In the year 1799, Captain Amasa Delano, of Duxbury, in Massachusetts,
commanding a large sealer and general trader, lay at anchor with a
valuable cargo, in the harbor of St. Maria—a small, desert, uninhabited
island toward the southern extremity of the long coast of Chili. There
he had touched for water.
On the second day, not long after dawn, while lying in his berth, his
mate came below, informing him that a strange sail was coming into the
bay. Ships were then not so plenty in those waters as now. He rose,
dressed, and went on deck.
The morning was one peculiar to that coast. Everything was mute and
calm; everything gray. The sea, though undulated into long roods of
swells, seemed fixed, and was sleeked at the surface like waved lead
that has cooled and set in the smelter’s mould. The sky seemed a gray
surtout. Flights of troubled gray fowl, kith and kin with flights of
troubled gray vapors among which they were mixed, skimmed low and
fitfully over the waters, as swallows over meadows before storms.
Shadows present, foreshadowing deeper shadows to come.
To Captain Delano’s surprise, the stranger, viewed through the glass,
showed no colors; though to do so upon entering a haven, however
uninhabited in its shores, where but a single other ship might be
lying, was the custom among peaceful seamen of all nations. Considering
the lawlessness and loneliness of the spot, and the sort of stories, at
that day, associated with those seas, Captain Delano’s surprise might
have deepened into some uneasiness had he not been a person of a
singularly undistrustful good-nature, not liable, except on
extraordinary and repeated incentives, and hardly then, to indulge in
personal alarms, any way involving the imputation of malign evil in
man. Whether, in view of what humanity is capable, such a trait
implies, along with a benevolent heart, more than ordinary quickness
and accuracy of intellectual perception, may be left to the wise to
determine.
But whatever misgivings might have obtruded on first seeing the
stranger, would almost, in any seaman’s mind, have been dissipated by
observing that, the ship, in navigating into the harbor, was drawing
too near the land; a sunken reef making out off her bow. This seemed to
prove her a stranger, indeed, not only to the sealer, but the island;
consequently, she could be no wonted freebooter on that ocean. With no
small interest, Captain Delano continued to watch her—a proceeding not
much facilitated by the vapors partly mantling the hull, through which
the far matin light from her cabin streamed equivocally enough; much
like the sun—by this time hemisphered on the rim of the horizon, and,
apparently, in company with the strange ship entering the harbor—which,
wimpled by the same low, creeping clouds, showed not unlike a Lima
intriguante’s one sinister eye peering across the Plaza from the Indian
loop-hole of her dusk _saya-y-manta._
It might have been but a deception of the vapors, but, the longer the
stranger was watched the more singular appeared her manoeuvres. Ere
long it seemed hard to decide whether she meant to come in or no—what
she wanted, or what she was about. The wind, which had breezed up a
little during the night, was now extremely light and baffling, which
the more increased the apparent uncertainty of her movements.
Surmising, at last, that it might be a ship in distress, Captain Delano
ordered his whale-boat to be dropped, and, much to the wary opposition
of his mate, prepared to board her, and, at the least, pilot her in. On
the night previous, a fishing-party of the seamen had gone a long
distance to some detached rocks out of sight from the sealer, and, an
hour or two before daybreak, had returned, having met with no small
success. Presuming that the stranger might have been long off
soundings, the good captain put several baskets of the fish, for
presents, into his boat, and so pulled away. From her continuing too
near the sunken reef, deeming her in danger, calling to his men, he
made all haste to apprise those on board of their situation. But, some
time ere the boat came up, the wind, light though it was, having
shifted, had headed the vessel off, as well as partly broken the vapors
from about her.
Upon gaining a less remote view, the ship, when made signally visible
on the verge of the leaden-hued swells, with the shreds of fog here and
there raggedly furring her, appeared like a white-washed monastery
after a thunder-storm, seen perched upon some dun cliff among the
Pyrenees. But it was no purely fanciful resemblance which now, for a
moment, almost led Captain Delano to think that nothing less than a
ship-load of monks was before him. Peering over the bulwarks were what
really seemed, in the hazy distance, throngs of dark cowls; while,
fitfully revealed through the open port-holes, other dark moving
figures were dimly descried, as of Black Friars pacing the cloisters.
Upon a still nigher approach, this appearance was modified, and the
true character of the vessel was plain—a Spanish merchantman of the
first class, carrying negro slaves, amongst other valuable freight,
from one colonial port to another. A very large, and, in its time, a
very fine vessel, such as in those days were at intervals encountered
along that main; sometimes superseded Acapulco treasure-ships, or
retired frigates of the Spanish king’s navy, which, like superannuated
Italian palaces, still, under a decline of masters, preserved signs of
former state.
As the whale-boat drew more and more nigh, the cause of the peculiar
pipe-clayed aspect of the stranger was seen in the slovenly neglect
pervading her. The spars, ropes, and great part of the bulwarks, looked
woolly, from long unacquaintance with the scraper, tar, and the brush.
Her keel seemed laid, her ribs put together, and she launched, from
Ezekiel’s Valley of Dry Bones.
In the present business in which she was engaged, the ship’s general
model and rig appeared to have undergone no material change from their
original warlike and Froissart pattern. However, no guns were seen.
The tops were large, and were railed about with what had once been
octagonal net-work, all now in sad disrepair. These tops hung overhead
like three ruinous aviaries, in one of which was seen, perched, on a
ratlin, a white noddy, a strange fowl, so called from its lethargic,
somnambulistic character, being frequently caught by hand at sea.
Battered and mouldy, the castellated forecastle seemed some ancient
turret, long ago taken by assault, and then left to decay. Toward the
stern, two high-raised quarter galleries—the balustrades here and there
covered with dry, tindery sea-moss—opening out from the unoccupied
state-cabin, whose dead-lights, for all the mild weather, were
hermetically closed and calked—these tenantless balconies hung over the
sea as if it were the grand Venetian canal. But the principal relic of
faded grandeur was the ample oval of the shield-like stern-piece,
intricately carved with the arms of Castile and Leon, medallioned about
by groups of mythological or symbolical devices; uppermost and central
of which was a dark satyr in a mask, holding his foot on the prostrate
neck of a writhing figure, likewise masked.
Whether the ship had a figure-head, or only a plain beak, was not quite
certain, owing to canvas wrapped about that part, either to protect it
while undergoing a re-furbishing, or else decently to hide its decay.
Rudely painted or chalked, as in a sailor freak, along the forward side
of a sort of pedestal below the canvas, was the sentence, “_Seguid
vuestro jefe_” (follow your leader); while upon the tarnished
headboards, near by, appeared, in stately capitals, once gilt, the
ship’s name, “SAN DOMINICK,” each letter streakingly corroded with
tricklings of copper-spike rust; while, like mourning weeds, dark
festoons of sea-grass slimily swept to and fro over the name, with
every hearse-like roll of the hull.
As, at last, the boat was hooked from the bow along toward the gangway
amidship, its keel, while yet some inches separated from the hull,
harshly grated as on a sunken coral reef. It proved a huge bunch of
conglobated barnacles adhering below the water to the side like a wen—a
token of baffling airs and long calms passed somewhere in those seas.
Climbing the side, the visitor was at once surrounded by a clamorous
throng of whites and blacks, but the latter outnumbering the former
more than could have been expected, negro transportation-ship as the
stranger in port was. But, in one language, and as with one voice, all
poured out a common tale of suffering; in which the negresses, of whom
there were not a few, exceeded the others in their dolorous vehemence.
The scurvy, together with the fever, had swept off a great part of
their number, more especially the Spaniards. Off Cape Horn they had
narrowly escaped shipwreck; then, for days together, they had lain
tranced without wind; their provisions were low; their water next to
none; their lips that moment were baked.
While Captain Delano was thus made the mark of all eager tongues, his
one eager glance took in all faces, with every other object about him.
Always upon first boarding a large and populous ship at sea, especially
a foreign one, with a nondescript crew such as Lascars or Manilla men,
the impression varies in a peculiar way from that produced by first
entering a strange house with strange inmates in a strange land. Both
house and ship—the one by its walls and blinds, the other by its high
bulwarks like ramparts—hoard from view their interiors till the last
moment: but in the case of the ship there is this addition; that the
living spectacle it contains, upon its sudden and complete disclosure,
has, in contrast with the blank ocean which zones it, something of the
effect of enchantment. The ship seems unreal; these strange costumes,
gestures, and faces, but a shadowy tableau just emerged from the deep,
which directly must receive back what it gave.
Perhaps it was some such influence, as above is attempted to be
described, which, in Captain Delano’s mind, heightened whatever, upon a
staid scrutiny, might have seemed unusual; especially the conspicuous
figures of four elderly grizzled negroes, their heads like black,
doddered willow tops, who, in venerable contrast to the tumult below
them, were couched, sphynx-like, one on the starboard cat-head, another
on the larboard, and the remaining pair face to face on the opposite
bulwarks above the main-chains. They each had bits of unstranded old
junk in their hands, and, with a sort of stoical self-content, were
picking the junk into oakum, a small heap of which lay by their sides.
They accompanied the task with a continuous, low, monotonous, chant;
droning and drilling away like so many gray-headed bag-pipers playing a
funeral march.
The quarter-deck rose into an ample elevated poop, upon the forward
verge of which, lifted, like the oakum-pickers, some eight feet above
the general throng, sat along in a row, separated by regular spaces,
the cross-legged figures of six other blacks; each with a rusty hatchet
in his hand, which, with a bit of brick and a rag, he was engaged like
a scullion in scouring; while between each two was a small stack of
hatchets, their rusted edges turned forward awaiting a like operation.
Though occasionally the four oakum-pickers would briefly address some
person or persons in the crowd below, yet the six hatchet-polishers
neither spoke to others, nor breathed a whisper among themselves, but
sat intent upon their task, except at intervals, when, with the
peculiar love in negroes of uniting industry with pastime, two and two
they sideways clashed their hatchets together, like cymbals, with a
barbarous din. All six, unlike the generality, had the raw aspect of
unsophisticated Africans.
But that first comprehensive glance which took in those ten figures,
with scores less conspicuous, rested but an instant upon them, as,
impatient of the hubbub of voices, the visitor turned in quest of
whomsoever it might be that commanded the ship.
But as if not unwilling to let nature make known her own case among his
suffering charge, or else in despair of restraining it for the time,
the Spanish captain, a gentlemanly, reserved-looking, and rather young
man to a stranger’s eye, dressed with singular richness, but bearing
plain traces of recent sleepless cares and disquietudes, stood
passively by, leaning against the main-mast, at one moment casting a
dreary, spiritless look upon his excited people, at the next an unhappy
glance toward his visitor. By his side stood a black of small stature,
in whose rude face, as occasionally, like a shepherd’s dog, he mutely
turned it up into the Spaniard’s, sorrow and affection were equally
blended.
Struggling through the throng, the American advanced to the Spaniard,
assuring him of his sympathies, and offering to render whatever
assistance might be in his power. To which the Spaniard returned for
the present but grave and ceremonious acknowledgments, his national
formality dusked by the saturnine mood of ill-health.
But losing no time in mere compliments, Captain Delano, returning to
the gangway, had his basket of fish brought up; and as the wind still
continued light, so that some hours at least must elapse ere the ship
could be brought to the anchorage, he bade his men return to the
sealer, and fetch back as much water as the whale-boat could carry,
with whatever soft bread the steward might have, all the remaining
pumpkins on board, with a box of sugar, and a dozen of his private
bottles of cider.
Not many minutes after the boat’s pushing off, to the vexation of all,
the wind entirely died away, and the tide turning, began drifting back
the ship helplessly seaward. But trusting this would not long last,
Captain Delano sought, with good hopes, to cheer up the strangers,
feeling no small satisfaction that, with persons in their condition, he
could—thanks to his frequent voyages along the Spanish main—converse
with some freedom in their native tongue.
While left alone with them, he was not long in observing some things
tending to heighten his first impressions; but surprise was lost in
pity, both for the Spaniards and blacks, alike evidently reduced from
scarcity of water and provisions; while long-continued suffering seemed
to have brought out the less good-natured qualities of the negroes,
besides, at the same time, impairing the Spaniard’s authority over
them. But, under the circumstances, precisely this condition of things
was to have been anticipated. In armies, navies, cities, or families,
in nature herself, nothing more relaxes good order than misery. Still,
Captain Delano was not without the idea, that had Benito Cereno been a
man of greater energy, misrule would hardly have come to the present
pass. But the debility, constitutional or induced by hardships, bodily
and mental, of the Spanish captain, was too obvious to be overlooked. A
prey to settled dejection, as if long mocked with hope he would not now
indulge it, even when it had ceased to be a mock, the prospect of that
day, or evening at furthest, lying at anchor, with plenty of water for
his people, and a brother captain to counsel and befriend, seemed in no
perceptible degree to encourage him. His mind appeared unstrung, if not
still more seriously affected. Shut up in these oaken walls, chained to
one dull round of command, whose unconditionality cloyed him, like some
hypochondriac abbot he moved slowly about, at times suddenly pausing,
starting, or staring, biting his lip, biting his finger-nail, flushing,
paling, twitching his beard, with other symptoms of an absent or moody
mind. This distempered spirit was lodged, as before hinted, in as
distempered a frame. He was rather tall, but seemed never to have been
robust, and now with nervous suffering was almost worn to a skeleton. A
tendency to some pulmonary complaint appeared to have been lately
confirmed. His voice was like that of one with lungs half gone—hoarsely
suppressed, a husky whisper. No wonder that, as in this state he
tottered about, his private servant apprehensively followed him.
Sometimes the negro gave his master his arm, or took his handkerchief
out of his pocket for him; performing these and similar offices with
that affectionate zeal which transmutes into something filial or
fraternal acts in themselves but menial; and which has gained for the
negro the repute of making the most pleasing body-servant in the world;
one, too, whom a master need be on no stiffly superior terms with, but
may treat with familiar trust; less a servant than a devoted companion.
Marking the noisy indocility of the blacks in general, as well as what
seemed the sullen inefficiency of the whites it was not without humane
satisfaction that Captain Delano witnessed the steady good conduct of
Babo.
But the good conduct of Babo, hardly more than the ill-behavior of
others, seemed to withdraw the half-lunatic Don Benito from his cloudy
languor. Not that such precisely was the impression made by the
Spaniard on the mind of his visitor. The Spaniard’s individual unrest
was, for the present, but noted as a conspicuous feature in the ship’s
general affliction. Still, Captain Delano was not a little concerned at
what he could not help taking for the time to be Don Benito’s
unfriendly indifference towards himself. The Spaniard’s manner, too,
conveyed a sort of sour and gloomy disdain, which he seemed at no pains
to disguise. But this the American in charity ascribed to the harassing
effects of sickness, since, in former instances, he had noted that
there are peculiar natures on whom prolonged physical suffering seems
to cancel every social instinct of kindness; as if, forced to black
bread themselves, they deemed it but equity that each person coming
nigh them should, indirectly, by some slight or affront, be made to
partake of their fare.
But ere long Captain Delano bethought him that, indulgent as he was at
the first, in judging the Spaniard, he might not, after all, have
exercised charity enough. At bottom it was Don Benito’s reserve which
displeased him; but the same reserve was shown towards all but his
faithful personal attendant. Even the formal reports which, according
to sea-usage, were, at stated times, made to him by some petty
underling, either a white, mulatto or black, he hardly had patience
enough to listen to, without betraying contemptuous aversion. His
manner upon such occasions was, in its degree, not unlike that which
might be supposed to have been his imperial countryman’s, Charles V.,
just previous to the anchoritish retirement of that monarch from the
throne.
This splenetic disrelish of his place was evinced in almost every
function pertaining to it. Proud as he was moody, he condescended to no
personal mandate. Whatever special orders were necessary, their
delivery was delegated to his body-servant, who in turn transferred
them to their ultimate destination, through runners, alert Spanish boys
or slave boys, like pages or pilot-fish within easy call continually
hovering round Don Benito. So that to have beheld this undemonstrative
invalid gliding about, apathetic and mute, no landsman could have
dreamed that in him was lodged a dictatorship beyond which, while at
sea, there was no earthly appeal.
Thus, the Spaniard, regarded in his reserve, seemed the involuntary
victim of mental disorder. But, in fact, his reserve might, in some
degree, have proceeded from design. If so, then here was evinced the
unhealthy climax of that icy though conscientious policy, more or less
adopted by all commanders of large ships, which, except in signal
emergencies, obliterates alike the manifestation of sway with every
trace of sociality; transforming the man into a block, or rather into a
loaded cannon, which, until there is call for thunder, has nothing to
say.
Viewing him in this light, it seemed but a natural token of the
perverse habit induced by a long course of such hard self-restraint,
that, notwithstanding the present condition of his ship, the Spaniard
should still persist in a demeanor, which, however harmless, or, it may
be, appropriate, in a well-appointed vessel, such as the San Dominick
might have been at the outset of the voyage, was anything but judicious
now. But the Spaniard, perhaps, thought that it was with captains as
with gods: reserve, under all events, must still be their cue. But
probably this appearance of slumbering dominion might have been but an
attempted disguise to conscious imbecility—not deep policy, but shallow
device. But be all this as it might, whether Don Benito’s manner was
designed or not, the more Captain Delano noted its pervading reserve,
the less he felt uneasiness at any particular manifestation of that
reserve towards himself.
Neither were his thoughts taken up by the captain alone. Wonted to the
quiet orderliness of the sealer’s comfortable family of a crew, the
noisy confusion of the San Dominick’s suffering host repeatedly
challenged his eye. Some prominent breaches, not only of discipline but
of decency, were observed. These Captain Delano could not but ascribe,
in the main, to the absence of those subordinate deck-officers to whom,
along with higher duties, is intrusted what may be styled the police
department of a populous ship. True, the old oakum-pickers appeared at
times to act the part of monitorial constables to their countrymen, the
blacks; but though occasionally succeeding in allaying trifling
outbreaks now and then between man and man, they could do little or
nothing toward establishing general quiet. The San Dominick was in the
condition of a transatlantic emigrant ship, among whose multitude of
living freight are some individuals, doubtless, as little troublesome
as crates and bales; but the friendly remonstrances of such with their
ruder companions are of not so much avail as the unfriendly arm of the
mate. What the San Dominick wanted was, what the emigrant ship has,
stern superior officers. But on these decks not so much as a
fourth-mate was to be seen.
The visitor’s curiosity was roused to learn the particulars of those
mishaps which had brought about such absenteeism, with its
consequences; because, though deriving some inkling of the voyage from
the wails which at the first moment had greeted him, yet of the details
no clear understanding had been had. The best account would, doubtless,
be given by the captain. Yet at first the visitor was loth to ask it,
unwilling to provoke some distant rebuff. But plucking up courage, he
at last accosted Don Benito, renewing the expression of his benevolent
interest, adding, that did he (Captain Delano) but know the particulars
of the ship’s misfortunes, he would, perhaps, be better able in the end
to relieve them. Would Don Benito favor him with the whole story.
Don Benito faltered; then, like some somnambulist suddenly interfered
with, vacantly stared at his visitor, and ended by looking down on the
deck. He maintained this posture so long, that Captain Delano, almost
equally disconcerted, and involuntarily almost as rude, turned suddenly
from him, walking forward to accost one of the Spanish seamen for the
desired information. But he had hardly gone five paces, when, with a
sort of eagerness, Don Benito invited him back, regretting his
momentary absence of mind, and professing readiness to gratify him.
While most part of the story was being given, the two captains stood on
the after part of the main-deck, a privileged spot, no one being near
but the servant.
“It is now a hundred and ninety days,” began the Spaniard, in his husky
whisper, “that this ship, well officered and well manned, with several
cabin passengers—some fifty Spaniards in all—sailed from Buenos Ayres
bound to Lima, with a general cargo, hardware, Paraguay tea and the
like—and,” pointing forward, “that parcel of negroes, now not more than
a hundred and fifty, as you see, but then numbering over three hundred
souls. Off Cape Horn we had heavy gales. In one moment, by night, three
of my best officers, with fifteen sailors, were lost, with the
main-yard; the spar snapping under them in the slings, as they sought,
with heavers, to beat down the icy sail. To lighten the hull, the
heavier sacks of mata were thrown into the sea, with most of the
water-pipes lashed on deck at the time. And this last necessity it was,
combined with the prolonged detections afterwards experienced, which
eventually brought about our chief causes of suffering. When—”
Here there was a sudden fainting attack of his cough, brought on, no
doubt, by his mental distress. His servant sustained him, and drawing a
cordial from his pocket placed it to his lips. He a little revived. But
unwilling to leave him unsupported while yet imperfectly restored, the
black with one arm still encircled his master, at the same time keeping
his eye fixed on his face, as if to watch for the first sign of
complete restoration, or relapse, as the event might prove.
The Spaniard proceeded, but brokenly and obscurely, as one in a dream.
—“Oh, my God! rather than pass through what I have, with joy I would
have hailed the most terrible gales; but—”
His cough returned and with increased violence; this subsiding; with
reddened lips and closed eyes he fell heavily against his supporter.
“His mind wanders. He was thinking of the plague that followed the
gales,” plaintively sighed the servant; “my poor, poor master!”
wringing one hand, and with the other wiping the mouth. “But be
patient, Señor,” again turning to Captain Delano, “these fits do not
last long; master will soon be himself.”
Don Benito reviving, went on; but as this portion of the story was very
brokenly delivered, the substance only will here be set down.
It appeared that after the ship had been many days tossed in storms off
the Cape, the scurvy broke out, carrying off numbers of the whites and
blacks. When at last they had worked round into the Pacific, their
spars and sails were so damaged, and so inadequately handled by the
surviving mariners, most of whom were become invalids, that, unable to
lay her northerly course by the wind, which was powerful, the
unmanageable ship, for successive days and nights, was blown
northwestward, where the breeze suddenly deserted her, in unknown
waters, to sultry calms. The absence of the water-pipes now proved as
fatal to life as before their presence had menaced it. Induced, or at
least aggravated, by the more than scanty allowance of water, a
malignant fever followed the scurvy; with the excessive heat of the
lengthened calm, making such short work of it as to sweep away, as by
billows, whole families of the Africans, and a yet larger number,
proportionably, of the Spaniards, including, by a luckless fatality,
every remaining officer on board. Consequently, in the smart west winds
eventually following the calm, the already rent sails, having to be
simply dropped, not furled, at need, had been gradually reduced to the
beggars’ rags they were now. To procure substitutes for his lost
sailors, as well as supplies of water and sails, the captain, at the
earliest opportunity, had made for Baldivia, the southernmost civilized
port of Chili and South America; but upon nearing the coast the thick
weather had prevented him from so much as sighting that harbor. Since
which period, almost without a crew, and almost without canvas and
almost without water, and, at intervals giving its added dead to the
sea, the San Dominick had been battle-dored about by contrary winds,
inveigled by currents, or grown weedy in calms. Like a man lost in
woods, more than once she had doubled upon her own track.
“But throughout these calamities,” huskily continued Don Benito,
painfully turning in the half embrace of his servant, “I have to thank
those negroes you see, who, though to your inexperienced eyes appearing
unruly, have, indeed, conducted themselves with less of restlessness
than even their owner could have thought possible under such
circumstances.”
Here he again fell faintly back. Again his mind wandered; but he
rallied, and less obscurely proceeded.
“Yes, their owner was quite right in assuring me that no fetters would
be needed with his blacks; so that while, as is wont in this
transportation, those negroes have always remained upon deck—not thrust
below, as in the Guinea-men—they have, also, from the beginning, been
freely permitted to range within given bounds at their pleasure.”
Once more the faintness returned—his mind roved—but, recovering, he
resumed:
“But it is Babo here to whom, under God, I owe not only my own
preservation, but likewise to him, chiefly, the merit is due, of
pacifying his more ignorant brethren, when at intervals tempted to
murmurings.”
“Ah, master,” sighed the black, bowing his face, “don’t speak of me;
Babo is nothing; what Babo has done was but duty.”
“Faithful fellow!” cried Captain Delano. “Don Benito, I envy you such a
friend; slave I cannot call him.”
As master and man stood before him, the black upholding the white,
Captain Delano could not but bethink him of the beauty of that
relationship which could present such a spectacle of fidelity on the
one hand and confidence on the other. The scene was heightened by, the
contrast in dress, denoting their relative positions. The Spaniard wore
a loose Chili jacket of dark velvet; white small-clothes and stockings,
with silver buckles at the knee and instep; a high-crowned sombrero, of
fine grass; a slender sword, silver mounted, hung from a knot in his
sash—the last being an almost invariable adjunct, more for utility than
ornament, of a South American gentleman’s dress to this hour. Excepting
when his occasional nervous contortions brought about disarray, there
was a certain precision in his attire curiously at variance with the
unsightly disorder around; especially in the belittered Ghetto, forward
of the main-mast, wholly occupied by the blacks.
The servant wore nothing but wide trowsers, apparently, from their
coarseness and patches, made out of some old topsail; they were clean,
and confined at the waist by a bit of unstranded rope, which, with his
composed, deprecatory air at times, made him look something like a
begging friar of St. Francis.
However unsuitable for the time and place, at least in the
blunt-thinking American’s eyes, and however strangely surviving in the
midst of all his afflictions, the toilette of Don Benito might not, in
fashion at least, have gone beyond the style of the day among South
Americans of his class. Though on the present voyage sailing from
Buenos Ayres, he had avowed himself a native and resident of Chili,
whose inhabitants had not so generally adopted the plain coat and once
plebeian pantaloons; but, with a becoming modification, adhered to
their provincial costume, picturesque as any in the world. Still,
relatively to the pale history of the voyage, and his own pale face,
there seemed something so incongruous in the Spaniard’s apparel, as
almost to suggest the image of an invalid courtier tottering about
London streets in the time of the plague.
The portion of the narrative which, perhaps, most excited interest, as
well as some surprise, considering the latitudes in question, was the
long calms spoken of, and more particularly the ship’s so long drifting
about. Without communicating the opinion, of course, the American could
not but impute at least part of the detentions both to clumsy
seamanship and faulty navigation. Eying Don Benito’s small, yellow
hands, he easily inferred that the young captain had not got into
command at the hawse-hole, but the cabin-window; and if so, why wonder
at incompetence, in youth, sickness, and gentility united?
But drowning criticism in compassion, after a fresh repetition of his
sympathies, Captain Delano, having heard out his story, not only
engaged, as in the first place, to see Don Benito and his people
supplied in their immediate bodily needs, but, also, now farther
promised to assist him in procuring a large permanent supply of water,
as well as some sails and rigging; and, though it would involve no
small embarrassment to himself, yet he would spare three of his best
seamen for temporary deck officers; so that without delay the ship
might proceed to Conception, there fully to refit for Lima, her
destined port.
Such generosity was not without its effect, even upon the invalid. His
face lighted up; eager and hectic, he met the honest glance of his
visitor. With gratitude he seemed overcome.
“This excitement is bad for master,” whispered the servant, taking his
arm, and with soothing words gently drawing him aside.
When Don Benito returned, the American was pained to observe that his
hopefulness, like the sudden kindling in his cheek, was but febrile and
transient.
Ere long, with a joyless mien, looking up towards the poop, the host
invited his guest to accompany him there, for the benefit of what
little breath of wind might be stirring.
As, during the telling of the story, Captain Delano had once or twice
started at the occasional cymballing of the hatchet-polishers,
wondering why such an interruption should be allowed, especially in
that part of the ship, and in the ears of an invalid; and moreover, as
the hatchets had anything but an attractive look, and the handlers of
them still less so, it was, therefore, to tell the truth, not without
some lurking reluctance, or even shrinking, it may be, that Captain
Delano, with apparent complaisance, acquiesced in his host’s
invitation. The more so, since, with an untimely caprice of punctilio,
rendered distressing by his cadaverous aspect, Don Benito, with
Castilian bows, solemnly insisted upon his guest’s preceding him up the
ladder leading to the elevation; where, one on each side of the last
step, sat for armorial supporters and sentries two of the ominous file.
Gingerly enough stepped good Captain Delano between them, and in the
instant of leaving them behind, like one running the gauntlet, he felt
an apprehensive twitch in the calves of his legs.
But when, facing about, he saw the whole file, like so many
organ-grinders, still stupidly intent on their work, unmindful of
everything beside, he could not but smile at his late fidgety panic.
Presently, while standing with his host, looking forward upon the decks
below, he was struck by one of those instances of insubordination
previously alluded to. Three black boys, with two Spanish boys, were
sitting together on the hatches, scraping a rude wooden platter, in
which some scanty mess had recently been cooked. Suddenly, one of the
black boys, enraged at a word dropped by one of his white companions,
seized a knife, and, though called to forbear by one of the
oakum-pickers, struck the lad over the head, inflicting a gash from
which blood flowed.
In amazement, Captain Delano inquired what this meant. To which the
pale Don Benito dully muttered, that it was merely the sport of the
lad.
“Pretty serious sport, truly,” rejoined Captain Delano. “Had such a
thing happened on board the Bachelor’s Delight, instant punishment
would have followed.”
At these words the Spaniard turned upon the American one of his sudden,
staring, half-lunatic looks; then, relapsing into his torpor, answered,
“Doubtless, doubtless, Señor.”
Is it, thought Captain Delano, that this hapless man is one of those
paper captains I’ve known, who by policy wink at what by power they
cannot put down? I know no sadder sight than a commander who has little
of command but the name.
“I should think, Don Benito,” he now said, glancing towards the
oakum-picker who had sought to interfere with the boys, “that you would
find it advantageous to keep all your blacks employed, especially the
younger ones, no matter at what useless task, and no matter what
happens to the ship. Why, even with my little band, I find such a
course indispensable. I once kept a crew on my quarter-deck thrumming
mats for my cabin, when, for three days, I had given up my ship—mats,
men, and all—for a speedy loss, owing to the violence of a gale, in
which we could do nothing but helplessly drive before it.”
“Doubtless, doubtless,” muttered Don Benito.
“But,” continued Captain Delano, again glancing upon the oakum-pickers
and then at the hatchet-polishers, near by, “I see you keep some, at
least, of your host employed.”
“Yes,” was again the vacant response.
“Those old men there, shaking their pows from their pulpits,” continued
Captain Delano, pointing to the oakum-pickers, “seem to act the part of
old dominies to the rest, little heeded as their admonitions are at
times. Is this voluntary on their part, Don Benito, or have you
appointed them shepherds to your flock of black sheep?”
“What posts they fill, I appointed them,” rejoined the Spaniard, in an
acrid tone, as if resenting some supposed satiric reflection.
“And these others, these Ashantee conjurors here,” continued Captain
Delano, rather uneasily eying the brandished steel of the
hatchet-polishers, where, in spots, it had been brought to a shine,
“this seems a curious business they are at, Don Benito?”
“In the gales we met,” answered the Spaniard, “what of our general
cargo was not thrown overboard was much damaged by the brine. Since
coming into calm weather, I have had several cases of knives and
hatchets daily brought up for overhauling and cleaning.”
“A prudent idea, Don Benito. You are part owner of ship and cargo, I
presume; but none of the slaves, perhaps?”
“I am owner of all you see,” impatiently returned Don Benito, “except
the main company of blacks, who belonged to my late friend, Alexandro
Aranda.”
As he mentioned this name, his air was heart-broken; his knees shook;
his servant supported him.
Thinking he divined the cause of such unusual emotion, to confirm his
surmise, Captain Delano, after a pause, said: “And may I ask, Don
Benito, whether—since awhile ago you spoke of some cabin passengers—the
friend, whose loss so afflicts you, at the outset of the voyage
accompanied his blacks?”
“Yes.”
“But died of the fever?”
“Died of the fever. Oh, could I but—”
Again quivering, the Spaniard paused.
“Pardon me,” said Captain Delano, lowly, “but I think that, by a
sympathetic experience, I conjecture, Don Benito, what it is that gives
the keener edge to your grief. It was once my hard fortune to lose, at
sea, a dear friend, my own brother, then supercargo. Assured of the
welfare of his spirit, its departure I could have borne like a man; but
that honest eye, that honest hand—both of which had so often met
mine—and that warm heart; all, all—like scraps to the dogs—to throw all
to the sharks! It was then I vowed never to have for fellow-voyager a
man I loved, unless, unbeknown to him, I had provided every requisite,
in case of a fatality, for embalming his mortal part for interment on
shore. Were your friend’s remains now on board this ship, Don Benito,
not thus strangely would the mention of his name affect you.”
“On board this ship?” echoed the Spaniard. Then, with horrified
gestures, as directed against some spectre, he unconsciously fell into
the ready arms of his attendant, who, with a silent appeal toward
Captain Delano, seemed beseeching him not again to broach a theme so
unspeakably distressing to his master.
This poor fellow now, thought the pained American, is the victim of
that sad superstition which associates goblins with the deserted body
of man, as ghosts with an abandoned house. How unlike are we made! What
to me, in like case, would have been a solemn satisfaction, the bare
suggestion, even, terrifies the Spaniard into this trance. Poor
Alexandro Aranda! what would you say could you here see your
friend—who, on former voyages, when you, for months, were left behind,
has, I dare say, often longed, and longed, for one peep at you—now
transported with terror at the least thought of having you anyway nigh
him.
At this moment, with a dreary grave-yard toll, betokening a flaw, the
ship’s forecastle bell, smote by one of the grizzled oakum-pickers,
proclaimed ten o’clock, through the leaden calm; when Captain Delano’s
attention was caught by the moving figure of a gigantic black, emerging
from the general crowd below, and slowly advancing towards the elevated
poop. An iron collar was about his neck, from which depended a chain,
thrice wound round his body; the terminating links padlocked together
at a broad band of iron, his girdle.
“How like a mute Atufal moves,” murmured the servant.
The black mounted the steps of the poop, and, like a brave prisoner,
brought up to receive sentence, stood in unquailing muteness before Don
Benito, now recovered from his attack.
At the first glimpse of his approach, Don Benito had started, a
resentful shadow swept over his face; and, as with the sudden memory of
bootless rage, his white lips glued together.
This is some mulish mutineer, thought Captain Delano, surveying, not
without a mixture of admiration, the colossal form of the negro.
“See, he waits your question, master,” said the servant.
Thus reminded, Don Benito, nervously averting his glance, as if
shunning, by anticipation, some rebellious response, in a disconcerted
voice, thus spoke:—
“Atufal, will you ask my pardon, now?”
The black was silent.
“Again, master,” murmured the servant, with bitter upbraiding eyeing
his countryman, “Again, master; he will bend to master yet.”
“Answer,” said Don Benito, still averting his glance, “say but the one
word, _pardon_, and your chains shall be off.”
Upon this, the black, slowly raising both arms, let them lifelessly
fall, his links clanking, his head bowed; as much as to say, “no, I am
content.”
“Go,” said Don Benito, with inkept and unknown emotion.
Deliberately as he had come, the black obeyed.
“Excuse me, Don Benito,” said Captain Delano, “but this scene surprises
me; what means it, pray?”
“It means that that negro alone, of all the band, has given me peculiar
cause of offense. I have put him in chains; I—”
Here he paused; his hand to his head, as if there were a swimming
there, or a sudden bewilderment of memory had come over him; but
meeting his servant’s kindly glance seemed reassured, and proceeded:—
“I could not scourge such a form. But I told him he must ask my pardon.
As yet he has not. At my command, every two hours he stands before me.”
“And how long has this been?”
“Some sixty days.”
“And obedient in all else? And respectful?”
“Yes.”
“Upon my conscience, then,” exclaimed Captain Delano, impulsively, “he
has a royal spirit in him, this fellow.”
“He may have some right to it,” bitterly returned Don Benito, “he says
he was king in his own land.”
“Yes,” said the servant, entering a word, “those slits in Atufal’s ears
once held wedges of gold; but poor Babo here, in his own land, was only
a poor slave; a black man’s slave was Babo, who now is the white’s.”
Somewhat annoyed by these conversational familiarities, Captain Delano
turned curiously upon the attendant, then glanced inquiringly at his
master; but, as if long wonted to these little informalities, neither
master nor man seemed to understand him.
“What, pray, was Atufal’s offense, Don Benito?” asked Captain Delano;
“if it was not something very serious, take a fool’s advice, and, in
view of his general docility, as well as in some natural respect for
his spirit, remit him his penalty.”
“No, no, master never will do that,” here murmured the servant to
himself, “proud Atufal must first ask master’s pardon. The slave there
carries the padlock, but master here carries the key.”
His attention thus directed, Captain Delano now noticed for the first,
that, suspended by a slender silken cord, from Don Benito’s neck, hung
a key. At once, from the servant’s muttered syllables, divining the
key’s purpose, he smiled, and said:—“So, Don Benito—padlock and
key—significant symbols, truly.”
Biting his lip, Don Benito faltered.
Though the remark of Captain Delano, a man of such native simplicity as
to be incapable of satire or irony, had been dropped in playful
allusion to the Spaniard’s singularly evidenced lordship over the
black; yet the hypochondriac seemed some way to have taken it as a
malicious reflection upon his confessed inability thus far to break
down, at least, on a verbal summons, the entrenched will of the slave.
Deploring this supposed misconception, yet despairing of correcting it,
Captain Delano shifted the subject; but finding his companion more than
ever withdrawn, as if still sourly digesting the lees of the presumed
affront above-mentioned, by-and-by Captain Delano likewise became less
talkative, oppressed, against his own will, by what seemed the secret
vindictiveness of the morbidly sensitive Spaniard. But the good sailor,
himself of a quite contrary disposition, refrained, on his part, alike
from the appearance as from the feeling of resentment, and if silent,
was only so from contagion.
Presently the Spaniard, assisted by his servant somewhat discourteously
crossed over from his guest; a procedure which, sensibly enough, might
have been allowed to pass for idle caprice of ill-humor, had not master
and man, lingering round the corner of the elevated skylight, began
whispering together in low voices. This was unpleasing. And more; the
moody air of the Spaniard, which at times had not been without a sort
of valetudinarian stateliness, now seemed anything but dignified; while
the menial familiarity of the servant lost its original charm of
simple-hearted attachment.
In his embarrassment, the visitor turned his face to the other side of
the ship. By so doing, his glance accidentally fell on a young Spanish
sailor, a coil of rope in his hand, just stepped from the deck to the
first round of the mizzen-rigging. Perhaps the man would not have been
particularly noticed, were it not that, during his ascent to one of the
yards, he, with a sort of covert intentness, kept his eye fixed on
Captain Delano, from whom, presently, it passed, as if by a natural
sequence, to the two whisperers.
His own attention thus redirected to that quarter, Captain Delano gave
a slight start. From something in Don Benito’s manner just then, it
seemed as if the visitor had, at least partly, been the subject of the
withdrawn consultation going on—a conjecture as little agreeable to the
guest as it was little flattering to the host.
The singular alternations of courtesy and ill-breeding in the Spanish
captain were unaccountable, except on one of two suppositions—innocent
lunacy, or wicked imposture.
But the first idea, though it might naturally have occurred to an
indifferent observer, and, in some respect, had not hitherto been
wholly a stranger to Captain Delano’s mind, yet, now that, in an
incipient way, he began to regard the stranger’s conduct something in
the light of an intentional affront, of course the idea of lunacy was
virtually vacated. But if not a lunatic, what then? Under the
circumstances, would a gentleman, nay, any honest boor, act the part
now acted by his host? The man was an impostor. Some low-born
adventurer, masquerading as an oceanic grandee; yet so ignorant of the
first requisites of mere gentlemanhood as to be betrayed into the
present remarkable indecorum. That strange ceremoniousness, too, at
other times evinced, seemed not uncharacteristic of one playing a part
above his real level. Benito Cereno—Don Benito Cereno—a sounding name.
One, too, at that period, not unknown, in the surname, to super-cargoes
and sea captains trading along the Spanish Main, as belonging to one of
the most enterprising and extensive mercantile families in all those
provinces; several members of it having titles; a sort of Castilian
Rothschild, with a noble brother, or cousin, in every great trading
town of South America. The alleged Don Benito was in early manhood,
about twenty-nine or thirty. To assume a sort of roving cadetship in
the maritime affairs of such a house, what more likely scheme for a
young knave of talent and spirit? But the Spaniard was a pale invalid.
Never mind. For even to the degree of simulating mortal disease, the
craft of some tricksters had been known to attain. To think that, under
the aspect of infantile weakness, the most savage energies might be
couched—those velvets of the Spaniard but the silky paw to his fangs.
From no train of thought did these fancies come; not from within, but
from without; suddenly, too, and in one throng, like hoar frost; yet as
soon to vanish as the mild sun of Captain Delano’s good-nature regained
its meridian.
Glancing over once more towards his host—whose side-face, revealed
above the skylight, was now turned towards him—he was struck by the
profile, whose clearness of cut was refined by the thinness, incident
to ill-health, as well as ennobled about the chin by the beard. Away
with suspicion. He was a true off-shoot of a true hidalgo Cereno.
Relieved by these and other better thoughts, the visitor, lightly
humming a tune, now began indifferently pacing the poop, so as not to
betray to Don Benito that he had at all mistrusted incivility, much
less duplicity; for such mistrust would yet be proved illusory, and by
the event; though, for the present, the circumstance which had provoked
that distrust remained unexplained. But when that little mystery should
have been cleared up, Captain Delano thought he might extremely regret
it, did he allow Don Benito to become aware that he had indulged in
ungenerous surmises. In short, to the Spaniard’s black-letter text, it
was best, for awhile, to leave open margin.
Presently, his pale face twitching and overcast, the Spaniard, still
supported by his attendant, moved over towards his guest, when, with
even more than his usual embarrassment, and a strange sort of
intriguing intonation in his husky whisper, the following conversation
began:—
“Señor, may I ask how long you have lain at this isle?”
“Oh, but a day or two, Don Benito.”
“And from what port are you last?”
“Canton.”
“And there, Señor, you exchanged your sealskins for teas and silks, I
think you said?”
“Yes, Silks, mostly.”
“And the balance you took in specie, perhaps?”