But the Captain had got his dander up. He wasn't going to have his natural passion judged and interfered with by these long-nosed Salvationist Johannuses. So he had nosey John hauled up and whipped as well.
For which I am very glad.
Alas, however, the Captain got the worst of it in the end. He smirks longest who smirks lasts. The Captain wasn't wary enough. Natural anger, natural passion has its unremitting enemy in the idealist. And the ship was already tainted with idealism. A good deal more so, apparently, than Herman Melville's ships were.
Which reminds us that Melville was once going to be flogged. In White Jacket. And he, too, would have taken it as the last insult.
In my opinion, there are worse insults than floggings. I would rather be flogged than have most people "like" me.
Melville too had an Intercedor: a quiet, self-respecting man, not a saviour. The man spoke in the name of Justice. Melville was to be unjustly whipped. The man spoke honestly and quietly. Not in any Salvationist spirit. And the whipping did not take place.
Justice is a great and manly thing. Saviourism is a despicable thing.
Sam was justly whipped. It was a passional justice.
But Melville's whipping would have been a cold, disciplinary injustice. A foul thing. Mechanical justice even is a foul thing. For true justice makes the heart's fibres quiver. You can't be cold in a matter of real justice.
Already in those days it was no fun to be a captain. You had to learn already to abstract yourself into a machine-part, exerting machine-control. And it is a good deal bitterer to exert machine-control, selfless, ideal control, than it is to have to obey, mechanically. Because the idealists who mechanically obey almost always hate the man who must give the orders. Their idealism rarely allows them to exonerate the man for the office.