If the Deposition have served as the key to fit into the lock of the
complications which precede it, then, as a vault whose door has been
flung back, the San Dominick’s hull lies open to-day.
Hitherto the nature of this narrative, besides rendering the
intricacies in the beginning unavoidable, has more or less required
that many things, instead of being set down in the order of occurrence,
should be retrospectively, or irregularly given; this last is the case
with the following passages, which will conclude the account:
During the long, mild voyage to Lima, there was, as before hinted, a
period during which the sufferer a little recovered his health, or, at
least in some degree, his tranquillity. Ere the decided relapse which
came, the two captains had many cordial conversations—their fraternal
unreserve in singular contrast with former withdrawments.
Again and again it was repeated, how hard it had been to enact the part
forced on the Spaniard by Babo.
“Ah, my dear friend,” Don Benito once said, “at those very times when
you thought me so morose and ungrateful, nay, when, as you now admit,
you half thought me plotting your murder, at those very times my heart
was frozen; I could not look at you, thinking of what, both on board
this ship and your own, hung, from other hands, over my kind
benefactor. And as God lives, Don Amasa, I know not whether desire for
my own safety alone could have nerved me to that leap into your boat,
had it not been for the thought that, did you, unenlightened, return to
your ship, you, my best friend, with all who might be with you, stolen
upon, that night, in your hammocks, would never in this world have
wakened again. Do but think how you walked this deck, how you sat in
this cabin, every inch of ground mined into honey-combs under you. Had
I dropped the least hint, made the least advance towards an
understanding between us, death, explosive death—yours as mine—would
have ended the scene.”
“True, true,” cried Captain Delano, starting, “you have saved my life,
Don Benito, more than I yours; saved it, too, against my knowledge and
will.”
“Nay, my friend,” rejoined the Spaniard, courteous even to the point of
religion, “God charmed your life, but you saved mine. To think of some
things you did—those smilings and chattings, rash pointings and
gesturings. For less than these, they slew my mate, Raneds; but you had
the Prince of Heaven’s safe-conduct through all ambuscades.”
“Yes, all is owing to Providence, I know: but the temper of my mind
that morning was more than commonly pleasant, while the sight of so
much suffering, more apparent than real, added to my good-nature,
compassion, and charity, happily interweaving the three. Had it been
otherwise, doubtless, as you hint, some of my interferences might have
ended unhappily enough. Besides, those feelings I spoke of enabled me
to get the better of momentary distrust, at times when acuteness might
have cost me my life, without saving another’s. Only at the end did my
suspicions get the better of me, and you know how wide of the mark they
then proved.”
“Wide, indeed,” said Don Benito, sadly; “you were with me all day;
stood with me, sat with me, talked with me, looked at me, ate with me,
drank with me; and yet, your last act was to clutch for a monster, not
only an innocent man, but the most pitiable of all men. To such degree
may malign machinations and deceptions impose. So far may even the best
man err, in judging the conduct of one with the recesses of whose
condition he is not acquainted. But you were forced to it; and you were
in time undeceived. Would that, in both respects, it was so ever, and
with all men.”
“You generalize, Don Benito; and mournfully enough. But the past is
passed; why moralize upon it? Forget it. See, yon bright sun has
forgotten it all, and the blue sea, and the blue sky; these have turned
over new leaves.”
“Because they have no memory,” he dejectedly replied; “because they are
not human.”
“But these mild trades that now fan your cheek, do they not come with a
human-like healing to you? Warm friends, steadfast friends are the
trades.”
“With their steadfastness they but waft me to my tomb, Señor,” was the
foreboding response.
“You are saved,” cried Captain Delano, more and more astonished and
pained; “you are saved: what has cast such a shadow upon you?”
“The negro.”
There was silence, while the moody man sat, slowly and unconsciously
gathering his mantle about him, as if it were a pall.
There was no more conversation that day.
But if the Spaniard’s melancholy sometimes ended in muteness upon
topics like the above, there were others upon which he never spoke at
all; on which, indeed, all his old reserves were piled. Pass over the
worst, and, only to elucidate let an item or two of these be cited. The
dress, so precise and costly, worn by him on the day whose events have
been narrated, had not willingly been put on. And that silver-mounted
sword, apparent symbol of despotic command, was not, indeed, a sword,
but the ghost of one. The scabbard, artificially stiffened, was empty.
As for the black—whose brain, not body, had schemed and led the revolt,
with the plot—his slight frame, inadequate to that which it held, had
at once yielded to the superior muscular strength of his captor, in the
boat. Seeing all was over, he uttered no sound, and could not be forced
to. His aspect seemed to say, since I cannot do deeds, I will not speak
words. Put in irons in the hold, with the rest, he was carried to Lima.
During the passage, Don Benito did not visit him. Nor then, nor at any
time after, would he look at him. Before the tribunal he refused. When
pressed by the judges he fainted. On the testimony of the sailors alone
rested the legal identity of Babo.
Some months after, dragged to the gibbet at the tail of a mule, the
black met his voiceless end. The body was burned to ashes; but for many
days, the head, that hive of subtlety, fixed on a pole in the Plaza,
met, unabashed, the gaze of the whites; and across the Plaza looked
towards St. Bartholomew’s church, in whose vaults slept then, as now,
the recovered bones of Aranda: and across the Rimac bridge looked
towards the monastery, on Mount Agonia without; where, three months
after being dismissed by the court, Benito Cereno, borne on the bier,
did, indeed, follow his leader.