{"id":"01KG8AM5828F4T2Q6QR7B30V2K","cid":"bafkreicyg3yzizena26xhci43zh7xi2jty6babxfelrckvcxhh4fdf5wty","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":1034,"extracted_at":"2026-01-30T20:48:26.981Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 1","source_file":"01KG89J1FFTGRE9J93Z3K29NGY","start_line":974,"text":"                                  VII\r\n\r\n\r\nThe lieutenants and other commissioned gentlemen forming Captain Vere’s\r\nstaff it is not necessary here to particularise, nor needs it to make\r\nmention of any of the warrant-officers. But among the petty officers was\r\none who, having much to do with the story, may as well be forthwith\r\nintroduced. This portrait I essay, but shall never hit it.\r\n\r\nThis was John Claggart, the master-at-arms. But that sea-title may to\r\nlandsmen seem somewhat equivocal. Originally, doubtless, that petty\r\nofficer’s function was the instruction of the men in the use of arms,\r\nsword, or cutlass. But very long ago, owing to the advance in gunnery\r\nmaking hand-to-hand encounters less frequent, and giving to nitre and\r\nsulphur the pre-eminence over steel, that function ceased; the\r\nmaster-at-arms of a great warship becoming a sort of chief of police\r\ncharged among other matters with the duty of preserving order on the\r\npopulous lower gun-decks.\r\n\r\nClaggart was a man of about five-and-thirty, somewhat spare and tall,\r\nyet of no ill figure upon the whole. His hand was too small and shapely\r\nto have been accustomed to hard toil. The face was a notable one; the\r\nfeatures, all except the chin, cleanly cut as those on a Greek\r\nmedallion; yet the chin, beardless as Tecumseh’s, had something of the\r\nstrange protuberant heaviness in its make that recalled the prints of\r\nthe Rev. Dr. Titus Oates, the historical deponent with the clerical\r\ndrawl in the time of Charles II., and the fraud of the alleged Popish\r\nPlot. It served Claggart in his office that his eye could cast a\r\ntutoring glance. His brow was of the sort phrenologically associated\r\nwith more than average intellect; silken jet curls partly clustering\r\nover it, making a foil to the pallor below, a pallor tinged with a faint\r\nshade of amber akin to the hue of time-tinted marbles of old.\r\n\r\nThis complexion singularly contrasting with the red or deeply bronzed\r\nvisages of the sailors, and in part the result of his official seclusion\r\nfrom the sunlight, though it was not exactly displeasing, nevertheless\r\nseemed to hint of something defective or abnormal in the constitution\r\nand blood. But his general aspect and manner were so suggestive of an\r\neducation and career incongruous with his naval function, that when not\r\nactively engaged in it he looked like a man of high quality, social and\r\nmoral, who for reasons of his own was keeping incognito. Nothing was\r\nknown of his former life. It might be that he was an Englishman; and yet\r\nthere lurked a bit of accent in his speech suggesting that possibly he\r\nwas not such by birth, but through naturalisation in early childhood.\r\nAmong certain grizzled sea-gossips of the gun-decks and forecastle went\r\na rumour perdue that the master-at-arms was a chevalier who had\r\nvolunteered into the King’s Navy by way of compounding for some\r\nmysterious swindle whereof he had been arraigned at the King’s Bench.\r\nThe fact that nobody could substantiate this report was, of course,\r\nnothing against its secret currency. Such a rumour once started on the\r\ngun-decks in reference to almost anyone below the rank of a commissioned\r\nofficer would, during the period assigned to this narrative, have seemed\r\nnot altogether wanting in credibility to the tarry old wiseacres of a\r\nman-of-war crew. And indeed a man of Claggart’s accomplishments, without\r\nprior nautical experience entering the Navy at mature life, as he did,\r\nand necessarily allotted at the start to the lowest grade in it; a man,\r\ntoo, who never made allusion to his previous life ashore; these were\r\ncircumstances which in the dearth of exact knowledge as to his true\r\nantecedents opened to the invidious a vague field for unfavourable\r\nsurmise.\r\n\r","title":"Chunk 1"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KG8AKFBW62NE4DSN4WF7YVNG","peer_type":"section","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KG89J1FFTGRE9J93Z3K29NGY","peer_type":"file","predicate":"extractedFrom"},{"peer":"01KG89HMDZKNY753EZE1CJ8HZW","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KG8AM582M2R114N3Q20MSQAP","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"next"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-30T20:48:27.906Z","ts":"2026-01-30T20:48:34.426Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}