Summary: Chapter 13
The narrator explains that profound passions can exist
in the lowliest settings, and may be provoked by trivial circumstances.
The passion to which he refers belongs to Claggart, who is beginning
to resent Billy with fervent intensity. Given time to reflect upon
the matter, Claggart arrives at the conclusion that Billy’s soup
spill is no accident. Rather, he believes that it is a gesture revealing
Billy’s ill will toward him, whether this antagonism is conscious
or not. Squeak, a wizened corporal and Claggart’s underling, who
also has it in for Billy, reinforces Claggart’s opinions. In addition
to persecuting Billy at every opportunity, Squeak lies to Claggart
and tells him that Billy makes fun of him behind his back. Searching
for a reason to justify his hatred of Billy and encouraged by Squeak’s
lies, Claggart seizes upon the soup spill as an indication of Billy’s
malice and uses it as an excuse to increase the level of his own
enmity.
Summary: Chapter 14
Shortly thereafter, on a warm night, Billy inadvertently
becomes involved in a troubling incident. While dozing on an upper
deck of the ship, he is roused by a whisper and a touch to his shoulder.
An anonymous figure tells Billy to meet him shortly thereafter on
a narrow balcony in a remote part of the ship. Innocently, Billy
gets up mechanically and goes to the balcony as instructed. Presently,
the other man arrives, and though it is dark and hazy Billy is able
to identify him as one of the afterguardsmen. Declaring that he
was forced into duty just like Billy, the man asks Billy in a roundabout way
if he would be willing to assist, if ever a mutiny occurred.
Not immediately grasping the man’s meaning, Billy presses
him for a further explanation. When the man holds up a pair of coins and
declares them to be Billy’s for the taking, Billy reacts violently, stuttering
in fits and starts. Billy orders the man to return to his place on
the ship, threatening to throw him overboard if he does not comply.
Taking Billy for his word, the man scuttles off. Awakened by Billy’s
loud threat and knowing that Billy stutters only when something
is truly amiss, a forecastleman emerges to check on the commotion.
Billy explains that he has sent a trespassing afterguardsman back
to his proper place on the ship. At this, yet another forecastleman
comes forth, this time to rebuke Billy for his relative mildness
in dealing with the encroaching afterguardsman. However, Billy convinces
the forecastlemen that everything has been handled with adequate
gruffness, and the matter is dropped.
Summary: Chapter 15
In the aftermath of this incident, Billy wrestles with
his conscience, as he has no prior experience in the world of the
corrupt or the illicit. He is at a loss to explain the nature of
the afterguardsman’s bribe or to figure out where the afterguardsman
might have acquired guineas at sea. The more he considers the matter,
the more bewildered he becomes. At the very least, Billy perceives
that the whole affair smacks of evil. Therefore, he decides that
he has no wish to be associated with it, although he is curious
to learn more of its specific nature.
The following afternoon, Billy spots the man he thinks
to be the afterguardsman on an upper gun deck. The man on the gun
deck hardly fits the picture of a jaded conspirator, however. The
man spots Billy before Billy spots him, and sends a nod in Billy’s
direction. A couple of days later, the two men again cross paths
on a gun deck, and the afterguardsman offers a friendly but unexpected
word of greeting to Billy. Embarrassed by the awkward situation,
Billy fails to return the greeting and is sent into a greater confusion
by the odd turn of events.
Once again, Billy chooses to unburden himself to the
salty old Dansker. After hearing Billy’s heavily generalized version
of his encounters, the Dansker concludes for a second time that
Claggart is out to get him. Billy, taken aback by such an interpretation, presses
the Dansker for an explanation, but the Dansker simply retreats
into mysterious silence.
