{"id":"01KG8AM5Y2YD9SN9RS3XV8DJA6","cid":"bafkreifghwyzgaz3fm2hq3gurobj5yf7nhttsskpskn3v3y4lanh6q5dt4","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":1836,"extracted_at":"2026-01-30T20:48:26.981Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 1","source_file":"01KG89J1FFTGRE9J93Z3K29NGY","start_line":1773,"text":"                                  XIV\r\n\r\n\r\nLong experience had very likely brought this old man to that bitter\r\nprudence which never interferes in aught, and never gives advice.\r\n\r\nYet, despite the Dansker’s pithy insistence as to the master-at-arms\r\nbeing at the bottom of these strange experiences of Billy on board the\r\n_Indomitable_, the young sailor was ready to ascribe them to almost\r\nanybody but the man who, to use Billy’s own expression, ‘always had a\r\npleasant word for him.’ This is to be wondered at. Yet not so much to be\r\nwondered at. In certain matters some sailors even in mature life remain\r\nunsophisticated enough. But a young seafarer of the disposition of our\r\nathletic foretopman, is much of a child-man. And yet a child’s utter\r\ninnocence is but its blank ignorance, and the innocence more or less\r\nwanes as intelligence waxes. But in Billy Budd intelligence, such as it\r\nwas, had advanced, while yet his simple-mindedness remained for the most\r\npart unaffected. Experience is a teacher indeed; yet did Billy’s years\r\nmake his experience small. Besides, he had none of that intuitive\r\nknowledge of the bad which in natures not good or incompletely so,\r\nforeruns experience, and therefore may pertain, as in some instances it\r\ntoo clearly does pertain, even to youth.\r\n\r\nAnd what could Billy know of man except of man as a mere sailor? And the\r\nold-fashioned sailor, the veritable man-before-the-mast, the sailor from\r\nboyhood up, he, though indeed of the same species as a landsman, is in\r\nsome respects singularly distinct from him. The sailor is frankness, the\r\nlandsman is finesse. Life is not a game with the sailor, demanding the\r\nlong head; no intricate game of chess where few moves are made in\r\nstraightforwardness, but ends are attained by indirection; an oblique,\r\ntedious, barren game, hardly worth that poor candle burnt out in playing\r\nit.\r\n\r\nYes, as a class, sailors are in character a juvenile race. Even their\r\ndeviations are marked by juvenility. And this more especially holding\r\ntrue with the sailors of Billy’s time. Then, too, certain things which\r\napply to all sailors do more pointedly operate here and there upon the\r\njunior one. Every sailor, too, is accustomed to obey orders without\r\ndebating them; his life afloat is externally ruled for him; he is not\r\nbrought into that promiscuous commerce with mankind where unobstructed\r\nfree agency on equal terms--equal superficially, at least--soon teaches\r\none that unless upon occasion he exercises a distrust keen in proportion\r\nto the fairness of the appearance, some foul turn may be served him. A\r\nruled, undemonstrative distrustfulness is so habitual, not with\r\nbusiness-men so much, as with men who know their kind in less shallow\r\nrelations than business, namely certain men of the world, that they come\r\nat last to employ it all but unconsciously; and some of them would very\r\nlikely feel real surprise at being charged with it as one of their\r\ngeneral characteristics.\r\n\r\n------------------------------------------------------------------------\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n                                   XV\r\n\r\n\r\nBut after the little matter at the mess Billy Budd no more found himself\r\nin strange trouble at times about his hammock or his clothes-bag, or\r\nwhat not. While, as to that smile that occasionally sunned him, and the\r\npleasant passing word, these were if not more frequent, yet if anything\r\nmore pronounced than before.\r\n\r","title":"Chunk 1"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KG8AJV0E3PB3A4XN57AVYHZ1","peer_type":"segment","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KG89J1FFTGRE9J93Z3K29NGY","peer_type":"file","predicate":"extractedFrom"},{"peer":"01KG89HMDZKNY753EZE1CJ8HZW","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KG8AM5Y2AF1QAWDSKT3SMS2H","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"next"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-30T20:48:28.610Z","ts":"2026-01-30T20:48:35.898Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}