{"id":"01KG6GMJF96MCYRM4DRK10A3J3","cid":"bafkreicxbo7o36iz3jv4kack63xo4fjpp7bxnukrdwpyjaugdhj4pajoei","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":656,"extracted_at":"2026-01-30T03:55:03.879Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 3","source_file":"01KG6FXSCNX5F3D880P3YP3PKR","start_line":589,"text":"palate a questionable smack as of a compounded wine. To any stray\r\ninheritor of these primitive qualities found, like Caspar Hauser,\r\nwandering dazed in any Christian capital of our time, the poet’s famous\r\ninvocation, near two thousand years ago, of the good rustic out of his\r\nlatitude in the Rome of the Cæsars, still appropriately holds:--\r\n\r\n            ‘Faithful in word and thought,\r\n             What hast Thee, Fabian, to the city brought.’\r\n\r\nThough our Handsome Sailor had as much of masculine beauty as one can\r\nexpect anywhere to see; nevertheless, like the beautiful woman in one of\r\nHawthorne’s minor tales, there was just one thing amiss in him. No\r\nvisible blemish, indeed, as with the lady; no, but an occasional\r\nliability to a vocal defect. Though in the hour of elemental uproar or\r\nperil, he was everything that a sailor should be, yet under sudden\r\nprovocation of strong heart-feeling his voice, otherwise singularly\r\nmusical, as if expressive of the harmony within, was apt to develop an\r\norganic hesitancy,--in fact, more or less of a stutter or even worse. In\r\nthis particular Billy was a striking instance that the arch-interpreter,\r\nthe envious marplot of Eden still has more or less to do with every\r\nhuman consignment to this planet of earth. In every case, one way or\r\nanother, he is sure to slip in his little card, as much as to remind\r\nus--I too have a hand here.\r\n\r\nThe avowal of such an imperfection in the Handsome Sailor should be\r\nevidence not alone that he is not presented as a conventional hero, but\r\nalso that the story in which he is the main figure is no romance.\r\n\r\n------------------------------------------------------------------------\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n                                  III\r\n\r\n\r\nAt the time of Billy Budd’s arbitrary enlistment into the _Indomitable_\r\nthat ship was on her way to join the Mediterranean fleet. No long time\r\nelapsed before the junction was effected. As one of that fleet the\r\nseventy-four participated in its movements, though at times on account\r\nof her superior sailing qualities, in the absence of frigates,\r\ndispatched on separate duty as a scout, and at times on less temporary\r\nservice. But with all this the story has little concernment, restricted\r\nas it is to the inner life of one particular ship and the career of an\r\nindividual sailor.\r\n\r\nIt was the summer of 1797. In the April of that year had occurred the\r\ncommotion at Spithead, followed in May by a second and yet more serious\r\noutbreak in the fleet at the Nore. The latter is known, and without\r\nexaggeration in the epithet, as the Great Mutiny. It was indeed a\r\ndemonstration more menacing to England than the contemporary manifestos\r\nand conquering and proselytising armies of the French Directory.\r\n\r\nTo the Empire, the Nore Mutiny was what a strike in the fire-brigade\r\nwould be to London threatened by general arson. In a crisis when the\r\nKingdom might well have anticipated the famous signal that some years\r\nlater published along the naval line of battle what it was that upon\r\noccasion England expected of Englishmen; _that_ was the time when at the\r\nmast-heads of the three-deckers and seventy-fours moored in her own\r\nroadstead--a fleet, the right arm of a Power then all but the sole free\r\nconservative one of the Old World, the blue-jackets, to be numbered by\r\nthousands, ran up with hurrahs the British colours with the union and\r\ncross wiped out; by that cancellation transmuting the flag of founded\r\nlaw and freedom defined, into the enemy’s red meteor of unbridled and\r\nunbounded revolt. Reasonable discontent growing out of practical\r\ngrievances in the fleet had been ignited into irrational combustion as\r\nby live cinders blown across the Channel from France in flames.\r\n\r","title":"Chunk 3"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KG6GK7XJNDPHXHRPR887TXSZ","peer_type":"section","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KG6FXSCNX5F3D880P3YP3PKR","peer_type":"file","predicate":"extractedFrom"},{"peer":"01KG2T49K0H5GDRB0G4YDTPG8H","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KG6GMJF9F9MET64N3Y75YTRJ","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"prev"},{"peer":"01KG6GMJF94QHKJ6TBFGHVNS16","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"next"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-30T03:55:04.041Z","ts":"2026-01-30T03:55:13.176Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}