, the Dansker in his ascetic way rather took to Billy. Nor\r\nwas this only because of a certain philosophic interest in such a\r\ncharacter. There was another cause. While the old man’s eccentricities,\r\nsometimes bordering on the ursine, repelled the juniors, Billy,\r\nundeterred thereby, would make advances, never passing the old\r\n_Agamemnon_ man without a salutation marked by that respect which is\r\nseldom lost on the aged, however crabbed at times, or whatever their\r\nstation in life. There was a vein of dry humour, or what not, in the\r\nmastman; and whether in freak of patriarchal irony touching Billy’s\r\nyouth and athletic frame, or for some other and more recondite reason,\r\nfrom the first in addressing him he always substituted Baby for Billy.\r\nThe Dansker, in fact, being the originator of the name by which the\r\nforetopman eventually became known aboard ship.\r\n\r\nWell then, in his mysterious little difficulty going in quest of the\r\nwrinkled one; Billy found him off duty in a dog-watch ruminating by\r\nhimself, seated on a shot-box of the upper gun-deck, now and then\r\nsurveying with a somewhat cynical regard certain of the more swaggering\r\npromenaders there. Billy recounted his trouble, again wondering how it\r\nall happened. The salt seer attentively listened, accompanying the\r\nforetopman’s recitals with queer twitchings of his wrinkles and\r\nproblematical little sparkles of his small ferret eyes. Making an end of\r\nhis story, the foretopman asked, ‘And now, Dansker, do tell me what you\r\nthink of it.’ The old man, shoving up the front of his tarpaulin and\r\ndeliberately rubbing the long slant scar at the point where it entered\r\nthe thin hair, laconically said, ‘Baby Budd, _Jemmy Legs_’ (meaning the\r\nmaster-at-arms) ‘is down on you.’\r\n\r\n‘_Jemmy Legs!_’ ejaculated Billy, his welkin eyes expanding; ‘what for?\r\nWhy, he calls me _the sweet and pleasant young fellow_, they tell me.’\r\n\r\n‘Does he so?’ grinned the grizzled one; then said, ‘Ay, Baby lad, a\r\nsweet voice has _Jemmy Legs_.’\r\n\r\n‘No, not always. But to me he has. I seldom pass him but there comes a\r\npleasant word.’\r\n\r\n‘And that’s because he’s down upon you, Baby Budd.’\r\n\r","title":"Chunk 2"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KG6G6NZT40NP6FHQH1W1DR0F","peer_type":"chapter","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KG6FXSCNX5F3D880P3YP3PKR","peer_type":"file","predicate":"extractedFrom"},{"peer":"01KG2T49K0H5GDRB0G4YDTPG8H","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KG6G84WSXCP1RXX8ETF9HWF1","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"prev"},{"peer":"01KG6G85HBVC8W30MWZQSVHN29","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"next"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-30T03:48:16.926Z","ts":"2026-01-30T03:48:24.408Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}