1856
BENITO CERENO
by Herman Melville
Electronically Enhanced Text (c) Copyright 1996, World Library(R)
BENITO CERENO
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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 harbour of St. Maria- a small,
desert, uninhabited island towards 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 grey. 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 grey mantle. Flights of troubled grey fowl, kith and kin with
flights of troubled grey vapours 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 colours; 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 excitement, 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 harbour, was drawing
too near the land, for her own safety's sake, owing to 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 vapours partly mantling the hull, through which the far matin
light from her cabin streamed equivocally enough; much like the sun-
by this time crescented on the rim of the horizon, and apparently,
in company with the strange ship, entering the harbour- 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 vapours, 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 day-break, 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 vapours 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 whitewashed
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. Towards 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 caulked- 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 refurbishing, 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 head-boards, 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 a 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 the 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 drooling away like so many
grey-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 the 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 baskets 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 whaleboat 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
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 the 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-behaviour
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 toward 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 toward all but
his 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 as the
involuntary victim of mental disorder. But, in fact, his reserve
might, in some degree, have proceeded from design. If so, then in
Don Benito 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 demeanour, 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 more 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 toward 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 entrusted 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 favour 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, 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 detentions
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, Senor," 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, proportionally, of the Spaniards, including, by a
luckless fatality, every 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 beggar's 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
southermost civilized port of Chili and South America; but upon
nearing the coast the thick weather had prevented him from so much
as sighting that harbour. 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 Guineamen- 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 trousers, apparently, from their
coarseness and patches, made out of some old top-sail; 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. Eyeing 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 aristocracy united? Such was his democratic conclusion.
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 further
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 Concepcion, 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 toward 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 four 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 fidgeting panic.
Presently, while standing with Don Benito, 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 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, Senor."
Is it, thought Captain Delano, that this helpless 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 toward 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 quarterdeck
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 eyeing 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 not 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 slowly, "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 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 graveyard 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 toward 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 offence. 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 offence, 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 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 time 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 in 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 slowly 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 Captain Delano; a procedure which,
sensibly enough, might have been allowed to pass for idle caprice of
ill-humour, had not master and man, lingering round the corner of
the elevated skylight, begun 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 respects, 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
lowborn 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 supercargoes 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 velvet 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 again toward Don Benito- whose side-face,
revealed above the skylight, was now turned toward him- Captain Delano
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 be 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 a while, to
leave open margin.
Presently, his pale face twitching and overcast, the Spaniard,
still supported by his attendant, moved over toward his guest, when,
with even more than usual embarrassment, and a strange sort of
intriguing intonation in his husky whisper, the following conversation
began:
"Senor, 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, Senor, you exchanged your seal-skins for teas and
silks, I think you said?"
"Yes. Silks, mostly."
"And the balance you took in specie, perhaps?"
Captain Delano, fidgeting a little, answered-
"Yes; some silver; not a very great deal, though."
"Ah- well. May I ask how many men have you on board, Senor?"
Captain Delano slightly started, but answered:
"About five-and-twenty, all told."
"And at present, Senor, all on board, I suppose?"
"All on board, Don Benito," replied the captain now with
satisfaction.
"And will be to-night, Senor?"
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, Senor?"
"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,
Senor?"
"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 woollen, 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-counsellor, 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, Senor, I have trust in
Babo."
Here Babo, changing his previous grin of mere animal humour 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 demeanour 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 undershirts 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 point of 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 favouring 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 pretence 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
harbours, 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 been corroborated not only by 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 the Spanish captain's veracity, that
inference was a legitimate one.
In short, scarce an uneasiness entered the honest sailor's mind
but, by a subsequent spontaneous act of good sense, it was ejected. At
last he began to laugh at these 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, in a human way, he almost
began to laugh 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 vapours, or putting random questions without sense or object.
Evidently, for the present, the man was not fit to be entrusted with
the ship. On some benevolent plea withdrawing the command from him,
Captain Delano would yet have to send her to Concepcion in charge of
his second mate, a worthy person and good navigator- a plan which
would prove no wiser 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 tranquillizing. There
was a difference between the idea of Don Benito's darkly
preordaining 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, flew
out against him with horrible curses, which the sailor someway
resenting, the two blacks dashed him to the deck and jumped upon
him, 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 thus called away from the spectacle of disorder to
the more pleasing one before him, Captain Delano could not avoid again
congratulating Don Benito 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,
tool 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
toward that handful of sailors- suddenly he thought that some 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 honour, Captain Delano, assuming a
good-humoured, off-hand 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 chessmen
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, with a circle of blacks squatted round him
inquisitively eyeing 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 to be combined with a dark eye, averted as
in trouble and shame, and then, however illogically, uniting in his
mind his own private suspicions of the crew with the confessed
ill-opinion on the part of their captain, he was insensibly operated
upon by certain general notions, which, while disconnecting pain and
abashment from virtue, as 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
misbehaviour, 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
eyeing 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 lace-work 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 vigour of the child at length roused the mother.
She started up, at 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 Mungo Park 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-galley; 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 cat's-paw-
an islet of breeze, unheralded, unfollowed- as this ghostly
cat's-paw came fanning his cheek, 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 caulked fast like a sarcophagus lid, 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 cat's-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 ribboned 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 chateau, 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 probably 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 toward 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 unfavourable 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, reconnoitring 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 pretence: that he was engaged there
maturing some 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 not he 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, or 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 toward him, and said 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 old 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 conge,
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 seasickness, 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 efficiency, 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 waterside to the schoolhouse 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 drool, 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 hand,
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 toward the boat; there's Rover; a 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 greyness of everything, it
seemed to be getting toward 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 toward 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 toward his now nearing
boat,- what then? Why, this 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
Captain Delano'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 toward 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 aides, who, in the name of Don
Benito, 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 fresh water, Don Benito 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 Spaniards alone, and in chief Don
Benito; but the latter objected; which disinterestedness, on his part,
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 humour 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, despatched 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, should the wind come 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, Senor."
"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 after noon. It is now, master. Will master go into the
cuddy?"
"Ah- yes," answered the Spaniard, starting, somewhat 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, Senor."
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 partitionings 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
bulkhead. Under the table lay a dented cutlass or two, with a hacked
harpoon, among some melancholy old rigging, like a heap of poor
friar's 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 crutch at the back, working with a
screw, seemed some grotesque Middle Age engine of torment. A flag
locker was in one corner, exposing various coloured 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 whoever 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 toward the hammock as he entered, Captain Delano said,
"You sleep here, Don Benito?"
"Yes, Senor, since we got into mild weather."
"This seems a sort of dormitory, sitting-room, sail-loft,
chapel, armoury, and private closet together, Don Benito," added
Captain Delano, looking around.
"Yes, Senor; events have not been favourable 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 it 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
castanets, and flourishing them apparently with almost equal
satisfaction. There is, too, a smooth tact about them in this
employment, with a marvellous, 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 humour. 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 all 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 colour 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 coloured 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 colours 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, specially 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.
These preliminaries being somewhat novel to Captain Delano he
sat curiously eyeing 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 stropping 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
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 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-colours- 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 toward the black,- "it's all one, I suppose, so the colours 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 now
and then 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 pretence of
seeing whether, as he had prophesied, any signs of a breeze were
visible.
Walking forward to the mainmast, 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 enlighte |
