{"id":"01KG8AM80HWZ1YC76Q9719NFBW","cid":"bafkreiecmwwockmhh343jjjhycx7vnd2e2bckq67tbtvesfjcjvkbtpxra","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":3468,"extracted_at":"2026-01-30T20:48:26.981Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 6","source_file":"01KG89J1FFTGRE9J93Z3K29NGY","start_line":3394,"text":"  ‘On the tenth of the last month a deplorable occurrence took place\r\n  on board H.M.S. _Indomitable_. John Claggart, the ship’s\r\n  master-at-arms, discovering that some sort of plot was incipient\r\n  among an inferior section of the ship’s company, and that the\r\n  ringleader was one William Budd, he, Claggart, in the act of\r\n  arraigning the man before the captain was vindictively stabbed to\r\n  the heart by the suddenly drawn sheath-knife of Budd.\r\n\r\n  ‘The deed and the implement employed sufficiently suggest that\r\n  though mustered into the service under an English name the\r\n  assassin was no Englishman, but one of those aliens adopting an\r\n  English cognomen whom the present extraordinary necessities of the\r\n  Service have caused to be admitted into it in considerable\r\n  numbers.\r\n\r\n  ‘The enormity of the crime and the extreme depravity of the\r\n  criminal, appear the greater in view of the character of the\r\n  victim, a middle-aged man, respectable and discreet, belonging to\r\n  that minor official grade, the petty officers, upon whom, as none\r\n  know better than the commissioned gentlemen, the efficiency of His\r\n  Majesty’s Navy so largely depends. His function was a responsible\r\n  one; at once onerous and thankless, and his fidelity in it the\r\n  greater because of his strong patriotic impulse. In this instance,\r\n  as in so many other instances in these days, the character of the\r\n  unfortunate man signally refutes, if refutation were needed, that\r\n  peevish saying attributed to Dr. Johnson, that patriotism is the\r\n  last refuge of a scoundrel.\r\n\r\n  ‘The criminal paid the penalty of his crime. The promptitude of\r\n  the punishment has proved salutary. Nothing amiss is now\r\n  apprehended aboard H.M.S. _Indomitable_.’[11]\r\n\r\n\r\n-----\r\n\r\nFootnote 11:\r\n\r\n  An author’s note, crossed out, here appears in the original MS. It\r\n  reads:--Here ends a story not unwarranted by what happens in this\r\n  incongruous world of ours--innocence and infirmary, spiritual\r\n  depravity and fair respite.\r\n\r\n------------------------------------------------------------------------\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n                                  XXVI\r\n\r\n\r\nEverything is for a season remarkable in navies. Any tangible object\r\nassociated with some striking incident of the service, is converted into\r\na monument. The spar from which the foretopman was suspended, was for\r\nsome few years kept trace of by the blue-jackets. Then knowledge\r\nfollowed it from ship to dockyard and again from dockyard to ship, still\r\npursuing it even when at last reduced to a mere dockyard boom. To them a\r\nchip of it was as a piece of the Cross. Ignorant though they were of the\r\nreal facts of the happening, and not thinking but that the penalty was\r\nunavoidably inflicted from the naval point of view, for all that they\r\ninstinctively felt that Billy was a sort of man as incapable of mutiny\r\nas of wilful murder. They recalled the fresh young image of the Handsome\r\nSailor, that face never deformed by a sneer or subtler vile freak of the\r\nheart within! This impression of him was doubtless deepened by the fact\r\nthat he was gone, and in a measure mysteriously gone. On the gun-decks\r\nof the _Indomitable_ the general estimate of his nature and its\r\nunconscious simplicity eventually found rude utterance from another\r\nforetopman, one of his own watch, gifted as some sailors are, with an\r\nartless poetic temperament. The tarry hands made some lines, which,\r\nafter circulating among the shipboard crew for a while, finally got\r\nrudely printed at Portsmouth as a ballad. The title given to it was the\r\nsailor’s.\r\n\r\n\r\n                         BILLY IN THE DARBIES\r\n\r","title":"Chunk 6"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KG8AJVQ8CPX6QJ952XD3PA4T","peer_type":"segment","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KG89J1FFTGRE9J93Z3K29NGY","peer_type":"file","predicate":"extractedFrom"},{"peer":"01KG89HMDZKNY753EZE1CJ8HZW","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KG8AM80M84QMH6913A4VR4NH","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"prev"},{"peer":"01KG8AM80K65WYQTN495E5H4TV","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"next"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-30T20:48:30.737Z","ts":"2026-01-30T20:48:37.726Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}