“About five-and-twenty, all told.”
“And at present, Señor, all on board, I suppose?”
“All on board, Don Benito,” replied the Captain, now with satisfaction.
“And will be to-night, Señor?”
At this last question, following so many pertinacious ones, for the
soul of him Captain Delano could not but look very earnestly at the
questioner, who, instead of meeting the glance, with every token of
craven discomposure dropped his eyes to the deck; presenting an
unworthy contrast to his servant, who, just then, was kneeling at his
feet, adjusting a loose shoe-buckle; his disengaged face meantime, with
humble curiosity, turned openly up into his master’s downcast one.
The Spaniard, still with a guilty shuffle, repeated his question:
“And—and will be to-night, Señor?”
“Yes, for aught I know,” returned Captain Delano—“but nay,” rallying
himself into fearless truth, “some of them talked of going off on
another fishing party about midnight.”
“Your ships generally go—go more or less armed, I believe, Señor?”
“Oh, a six-pounder or two, in case of emergency,” was the intrepidly
indifferent reply, “with a small stock of muskets, sealing-spears, and
cutlasses, you know.”
As he thus responded, Captain Delano again glanced at Don Benito, but
the latter’s eyes were averted; while abruptly and awkwardly shifting
the subject, he made some peevish allusion to the calm, and then,
without apology, once more, with his attendant, withdrew to the
opposite bulwarks, where the whispering was resumed.
At this moment, and ere Captain Delano could cast a cool thought upon
what had just passed, the young Spanish sailor, before mentioned, was
seen descending from the rigging. In act of stooping over to spring
inboard to the deck, his voluminous, unconfined frock, or shirt, of
coarse woolen, much spotted with tar, opened out far down the chest,
revealing a soiled under garment of what seemed the finest linen,
edged, about the neck, with a narrow blue ribbon, sadly faded and worn.
At this moment the young sailor’s eye was again fixed on the
whisperers, and Captain Delano thought he observed a lurking
significance in it, as if silent signs, of some Freemason sort, had
that instant been interchanged.
This once more impelled his own glance in the direction of Don Benito,
and, as before, he could not but infer that himself formed the subject
of the conference. He paused. The sound of the hatchet-polishing fell
on his ears. He cast another swift side-look at the two. They had the
air of conspirators. In connection with the late questionings, and the
incident of the young sailor, these things now begat such return of
involuntary suspicion, that the singular guilelessness of the American
could not endure it. Plucking up a gay and humorous expression, he
crossed over to the two rapidly, saying:—“Ha, Don Benito, your black
here seems high in your trust; a sort of privy-counselor, in fact.”
Upon this, the servant looked up with a good-natured grin, but the
master started as from a venomous bite. It was a moment or two before
the Spaniard sufficiently recovered himself to reply; which he did, at
last, with cold constraint:—“Yes, Señor, I have trust in Babo.”
Here Babo, changing his previous grin of mere animal humor into an
intelligent smile, not ungratefully eyed his master.
Finding that the Spaniard now stood silent and reserved, as if
involuntarily, or purposely giving hint that his guest’s proximity was
inconvenient just then, Captain Delano, unwilling to appear uncivil
even to incivility itself, made some trivial remark and moved off;
again and again turning over in his mind the mysterious demeanor of Don
Benito Cereno.
He had descended from the poop, and, wrapped in thought, was passing
near a dark hatchway, leading down into the steerage, when, perceiving
motion there, he looked to see what moved. The same instant there was a
sparkle in the shadowy hatchway, and he saw one of the Spanish sailors,
prowling there hurriedly placing his hand in the bosom of his frock, as
if hiding something. Before the man could have been certain who it was
that was passing, he slunk below out of sight. But enough was seen of
him to make it sure that he was the same young sailor before noticed in
the rigging.
What was that which so sparkled? thought Captain Delano. It was no
lamp—no match—no live coal. Could it have been a jewel? But how come
sailors with jewels?—or with silk-trimmed under-shirts either? Has he
been robbing the trunks of the dead cabin-passengers? But if so, he
would hardly wear one of the stolen articles on board ship here. Ah,
ah—if, now, that was, indeed, a secret sign I saw passing between this
suspicious fellow and his captain awhile since; if I could only be
certain that, in my uneasiness, my senses did not deceive me, then—
Here, passing from one suspicious thing to another, his mind revolved
the strange questions put to him concerning his ship.
By a curious coincidence, as each point was recalled, the black wizards
of Ashantee would strike up with their hatchets, as in ominous comment
on the white stranger’s thoughts. Pressed by such enigmas and portents,
it would have been almost against nature, had not, even into the least
distrustful heart, some ugly misgivings obtruded.
Observing the ship, now helplessly fallen into a current, with
enchanted sails, drifting with increased rapidity seaward; and noting
that, from a lately intercepted projection of the land, the sealer was
hidden, the stout mariner began to quake at thoughts which he barely
durst confess to himself. Above all, he began to feel a ghostly dread
of Don Benito. And yet, when he roused himself, dilated his chest, felt
himself strong on his legs, and coolly considered it—what did all these
phantoms amount to?
Had the Spaniard any sinister scheme, it must have reference not so
much to him (Captain Delano) as to his ship (the Bachelor’s Delight).
Hence the present drifting away of the one ship from the other, instead
of favoring any such possible scheme, was, for the time, at least,
opposed to it. Clearly any suspicion, combining such contradictions,
must need be delusive. Beside, was it not absurd to think of a vessel
in distress—a vessel by sickness almost dismanned of her crew—a vessel
whose inmates were parched for water—was it not a thousand times absurd
that such a craft should, at present, be of a piratical character; or
her commander, either for himself or those under him, cherish any
desire but for speedy relief and refreshment? But then, might not
general distress, and thirst in particular, be affected? And might not
that same undiminished Spanish crew, alleged to have perished off to a
remnant, be at that very moment lurking in the hold? On heart-broken
pretense of entreating a cup of cold water, fiends in human form had
got into lonely dwellings, nor retired until a dark deed had been done.
And among the Malay pirates, it was no unusual thing to lure ships
after them into their treacherous harbors, or entice boarders from a
declared enemy at sea, by the spectacle of thinly manned or vacant
decks, beneath which prowled a hundred spears with yellow arms ready to
upthrust them through the mats. Not that Captain Delano had entirely
credited such things. He had heard of them—and now, as stories, they
recurred. The present destination of the ship was the anchorage. There
she would be near his own vessel. Upon gaining that vicinity, might not
the San Dominick, like a slumbering volcano, suddenly let loose
energies now hid?
He recalled the Spaniard’s manner while telling his story. There was a
gloomy hesitancy and subterfuge about it. It was just the manner of one
making up his tale for evil purposes, as he goes. But if that story was
not true, what was the truth? That the ship had unlawfully come into
the Spaniard’s possession? But in many of its details, especially in
reference to the more calamitous parts, such as the fatalities among
the seamen, the consequent prolonged beating about, the past sufferings
from obstinate calms, and still continued suffering from thirst; in all
these points, as well as others, Don Benito’s story had corroborated
not only the wailing ejaculations of the indiscriminate multitude,
white and black, but likewise—what seemed impossible to be
counterfeit—by the very expression and play of every human feature,
which Captain Delano saw. If Don Benito’s story was, throughout, an
invention, then every soul on board, down to the youngest negress, was
his carefully drilled recruit in the plot: an incredible inference. And
yet, if there was ground for mistrusting his veracity, that inference
was a legitimate one.
But those questions of the Spaniard. There, indeed, one might pause.
Did they not seem put with much the same object with which the burglar
or assassin, by day-time, reconnoitres the walls of a house? But, with
ill purposes, to solicit such information openly of the chief person
endangered, and so, in effect, setting him on his guard; how unlikely a
procedure was that? Absurd, then, to suppose that those questions had
been prompted by evil designs. Thus, the same conduct, which, in this
instance, had raised the alarm, served to dispel it. In short, scarce
any suspicion or uneasiness, however apparently reasonable at the time,
which was not now, with equal apparent reason, dismissed.
At last he began to laugh at his former forebodings; and laugh at the
strange ship for, in its aspect, someway siding with them, as it were;
and laugh, too, at the odd-looking blacks, particularly those old
scissors-grinders, the Ashantees; and those bed-ridden old knitting
women, the oakum-pickers; and almost at the dark Spaniard himself, the
central hobgoblin of all.
For the rest, whatever in a serious way seemed enigmatical, was now
good-naturedly explained away by the thought that, for the most part,
the poor invalid scarcely knew what he was about; either sulking in
black vapors, or putting idle questions without sense or object.
Evidently for the present, the man was not fit to be intrusted with the
ship. On some benevolent plea withdrawing the command from him, Captain
Delano would yet have to send her to Conception, in charge of his
second mate, a worthy person and good navigator—a plan not more
convenient for the San Dominick than for Don Benito; for, relieved from
all anxiety, keeping wholly to his cabin, the sick man, under the good
nursing of his servant, would, probably, by the end of the passage, be
in a measure restored to health, and with that he should also be
restored to authority.
Such were the American’s thoughts. They were tranquilizing. There was a
difference between the idea of Don Benito’s darkly pre-ordaining
Captain Delano’s fate, and Captain Delano’s lightly arranging Don
Benito’s. Nevertheless, it was not without something of relief that the
good seaman presently perceived his whale-boat in the distance. Its
absence had been prolonged by unexpected detention at the sealer’s
side, as well as its returning trip lengthened by the continual
recession of the goal.
The advancing speck was observed by the blacks. Their shouts attracted
the attention of Don Benito, who, with a return of courtesy,
approaching Captain Delano, expressed satisfaction at the coming of
some supplies, slight and temporary as they must necessarily prove.
Captain Delano responded; but while doing so, his attention was drawn
to something passing on the deck below: among the crowd climbing the
landward bulwarks, anxiously watching the coming boat, two blacks, to
all appearances accidentally incommoded by one of the sailors,
violently pushed him aside, which the sailor someway resenting, they
dashed him to the deck, despite the earnest cries of the oakum-pickers.
“Don Benito,” said Captain Delano quickly, “do you see what is going on
there? Look!”
But, seized by his cough, the Spaniard staggered, with both hands to
his face, on the point of falling. Captain Delano would have supported
him, but the servant was more alert, who, with one hand sustaining his
master, with the other applied the cordial. Don Benito restored, the
black withdrew his support, slipping aside a little, but dutifully
remaining within call of a whisper. Such discretion was here evinced as
quite wiped away, in the visitor’s eyes, any blemish of impropriety
which might have attached to the attendant, from the indecorous
conferences before mentioned; showing, too, that if the servant were to
blame, it might be more the master’s fault than his own, since, when
left to himself, he could conduct thus well.
His glance called away from the spectacle of disorder to the more
pleasing one before him, Captain Delano could not avoid again
congratulating his host upon possessing such a servant, who, though
perhaps a little too forward now and then, must upon the whole be
invaluable to one in the invalid’s situation.
“Tell me, Don Benito,” he added, with a smile—“I should like to have
your man here, myself—what will you take for him? Would fifty doubloons
be any object?”
“Master wouldn’t part with Babo for a thousand doubloons,” murmured the
black, overhearing the offer, and taking it in earnest, and, with the
strange vanity of a faithful slave, appreciated by his master, scorning
to hear so paltry a valuation put upon him by a stranger. But Don
Benito, apparently hardly yet completely restored, and again
interrupted by his cough, made but some broken reply.
Soon his physical distress became so great, affecting his mind, too,
apparently, that, as if to screen the sad spectacle, the servant gently
conducted his master below.
Left to himself, the American, to while away the time till his boat
should arrive, would have pleasantly accosted some one of the few
Spanish seamen he saw; but recalling something that Don Benito had said
touching their ill conduct, he refrained; as a shipmaster indisposed to
countenance cowardice or unfaithfulness in seamen.
While, with these thoughts, standing with eye directed forward towards
that handful of sailors, suddenly he thought that one or two of them
returned the glance and with a sort of meaning. He rubbed his eyes, and
looked again; but again seemed to see the same thing. Under a new form,
but more obscure than any previous one, the old suspicions recurred,
but, in the absence of Don Benito, with less of panic than before.
Despite the bad account given of the sailors, Captain Delano resolved
forthwith to accost one of them. Descending the poop, he made his way
through the blacks, his movement drawing a queer cry from the
oakum-pickers, prompted by whom, the negroes, twitching each other
aside, divided before him; but, as if curious to see what was the
object of this deliberate visit to their Ghetto, closing in behind, in
tolerable order, followed the white stranger up. His progress thus
proclaimed as by mounted kings-at-arms, and escorted as by a Caffre
guard of honor, Captain Delano, assuming a good-humored, off-handed
air, continued to advance; now and then saying a blithe word to the
negroes, and his eye curiously surveying the white faces, here and
there sparsely mixed in with the blacks, like stray white pawns
venturously involved in the ranks of the chess-men opposed.
While thinking which of them to select for his purpose, he chanced to
observe a sailor seated on the deck engaged in tarring the strap of a
large block, a circle of blacks squatted round him inquisitively eying
the process.
The mean employment of the man was in contrast with something superior
in his figure. His hand, black with continually thrusting it into the
tar-pot held for him by a negro, seemed not naturally allied to his
face, a face which would have been a very fine one but for its
haggardness. Whether this haggardness had aught to do with criminality,
could not be determined; since, as intense heat and cold, though
unlike, produce like sensations, so innocence and guilt, when, through
casual association with mental pain, stamping any visible impress, use
one seal—a hacked one.
Not again that this reflection occurred to Captain Delano at the time,
charitable man as he was. Rather another idea. Because observing so
singular a haggardness combined with a dark eye, averted as in trouble
and shame, and then again recalling Don Benito’s confessed ill opinion
of his crew, insensibly he was operated upon by certain general notions
which, while disconnecting pain and abashment from virtue, invariably
link them with vice.
If, indeed, there be any wickedness on board this ship, thought Captain
Delano, be sure that man there has fouled his hand in it, even as now
he fouls it in the pitch. I don’t like to accost him. I will speak to
this other, this old Jack here on the windlass.
He advanced to an old Barcelona tar, in ragged red breeches and dirty
night-cap, cheeks trenched and bronzed, whiskers dense as thorn hedges.
Seated between two sleepy-looking Africans, this mariner, like his
younger shipmate, was employed upon some rigging—splicing a cable—the
sleepy-looking blacks performing the inferior function of holding the
outer parts of the ropes for him.
Upon Captain Delano’s approach, the man at once hung his head below its
previous level; the one necessary for business. It appeared as if he
desired to be thought absorbed, with more than common fidelity, in his
task. Being addressed, he glanced up, but with what seemed a furtive,
diffident air, which sat strangely enough on his weather-beaten visage,
much as if a grizzly bear, instead of growling and biting, should
simper and cast sheep’s eyes. He was asked several questions concerning
the voyage—questions purposely referring to several particulars in Don
Benito’s narrative, not previously corroborated by those impulsive
cries greeting the visitor on first coming on board. The questions were
briefly answered, confirming all that remained to be confirmed of the
story. The negroes about the windlass joined in with the old sailor;
but, as they became talkative, he by degrees became mute, and at length
quite glum, seemed morosely unwilling to answer more questions, and
yet, all the while, this ursine air was somehow mixed with his sheepish
one.
Despairing of getting into unembarrassed talk with such a centaur,
Captain Delano, after glancing round for a more promising countenance,
but seeing none, spoke pleasantly to the blacks to make way for him;
and so, amid various grins and grimaces, returned to the poop, feeling
a little strange at first, he could hardly tell why, but upon the whole
with regained confidence in Benito Cereno.
How plainly, thought he, did that old whiskerando yonder betray a
consciousness of ill desert. No doubt, when he saw me coming, he
dreaded lest I, apprised by his Captain of the crew’s general
misbehavior, came with sharp words for him, and so down with his head.
And yet—and yet, now that I think of it, that very old fellow, if I err
not, was one of those who seemed so earnestly eying me here awhile
since. Ah, these currents spin one’s head round almost as much as they
do the ship. Ha, there now’s a pleasant sort of sunny sight; quite
sociable, too.
His attention had been drawn to a slumbering negress, partly disclosed
through the lacework of some rigging, lying, with youthful limbs
carelessly disposed, under the lee of the bulwarks, like a doe in the
shade of a woodland rock. Sprawling at her lapped breasts, was her
wide-awake fawn, stark naked, its black little body half lifted from
the deck, crosswise with its dam’s; its hands, like two paws,
clambering upon her; its mouth and nose ineffectually rooting to get at
the mark; and meantime giving a vexatious half-grunt, blending with the
composed snore of the negress.
The uncommon vigor of the child at length roused the mother. She
started up, at a distance facing Captain Delano. But as if not at all
concerned at the attitude in which she had been caught, delightedly she
caught the child up, with maternal transports, covering it with kisses.
There’s naked nature, now; pure tenderness and love, thought Captain
Delano, well pleased.
This incident prompted him to remark the other negresses more
particularly than before. He was gratified with their manners: like
most uncivilized women, they seemed at once tender of heart and tough
of constitution; equally ready to die for their infants or fight for
them. Unsophisticated as leopardesses; loving as doves. Ah! thought
Captain Delano, these, perhaps, are some of the very women whom Ledyard
saw in Africa, and gave such a noble account of.
These natural sights somehow insensibly deepened his confidence and
ease. At last he looked to see how his boat was getting on; but it was
still pretty remote. He turned to see if Don Benito had returned; but
he had not.
To change the scene, as well as to please himself with a leisurely
observation of the coming boat, stepping over into the mizzen-chains,
he clambered his way into the starboard quarter-gallery—one of those
abandoned Venetian-looking water-balconies previously
mentioned—retreats cut off from the deck. As his foot pressed the
half-damp, half-dry sea-mosses matting the place, and a chance phantom
cats-paw—an islet of breeze, unheralded, unfollowed—as this ghostly
cats-paw came fanning his cheek; as his glance fell upon the row of
small, round dead-lights—all closed like coppered eyes of the
coffined—and the state-cabin door, once connecting with the gallery,
even as the dead-lights had once looked out upon it, but now calked
fast like a sarcophagus lid; and to a purple-black tarred-over, panel,
threshold, and post; and he bethought him of the time, when that
state-cabin and this state-balcony had heard the voices of the Spanish
king’s officers, and the forms of the Lima viceroy’s daughters had
perhaps leaned where he stood—as these and other images flitted through
his mind, as the cats-paw through the calm, gradually he felt rising a
dreamy inquietude, like that of one who alone on the prairie feels
unrest from the repose of the noon.
He leaned against the carved balustrade, again looking off toward his
boat; but found his eye falling upon the ribbon grass, trailing along
the ship’s water-line, straight as a border of green box; and parterres
of sea-weed, broad ovals and crescents, floating nigh and far, with
what seemed long formal alleys between, crossing the terraces of
swells, and sweeping round as if leading to the grottoes below. And
overhanging all was the balustrade by his arm, which, partly stained
with pitch and partly embossed with moss, seemed the charred ruin of
some summer-house in a grand garden long running to waste.
Trying to break one charm, he was but becharmed anew. Though upon the
wide sea, he seemed in some far inland country; prisoner in some
deserted château, left to stare at empty grounds, and peer out at vague
roads, where never wagon or wayfarer passed.
But these enchantments were a little disenchanted as his eye fell on
the corroded main-chains. Of an ancient style, massy and rusty in link,
shackle and bolt, they seemed even more fit for the ship’s present
business than the one for which she had been built.
Presently he thought something moved nigh the chains. He rubbed his
eyes, and looked hard. Groves of rigging were about the chains; and
there, peering from behind a great stay, like an Indian from behind a
hemlock, a Spanish sailor, a marlingspike in his hand, was seen, who
made what seemed an imperfect gesture towards the balcony, but
immediately as if alarmed by some advancing step along the deck within,
vanished into the recesses of the hempen forest, like a poacher.
What meant this? Something the man had sought to communicate, unbeknown
to any one, even to his captain. Did the secret involve aught
unfavorable to his captain? Were those previous misgivings of Captain
Delano’s about to be verified? Or, in his haunted mood at the moment,
had some random, unintentional motion of the man, while busy with the
stay, as if repairing it, been mistaken for a significant beckoning?
Not unbewildered, again he gazed off for his boat. But it was
temporarily hidden by a rocky spur of the isle. As with some eagerness
he bent forward, watching for the first shooting view of its beak, the
balustrade gave way before him like charcoal. Had he not clutched an
outreaching rope he would have fallen into the sea. The crash, though
feeble, and the fall, though hollow, of the rotten fragments, must have
been overheard. He glanced up. With sober curiosity peering down upon
him was one of the old oakum-pickers, slipped from his perch to an
outside boom; while below the old negro, and, invisible to him,
reconnoitering from a port-hole like a fox from the mouth of its den,
crouched the Spanish sailor again. From something suddenly suggested by
the man’s air, the mad idea now darted into Captain Delano’s mind, that
Don Benito’s plea of indisposition, in withdrawing below, was but a
pretense: that he was engaged there maturing his plot, of which the
sailor, by some means gaining an inkling, had a mind to warn the
stranger against; incited, it may be, by gratitude for a kind word on
first boarding the ship. Was it from foreseeing some possible
interference like this, that Don Benito had, beforehand, given such a
bad character of his sailors, while praising the negroes; though,
indeed, the former seemed as docile as the latter the contrary? The
whites, too, by nature, were the shrewder race. A man with some evil
design, would he not be likely to speak well of that stupidity which
was blind to his depravity, and malign that intelligence from which it
might not be hidden? Not unlikely, perhaps. But if the whites had dark
secrets concerning Don Benito, could then Don Benito be any way in
complicity with the blacks? But they were too stupid. Besides, who ever
heard of a white so far a renegade as to apostatize from his very
species almost, by leaguing in against it with negroes? These
difficulties recalled former ones. Lost in their mazes, Captain Delano,
who had now regained the deck, was uneasily advancing along it, when he
observed a new face; an aged sailor seated cross-legged near the main
hatchway. His skin was shrunk up with wrinkles like a pelican’s empty
pouch; his hair frosted; his countenance grave and composed. His hands
were full of ropes, which he was working into a large knot. Some blacks
were about him obligingly dipping the strands for him, here and there,
as the exigencies of the operation demanded.
Captain Delano crossed over to him, and stood in silence surveying the
knot; his mind, by a not uncongenial transition, passing from its own
entanglements to those of the hemp. For intricacy, such a knot he had
never seen in an American ship, nor indeed any other. The old man
looked like an Egyptian priest, making Gordian knots for the temple of
Ammon. The knot seemed a combination of double-bowline-knot,
treble-crown-knot, back-handed-well-knot, knot-in-and-out-knot, and
jamming-knot.
At last, puzzled to comprehend the meaning of such a knot, Captain
Delano addressed the knotter:—
“What are you knotting there, my man?”
“The knot,” was the brief reply, without looking up.
“So it seems; but what is it for?”
“For some one else to undo,” muttered back the old man, plying his
fingers harder than ever, the knot being now nearly completed.
While Captain Delano stood watching him, suddenly the old man threw the
knot towards him, saying in broken English—the first heard in the
ship—something to this effect: “Undo it, cut it, quick.” It was said
lowly, but with such condensation of rapidity, that the long, slow
words in Spanish, which had preceded and followed, almost operated as
covers to the brief English between.
For a moment, knot in hand, and knot in head, Captain Delano stood
mute; while, without further heeding him, the old man was now intent
upon other ropes. Presently there was a slight stir behind Captain
Delano. Turning, he saw the chained negro, Atufal, standing quietly
there. The next moment the old sailor rose, muttering, and, followed by
his subordinate negroes, removed to the forward part of the ship, where
in the crowd he disappeared.
An elderly negro, in a clout like an infant’s, and with a pepper and
salt head, and a kind of attorney air, now approached Captain Delano.
In tolerable Spanish, and with a good-natured, knowing wink, he
informed him that the old knotter was simple-witted, but harmless;
often playing his odd tricks. The negro concluded by begging the knot,
for of course the stranger would not care to be troubled with it.
Unconsciously, it was handed to him. With a sort of congé, the negro
received it, and, turning his back, ferreted into it like a detective
custom-house officer after smuggled laces. Soon, with some African
word, equivalent to pshaw, he tossed the knot overboard.
All this is very queer now, thought Captain Delano, with a qualmish
sort of emotion; but, as one feeling incipient sea-sickness, he strove,
by ignoring the symptoms, to get rid of the malady. Once more he looked
off for his boat. To his delight, it was now again in view, leaving the
rocky spur astern.
The sensation here experienced, after at first relieving his
uneasiness, with unforeseen efficacy soon began to remove it. The less
distant sight of that well-known boat—showing it, not as before, half
blended with the haze, but with outline defined, so that its
individuality, like a man’s, was manifest; that boat, Rover by name,
which, though now in strange seas, had often pressed the beach of
Captain Delano’s home, and, brought to its threshold for repairs, had
familiarly lain there, as a Newfoundland dog; the sight of that
household boat evoked a thousand trustful associations, which,
contrasted with previous suspicions, filled him not only with lightsome
confidence, but somehow with half humorous self-reproaches at his
former lack of it.
“What, I, Amasa Delano—Jack of the Beach, as they called me when a
lad—I, Amasa; the same that, duck-satchel in hand, used to paddle along
the water-side to the school-house made from the old hulk—I, little
Jack of the Beach, that used to go berrying with cousin Nat and the
rest; I to be murdered here at the ends of the earth, on board a
haunted pirate-ship by a horrible Spaniard? Too nonsensical to think
of! Who would murder Amasa Delano? His conscience is clean. There is
some one above. Fie, fie, Jack of the Beach! you are a child indeed; a
child of the second childhood, old boy; you are beginning to dote and
drule, I’m afraid.”
Light of heart and foot, he stepped aft, and there was met by Don
Benito’s servant, who, with a pleasing expression, responsive to his
own present feelings, informed him that his master had recovered from
the effects of his coughing fit, and had just ordered him to go present
his compliments to his good guest, Don Amasa, and say that he (Don
Benito) would soon have the happiness to rejoin him.
There now, do you mark that? again thought Captain Delano, walking the
poop. What a donkey I was. This kind gentleman who here sends me his
kind compliments, he, but ten minutes ago, dark-lantern in had, was
dodging round some old grind-stone in the hold, sharpening a hatchet
for me, I thought. Well, well; these long calms have a morbid effect on
the mind, I’ve often heard, though I never believed it before. Ha!
glancing towards the boat; there’s Rover; good dog; a white bone in her
mouth. A pretty big bone though, seems to me.—What? Yes, she has fallen
afoul of the bubbling tide-rip there. It sets her the other way, too,
for the time. Patience.
It was now about noon, though, from the grayness of everything, it
seemed to be getting towards dusk.
The calm was confirmed. In the far distance, away from the influence of
land, the leaden ocean seemed laid out and leaded up, its course
finished, soul gone, defunct. But the current from landward, where the
ship was, increased; silently sweeping her further and further towards
the tranced waters beyond.
Still, from his knowledge of those latitudes, cherishing hopes of a
breeze, and a fair and fresh one, at any moment, Captain Delano,
despite present prospects, buoyantly counted upon bringing the San
Dominick safely to anchor ere night. The distance swept over was
nothing; since, with a good wind, ten minutes’ sailing would retrace
more than sixty minutes, drifting. Meantime, one moment turning to mark
“Rover” fighting the tide-rip, and the next to see Don Benito
approaching, he continued walking the poop.
Gradually he felt a vexation arising from the delay of his boat; this
soon merged into uneasiness; and at last—his eye falling continually,
as from a stage-box into the pit, upon the strange crowd before and
below him, and, by-and-by, recognizing there the face—now composed to
indifference—of the Spanish sailor who had seemed to beckon from the
main-chains—something of his old trepidations returned.
Ah, thought he—gravely enough—this is like the ague: because it went
off, it follows not that it won’t come back.
Though ashamed of the relapse, he could not altogether subdue it; and
so, exerting his good-nature to the utmost, insensibly he came to a
compromise.
Yes, this is a strange craft; a strange history, too, and strange folks
on board. But—nothing more.
By way of keeping his mind out of mischief till the boat should arrive,
he tried to occupy it with turning over and over, in a purely
speculative sort of way, some lesser peculiarities of the captain and
crew. Among others, four curious points recurred:
First, the affair of the Spanish lad assailed with a knife by the slave
boy; an act winked at by Don Benito. Second, the tyranny in Don
Benito’s treatment of Atufal, the black; as if a child should lead a
bull of the Nile by the ring in his nose. Third, the trampling of the
sailor by the two negroes; a piece of insolence passed over without so
much as a reprimand. Fourth, the cringing submission to their master,
of all the ship’s underlings, mostly blacks; as if by the least
inadvertence they feared to draw down his despotic displeasure.
Coupling these points, they seemed somewhat contradictory. But what
then, thought Captain Delano, glancing towards his now nearing
boat—what then? Why, Don Benito is a very capricious commander. But he
is not the first of the sort I have seen; though it’s true he rather
exceeds any other. But as a nation—continued he in his reveries—these
Spaniards are all an odd set; the very word Spaniard has a curious,
conspirator, Guy-Fawkish twang to it. And yet, I dare say, Spaniards in
the main are as good folks as any in Duxbury, Massachusetts. Ah good!
At last “Rover” has come.
As, with its welcome freight, the boat touched the side, the
oakum-pickers, with venerable gestures, sought to restrain the blacks,
who, at the sight of three gurried water-casks in its bottom, and a
pile of wilted pumpkins in its bow, hung over the bulwarks in
disorderly raptures.
Don Benito, with his servant, now appeared; his coming, perhaps,
hastened by hearing the noise. Of him Captain Delano sought permission
to serve out the water, so that all might share alike, and none injure
themselves by unfair excess. But sensible, and, on Don Benito’s
account, kind as this offer was, it was received with what seemed
impatience; as if aware that he lacked energy as a commander, Don
Benito, with the true jealousy of weakness, resented as an affront any
interference. So, at least, Captain Delano inferred.
In another moment the casks were being hoisted in, when some of the
eager negroes accidentally jostled Captain Delano, where he stood by
the gangway; so, that, unmindful of Don Benito, yielding to the impulse
of the moment, with good-natured authority he bade the blacks stand
back; to enforce his words making use of a half-mirthful, half-menacing
gesture. Instantly the blacks paused, just where they were, each negro
and negress suspended in his or her posture, exactly as the word had
found them—for a few seconds continuing so—while, as between the
responsive posts of a telegraph, an unknown syllable ran from man to
man among the perched oakum-pickers. While the visitor’s attention was
fixed by this scene, suddenly the hatchet-polishers half rose, and a
rapid cry came from Don Benito.
Thinking that at the signal of the Spaniard he was about to be
massacred, Captain Delano would have sprung for his boat, but paused,
as the oakum-pickers, dropping down into the crowd with earnest
exclamations, forced every white and every negro back, at the same
moment, with gestures friendly and familiar, almost jocose, bidding
him, in substance, not be a fool. Simultaneously the hatchet-polishers
resumed their seats, quietly as so many tailors, and at once, as if
nothing had happened, the work of hoisting in the casks was resumed,
whites and blacks singing at the tackle.
Captain Delano glanced towards Don Benito. As he saw his meagre form in
the act of recovering itself from reclining in the servant’s arms, into
which the agitated invalid had fallen, he could not but marvel at the
panic by which himself had been surprised, on the darting supposition
that such a commander, who, upon a legitimate occasion, so trivial,
too, as it now appeared, could lose all self-command, was, with
energetic iniquity, going to bring about his murder.
The casks being on deck, Captain Delano was handed a number of jars and
cups by one of the steward’s aids, who, in the name of his captain,
entreated him to do as he had proposed—dole out the water. He complied,
with republican impartiality as to this republican element, which
always seeks one level, serving the oldest white no better than the
youngest black; excepting, indeed, poor Don Benito, whose condition, if
not rank, demanded an extra allowance. To him, in the first place,
Captain Delano presented a fair pitcher of the fluid; but, thirsting as
he was for it, the Spaniard quaffed not a drop until after several
grave bows and salutes. A reciprocation of courtesies which the
sight-loving Africans hailed with clapping of hands.
Two of the less wilted pumpkins being reserved for the cabin table, the
residue were minced up on the spot for the general regalement. But the
soft bread, sugar, and bottled cider, Captain Delano would have given
the whites alone, and in chief Don Benito; but the latter objected;
which disinterestedness not a little pleased the American; and so
mouthfuls all around were given alike to whites and blacks; excepting
one bottle of cider, which Babo insisted upon setting aside for his
master.
Here it may be observed that as, on the first visit of the boat, the
American had not permitted his men to board the ship, neither did he
now; being unwilling to add to the confusion of the decks.
Not uninfluenced by the peculiar good-humor at present prevailing, and
for the time oblivious of any but benevolent thoughts, Captain Delano,
who, from recent indications, counted upon a breeze within an hour or
two at furthest, dispatched the boat back to the sealer, with orders
for all the hands that could be spared immediately to set about rafting
casks to the watering-place and filling them. Likewise he bade word be
carried to his chief officer, that if, against present expectation, the
ship was not brought to anchor by sunset, he need be under no concern;
for as there was to be a full moon that night, he (Captain Delano)
would remain on board ready to play the pilot, come the wind soon or
late.
As the two Captains stood together, observing the departing boat—the
servant, as it happened, having just spied a spot on his master’s
velvet sleeve, and silently engaged rubbing it out—the American
expressed his regrets that the San Dominick had no boats; none, at
least, but the unseaworthy old hulk of the long-boat, which, warped as
a camel’s skeleton in the desert, and almost as bleached, lay pot-wise
inverted amidships, one side a little tipped, furnishing a
subterraneous sort of den for family groups of the blacks, mostly women
and small children; who, squatting on old mats below, or perched above
in the dark dome, on the elevated seats, were descried, some distance
within, like a social circle of bats, sheltering in some friendly cave;
at intervals, ebon flights of naked boys and girls, three or four years
old, darting in and out of the den’s mouth.
“Had you three or four boats now, Don Benito,” said Captain Delano, “I
think that, by tugging at the oars, your negroes here might help along
matters some. Did you sail from port without boats, Don Benito?”
“They were stove in the gales, Señor.”
“That was bad. Many men, too, you lost then. Boats and men. Those must
have been hard gales, Don Benito.”
“Past all speech,” cringed the Spaniard.
“Tell me, Don Benito,” continued his companion with increased interest,
“tell me, were these gales immediately off the pitch of Cape Horn?”
“Cape Horn?—who spoke of Cape Horn?”
“Yourself did, when giving me an account of your voyage,” answered
Captain Delano, with almost equal astonishment at this eating of his
own words, even as he ever seemed eating his own heart, on the part of
the Spaniard. “You yourself, Don Benito, spoke of Cape Horn,” he
emphatically repeated.
The Spaniard turned, in a sort of stooping posture, pausing an instant,
as one about to make a plunging exchange of elements, as from air to
water.
At this moment a messenger-boy, a white, hurried by, in the regular
performance of his function carrying the last expired half hour forward
to the forecastle, from the cabin time-piece, to have it struck at the
ship’s large bell.
“Master,” said the servant, discontinuing his work on the coat sleeve,
and addressing the rapt Spaniard with a sort of timid apprehensiveness,
as one charged with a duty, the discharge of which, it was foreseen,
would prove irksome to the very person who had imposed it, and for
whose benefit it was intended, “master told me never mind where he was,
or how engaged, always to remind him to a minute, when shaving-time
comes. Miguel has gone to strike the half-hour afternoon. It is _now_,
master. Will master go into the cuddy?”
“Ah—yes,” answered the Spaniard, starting, as from dreams into
realities; then turning upon Captain Delano, he said that ere long he
would resume the conversation.
“Then if master means to talk more to Don Amasa,” said the servant,
“why not let Don Amasa sit by master in the cuddy, and master can talk,
and Don Amasa can listen, while Babo here lathers and strops.”
“Yes,” said Captain Delano, not unpleased with this sociable plan,
“yes, Don Benito, unless you had rather not, I will go with you.”
“Be it so, Señor.”
As the three passed aft, the American could not but think it another
strange instance of his host’s capriciousness, this being shaved with
such uncommon punctuality in the middle of the day. But he deemed it
more than likely that the servant’s anxious fidelity had something to
do with the matter; inasmuch as the timely interruption served to rally
his master from the mood which had evidently been coming upon him.
The place called the cuddy was a light deck-cabin formed by the poop, a
sort of attic to the large cabin below. Part of it had formerly been
the quarters of the officers; but since their death all the
partitioning had been thrown down, and the whole interior converted
into one spacious and airy marine hall; for absence of fine furniture
and picturesque disarray of odd appurtenances, somewhat answering to
the wide, cluttered hall of some eccentric bachelor-squire in the
country, who hangs his shooting-jacket and tobacco-pouch on deer
antlers, and keeps his fishing-rod, tongs, and walking-stick in the
same corner.
The similitude was heightened, if not originally suggested, by glimpses
of the surrounding sea; since, in one aspect, the country and the ocean
seem cousins-german.
The floor of the cuddy was matted. Overhead, four or five old muskets
were stuck into horizontal holes along the beams. On one side was a
claw-footed old table lashed to the deck; a thumbed missal on it, and
over it a small, meagre crucifix attached to the bulk-head. Under the
table lay a dented cutlass or two, with a hacked harpoon, among some
melancholy old rigging, like a heap of poor friars’ girdles. There were
also two long, sharp-ribbed settees of Malacca cane, black with age,
and uncomfortable to look at as inquisitors’ racks, with a large,
misshapen arm-chair, which, furnished with a rude barber’s crotch at
the back, working with a screw, seemed some grotesque engine of
torment. A flag locker was in one corner, open, exposing various
colored bunting, some rolled up, others half unrolled, still others
tumbled. Opposite was a cumbrous washstand, of black mahogany, all of
one block, with a pedestal, like a font, and over it a railed shelf,
containing combs, brushes, and other implements of the toilet. A torn
hammock of stained grass swung near; the sheets tossed, and the pillow
wrinkled up like a brow, as if who ever slept here slept but illy, with
alternate visitations of sad thoughts and bad dreams.
The further extremity of the cuddy, overhanging the ship’s stern, was
pierced with three openings, windows or port-holes, according as men or
cannon might peer, socially or unsocially, out of them. At present
neither men nor cannon were seen, though huge ring-bolts and other
rusty iron fixtures of the wood-work hinted of twenty-four-pounders.
Glancing towards the hammock as he entered, Captain Delano said, “You
sleep here, Don Benito?”
“Yes, Señor, since we got into mild weather.”
“This seems a sort of dormitory, sitting-room, sail-loft, chapel,
armory, and private closet all together, Don Benito,” added Captain
Delano, looking round.
“Yes, Señor; events have not been favorable to much order in my
arrangements.”
Here the servant, napkin on arm, made a motion as if waiting his
master’s good pleasure. Don Benito signified his readiness, when,
seating him in the Malacca arm-chair, and for the guest’s convenience
drawing opposite one of the settees, the servant commenced operations
by throwing back his master’s collar and loosening his cravat.
There is something in the negro which, in a peculiar way, fits him for
avocations about one’s person. Most negroes are natural valets and
hair-dressers; taking to the comb and brush congenially as to the
castinets, and flourishing them apparently with almost equal
satisfaction. There is, too, a smooth tact about them in this
employment, with a marvelous, noiseless, gliding briskness, not
ungraceful in its way, singularly pleasing to behold, and still more so
to be the manipulated subject of. And above all is the great gift of
good-humor. Not the mere grin or laugh is here meant. Those were
unsuitable. But a certain easy cheerfulness, harmonious in every glance
and gesture; as though God had set the whole negro to some pleasant
tune.
When to this is added the docility arising from the unaspiring
contentment of a limited mind and that susceptibility of blind
attachment sometimes inhering in indisputable inferiors, one readily
perceives why those hypochondriacs, Johnson and Byron—it may be,
something like the hypochondriac Benito Cereno—took to their hearts,
almost to the exclusion of the entire white race, their serving men,
the negroes, Barber and Fletcher. But if there be that in the negro
which exempts him from the inflicted sourness of the morbid or cynical
mind, how, in his most prepossessing aspects, must he appear to a
benevolent one? When at ease with respect to exterior things, Captain
Delano’s nature was not only benign, but familiarly and humorously so.
At home, he had often taken rare satisfaction in sitting in his door,
watching some free man of color at his work or play. If on a voyage he
chanced to have a black sailor, invariably he was on chatty and
half-gamesome terms with him. In fact, like most men of a good, blithe
heart, Captain Delano took to negroes, not philanthropically, but
genially, just as other men to Newfoundland dogs.
Hitherto, the circumstances in which he found the San Dominick had
repressed the tendency. But in the cuddy, relieved from his former
uneasiness, and, for various reasons, more sociably inclined than at
any previous period of the day, and seeing the colored servant, napkin
on arm, so debonair about his master, in a business so familiar as that
of shaving, too, all his old weakness for negroes returned.
Among other things, he was amused with an odd instance of the African
love of bright colors and fine shows, in the black’s informally taking
from the flag-locker a great piece of bunting of all hues, and lavishly
tucking it under his master’s chin for an apron.
The mode of shaving among the Spaniards is a little different from what
it is with other nations. They have a basin, specifically called a
barber’s basin, which on one side is scooped out, so as accurately to
receive the chin, against which it is closely held in lathering; which
is done, not with a brush, but with soap dipped in the water of the
basin and rubbed on the face.
In the present instance salt-water was used for lack of better; and the
parts lathered were only the upper lip, and low down under the throat,
all the rest being cultivated beard.
The preliminaries being somewhat novel to Captain Delano, he sat
curiously eying them, so that no conversation took place, nor, for the
present, did Don Benito appear disposed to renew any.
Setting down his basin, the negro searched among the razors, as for the
sharpest, and having found it, gave it an additional edge by expertly
strapping it on the firm, smooth, oily skin of his open palm; he then
made a gesture as if to begin, but midway stood suspended for an
instant, one hand elevating the razor, the other professionally
dabbling among the bubbling suds on the Spaniard’s lank neck. Not
unaffected by the close sight of the gleaming steel, Don Benito
nervously shuddered; his usual ghastliness was heightened by the
lather, which lather, again, was intensified in its hue by the
contrasting sootiness of the negro’s body. Altogether the scene was
somewhat peculiar, at least to Captain Delano, nor, as he saw the two
thus postured, could he resist the vagary, that in the black he saw a
headsman, and in the white a man at the block. But this was one of
those antic conceits, appearing and vanishing in a breath, from which,
perhaps, the best regulated mind is not always free.
Meantime the agitation of the Spaniard had a little loosened the
bunting from around him, so that one broad fold swept curtain-like over
the chair-arm to the floor, revealing, amid a profusion of armorial
bars and ground-colors—black, blue, and yellow—a closed castle in a
blood red field diagonal with a lion rampant in a white.
“The castle and the lion,” exclaimed Captain Delano—“why, Don Benito,
this is the flag of Spain you use here. It’s well it’s only I, and not
the King, that sees this,” he added, with a smile, “but”—turning
towards the black—“it’s all one, I suppose, so the colors be gay;”
which playful remark did not fail somewhat to tickle the negro.
“Now, master,” he said, readjusting the flag, and pressing the head
gently further back into the crotch of the chair; “now, master,” and
the steel glanced nigh the throat.
Again Don Benito faintly shuddered.
“You must not shake so, master. See, Don Amasa, master always shakes
when I shave him. And yet master knows I never yet have drawn blood,
though it’s true, if master will shake so, I may some of these times.
Now master,” he continued. “And now, Don Amasa, please go on with your
talk about the gale, and all that; master can hear, and, between times,
master can answer.”
“Ah yes, these gales,” said Captain Delano; “but the more I think of
your voyage, Don Benito, the more I wonder, not at the gales, terrible
as they must have been, but at the disastrous interval following them.
For here, by your account, have you been these two months and more
getting from Cape Horn to St. Maria, a distance which I myself, with a
good wind, have sailed in a few days. True, you had calms, and long
ones, but to be becalmed for two months, that is, at least, unusual.
Why, Don Benito, had almost any other gentleman told me such a story, I
should have been half disposed to a little incredulity.”
Here an involuntary expression came over the Spaniard, similar to that
just before on the deck, and whether it was the start he gave, or a
sudden gawky roll of the hull in the calm, or a momentary unsteadiness
of the servant’s hand, however it was, just then the razor drew blood,
spots of which stained the creamy lather under the throat: immediately
the black barber drew back his steel, and, remaining in his
professional attitude, back to Captain Delano, and face to Don Benito,
held up the trickling razor, saying, with a sort of half humorous
sorrow, “See, master—you shook so—here’s Babo’s first blood.”
No sword drawn before James the First of England, no assassination in
that timid King’s presence, could have produced a more terrified aspect
than was now presented by Don Benito.
Poor fellow, thought Captain Delano, so nervous he can’t even bear the
sight of barber’s blood; and this unstrung, sick man, is it credible
that I should have imagined he meant to spill all my blood, who can’t
endure the sight of one little drop of his own? Surely, Amasa Delano,
you have been beside yourself this day. Tell it not when you get home,
sappy Amasa. Well, well, he looks like a murderer, doesn’t he? More
like as if himself were to be done for. Well, well, this day’s
experience shall be a good lesson.
Meantime, while these things were running through the honest seaman’s
mind, the servant had taken the napkin from his arm, and to Don Benito
had said—“But answer Don Amasa, please, master, while I wipe this ugly
stuff off the razor, and strop it again.”
As he said the words, his face was turned half round, so as to be alike
visible to the Spaniard and the American, and seemed, by its
expression, to hint, that he was desirous, by getting his master to go
on with the conversation, considerately to withdraw his attention from
the recent annoying accident. As if glad to snatch the offered relief,
Don Benito resumed, rehearsing to Captain Delano, that not only were
the calms of unusual duration, but the ship had fallen in with
obstinate currents; and other things he added, some of which were but
repetitions of former statements, to explain how it came to pass that
the passage from Cape Horn to St. Maria had been so exceedingly long;
now and then, mingling with his words, incidental praises, less
qualified than before, to the blacks, for their general good conduct.
These particulars were not given consecutively, the servant, at
convenient times, using his razor, and so, between the intervals of
shaving, the story and panegyric went on with more than usual
huskiness.
To Captain Delano’s imagination, now again not wholly at rest, there
was something so hollow in the Spaniard’s manner, with apparently some
reciprocal hollowness in the servant’s dusky comment of silence, that
the idea flashed across him, that possibly master and man, for some
unknown purpose, were acting out, both in word and deed, nay, to the
very tremor of Don Benito’s limbs, some juggling play before him.
Neither did the suspicion of collusion lack apparent support, from the
fact of those whispered conferences before mentioned. But then, what
could be the object of enacting this play of the barber before him? At
last, regarding the notion as a whimsy, insensibly suggested, perhaps,
by the theatrical aspect of Don Benito in his harlequin ensign, Captain
Delano speedily banished it.
The shaving over, the servant bestirred himself with a small bottle of
scented waters, pouring a few drops on the head, and then diligently
rubbing; the vehemence of the exercise causing the muscles of his face
to twitch rather strangely.
His next operation was with comb, scissors, and brush; going round and
round, smoothing a curl here, clipping an unruly whisker-hair there,
giving a graceful sweep to the temple-lock, with other impromptu
touches evincing the hand of a master; while, like any resigned
gentleman in barber’s hands, Don Benito bore all, much less uneasily,
at least than he had done the razoring; indeed, he sat so pale and
rigid now, that the negro seemed a Nubian sculptor finishing off a
white statue-head.
All being over at last, the standard of Spain removed, tumbled up, and
tossed back into the flag-locker, the negro’s warm breath blowing away
any stray hair, which might have lodged down his master’s neck; collar
and cravat readjusted; a speck of lint whisked off the velvet lapel;
all this being done; backing off a little space, and pausing with an
expression of subdued self-complacency, the servant for a moment
surveyed his master, as, in toilet at least, the creature of his own
tasteful hands.
Captain Delano playfully complimented him upon his achievement; at the
same time congratulating Don Benito.
But neither sweet waters, nor shampooing, nor fidelity, nor sociality,
delighted the Spaniard. Seeing him relapsing into forbidding gloom, and
still remaining seated, Captain Delano, thinking that his presence was
undesired just then, withdrew, on pretense of seeing whether, as he had
prophesied, any signs of a breeze were visible.
Walking forward to the main-mast, he stood awhile thinking over the
scene, and not without some undefined misgivings, when he heard a noise
near the cuddy, and turning, saw the negro, his hand to his cheek.
Advancing, Captain Delano perceived that the cheek was bleeding. He was
about to ask the cause, when the negro’s wailing soliloquy enlightened
him.
“Ah, when will master get better from his sickness; only the sour heart
that sour sickness breeds made him serve Babo so; cutting Babo with the
razor, because, only by accident, Babo had given master one little
scratch; and for the first time in so many a day, too. Ah, ah, ah,”
holding his hand to his face.
Is it possible, thought Captain Delano; was it to wreak in private his
Spanish spite against this poor friend of his, that Don Benito, by his
sullen manner, impelled me to withdraw? Ah this slavery breeds ugly
passions in man.—Poor fellow!
He was about to speak in sympathy to the negro, but with a timid
reluctance he now re-entered the cuddy.
Presently master and man came forth; Don Benito leaning on his servant
as if nothing had happened.
But a sort of love-quarrel, after all, thought Captain Delano.
He accosted Don Benito, and they slowly walked together. They had gone
but a few paces, when the steward—a tall, rajah-looking mulatto,
orientally set off with a pagoda turban formed by three or four Madras
handkerchiefs wound about his head, tier on tier—approaching with a
saalam, announced lunch in the cabin.
On their way thither, the two captains were preceded by the mulatto,
who, turning round as he advanced, with continual smiles and bows,
ushered them on, a display of elegance which quite completed the
insignificance of the small bare-headed Babo, who, as if not
unconscious of inferiority, eyed askance the graceful steward. But in
part, Captain Delano imputed his jealous watchfulness to that peculiar
feeling which the full-blooded African entertains for the adulterated
one. As for the steward, his manner, if not bespeaking much dignity of
self-respect, yet evidenced his extreme desire to please; which is
doubly meritorious, as at once Christian and Chesterfieldian.
Captain Delano observed with interest that while the complexion of the
mulatto was hybrid, his physiognomy was European—classically so.
“Don Benito,” whispered he, “I am glad to see this
usher-of-the-golden-rod of yours; the sight refutes an ugly remark once
made to me by a Barbadoes planter; that when a mulatto has a regular
European face, look out for him; he is a devil. But see, your steward
here has features more regular than King George’s of England; and yet
there he nods, and bows, and smiles; a king, indeed—the king of kind
hearts and polite fellows. What a pleasant voice he has, too?”
“He has, Señor.”
“But tell me, has he not, so far as you have known him, always proved a
good, worthy fellow?” said Captain Delano, pausing, while with a final
genuflexion the steward disappeared into the cabin; “come, for the
reason just mentioned, I am curious to know.”
“Francesco is a good man,” a sort of sluggishly responded Don Benito,
like a phlegmatic appreciator, who would neither find fault nor
flatter.
“Ah, I thought so. For it were strange, indeed, and not very creditable
to us white-skins, if a little of our blood mixed with the African’s,
should, far from improving the latter’s quality, have the sad effect of
pouring vitriolic acid into black broth; improving the hue, perhaps,
but not the wholesomeness.”
“Doubtless, doubtless, Señor, but”—glancing at Babo—“not to speak of
negroes, your planter’s remark I have heard applied to the Spanish and
Indian intermixtures in our provinces. But I know nothing about the
matter,” he listlessly added.
And here they entered the cabin.
The lunch was a frugal one. Some of Captain Delano’s fresh fish and
pumpkins, biscuit and salt beef, the reserved bottle of cider, and the
San Dominick’s last bottle of Canary.
As they entered, Francesco, with two or three colored aids, was
hovering over the table giving the last adjustments. Upon perceiving
their master they withdrew, Francesco making a smiling congé, and the
Spaniard, without condescending to notice it, fastidiously remarking to
his companion that he relished not superfluous attendance.
Without companions, host and guest sat down, like a childless married
couple, at opposite ends of the table, Don Benito waving Captain Delano
to his place, and, weak as he was, insisting upon that gentleman being
seated before himself.
The negro placed a rug under Don Benito’s feet, and a cushion behind
his back, and then stood behind, not his master’s chair, but Captain
Delano’s. At first, this a little surprised the latter. But it was soon
evident that, in taking his position, the black was still true to his
master; since by facing him he could the more readily anticipate his
slightest want.
“This is an uncommonly intelligent fellow of yours, Don Benito,”
whispered Captain Delano across the table.
“You say true, Señor.”
During the repast, the guest again reverted to parts of Don Benito’s
story, begging further particulars here and there. He inquired how it
was that the scurvy and fever should have committed such wholesale
havoc upon the whites, while destroying less than half of the blacks.
As if this question reproduced the whole scene of plague before the
Spaniard’s eyes, miserably reminding him of his solitude in a cabin
where before he had had so many friends and officers round him, his
hand shook, his face became hueless, broken words escaped; but directly
the sane memory of the past seemed replaced by insane terrors of the
present. With starting eyes he stared before him at vacancy. For
nothing was to be seen but the hand of his servant pushing the Canary
over towards him. At length a few sips served partially to restore him.
He made random reference to the different constitution of races,
enabling one to offer more resistance to certain maladies than another.
The thought was new to his companion.
Presently Captain Delano, intending to say something to his host
concerning the pecuniary part of the business he had undertaken for
him, especially—since he was strictly accountable to his owners—with
reference to the new suit of sails, and other things of that sort; and
naturally preferring to conduct such affairs in private, was desirous
that the servant should withdraw; imagining that Don Benito for a few
minutes could dispense with his attendance. He, however, waited awhile;
thinking that, as the conversation proceeded, Don Benito, without being
prompted, would perceive the propriety of the step.
But it was otherwise. At last catching his host’s eye, Captain Delano,
with a slight backward gesture of his thumb, whispered, “Don Benito,
pardon me, but there is an interference with the full expression of
what I have to say to you.”
Upon this the Spaniard changed countenance; which was imputed to his
resenting the hint, as in some way a reflection upon his servant. After
a moment’s pause, he assured his guest that the black’s remaining with
them could be of no disservice; because since losing his officers he
had made Babo (whose original office, it now appeared, had been captain
of the slaves) not only his constant attendant and companion, but in
all things his confidant.
After this, nothing more could be said; though, indeed, Captain Delano
could hardly avoid some little tinge of irritation upon being left
ungratified in so inconsiderable a wish, by one, too, for whom he
intended such solid services. But it is only his querulousness, thought
he; and so filling his glass he proceeded to business.
The price of the sails and other matters was fixed upon. But while this
was being done, the American observed that, though his original offer
of assistance had been hailed with hectic animation, yet now when it
was reduced to a business transaction, indifference and apathy were
betrayed. Don Benito, in fact, appeared to submit to hearing the
details more out of regard to common propriety, than from any
impression that weighty benefit to himself and his voyage was involved.
Soon, his manner became still more reserved. The effort was vain to
seek to draw him into social talk. Gnawed by his splenetic mood, he sat
twitching his beard, while to little purpose the hand of his servant,
mute as that on the wall, slowly pushed over the Canary.
Lunch being over, they sat down on the cushioned transom; the servant
placing a pillow behind his master. The long continuance of the calm
had now affected the atmosphere. Don Benito sighed heavily, as if for
breath.
“Why not adjourn to the cuddy,” said Captain Delano; “there is more air
there.” But the host sat silent and motionless.
Meantime his servant knelt before him, with a large fan of feathers.
And Francesco coming in on tiptoes, handed the negro a little cup of
aromatic waters, with which at intervals he chafed his master’s brow;
smoothing the hair along the temples as a nurse does a child’s. He
spoke no word. He only rested his eye on his master’s, as if, amid all
Don Benito’s distress, a little to refresh his spirit by the silent
sight of fidelity.
Presently the ship’s bell sounded two o’clock; and through the cabin
windows a slight rippling of the sea was discerned; and from the
desired direction.
“There,” exclaimed Captain Delano, “I told you so, Don Benito, look!”
He had risen to his feet, speaking in a very animated tone, with a view
the more to rouse his companion. But though the crimson curtain of the
stern-window near him that moment fluttered against his pale cheek, Don
Benito seemed to have even less welcome for the breeze than the calm.
Poor fellow, thought Captain Delano, bitter experience has taught him
that one ripple does not make a wind, any more than one swallow a
summer. But he is mistaken for once. I will get his ship in for him,
and prove it.
Briefly alluding to his weak condition, he urged his host to remain
quietly where he was, since he (Captain Delano) would with pleasure
take upon himself the responsibility of making the best use of the
wind.
Upon gaining the deck, Captain Delano started at the unexpected figure
of Atufal, monumentally fixed at the threshold, like one of those
sculptured porters of black marble guarding the porches of Egyptian
tombs.
But this time the start was, perhaps, purely physical. Atufal’s
presence, singularly attesting docility even in sullenness, was
contrasted with that of the hatchet-polishers, who in patience evinced
their industry; while both spectacles showed, that lax as Don Benito’s
general authority might be, still, whenever he chose to exert it, no
man so savage or colossal but must, more or less, bow.
Snatching a trumpet which hung from the bulwarks, with a free step
Captain Delano advanced to the forward edge of the poop, issuing his
orders in his best Spanish. The few sailors and many negroes, all
equally pleased, obediently set about heading the ship towards the
harbor.
While giving some directions about setting a lower stu’n’-sail,
suddenly Captain Delano heard a voice faithfully repeating his orders.
Turning, he saw Babo, now for the time acting, under the pilot, his
original part of captain of the slaves. This assistance proved
valuable. Tattered sails and warped yards were soon brought into some
trim. And no brace or halyard was pulled but to the blithe songs of the
inspirited negroes.
Good fellows, thought Captain Delano, a little training would make fine
sailors of them. Why see, the very women pull and sing too. These must
be some of those Ashantee negresses that make such capital soldiers,
I’ve heard. But who’s at the helm. I must have a good hand there.
He went to see.
The San Dominick steered with a cumbrous tiller, with large horizontal
pullies attached. At each pully-end stood a subordinate black, and
between them, at the tiller-head, the responsible post, a Spanish
seaman, whose countenance evinced his due share in the general
hopefulness and confidence at the coming of the breeze.
He proved the same man who had behaved with so shame-faced an air on
the windlass.
“Ah,—it is you, my man,” exclaimed Captain Delano—“well, no more
sheep’s-eyes now;—look straight forward and keep the ship so. Good
hand, I trust? And want to get into the harbor, don’t you?”
The man assented with an inward chuckle, grasping the tiller-head
firmly. Upon this, unperceived by the American, the two blacks eyed the
sailor intently.
Finding all right at the helm, the pilot went forward to the
forecastle, to see how matters stood there.
The ship now had way enough to breast the current. With the approach of
evening, the breeze would be sure to freshen.
Having done all that was needed for the present, Captain Delano, giving
his last orders to the sailors, turned aft to report affairs to Don
Benito in the cabin; perhaps additionally incited to rejoin him by the
hope of snatching a moment’s private chat while the servant was engaged
upon deck.
From opposite sides, there were, beneath the poop, two approaches to
the cabin; one further forward than the other, and consequently
communicating with a longer passage. Marking the servant still above,
Captain Delano, taking the nighest entrance—the one last named, and at
whose porch Atufal still stood—hurried on his way, till, arrived at the
cabin threshold, he paused an instant, a little to recover from his
eagerness. Then, with the words of his intended business upon his lips,
he entered. As he advanced toward the seated Spaniard, he heard another
footstep, keeping time with his. From the opposite door, a salver in
hand, the servant was likewise advancing.
“Confound the faithful fellow,” thought Captain Delano; “what a
vexatious coincidence.”
Possibly, the vexation might have been something different, were it not
for the brisk confidence inspired by the breeze. But even as it was, he
felt a slight twinge, from a sudden indefinite association in his mind
of Babo with Atufal.
“Don Benito,” said he, “I give you joy; the breeze will hold, and will
increase. By the way, your tall man and time-piece, Atufal, stands
without. By your order, of course?”
Don Benito recoiled, as if at some bland satirical touch, delivered
with such adroit garnish of apparent good breeding as to present no
handle for retort.
He is like one flayed alive, thought Captain Delano; where may one
touch him without causing a shrink?
The servant moved before his master, adjusting a cushion; recalled to
civility, the Spaniard stiffly replied: “you are right. The slave
appears where you saw him, according to my command; which is, that if
at the given hour I am below, he must take his stand and abide my
coming.”
“Ah now, pardon me, but that is treating the poor fellow like an
ex-king indeed. Ah, Don Benito,” smiling, “for all the license you
permit in some things, I fear lest, at bottom, you are a bitter hard
master.”
Again Don Benito shrank; and this time, as the good sailor thought,
from a genuine twinge of his conscience.
Again conversation became constrained. In vain Captain Delano called
attention to the now perceptible motion of the keel gently cleaving the
sea; with lack-lustre eye, Don Benito returned words few and reserved.
By-and-by, the wind having steadily risen, and still blowing right into
the harbor bore the San Dominick swiftly on. Sounding a point of land,
the sealer at distance came into open view.
Meantime Captain Delano had again repaired to the deck, remaining there
some time. Having at last altered the ship’s course, so as to give the
reef a wide berth, he returned for a few moments below.