Herman Melville · 1891
Questions on the text, each answered in the book’s own words, with the minute you hear it.
Challenge a friend: 123BookWarThe text
Answer 1797
“The year 1797, the year of this narrative, belongs to a period which, as every thinker now feels, involved a crisis for Christendom”
Answer Liverpool
“In Liverpool, now half a century ago, I saw under the shadow of the great dingy street-wall of Prince’s Dock (an obstruction long since removed) a common sailor”
Answer Lieutenant Ratcliffe
“Plump upon Billy at first sight in the gangway the boarding-officer, Lieutenant Ratcliffe, pounced, even before the merchantman’s crew formally was mustered”
Answer My peacemaker
“Ay, Lieutenant, you are going to take away the jewel of ’em; you are going to take away my peacemaker.’”
Answer Thomas Paine’s
“The hard-headed Dundee owner was a staunch admirer of Thomas Paine, whose book in rejoinder to Burke’s arraignment of the French Revolution had then been published for some time”
Answer ‘And good-bye to you too, old Rights-of-Man!’
“Then making a salutation as to the ship herself, ‘And good-bye to you too, old Rights-of-Man!’”
Answer In a silk-lined basket hanging from a door-knocker in Bristol
“I have heard that I was found in a pretty silk-lined basket hanging one morning from the knocker of a good man’s door in Bristol.”
Answer A stutter under strong feeling
“his voice, otherwise singularly musical, as if expressive of the harmony within, was apt to develop an organic hesitancy,—in fact, more or less of a stutter or even worse.”
Answer May
“In the April of that year had occurred the commotion at Spithead, followed in May by a second and yet more serious outbreak in the fleet at the Nore.”
Answer Portsmouth
“the solitary old hulk at Portsmouth, Nelson’s Victory, seems to float there, not alone as the decaying monument of a fame incorruptible”
Answer Rodney
“For his gallantry in the West Indian waters as flag-lieutenant under Rodney in that admiral’s crowning victory over De Grasse, he was made a post-captain.”
Answer Montaigne
“unconventional writers who, free from cant and convention, like Montaigne, honestly, and in the spirit of common sense, philosophise upon realities.”
Answer The Rev. Dr. Titus Oates
“the chin, beardless as Tecumseh’s, had something of the strange protuberant heaviness in its make that recalled the prints of the Rev. Dr. Titus Oates”
Answer The Agamemnon
“some two years prior to the time of this story having served under Nelson, when but Sir Horatio, in that ship immortal in naval memory”
Answer Board-her-in-the-smoke
“as well as from his blue-peppered complexion, that the Dansker went among the Indomitable’s crew by the name of ‘Board-her-in-the-smoke.’”
Answer The contents of his soup-pan
“chanced in a sudden lurch to spill the entire contents of his soup-pan upon the new-scrubbed deck.”
Answer ‘Handsomely done, my lad! And handsome is as handsome did it, too!’
“saying, in a low musical voice, peculiar to him at times, ‘Handsomely done, my lad! And handsome is as handsome did it, too!’”
Answer A list of definitions attributed to Plato
“In a list of definitions included in the authentic translation of Plato, a list attributed to him, occurs this: ‘Natural Depravity: a depravity according to nature.’”
Answer Squeak
“certain tell-tale reports purveyed to his ear by Squeak, one of his more cunning corporals, a grizzled little man”
Answer The lee fore-chains
“Slip into the lee fore-chains, Billy; there is something in the wind. Don’t speak. Quick. I will meet you there”
Answer Red Pepper
“an irascible old fellow of brick-coloured visage and hair, and who was known to his associate forecastlemen as Red Pepper.”
Answer Guineas
“And could they really be guineas, those two glittering objects the interloper had held up to his (Billy’s) eyes? Where could the fellow get guineas?”
Answer ‘A cat’s-paw, a cat’s-paw!’
“Ho, it was an afterguardsman, then. A cat’s-paw, a cat’s-paw!”
Answer The armourer and the captain of the hold
“Two minor officers, the armourer and captain of the hold, with whom he had never exchanged a word, his position on the ship not bringing him into contact with them”
Answer ‘Be direct, man; say impressed men.’
“At this point Captain Vere with some impatience interrupted him: ‘Be direct, man; say impressed men.’”
Answer A yard-arm-end
“heed what you speak. Just now and in a case like this, there is a yard-arm-end for the false witness.’”
Answer His coxswain
“Yes, the captain, I have always thought, looks kindly upon me. Wonder if he’s going to make me his coxswain. I should like that.”
Answer ‘There is no hurry, my boy. Take your time, take your time.’
“Going close up to the young sailor, and laying a soothing hand on his shoulder, he said, ‘There is no hurry, my boy. Take your time, take your time.’”
Answer Ananias
“Suddenly, catching the surgeon’s arm convulsively, he exclaimed, pointing down to the body, ‘It is the divine judgment of Ananias! Look!’”
Answer The first lieutenant, the captain of marines, and the sailing-master
“a drum-head court was summarily convened, he electing the individuals composing it—the first lieutenant, the captain of marines, and the sailing-master.”
Answer The King’s bread
“It is just as Captain Vere says, but it is not as the master-at-arms said. I have eaten the King’s bread, and I am true to the King.’”
Answer The Mutiny Act
“But how here? We proceed under the law of the Mutiny Act. In feature no child can resemble his father more than that Act resembles in spirit the thing from which it derives—War.”
Answer The junior lieutenant
“Can we not convict and yet mitigate the penalty?’ asked the junior lieutenant, here speaking, and falteringly, for the first.”
Answer Mutiny
“and that the execution would take place in the early morning watch. The word mutiny was not named in what he said.”
Answer Between two guns
“But now, lying between the two guns, as nipped in the vice of fate, Billy’s agony, mainly proceeding from a generous young heart’s virgin experience of the diabolical”
Answer Kissed him on the cheek
“Stooping over, he kissed on the fair cheek his fellow-man, a felon in martial law, one who, though in the confines of death, he felt he could never convert to a dogma”
Answer Four o’clock in the morning
“was struck aft, responded to by one louder metallic stroke from forward. It was four o’clock in the morning.”
Answer The main-yard
“At sea in the old time, the execution by halter of a military sailor was generally from the fore-yard. In the present instance, for special reasons, the main-yard was assigned.”
Answer ‘God bless Captain Vere!’
“At the penultimate moment, his words, his only ones, words wholly unobstructed in the utterance, were these—‘God bless Captain Vere!’”
Answer Euthanasia
“was the man’s death effected by the halter, or was it a species of euthanasia?”
Answer Orpheus with his lyre
“forms, measured forms, are everything; and that is the import couched in the story of Orpheus with his lyre spell-binding the wild denizens of the woods.”
Answer The Athéiste
“line-of-battle ship was named the Athéiste. Such a name, like some other substituted ones in the Revolutionary fleet”
Answer ‘Billy Budd, Billy Budd.’
“he was heard to murmur words inexplicable to his attendant—‘Billy Budd, Billy Budd.’”
Answer Stabbed him to the heart with a sheath-knife
“in the act of arraigning the man before the captain was vindictively stabbed to the heart by the suddenly drawn sheath-knife of Budd.”
Answer Bristol-Molly
“A jewel-block they’ll make of me to-morrow, Pendant pearl from the yard-arm-end Like the ear-drop I gave to Bristol-Molly—”
“Billy Budd, Foretopman,” in Billy Budd and Other Prose Pieces, ed. Raymond W. Weaver, Constable and Company, 1924 — the first publication. Public domain in the United States. Later editions title it Billy Budd, Sailor.