No answer.

I threw open the folding-doors near by, and,
turning upon Turkey and Nippers, exclaimed:

“Bartleby a second time says, he won't examine
his papers. What do you think of it,
Turkey?”

It was afternoon, be it remembered. Turkey
sat glowing like a brass boiler; his bald head
steaming; his hands reeling among his blotted
papers.

“Think of it?” roared Turkey; “I think
I'll just step behind his screen, and black his
eyes for him!”

So saying, Turkey rose to his feet and threw
his arms into a pugilistic position. He was
hurrying away to make good his promise, when
I detained him, alarmed at the effect of incautiously
rousing Turkey's combativeness after
dinner.

“Sit down, Turkey,” said I, “and hear what
Nippers has to say. What do you think of it,
Nippers? Would I not be justified in immediately
dismissing Bartleby?”

“Excuse me, that is for you to decide, sir.
I think his conduct quite unusual, and, indeed,

[figure description] Page 058.[end figure description]

unjust, as regards Turkey and myself. But it
may only be a passing whim.”

“Ah,” exclaimed I, “you have strangely
changed your mind, then—you speak very gently
of him now.”

“All beer,” cried Turkey; “gentleness is
effects of beer—Nippers and I dined together
to-day. You see how gentle I am, sir. Shall I
go and black his eyes?”

“You refer to Bartleby, I suppose. No, not
to-day, Turkey,” I replied; “pray, put up your
fists.”

I closed the doors, and again advanced towards
Bartleby. I felt additional incentives tempting
me to my fate. I burned to be rebelled against
again. I remembered that Bartleby never left
the office.

“Bartleby,” said I, “Ginger Nut is away;
just step around to the Post Office, won't you?
(it was but a three minutes' walk), and see if
there is anything for me.”

“I would prefer not to.”

“You will not?”

“I prefer not.”

I staggered to my desk, and sat there in a

[figure description] Page 059.[end figure description]

deep study. My blind inveteracy returned.
Was there any other thing in which I could procure
myself to be ignominiously repulsed by
this lean, penniless wight?—my hired clerk?
What added thing is there, perfectly reasonable,
that he will be sure to refuse to do?

“Bartleby!”

No answer.

“Bartleby,” in a louder tone.

No answer.

“Bartleby,” I roared.

Like a very ghost, agreeably to the laws of
magical invocation, at the third summons, he
appeared at the entrance of his hermitage.

“Go to the next room, and tell Nippers to
come to me.”

“I prefer not to,” he respectfully and slowly
said, and mildly disappeared.

“Very good, Bartleby,” said I, in a quiet sort
of serenely-severe self-possessed tone, intimating
the unalterable purpose of some terrible retribution
very close at hand. At the moment I
half intended something of the kind. But upon
the whole, as it was drawing towards my dinnerhour,
I thought it best to put on my hat and

[figure description] Page 060.[end figure description]

walk home for the day, suffering much from per
plexity and distress of mind.

Shall I acknowledge it? The conclusion of
this whole business was, that it soon became a
fixed fact of my chambers, that a pale young
scrivener, by the name of Bartleby, had a desk
there; that he copied for me at the usual rate
of four cents a folio (one hundred words); but
he was permanently exempt from examining the
work done by him, that duty being transferred to
Turkey and Nippers, out of compliment, doubtless,
to their superior acuteness; moreover, said
Bartleby was never, on any account, to be dispatched
on the most trivial errand of any sort;
and that even if entreated to take upon him
such a matter, it was generally understood that
he would “prefer not to”—in other words, that
he would refuse point-blank.

As days passed on, I became considerably reconciled
to Bartleby. His steadiness, his freedom
from all dissipation, his incessant industry
(except when he chose to throw himself into a
standing revery behind his screen), his great
stillness, his unalterableness of demeanor under
all circumstances, made him a valuable

[figure description] Page 061.[end figure description]

acquisition. One prime thing was this—he was
always there—first in the morning, continually
through the day, and the last at night. I had a
singular confidence in his honesty. I felt my
most precious papers perfectly safe in his hands.
Sometimes, to be sure, I could not, for the very
soul of me, avoid falling into sudden spasmodic
passions with him. For it was exceeding difficult
to bear in mind all the time those strange
peculiarities, privileges, and unheard of exemptions,
forming the tacit stipulations on Bartleby's
part under which he remained in my office.
Now and then, in the eagerness of dispatching
pressing business, I would inadvertently summon
Bartleby, in a short, rapid tone, to put his
finger, say, on the incipient tie of a bit of red
tape with which I was about compressing some
papers. Of course, from behind the screen the
usual answer, “I prefer not to,” was sure to
come; and then, how could a human creature,
with the common infirmities of our nature, refrain
from bitterly exclaiming upon such perverseness—
such unreasonableness. However,
every added repulse of this sort which I received
only tended to lessen the probability of my repeating
the inadvertence.

[figure description] Page 062.[end figure description]

Here it must be said, that according to the
custom of most legal gentlemen occupying
chambers in densely-populated law buildings,
there were several keys to my door. One was
kept by a woman residing in the attic, which
person weekly scrubbed and daily swept and
dusted my apartments. Another was kept by
Turkey for convenience sake. The third I
sometimes carried in my own pocket. The
fourth I knew not who had.

Now, one Sunday morning I happened to go
to Trinity Church, to hear a celebrated preacher,
and finding myself rather early on the ground
I thought I would walk round to my chambers
for a while. Luckily I had my key with me;
but upon applying it to the lock, I found it resisted
by something inserted from the inside.
Quite surprised, I called out; when to my consternation
a key was turned from within; and
thrusting his lean visage at me, and holding the
door ajar, the apparition of Bartleby appeared,
in his shirt sleeves, and otherwise in a strangely
tattered deshabille, saying quietly that he was
sorry, but he was deeply engaged just then, and—
preferred not admitting me at present. In a

[figure description] Page 063.[end figure description]

brief word or two, he moreover added, that perhaps
I had better walk round the block two or
three times, and by that time he would probably
have concluded his affairs.

Now, the utterly unsurmised appearance of
Bartleby, tenanting my law-chambers of a Sunday
morning, with his cadaverously gentlemanly
nonchalance, yet withal firm and self-possessed,
had such a strange effect upon me, that incontinently
I slunk away from my own door,
and did as desired. But not without sundry
twinges of impotent rebellion against the mild
effrontery of this unaccountable scrivener. Indeed,
it was his wonderful mildness chiefly,
which not only disarmed me, but unmanned me
as it were. For I consider that one, for the
time, is a sort of unmanned when he tranquilly
permits his hired clerk to dictate to him, and
order him away from his own premises. Furthermore,
I was full of uneasiness as to what
Bartleby could possibly be doing in my office in
his shirt sleeves, and in an otherwise dismantled
condition of a Sunday morning. Was anything
amiss going on? Nay, that was out of the
question. It was not to be thought of for a

[figure description] Page 064.[end figure description]

moment that Bartleby was an immoral person.
But what could he be doing there?—copying?
Nay again, whatever might be his eccentricities,
Bartleby was an eminently decorous person.
He would be the last man to sit down to his
desk in any state approaching to nudity. Besides,
it was Sunday; and there was something
about Bartleby that forbade the supposition
that he would by any secular occupation violate
the proprieties of the day.

Nevertheless, my mind was not pacified; and
full of a restless curiosity, at last I returned to
the door. Without hindrance I inserted my key
opened it, and entered. Bartleby was not to be
seen. I looked round anxiously, peeped behind
his screen; but it was very plain that he was
gone. Upon more closely examining the place,
I surmised that for an indefinite period Bartleby
must have ate, dressed, and slept in my office,
and that, too without plate, mirror, or bed. The
cushioned seat of a ricketty old sofa in one
corner bore the faint impress of a lean, reclining
form. Rolled away under his desk, I found a
blanket; under the empty grate, a blacking
box and brush; on a chair, a tin basin, with

[figure description] Page 065.[end figure description]

soap and a ragged towel; in a newspaper a few
crumbs of ginger-nuts and a morsel of cheese.
Yes, thought I, it is evident enough that Bartleby
has been making his home here, keeping
bachelor's hall all by himself. Immediately
then the thought came sweeping across me,
what miserable friendlessness and loneliness are
here revealed! His poverty is great; but his
solitude, how horrible! Think of it. Of a Sunday,
Wall-street is deserted as Petra; and every
night of every day it is an emptiness. This
building, too, which of week-days hums with
industry and life, at nightfall echoes with sheer
vacancy, and all through Sunday is forlorn.
And here Bartleby makes his home; sole
spectator of a solitude which he has seen all
populous—a sort of innocent and transformed
Marius brooding among the ruins of Carthage!

For the first time in my life a feeling of overpowering
stinging melancholy seized me. Before,
I had never experienced aught but a not
unpleasing sadness. The bond of a common
humanity now drew me irresistibly to gloom.
A fraternal melancholy! For both I and Bartleby
were sons of Adam. I remembered the

[figure description] Page 066.[end figure description]

bright silks and sparkling faces I had seen that
day, in gala trim, swan-like sailing down the
Mississippi of Broadway; and I contrasted them
with the pallid copyist, and thought to myself,
Ah, happiness courts the light, so we deem the
world is gay; but misery hides aloof, so we
deem that misery there is none. These sad
fancyings—chimeras, doubtless, of a sick and
silly brain—led on to other and more special
thoughts, concerning the eccentricities of Bartleby.
Presentiments of strange discoveries
hovered round me. The scrivener's pale form
appeared to me laid out, among uncaring strangers,
in its shivering winding sheet.

Suddenly I was attracted by Bartleby's closed
desk, the key in open sight left in the lock.

I mean no mischief, seek the gratification of
no heartless curiosity, thought I; besides, the
desk is mine, and its contents, too, so I will
make bold to look within. Everything was
methodically arranged, the papers smoothly
placed. The pigeon holes were deep, and removing
the files of documents, I groped into
their recesses. Presently I felt something there,
and dragged it out. It was an old bandanna

[figure description] Page 067.[end figure description]

handkerchief, heavy and knotted. I opened it,
and saw it was a savings's bank.

I now recalled all the quiet mysteries which
I had noted in the man. I remembered that he
never spoke but to answer; that, though at intervals
he had considerable time to himself, yet
I had never seen him reading—no, not even a
newspaper; that for long periods he would
stand looking out, at his pale window behind
the screen, upon the dead brick wall; I was
quite sure he never visited any refectory or eating
house; while his pale face clearly indicated
that he never drank beer like Turkey, or tea
and coffee even, like other men; that he never
went anywhere in particular that I could learn;
never went out for a walk, unless, indeed, that
was the case at present; that he had declined
telling who he was, or whence he came, or
whether he had any relatives in the world; that
though so thin and pale, he never complained of
ill health. And more than all, I remembered a
certain unconscious air of pallid—how shall I
call it?—of pallid haughtiness, say, or rather an
austere reserve about him, which had positively
awed me into my tame compliance with his

[figure description] Page 068.[end figure description]

eccentricities, when I had feared to ask him to
do the slightest incidental thing for me, even
though I might know, from his long-continued
motionlessness, that behind his screen he must
be standing in one of those dead-wall reveries of
his.

Revolving all these things, and coupling them
with the recently discovered fact, that he made
my office his constant abiding place and home,
and not forgetful of his morbid moodiness; revolving
all these things, a prudential feeling
began to steal over me. My first emotions had
been those of pure melancholy and sincerest
pity; but just in proportion as the forlornness
of Bartleby grew and grew to my imagination,
did that same melancholy merge into fear, that
pity into repulsion. So true it is, and so terrible,
too, that up to a certain point the thought
or sight of misery enlists our best affections;
but, in certain special cases, beyond that point it
does not. They err who would assert that invariably
this is owing to the inherent selfishness
of the human heart. It rather proceeds from a
certain hopelessness of remedying excessive and
organic ill. To a sensitive being, pity is not sel

[figure description] Page 069.[end figure description]

dom pain. And when at last it is perceived
that such pity cannot lead to effectual succor,
common sense bids the soul be rid of it. What
I saw that morning persuaded me that the
scrivener was the victim of innate and incurable
disorder. I might give alms to his body; but
his body did not pain him; it was his soul that
suffered, and his soul I could not reach.

I did not accomplish the purpose of going to
Trinity Church that morning. Somehow, the
things I had seen disqualified me for the time
from church-going. I walked homeward, thinking
what I would do with Bartleby. Finally, I
resolved upon this—I would put certain calm
questions to him the next morning, touching
his history, etc., and if he declined to answer
them openly and unreservedly (and I supposed
he would prefer not), then to give him a twenty
dollar bill over and above whatever I might owe
him, and tell him his services were no longer
required; but that if in any other way I could
assist him, I would be happy to do so, especially
if he desired to return to his native place,
wherever that might be, I would willingly help
to defray the expenses. Moreover, if, after

[figure description] Page 070.[end figure description]

reaching home, he found himself at any time in
want of aid, a letter from him would be sure
of a reply.

The next morning came.

“Bartleby,” said I, gently calling to him
behind his screen.

No reply.

“Bartleby,” said I, in a still gentler tone,
“come here; I am not going to ask you to
do anything you would prefer not to do—I
simply wish to speak to you.”

Upon this he noiselessly slid into view.

“Will you tell me, Bartleby, where you
were born?”

“I would prefer not to.”

“Will you tell me anything about yourself?”

“I would prefer not to.”

“But what reasonable objection can you
have to speak to me? I feel friendly towards
you.”

He did not look at me while I spoke, but
kept his glance fixed upon my bust of Cicero,
which, as I then sat, was directly behind me,
some six inches above my head.

“What is your answer, Bartleby,” said I,

[figure description] Page 071.[end figure description]

after waiting a considerable time for a reply,
during which his countenance remained immovable,
only there was the faintest conceivable
tremor of the white attenuated mouth.

“At present I prefer to give no answer,” he
said, and retired into his hermitage.

It was rather weak in me I confess, but his
manner, on this occasion, nettled me. Not
only did there seem to lurk in it a certain calm
disdain, but his perverseness seemed ungrateful,
considering the undeniable good usage and
indulgence he had received from me.

Again I sat ruminating what I should do.
Mortified as I was at his behavior, and resolved
as I had been to dismiss him when I entered
my office, nevertheless I strangely felt something
superstitious knocking at my heart, and
forbidding me to carry out my purpose, and
denouncing me for a villain if I dared to breathe
one bitter word against this forlornest of mankind.
At last, familiarly drawing my chair
behind his screen, I sat down and said: “Bartleby,
never mind, then, about revealing your
history; but let me entreat you, as a friend, to
comply as far as may be with the usages of

[figure description] Page 072.[end figure description]

this office. Say now, you will help to examine
papers to-morrow or next day: in short, say
now, that in a day or two you will begin to be
a little reasonable:—say so, Bartleby.”

“At present I would prefer not to be a little
reasonable,” was his mildly cadaverous reply.

Just then the folding-doors opened, and
Nippers approached. He seemed suffering from
an unusually bad night's rest, induced by severer
indigestion than common. He overheard
those final words of Bartleby.

“Prefer not, eh?” gritted Nippers—“I'd prefer
him, if I were you, sir,” addressing me—
“I'd prefer him; I'd give him preferences, the
stubborn mule! What is it, sir, pray, that he
prefers not to do now?”

Bartleby moved not a limb.

“Mr. Nippers,” said I, “I'd prefer that you
would withdraw for the present.”

Somehow, of late, I had got into the way of
involuntarily using this word “prefer” upon all
sorts of not exactly suitable occasions. And I
trembled to think that my contact with the
scrivener had already and seriously affected me
in a mental way. And what further and

[figure description] Page 073.[end figure description]

deeper aberration might it not yet produce? This
apprehension had not been without efficacy in
determining me to summary measures.

As Nippers, looking very sour and sulky, was
departing, Turkey blandly and deferentially approached.

“With submission, sir,” said he, “yesterday
I was thinking about Bartleby here, and I think
that if he would but prefer to take a quart of
good ale every day, it would do much towards
mending him, and enabling him to assist in examining
his papers.”

“So you have got the word, too,” said I,
slightly excited.

“With submission, what word, sir,” asked
Turkey, respectfully crowding himself into the
contracted space behind the screen, and by so
doing, making me jostle the scrivener. “What
word, sir?”

“I would prefer to be left alone here,” said
Bartleby, as if offended at being mobbed in his
privacy.

“That's the word, Turkey,” said I—“that'
it.”

“Oh, prefer? oh yes—queer word. I never

[figure description] Page 074.[end figure description]

use it myself. But, sir, as I was saying, if he
would but prefer—”

“Turkey,” interrupted I, “you will please
withdraw.”

“Oh certainly, sir, if you prefer that I
should.”

As he opened the folding-door to retire, Nippers
at his desk caught a glimpse of me, and
asked whether I would prefer to have a certain
paper copied on blue paper or white. He did
not in the least roguishly accent the word prefer.
It was plain that it involuntarily rolled
from his tongue. I thought to myself, surely I
must get rid of a demented man, who already
has in some degree turned the tongues, if not
the heads of myself and clerks. But I thought
it prudent not to break the dismission at once.

The next day I noticed that Bartleby did
nothing but stand at his window in his dead-wall
revery. Upon asking him why he did not
write, he said that he had decided upon doing
no more writing.

“Why, how now? what next?” exclaimed I,
“do no more writing?”

“No more.”

[figure description] Page 075.[end figure description]

“And what is the reason?”

“Do you not see the reason for yourself,” he
indifferently replied.

I looked steadfastly at him, and perceived
that his eyes looked dull and glazed. Instantly
it occurred to me, that his unexampled diligence
in copying by his dim window for the
first few weeks of his stay with me might have
temporarily impared his vision.

I was touched. I said something in condolence
with him. I hinted that of course he did
wisely in abstaining from writing for a while;
and urged him to embrace that opportunity of
taking wholesome exercise in the open air.
This, however, he did not do. A few days after
this, my other clerks being absent, and being in
a great hurry to dispatch certain letters by the
mail, I thought that, having nothing else earthly
to do, Bartleby would surely be less inflexible
than usual, and carry these letters to the post-office.
But he blankly declined. So, much to
my inconvenience, I went myself.

Still added days went by. Whether Bartleby's
eyes improved or not, I could not say. To
all appearance. I thought they did. But when I

[figure description] Page 076.[end figure description]

asked him if they did, he vouchsafed no answer.
At all events, he would do no copying. At
last, in reply to my urgings, he informed me
that he had permanently given up copying.

“What!” exclaimed I; “suppose your eyes
should get entirely well—better than ever before—
would you not copy then?”

“I have given up copying,” he answered, and
slid aside.

He remained as ever, a fixture in my chamber.
Nay—if that were possible—he became
still more of a fixture than before. What was
to be done? He would do nothing in the office;
why should he stay there? In plain fact, he had
now become a millstone to me, not only useless
as a necklace, but afflictive to bear. Yet I was
sorry for him. I speak less than truth when I
say that, on his own account, he occasioned me
uneasiness. If he would but have named a
single relative or friend, I would instantly have
written, and urged their taking the poor fellow
away to some convenient retreat. But he seemed
alone, absolutely alone in the universe. A
bit of wreck in the mid Atlantic. At length,
necessities connected with my business

[figure description] Page 077.[end figure description]

tyrannized over all other considerations. Decently as
I could, I told Bartleby that in six days time he
must unconditionally leave the office. I warned
him to take measures, in the interval, for procuring
some other abode. I offered to assist
him in this endeavor, if he himself would but
take the first step towards a removal. “And
when you finally quit me, Bartleby,” added I,
“I shall see that you go not away entirely unprovided.
Six days from this hour, remember.”

At the expiration of that period, I peeped
behind the screen, and lo! Bartleby was there.

I buttoned up my coat, balanced myself; advanced
slowly towards him, touched his shoulder,
and said, “The time has come; you must
quit this place; I am sorry for you; here is
money; but you must go.”

“I would prefer not,” he replied, with his
back still towards me.

“You must.”

He remained silent.

Now I had an unbounded confidence in this
man's common honesty. He had frequently restored
to me sixpences and shillings carelessly
dropped upon the floor, for I am apt to be very

[figure description] Page 078.[end figure description]

reckless in such shirt-button affairs. The proceeding,
then, which followed will not be deemed
extraordinary.

“Bartleby,” said I, “I owe you twelve dollars
on account; here are thirty-two; the odd
twenty are yours—Will you take it?” and I
handed the bills towards him.

But he made no motion.

“I will leave them here, then,” putting them
under a weight on the table. Then taking my hat
and cane and going to the door, I tranquilly
turned and added—“After you have removed
your things from these offices, Bartleby, you
will of course lock the door—since every one is
now gone for the day but you—and if you
please, slip your key underneath the mat, so
that I may have it in the morning. I shall not
see you again; so good-by to you. If, hereafter,
in your new place of abode, I can be of
any service to you, do not fail to advise me by
letter. Good-by, Bartleby, and fare you well.”

But he answered not a word; like the last
column of some ruined temple, he remained
standing mute and solitary in the middle of the
otherwise deserted room.

[figure description] Page 079.[end figure description]

As I walked home in a pensive mood, my
vanity got the better of my pity. I could not
but highly plume myself on my masterly management
in getting rid of Bartleby. Masterly I
call it, and such it must appear to any dispassionate
thinker. The beauty of my procedure
seemed to consist in its perfect quietness. There
was no vulgar bullying, no bravado of any sort,
no choleric hectoring, and striding to and fro
across the apartment, jerking out vehement
commands for Bartleby to bundle himself off
with his beggarly traps. Nothing of the kind.
Without loudly bidding Bartleby depart—as an
inferior genius might have done—I assumed the
ground that depart he must; and upon that assumption
built all I had to say. The more I
thought over my procedure, the more I was
charmed with it. Nevertheless, next morning,
upon awakening, I had my doubts—I had somehow
slept off the fumes of vanity. One of the
coolest and wisest hours a man has, is just after
he awakes in the morning. My procedure seemed
as sagacious as ever—but only in theory.
How it would prove in practice—there was the
rub. It was truly a beautiful thought to have

[figure description] Page 080.[end figure description]

assumed Bartleby's departure; but, after all,
that assumption was simply my own, and none
of Bartleby's. The great point was, not whether
I had assumed that he would quit me, but
whether he would prefer so to do. He was
more a man of preferences than assumptions.

After breakfast, I walked down town, arguing
the probabilities pro and con. One moment I
thought it would prove a miserable failure, and
Bartleby would be found all alive at my office
as usual; the next moment it seemed certain
that I should find his chair empty. And so I
kept veering about. At the corner of Broadway
and Canal street, I saw quite an excited
group of people standing in earnest conversation.

“I'll take odds he doesn't,” said a voice as I
passed.

“Doesn't go?—done!” said I, “put up your
money.”

I was instinctively putting my hand in my
pocket to produce my own, when I remembered
that this was an election day. The words I
had overheard bore no reference to Bartleby,
but to the success or non-success of some

[figure description] Page 081.[end figure description]

candidate for the mayoralty. In my intent frame of
mind, I had, as it were, imagined that all Broadway
shared in my excitement, and were debating
the same question with me. I passed on, very
thankful that the uproar of the street screened
my momentary absent-mindedness.

As I had intended, I was earlier than usual
at my office door. I stood listening for a
moment. All was still. He must be gone. I
tried the knob. The door was locked. Yes,
my procedure had worked to a charm; he indeed
must be vanished. Yet a certain melancholy
mixed with this: I was almost sorry for
my brilliant success. I was fumbling under the
door mat for the key, which Bartleby was to
have left there for me, when accidentally my
knee knocked against a panel, producing a
summoning sound, and in response a voice came
to me from within—“Not yet; I am occupied.”

It was Bartleby.

I was thunderstruck. For an instant I stood
like the man who, pipe in mouth, was killed
one cloudless afternoon long ago in Virginia,
by summer lightning; at his own warm open

[figure description] Page 082.[end figure description]

window he was killed, and remained leaning out
there upon the dreamy afternoon, till some one
touched him, when he fell.

“Not gone!” I murmured at last. But
again obeying that wondrous ascendancy which
the inscrutable scrivener had over me, and from
which ascendancy, for all my chafing, I could
not completely escape, I slowly went down
stairs and out into the street, and while walking
round the block, considered what I should next
do in this unheard-of perplexity. Turn the
man out by an actual thrusting I could not; to
drive him away by calling him hard names
would not do; calling in the police was an unpleasant
idea; and yet, permit him to enjoy his
cadaverous triumph over me—this, too, I could
not think of. What was to be done? or, if
nothing could be done, was there anything further
that I could assume in the matter? Yes, as
before I had prospectively assumed that Bartleby
would depart, so now I might retrospectively
assume that departed he was. In the legitimate
carrying out of this assumption, I might
enter my office in a great hurry, and pretending
not to see Bartleby at all, walk straight against

[figure description] Page 083.[end figure description]

him as if he were air. Such a proceeding
would in a singular degree have the appearance
of a home-thrust. It was hardly possible that
Bartleby could withstand such an application of
the doctrine of assumptions. But upon second
thoughts the success of the plan seemed rather
dubious. I resolved to argue the matter over
with him again.

“Bartleby,” said I, entering the office, with
a quietly severe expression, “I am seriously displeased.
I am pained, Bartleby. I had thought
better of you. I had imagined you of such a
gentlemanly organization, that in any delicate
dilemma a slight hint would suffice—in short, an
assumption. But it appears I am deceived.
Why,” I added, unaffectedly starting, “you
have not even touched that money yet,” pointing
to it, just where I had left it the evening
previous.

He answered nothing.

“Will you, or will you not, quit me?” I now
demanded in a sudden passion, advancing close
to him.

“I would prefer not to quit you,” he replied
gently emphasizing the not.

[figure description] Page 084.[end figure description]

“What earthly right have you to stay here?
Do you pay any rent? Do you pay my taxes?
Or is this property yours?”

He answered nothing.

“Are you ready to go on and write now?
Are your eyes recovered? Could you copy a
small paper for me this morning? or help examine
a few lines? or step round to the post-office?
In a word, will you do anything at all,
to give a coloring to your refusal to depart the
premises?

He silently retired into his hermitage.

I was now in such a state of nervous resentment
that I thought it but prudent to check
myself at present from further demonstrations.
Bartleby and I were alone. I remembered the
tragedy of the unfortunate Adams and the still
more unfortunate Colt in the solitary office of
the latter; and how poor Colt, being dreadfully
incensed by Adams, and imprudently permitting
himself to get wildly excited, was at unawares
hurried into his fatal act—an act which
certainly no man could possibly deplore more
than the actor himself. Often it had occurred
to me in my ponderings upon the subject, that

[figure description] Page 085.[end figure description]

had that altercation taken place in the public
street, or at a private residence, it would not
have terminated as it did. It was the circumstance
of being alone in a solitary office, up
stairs, of a building entirely unhallowed by
humanizing domestic associations—an uncarpeted
office, doubtless, of a dusty, haggard sort
of appearance—this it must have been, which
greatly helped to enhance the irritable desperation
of the hapless Colt.

But when this old Adam of resentment rose
in me and tempted me concerning Bartleby, I
grappled him and threw him. How? Why,
simply by recalling the divine injunction: “A
new commandment give I unto you, that ye
love one another.” Yes, this it was that saved
me. Aside from higher considerations, charity
often operates as a vastly wise and prudent
principle—a great safeguard to its possessor.
Men have committed murder for jealousy's sake,
and anger's sake, and hatred's sake, and selfishness'
sake, and spiritual pride's sake; but no
man, that ever I heard of, ever committed a diabolical
murder for sweet charity's sake. Mere
self-interest, then, if no better motive can be

[figure description] Page 086.[end figure description]

enlisted, should, especially with high-tempered
men, prompt all beings to charity and philanthropy.
At any rate, upon the occasion in
qestion, I strove to drown my exasperated feelings
towards the scrivener by benevolently
construing his conduct. Poor fellow, poor fellow!
thought I, he don't mean anything; and
besides, he has seen hard times, and ought to be
indulged.

I endeavored, also, immediately to occupy
myself, and at the same time to comfort my
despondency. I tried to fancy, that in the
course of the morning, at such time as might
prove agreeable to him, Bartleby, of his own
free accord, would emerge from his hermitage
and take up some decided line of march in the
direction of the door. But no. Half-past
twelve o'clock came; Turkey began to glow in
the face, overturn his inkstand, and become
generally obstreperous; Nippers abated down
into quietude and courtesy; Ginger Nut munched
his noon apple; and Bartleby remained
standing at his window in one of his profoundest
dead-wall reveries. Will it be credited?
Ought I to acknowledge it? That afternoon I

[figure description] Page 087.[end figure description]

left the office without saying one further word
to him.

Some days now passed, during which, at leisure
intervals I looked a little into “Edwards
on the Will,” and “Priestley on Necessity.”
Under the circumstances, those books induced
a salutary feeling. Gradually I slid into the
persuasion that these troubles of mine, touching
the scrivener, had been all predestinated from
eternity, and Bartleby was billeted upon me for
some mysterious purpose of an allwise Providence,
which it was not for a mere mortal like
me to fathom. Yes, Bartleby, stay there behind
your screen, thought I; I shall persecute
you no more; you are harmless and noiseless
as any of these old chairs; in short, I never feel
so private as when I know you are here. At
last I see it, I feel it; I penetrate to the predestinated
purpose of my life. I am content.
Others may have loftier parts to enact; but my
mission in this world, Bartleby, is to furnish you
with office-room for such period as you may
see fit to remain.

I believe that this wise and blessed frame of
mind would have continued with me, had it not

[figure description] Page 088.[end figure description]

been for the unsolicited and uncharitable remarks
obtruded upon me by my professional
friends who visited the rooms. But thus it
often is, that the constant friction of illiberal
minds wears out at last the best resolves of the
more generous. Though to be sure, when I
reflected upon it, it was not strange that people
entering my office should be struck by the
peculiar aspect of the unaccountable Bartleby,
and so be tempted to throw out some sinister
observations concerning him. Sometimes an
attorney, having business with me, and calling
at my office, and finding no one but the scrivener
there, would undertake to obtain some sort of
precise information from him touching my
whereabouts; but without heeding his idle talk,
Bartleby would remain standing immovable in
the middle of the room. So after contemplating
him in that position for a time, the attorney
would depart, no wiser than he came.

Also, when a reference was going on, and
the room full of lawyers and witnesses, and business
driving fast, some deeply-occupied legal
gentleman present, seeing Bartleby wholly
unemployed, would request him to run round

[figure description] Page 089.[end figure description]

to his (the legal gentleman's) office and fetch
some papers for him. Thereupon, Bartleby
would tranquilly decline, and yet remain idle
as before. Then the lawyer would give a
great stare, and turn to me. And what
could I say? At last I was made aware
that all through the circle of my professional
acquaintance, a whisper of wonder was running
round, having reference to the strange creature
I kept at my office. This worried me very
much. And as the idea came upon me of his
possibly turning out a long-lived man, and keep
occupying my chambers, and denying my authority;
and perplexing my visitors; and
scandalizing my professional reputation; and
casting a general gloom over the premises; keeping
soul and body together to the last upon his
savings (for doubtless he spent but half a dime
a day), and in the end perhaps outlive me, and
claim possession of my office by right of his
perpetual occupancy: as all these dark anticipa
tions crowded upon me more and more, and
my friends continually intruded their relentless
remarks upon the apparition in my room;
a great change was wrought in me. I

[figure description] Page 090.[end figure description]

resolved to gather all my faculties together, and
forever rid me of this intolerable incubus.

Ere revolving any complicated project, however,
adapted to this end, I first simply suggested
to Bartleby the propriety of his permanent
departure. In a calm and serious tone, I
commended the idea to his careful and mature
consideration. But, having taken three days
to meditate upon it, he apprised me, that his
original determination remained the same; in
short, that he still preferred to abide with me.

What shall I do? I now said to myself,
buttoning up my coat to the last button. What
shall I do? what ought I to do? what does
conscience say I should do with this man, or,
rather, ghost. Rid myself of him, I must; go,
he shall. But how? You will not thrust him,
the poor, pale, passive mortal—you will not
thrust such a helpless creature out of your
door? you will not dishonor yourself by such
cruelty? No, I will not, I cannot do that.
Rather would I let him live and die here, and
then mason up his remains in the wall. What,
then, will you do? For all your coaxing, he
will not budge. Bribes he leaves under your

[figure description] Page 091.[end figure description]

own paper-weight on your table; in short, it
is quite plain that he prefers to cling to you.

Then something severe, something unusual
must be done. What! surely you will not
have him collared by a constable, and commit
his innocent pallor to the common jail? And
upon what ground could you procure such a
thing to be done?—a vagrant, is he? What!
he a vagrant, a wanderer, who refuses to
budge? It is because he will not be a vagrant,
then, that you seek to count him as a vagrant.
That is too absurd. No visible means of support:
there I have him. Wrong again: for
indubitably he does support himself, and that is
the only unanswerable proof that any man can
show of his possessing the means so to do.
No more, then. Since he will not quit me, I
must quit him. I will change my offices; I
will move elsewhere, and give him fair notice,
that if I find him on my new premises I will
then proceed against him as a common trespasser.

Acting accordingly, next day I thus addressed
him: “I find these chambers too far from
the City Hall; the air is unwholesome. In a

[figure description] Page 092.[end figure description]

word, I propose to remove my offices next
week, and shall no longer require your services.
I tell you this now, in order that you
may seek another place.”

He made no reply, and nothing more was
said.

On the appointed day I engaged carts and
men, proceeded to my chambers, and, having
but little furniture, everything was removed in
a few hours. Throughout, the scrivener remained
standing behind the screen, which I
directed to be removed the last thing. It was
withdrawn; and, being folded up like a huge
folio, left him the motionless occupant of a
naked room. I stood in the entry watching
him a moment, while something from within
me upbraided me.

I re-entered, with my hand in my pocket—
and—and my heart in my mouth.

“Good-by, Bartleby; I am going—good-by,
and God some way bless you; and take
that,” slipping something in his hand. But it
dropped upon the floor, and then—strange to
say—I tore myself from him whom I had so
longed to be rid of.

[figure description] Page 093.[end figure description]

Established in my new quarters, for a day
or two I kept the door locked, and started at
every footfall in the passages. When I returned
to my rooms, after any little absence, I
would pause at the threshold for an instant,
and attentively listen, ere applying my key.
But these fears were needless. Bartleby never
came nigh me.

I thought all was going well, when a perturbed-looking
stranger visited me, inquiring
whether I was the person who had recently
occupied rooms at No. — Wall street.

Full of forebodings, I replied that I was.

“Then, sir,” said the stranger, who proved
a lawyer, “you are responsible for the man
you left there. He refuses to do any copying;
he refuses to do anything; he says he prefers
not to; and he refuses to quit the premises.”

“I am very sorry, sir,” said I, with assumed
tranquillity, but an inward tremor, “but, really,
the man you allude to is nothing to me—
he is no relation or apprentice of mine, that
you should hold me responsible for him.”

“In mercy's name, who is he?”

“I certainly cannot inform you. I know

[figure description] Page 094.[end figure description]

nothing about him. Formerly I employed him
as a copyist; but he has done nothing for me
now for some time past.”

“I shall settle him, then—good morning,
sir.”

Several days passed, and I heard nothing
more; and, though I often felt a charitable
prompting to call at the place and see poor
Bartleby, yet a certain squeamishness, of I
know not what, withheld me.

All is over with him, by this time, thought
I, at last, when, through another week, no
further intelligence reached me. But, coming
to my room the day after, I found several persons
waiting at my door in a high state of
nervous excitement.

“That's the man—here he comes,” cried the
foremost one, whom I recognized as the lawyer
who had previously called upon me alone.

“You must take him away, sir, at once,”
cried a portly person among them, advancing
upon me, and whom I knew to be the landlord
of No. — Wall street. “These gentlemen,
my tenants, cannot stand it any longer;
Mr. B—,” pointing to the lawyer, “has

[figure description] Page 095.[end figure description]

turned him out of his room, and he now persists
in haunting the building generally, sitting
upon the banisters of the stairs by day, and
sleeping in the entry by night. Everybody is
concerned; clients are leaving the offices; some
fears are entertained of a mob; something you
must do, and that without delay.”

Aghast at this torrent, I fell back before it,
and would fain have locked myself in my new
quarters. In vain I persisted that Bartleby
was nothing to me—no more than to any one
else. In vain—I was the last person known
to have anything to do with him, and they
held me to the terrible account. Fearful, then,
of being exposed in the papers (as one person
present obscurely threatened), I considered the
matter, and, at length, said, that if the lawyer
would give me a confidential interview with
the scrivener, in his (the lawyer's) own room,
I would, that afternoon, strive my best to rid
them of the nuisance they complained of.

Going up stairs to my old haunt, there was
Bartleby silently sitting upon the banister at
the landing.

“What are you doing here, Bartleby?” said I.

[figure description] Page 096.[end figure description]

“Sitting upon the banister,” he mildly replied.

I motioned him into the lawyer's room, who
then left us.

“Bartleby” said I, “are you aware that you
are the cause of great tribulation to me, by
persisting in occupying the entry after being
dismissed from the office?”

No answer.

“Now one of two things must take place.
Either you must do something, or something
must be done to you. Now what sort of business
would you like to engage in? Would
you like to re-engage in copying for some
one?”

“No; I would prefer not to make any
change.”

“Would you like a clerkship in a dry-goods
store?”

“There is too much confinement about that.
No, I would not like a clerkship; but I am not
particular.”

“Too much confinement,” I cried, “why
you keep yourself confined all the time!”

“I would prefer not to take a clerkship,”

[figure description] Page 097.[end figure description]

he rejoined, as if to settle that little item at
once.

“How would a bar-tender's business suit
you? There is no trying of the eye-sight in
that.”

“I would not like it at all; though, as I said
before, I am not particular.”

His unwonted wordiness inspirited me. I
returned to the charge.

“Well, then, would you like to travel
through the country collecting bills for the
merchants? That would improve your health.”

“No, I would prefer to be doing something
else.”

“How, then, would going as a companion to
Europe, to entertain some young gentleman
with your conversation—how would that suit
you?”

“Not at all. It does not strike me that
there is anything definite about that. I like
to be stationary. But I am not particular.”

“Stationary you shall be, then,” I cried, now
losing all patience, and, for the first time in
all my exasperating connection with him, fairly
flying into a passion. “If you do not go away

[figure description] Page 098.[end figure description]

from these premises before night, I shall feel
bound—indeed, I am bound—to—to—to quit
the premises myself!” I rather absurdly concluded,
knowing not with what possible threat
to try to frighten his immobility into compliance.
Despairing of all further efforts, I
was precipitately leaving him, when a final
thought occurred to me—one which had not
been wholly unindulged before.

“Bartleby,” said I, in the kindest tone I
could assume under such exciting circumstances,
“will you go home with me now—
not to my office, but my dwelling—and remain
there till we can conclude upon some convenient
arrangement for you at our leisure?
Come, let us start now, right away.”

“No: at present I would prefer not to make
any change at all.”

I answered nothing; but, effectually dodging
every one by the suddenness and rapidity of
my flight, rushed from the building, ran up
Wall street towards Broadway, and, jumping
into the first omnibus, was soon removed from
pursuit. As soon as tranquillity returned, I
distinctly perceived that I had now done all

[figure description] Page 099.[end figure description]

that I possibly could, both in respect to the
demands of the landlord and his tenants, and
with regard to my own desire and sense of
duty, to benefit Bartleby, and shield him from
rude persecution. I now strove to be entirely
care-free and quiescent; and my conscience
justified me in the attempt; though, indeed, it
was not so successful as I could have wished.
So fearful was I of being again hunted out
by the incensed landlord and his exasperated
tenants, that, surrendering my business to Nippers,
for a few days, I drove about the upper
part of the town and through the suburbs, in
my rockaway; crossed over to Jersey City and
Hoboken, and paid fugitive visits to Manhattanville
and Astoria. In fact, I almost lived in
my rockaway for the time.

When again I entered my office, lo, a note
from the landlord lay upon the desk. I opened
it with trembling hands. It informed me that
the writer had sent to the police, and had
Bartleby removed to the Tombs as a vagrant.
Moreover, since I knew more about him than
any one else, he wished me to appear at that
place, and make a suitable statement of the

[figure description] Page 100.[end figure description]

facts. These tidings had a conflicting effect
upon me. At first I was indignant; but, at
last, almost approved. The landlord's energetic,
summary disposition, had led him to
adopt a procedure which I do not think I
would have decided upon myself; and yet, as
a last resort, under such peculiar circumstances,
it seemed the only plan.

As I afterwards learned, the poor scrivener,
when told that he must be conducted to the
Tombs, offered not the slightest obstacle, but,
in his pale, unmoving way, silently acquiesced.

Some of the compassionate and curious bystanders
joined the party; and headed by one
of the constables arm in arm with Bartleby,
the silent procession filed its way through all
the noise, and heat, and joy of the roaring
thoroughfares at noon.

The same day I received the note, I went
to the Tombs, or, to speak more properly, the
Halls of Justice. Seeking the right officer, I
stated the purpose of my call, and was informed
that the individual I described was,
indeed, within. I then assured the functionary
that Bartleby was a perfectly honest man, and

[figure description] Page 101.[end figure description]

greatly to be compassionated, however unaccountably
eccentric. I narrated all I knew
and closed by suggesting the idea of letting
him remain in as indulgent confinement as
possible, till something less harsh might be
done—though, indeed, I hardly knew what.
At all events, if nothing else could be decided
upon, the alms-house must receive him. I
then begged to have an interview.

Being under no disgraceful charge, and quite
serene and harmless in all his ways, they had
permitted him freely to wander about the
prison, and, especially, in the inclosed grassplatted
yards thereof. And so I found him
there, standing all alone in the quietest of the
yards, his face towards a high wall, while all
around, from the narrow slits of the jail windows,
I thought I saw peering out upon him
the eyes of murderers and thieves.

“Bartleby!”

“I know you,” he said, without looking
round—“and I want nothing to say to you.”

“It was not I that brought you here,” Bartleby,”
said I, keenly pained at his implied
suspicion. “And to you, this should not be

[figure description] Page 102.[end figure description]

so vile a place. Nothing reproachful attaches
to you by being here. And see, it is not so
sad a place as one might think. Look, there
is the sky, and here is the grass.”

“I know where I am,” he replied, but would
say nothing more, and so I left him.

As I entered the corridor again, a broad
meat-like man, in an apron, accosted me, and,
jerking his thumb over his shoulder, said—“Is
that your friend?”

“Yes.”

“Does he want to starve? If he does, let
him live on the prison fare, that's all.”

“Who are you?” asked I, not knowing what
to make of such an unofficially speaking person
in such a place.

“I am the grub-man. Such gentlemen as
have friends here, hire me to provide them
with something good to eat.”

“Is this so?” said I, turning to the turnkey.

He said it was.

“Well, then,” said I, slipping some silver
into the grub-man's hands (for so they called
him), “I want you to give particular attention
to my friend there; let him have the best

[figure description] Page 103.[end figure description]

dinner you can get. And you must be as polite
to him as possible.”

“Introduce me, will you?” said the grub-man,
looking at me with an expression which
seem to say he was all impatience for an opportunity
to give a specimen of his breeding.

Thinking it would prove of benefit to the
scrivener, I acquiesced; and, asking the grub-man
his name, went up with him to Bartleby.

“Bartleby, this is a friend; you will find
him very useful to you.”

“Your sarvant, sir, your sarvant,” said the
grub-man, making a low salutation behind his
apron. “Hope you find it pleasant here, sir;
nice grounds—cool apartments—hope you'll
stay with us some time—try to make it agreeable.
What will you have for dinner to-day?”

“I prefer not to dine to-day,” said Bartleby,
turning away. “It would disagree with me;
I am unused to dinners.” So saying, he slowly
moved to the other side of the inclosure, and
took up a position fronting the dead-wall.

“How's this?” said the grub-man, addressing
me with a stare of astonishment. “He's
odd, ain't he?”

[figure description] Page 104.[end figure description]

“I think he is a little deranged,” said I,
sadly.

“Deranged? deranged is it? Well, now,
upon my word, I thought that friend of yourn
was a gentleman forger; they are always pale
and genteel-like, them forgers. I can't help
pity 'em—can't help it, sir. Did you know
Monroe Edwards?” he added, touchingly, and
paused. Then, laying his hand piteously on
my shoulder, sighed, “he died of consumption
at Sing-Sing. So you weren't acquainted with
Monroe?”

“No, I was never socially acquainted with
any forgers. But I cannot stop longer. Look
to my friend yonder. You will not lose by it.
I will see you again.”

Some few days after this, I again obtained
admission to the Tombs, and went through
the corridors in quest of Bartleby; but without
finding him.

“I saw him coming from his cell not long
ago,” said a turnkey, “may be he's gone to
loiter in the yards.”

So I went in that direction.

“Are you looking for the silent man?” said

[figure description] Page 105.[end figure description]

another turnkey, passing me. “Yonder he
lies—sleeping in the yard there. 'Tis not
twenty minutes since I saw him lie down.”

The yard was entirely quiet. It was not
accessible to the common prisoners. The surrounding
walls, of amazing thickness, kept off
all sounds behind them. The Egyptian character
of the masonry weighed upon me with
its gloom. But a soft imprisoned turf grew
under foot. The heart of the eternal pyramids,
it seemed, wherein, by some strange magic,
through the clefts, grass-seed, dropped by birds,
had sprung.

Strangely huddled at the base of the wall,
his knees drawn up, and lying on his side, his
head touching the cold stones, I saw the wasted
Bartleby. But nothing stirred. I paused;
then went close up to him; stooped over, and
saw that his dim eyes were open; otherwise
he seemed profoundly sleeping. Something
prompted me to touch him. I felt his hand,
when a tingling shiver ran up my arm and
down my spine to my feet.

The round face of the grub-man peered upon
me now. “His dinner is ready. Won't he

[figure description] Page 106.[end figure description]

dine to-day, either? Or does he live without
dining?”

“Lives without dining,” said I, and closed
the eyes.

“Eh!—He's asleep, ain't he?”

“With kings and counselors,” murmured I.

There would seem little need for proceeding
further in this history. Imagination will readily
supply the meagre recital of poor Bartleby's
interment. But, ere parting with the reader,
let me say, that if this little narrative has
sufficiently interested him, to awaken curiosity
as to who Bartleby was, and what manner
of life he led prior to the present narrator's
making his acquaintance, I can only reply,
that in such curiosity I fully share, but am
wholly unable to gratify it. Yet here I hardly
know whether I should divulge one little item
of rumor, which came to my ear a few months
after the scrivener's decease. Upon what basis
it rested, I could never ascertain; and hence,
how true it is I cannot now tell. But, inasmuch
as this vague report has not been without
a certain suggestive interest to me, however

[figure description] Page 107.[end figure description]

sad, it may prove the same with some others;
and so I will briefly mention it. The report
was this: that Bartleby had been a subordinate
clerk in the Dead Letter Office at Washington,
from which he had been suddenly removed by
a change in the administration. When I think
over this rumor, hardly can I express the emotions
which seize me. Dead letters! does it
not sound like dead men? Conceive a man by
nature and misfortune prone to a pallid hopelessness,
can any business seem more fitted to
heighten it than that of continually handling
these dead letters, and assorting them for the
flames? For by the cart-load they are annually
burned. Sometimes from out the folded
paper the pale clerk takes a ring—the finger
it was meant for, perhaps, moulders in the
grave; a bank-note sent in swiftest charity—
he whom it would relieve, nor eats nor hungers
any more; pardon for those who died despairing;
hope for those who died unhoping; good
tidings for those who died stifled by unrelieved
calamities. On errands of life, these letters
speed to death.

Ah, Bartleby! Ah, humanity!

[figure description] Blank Page.[end figure description]

p643-118 BENITO CERENO.

[figure description] Page 109.[end figure description]

In the year 1799, Captain Amasa Delano,
of Duxbury, in Massachusetts, commanding a
large sealer and general trader, lay at anchor
with a valuable cargo, in the harbor of St.
Maria—a small, desert, uninhabited island toward
the southern extremity of the long coast
of Chili. There he had touched for water.

On the second day, not long after dawn,
while lying in his berth, his mate came below,
informing him that a strange sail was coming
into the bay. Ships were then not so plenty in
those waters as now. He rose, dressed, and
went on deck.

The morning was one peculiar to that coast.
Everything was mute and calm; everything
gray. The sea, though undulated into long
roods of swells, seemed fixed, and was sleeked
at the surface like waved lead that has cooled
and set in the smelter's mould. The sky seemed
a gray surtout. Flights of troubled gray fowl,

[figure description] Page 110.[end figure description]

kith and kin with flights of troubled gray vapors
among which they were mixed, skimmed
low and fitfully over the waters, as swallows
over meadows before storms. Shadows present,
foreshadowing deeper shadows to come.

To Captain Delano's surprise, the stranger,
viewed through the glass, showed no colors;
though to do so upon entering a haven, however
uninhabited in its shores, where but a
single other ship might be lying, was the custom
among peaceful seamen of all nations.
Considering the lawlessness and loneliness of
the spot, and the sort of stories, at that day,
associated with those seas, Captain Delano's
surprise might have deepened into some uneasiness
had he not been a person of a singularly
undistrustful goodnature, not liable, except on
extraordinary and repeated incentives, and hardly
then, to indulge in personal alarms, any way
involving the imputation of malign evil in man.
Whether, in view of what humanity is capable,
such a trait implies, along with a benevolent
heart, more than ordinary quickness and accuracy
of intellectual perception, may be left to
the wise to determine.

[figure description] Page 111.[end figure description]

But whatever misgivings might have obtruded
on first seeing the stranger, would almost, in
any seaman's mind, have been dissipated by
observing that, the ship, in navigating into the
harbor, was drawing too near the land; a sunken
reef making out off her bow. This seemed
to prove her a stranger, indeed, not only to the
sealer, but the island; consequently, she could
be no wonted freebooter on that ocean. With
no small interest, Captain Delano continued to
watch her—a proceeding not much facilitated
by the vapors partly mantling the hull, through
which the far matin light from her cabin
streamed equivocally enough; much like the
sun—by this time hemisphered on the rim of
the horizon, and, apparently, in company with
the strange ship entering the harbor—which,
wimpled by the same low, creeping clouds,
showed not unlike a Lima intriguante's one
sinister eye peering across the Plaza from the
Indian loop-hole of her dusk saya-y-manta.

It might have been but a deception of the
vapors, but, the longer the stranger was watched
the more singular appeared her manœuvres.
Ere long it seemed hard to decide whether she

[figure description] Page 112.[end figure description]

meant to come in or no—what she wanted, or
what she was about. The wind, which had
breezed up a little during the night, was now extremely
light and baffling, which the more increased
the apparent uncertainty of her movements.

Surmising, at last, that it might be a ship in
distress, Captain Delano ordered his whale-boat
to be dropped, and, much to the wary opposition
of his mate, prepared to board her, and, at the
least, pilot her in. On the night previous, a
fishing-party of the seamen had gone a long
distance to some detached rocks out of sight
from the sealer, and, an hour or two before daybreak,
had returned, having met with no small
success. Presuming that the stranger might
have been long off soundings, the good captain
put several baskets of the fish, for presents, into
his boat, and so pulled away. From her continuing
too near the sunken reef, deeming her
in danger, calling to his men, he made all haste
to apprise those on board of their situation.
But, some time ere the boat came up, the wind,
light though it was, having shifted, had headed
the vessel off, as well as partly broken the
vapors from about her.

[figure description] Page 113.[end figure description]

Upon gaining a less remote view, the ship,
when made signally visible on the verge of the
leaden-hued swells, with the shreds of fog here
and there raggedly furring her, appeared like a
white-washed monastery after a thunder-storm,
seen perched upon some dun cliff among the
Pyrenees. But it was no purely fanciful resemblance
which now, for a moment, almost
led Captain Delano to think that nothing less
than a ship-load of monks was before him.
Peering over the bulwarks were what really
seemed, in the hazy distance, throngs of dark
cowls; while, fitfully revealed through the
open port-holes, other dark moving figures were
dimly descried, as of Black Friars pacing the
cloisters.

Upon a still nigher approach, this appearance
was modified, and the true character of the
vessel was plain—a Spanish merchantman of
the first class, carrying negro slaves, amongst
other valuable freight, from one colonial port to
another. A very large, and, in its time, a very
fine vessel, such as in those days were at intervals
encountered along that main; sometimes
superseded Acapulco treasure-ships, or retired

[figure description] Page 114.[end figure description]

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

[figure description] Page 115.[end figure description]

caught by hand at sea. Battered and mouldy,
the castellated forecastle seemed some ancient
turret, long ago taken by assault, and then left
to decay. Toward the stern, two high-raised
quarter galleries—the balustrades here and
there covered with dry, tindery sea-moss—opening
out from the unoccupied state-cabin, whose
dead-lights, for all the mild weather, were
hermetically closed and calked—these tenantless
balconies hung over the sea as if it were
the grand Venetian canal. But the principal
relic of faded grandeur was the ample oval of
the shield-like stern-piece, intricately carved
with the arms of Castile and Leon, medallioned
about by groups of mythological or symbolical
devices; uppermost and central of which was
a dark satyr in a mask, holding his foot on the
prostrate neck of a writhing figure, likewise
masked.

Whether the ship had a figure-head, or only
a plain beak, was not quite certain, owing to
canvas wrapped about that part, either to protect
it while undergoing a re-furbishing, or else
decently to hide its decay. Rudely painted or
chalked, as in a sailor freak, along the forward

[figure description] Page 116.[end figure description]

side of a sort of pedestal below the canvas,
was the sentence, “Seguid vuestro jefe,” (follow
your leader); while upon the tarnished headboards,
near by, appeared, in stately capitals,
once gilt, the ship's name, “San Dominick,”
each letter streakingly corroded with tricklings
of copper-spike rust; while, like mourning
weeds, dark festoons of sea-grass slimily swept
to and fro over the name, with every hearselike
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

[figure description] Page 117.[end figure description]

suffering; in which the negresses, of whom there
were not a few, exceeded the others in their
dolorous vehemence. The scurvy, together
with the fever, had swept off a great part of
their number, more especially the Spaniards.
Off Cape Horn they had narrowly escaped shipwreck;
then, for days together, they had lain
tranced without wind; their provisions were
low; their water next to none; their lips that
moment were baked.

While Captain Delano was thus made the
mark of all eager tongues, his one eager glance
took in all faces, with every other object about
him.

Always upon first boarding a large and populous
ship at sea, especially a foreign one, with
a nondescript crew such as Lascars or Manilla
men, the impression varies in a peculiar way
from that produced by first entering a strange
house with strange inmates in a strange land.
Both house and ship—the one by its walls and
blinds, the other by its high bulwarks like
ramparts—hoard from view their interiors till
the last moment: but in the case of the ship
there is this addition; that the living spectacle

[figure description] Page 118.[end figure description]

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;

[figure description] Page 119.[end figure description]

droning and druling away like so many gray-headed
bag-pipers playing a funeral march.

The quarter-deck rose into an ample elevated
poop, upon the forward verge of which, lifted,
like the oakum-pickers, some eight feet above
the general throng, sat along in a row, separated
by regular spaces, the cross-legged figures
of six other blacks; each with a rusty hatchet
in his hand, which, with a bit of brick and a rag,
he was engaged like a scullion in scouring;
while between each two was a small stack of
hatchets, their rusted edges turned forward
awaiting a like operation. Though occasionally
the four oakum-pickers would briefly
address some person or persons in the crowd
below, yet the six hatchet-polishers neither
spoke to others, nor breathed a whisper
among themselves, but sat intent upon their
task, except at intervals, when, with the
peculiar love in negroes of uniting industry
with pastime, two and two they sideways
clashed their hatchets together, like cymbals,
with a barbarous din. All six, unlike
the generality, had the raw aspect of unsophisticated
Africans.

[figure description] Page 120.[end figure description]

But that first comprehensive glance which
took in those ten figures, with scores less conspicuous,
rested but an instant upon them, as,
impatient of the hubbub of voices, the visitor
turned in quest of whomsoever it might be
that commanded the ship.

But as if not unwilling to let nature make
known her own case among his suffering charge,
or else in despair of restraining it for the time,
the Spanish captain, a gentlemanly, reserved-looking,
and rather young man to a stranger's
eye, dressed with singular richness, but bearing
plain traces of recent sleepless cares and disquietudes,
stood passively by, leaning against
the main-mast, at one moment casting a dreary,
spiritless look upon his excited people, at the
next an unhappy glance toward his visitor. By
his side stood a black of small stature, in whose
rude face, as occasionally, like a shepherd's dog,
he mutely turned it up into the Spaniard's, sorrow
and affection were equally blended.

Struggling through the throng, the American
advanced to the Spaniard, assuring him of his
sympathies, and offering to render whatever
assistance might be in his power. To which

[figure description] Page 121.[end figure description]

the Spaniard returned for the present but grave
and ceremonious acknowledgments, his national
formality dusked by the saturnine mood of
ill-health.

But losing no time in mere compliments,
Captain Delano, returning to the gangway, had
his basket of fish brought up; and as the wind
still continued light, so that some hours at
least must elapse ere the ship could be brought
to the anchorage, he bade his men return to the
sealer, and fetch back as much water as the
whale-boat could carry, with whatever soft
bread the steward might have, all the remaining
pumpkins on board, with a box of sugar,
and a dozen of his private bottles of cider.

Not many minutes after the boat's pushing
off, to the vexation of all, the wind entirely
died away, and the tide turning, began drifting
back the ship helplessly seaward. But trusting
this would not long last, Captain Delano
sought, with good hopes, to cheer up the strangers,
feeling no small satisfaction that, with persons
in thier condition, he could—thanks to his
frequent voyages along the Spanish main—converse
with some freedom in their native tongue.

[figure description] Page 122.[end figure description]

While left alone with them, he was not long
in observing some things tending to heighten
his first impressions; but surprise was lost
in pity, both for the Spaniards and blacks,
alike evidently reduced from scarcity of water
and provisions; while long-continued suffering
seemed to have brought out the less good-natured
qualities of the negroes, besides, at the
same time, impairing the Spaniard's authority
over them. But, under the circumstances, precisely
this condition of things was to have been
anticipated. In armies, navies, cities, or families,
in nature herself, nothing more relaxes
good order than misery. Still, Captain Delano
was not without the idea, that had Benito
Cereno been a man of greater energy, misrule
would hardly have come to the present pass.
But the debility, constitutional or induced by
hardships, bodily and mental, of the Spanish
captain, was too obvious to be overlooked. A
prey to settled dejection, as if long mocked
with hope he would not now indulge it, even
when it had ceased to be a mock, the prospect
of that day, or evening at furthest, lying at
anchor, with plenty of water for his people,

[figure description] Page 123.[end figure description]

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

[figure description] Page 124.[end figure description]

zeal which transmutes into something filial or
fraternal acts in themselves but menial; and
which has gained for the negro the repute of
making the most pleasing body-servant in the
world; one, too, whom a master need be on no
stiffly superior terms with, but may treat with
familiar trust; less a servant than a devoted
companion.

Marking the noisy indocility of the blacks
in general, as well as what seemed the sullen
inefficiency of the whites it was not without
humane satisfaction that Captain Delano witnessed
the steady good conduct of Babo.

But the good conduct of Babo, hardly more
than the ill-behavior of others, seemed to withdraw
the half-lunatic Don Benito from his
cloudy languor. Not that such precisely was
the impression made by the Spaniard on the
mind of his visitor. The Spaniard's individual
unrest was, for the present, but noted as a conspicuous
feature in the ship's general affliction.
Still, Captain Delano was not a little concerned
at what he could not help taking for the
time to be Don Benito's unfriendly indifference
towards himself. The Spaniard's manner,

[figure description] Page 125.[end figure description]

too, conveyed a sort of sour and gloomy disdain,
which he seemed at no pains to disguise.
But this the American in charity ascribed to
the harassing effects of sickness, since, in former
instances, he had noted that there are peculiar
natures on whom prolonged physical
suffering seems to cancel every social instinct
of kindness; as if, forced to black bread themselves,
they deemed it but equity that each
person coming nigh them should, indirectly,
by some slight or affront, be made to partake
of their fare.

But ere long Captain Delano bethought him
that, indulgent as he was at the first, in judging
the Spaniard, he might not, after all, have
exercised charity enough. At bottom it was
Don Benito's reserve which displeased him;
but the same reserve was shown towards all
but his faithful personal attendant. Even the
formal reports which, according to sea-usage,
were, at stated times, made to him by some
petty underling, either a white, mulatto or
black, he hardly had patience enough to listen
to, without betraying contemptuous aversion.
His manner upon such occasions was, in its

[figure description] Page 126.[end figure description]

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
undermonstrative invalid gliding about, apathetic
and mute, no landsman could have
dreamed that in him was lodged a dictatorship
beyond which, while at sea, there was no earthly
appeal.

Thus, the Spaniard, regarded in his reserve,
seemed the involuntary victim of mental disorder.
But, in fact, his reserve might, in some
degree, have proceeded from design. If so,
then here was evinced the unhealthy climax of
that icy though conscientious policy, more or

[figure description] Page 127.[end figure description]

less adopted by all commanders of large ships,
which, except in signal emergencies, obliterates
alike the manifestation of sway with every
trace of sociality; transforming the man into
a block, or rather into a loaded cannon, which,
until there is call for thunder, has nothing to
say.

Viewing him in this light, it seemed but a
natural token of the perverse habit induced by
a long course of such hard self-restraint, that,
notwithstanding the present condition of his
ship, the Spaniard should still persist in a demeanor,
which, however harmless, or, it may
be, appropriate, in a well-appointed vessel, such
as the San Dominick might have been at the
outset of the voyage, was anything but judicious
now. But the Spaniard, perhaps, thought
that it was with captains as with gods: reserve,
under all events, must still be their cue. But
probably this appearance of slumbering dominion
might have been but an attempted disguise
to conscious imbecility—not deep policy, but
shallow device. But be all this as it might,
whether Don Benito's manner was designed or
not, the more Captain Delano noted its

[figure description] Page 128.[end figure description]

pervading reserve, the less he felt uneasiness at any
particular manifestation of that reserve towards
himself.

Neither were his thoughts taken up by the
captain alone. Wonted to the quiet orderliness
of the sealer's comfortable family of a
crew, the noisy confusion of the San Dominick's
suffering host repeatedly challenged his
eye. Some prominent breaches, not only of
discipline but of decency, were observed. These
Captain Delano could not but ascribe, in the
main, to the absence of those subordinate
deck-officers to whom, along with higher duties,
is intrusted what may be styled the police
department of a populous ship. True, the old
oakum-pickers appeared at times to act the
part of monitorial constables to their countrymen,
the blacks; but though occasionally succeeding
in allaying trifling outbreaks now
and then between man and man, they could
do little or nothing toward establishing general
quiet. The San Dominick was in the condition
of a transatlantic emigrant ship, among
whose multitude of living freight are some
individuals, doubtless, as little troublesome as

[figure description] Page 129.[end figure description]

crates and bales; but the friendly remonstrances
of such with their ruder companions
are of not so much avail as the unfriendly arm
of the mate. What the San Dominick wanted
was, what the emigrant ship has, stern superior
officers. But on these decks not so much
as a fourth-mate was to be seen.

The visitor's curiosity was roused to learn
the particulars of those mishaps which had
brought about such absenteeism, with its consequences;
because, though deriving some inkling
of the voyage from the wails which at the
first moment had greeted him, yet of the details
no clear understanding had been had.
The best account would, doubtless, be given
by the captain. Yet at first the visitor was
loth to ask it, unwilling to provoke some distant
rebuff. But plucking up courage, he at
last accosted Don Benito, renewing the expression
of his benevolent interest, adding, that
did he (Captain Delano) but know the particulars
of the ship's misfortunes, he would, perhaps,
be better able in the end to relieve
them. Would Don Benito favor him with the
whole story.

[figure description] Page 130.[end figure description]

Don Benito faltered; then, like some somnambulist
suddenly interfered with, vacantly
stared at his visitor, and ended by looking
down on the deck. He maintained this posture
so long, that Captain Delano, almost equally
disconcerted, and involuntarily almost as rude,
turned suddenly from him, walking forward to
accost one of the Spanish seamen for the desired
information. But he had hardly gone
five paces, when, with a sort of eagerness, Don
Benito invited him back, regretting his momentary
absence of mind, and professing readiness
to gratify him.

While most part of the story was being
given, the two captains stood on the after part
of the main-deck, a privileged spot, no one
being near but the servant.

“It is now a hundred and ninety days,”
began the Spaniard, in his husky whisper,
“that this ship, well officered and well manned,
with several cabin passengers—some fifty Spaniards
in all—sailed from Buenos Ayres bound
to Lima, with a general cargo, hardware, Paraguay
tea and the like—and,” pointing forward,
“that parcel of negroes, now not more than a

[figure description] Page 131.[end figure description]

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.

[figure description] Page 132.[end figure description]

The Spaniard proceeded, but brokenly and
obscurely, as one in a dream.

—“Oh, my God! rather than pass through
what I have, with joy I would have hailed the
most terrible gales; but—”

His cough returned and with increased violence;
this subsiding, with reddened lips and
closed eyes he fell heavily against his supporter.

“His mind wanders. He was thinking of
the plague that followed the gales,” plaintively
sighed the servant; “my poor, poor master!”
wringing one hand, and with the other
wiping the mouth. “But be patient, Señor,'
again turning to Captain Delano, “these fits
do not last long; master will soon be himself.”

Don Benito reviving, went on; but as this
portion of the story was very brokenly delivered,
the substance only will here be set down.

It appeared that after the ship had been
many days tossed in storms off the Cape, the
scurvy broke out, carrying off numbers of the
whites and blacks. When at last they had
worked round into the Pacific, their spars and
sails were so damaged, and so inadequately

[figure description] Page 133.[end figure description]

handled by the surviving mariners, most of
whom were become invalids, that, unable to
lay her northerly course by the wind, which
was powerful, the unmanageable ship, for successive
days and nights, was blown northwestward,
where the breeze suddenly deserted her,
in unknown waters, to sultry calms. The
absence of the water-pipes now proved as fatal
to life as before their presence had menaced it.
Induced, or at least aggravated, by the more
than scanty allowance of water, a malignant
fever followed the scurvy; with the excessive
heat of the lengthened calm, making such short
work of it as to sweep away, as by billows,
whole families of the Africans, and a yet larger
number, proportionably, of the Spaniards, including,
by a luckless fatality, every remaining
officer on board. Consequently, in the smart
west winds eventually following the calm, the
already rent sails, having to be simply dropped,
not furled, at need, had been gradually reduced
to the beggars' rags they were now. To procure
substitutes for his lost sailors, as well as
supplies of water and sails, the captain, at the
earliest opportunity, had made for Baldivia, the

[figure description] Page 134.[end figure description]

southernmost civilized port of Chili and South
America; but upon nearing the coast the thick
weather had prevented him from so much as
sighting that harbor. Since which period, almost
without a crew, and almost without
canvas and almost without water, and, at intervals,
giving its added dead to the sea, the San
Dominick had been battle-dored about by contrary
winds, inveigled by currents, or grown
weedy in calms. Like a man lost in woods,
more than once she had doubled upon her own
track.

“But throughout these calamities,” huskily
continued Don Benito, painfully turning in the
half embrace of his servant, “I have to thank
those negroes you see, who, though to your
inexperienced eyes appearing unruly, have, indeed,
conducted themselves with less of restlessness
than even their owner could have
thought possible under such circumstances.”

Here he again fell faintly back. Again his
mind wandered; but he rallied, and less obscurely
proceeded.

“Yes, their owner was quite right in assuring
me that no fetters would be needed with

[figure description] Page 135.[end figure description]

his blacks; so that while, as is wont in this
transportation, those negroes have always remained
upon deck—not thrust below, as in the
Guinea-men—they have, also, from the beginning,
been freely permitted to range within
given bounds at their pleasure.”

Once more the faintness returned—his mind
roved—but, recovering, he resumed:

“But it is Babo here to whom, under God, I
owe not only my own preservation, but likewise
to him, chiefly, the merit is due, of pacifying
his more ignorant brethren, when at intervals
tempted to murmurings.”

“Ah, master,” sighed the black, bowing his
face, “don't speak of me; Babo is nothing;
what Babo has done was but duty.”

“Faithful fellow!” cried Captain Delano.
“Don Benito, I envy you such a friend; slave
I cannot call him.”

As master and man stood before him, the
black upholding the white, Captain Delano
could not but bethink him of the beauty of
that relationship which could present such a
spectacle of fidelity on the one hand and confidence
on the other. The scene was

[figure description] Page 136.[end figure description]

heightened by the contrast in dress, denoting their
relative positions. The Spaniard wore a loose
Chili jacket of dark velvet; white small-clothes
and stockings, with silver buckles at the
knee and instep; a high-crowned sombrero, of
fine grass; a slender sword, silver mounted,
hung from a knot in his sash—the last being an
almost invariable adjunct, more for utility than
ornament, of a South American gentleman's
dress to this hour. Excepting when his occasional
nervous contortions brought about disarray,
there was a certain precision in his attire
curiously at variance with the unsightly disorder
around; especially in the belittered
Ghetto, forward of the main-mast, wholly occupied
by the blacks.

The servant wore nothing but wide trowsers,
apparently, from their coarseness and patches,
made out of some old topsail; they were clean,
and confined at the waist by a bit of unstranded
rope, which, with his composed, deprecatory
air at times, made him look something like a
begging friar of St. Francis.

However unsuitable for the time and place,
at least in the blunt-thinking American's eyes,

[figure description] Page 137.[end figure description]

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

[figure description] Page 138.[end figure description]

faulty navigation. Eying Don Benito's small,
yellow hands, he easily inferred that the young
captain had not got into command at the hawsehole,
but the cabin-window; and if so, why
wonder at incompetence, in youth, sickness,
and gentility united?

But drowning criticism in compassion, after
a fresh repetition of his sympathies, Captain
Delano, having heard out his story, not only
engaged, as in the first place, to see Don Benito
and his people supplied in their immediate
bodily needs, but, also, now 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 Conception, there fully to refit for
Lima, her destined port.

Such generosity was not without its effect,
even upon the invalid. His face lighted up;
eager and hectic, he met the honest glance of
his visitor. With gratitude he seemed overcome.

[figure description] Page 139.[end figure description]

“This excitement is bad for master,” whispered
the servant, taking his arm, and with
soothing words gently drawing him aside.

When Don Benito returned, the American
was pained to observe that his hopefulness, like
the sudden kindling in his cheek, was but
febrile and transient.

Ere long, with a joyless mien, looking up
towards the poop, the host invited his guest to
accompany him there, for the benefit of what
little breath of wind might be stirring.

As, during the telling of the story, Captain
Delano had once or twice started at the occasional
cymballing of the hatchet-polishers,
wondering why such an interruption should be
allowed, especially in that part of the ship, and
in the ears of an invalid; and moreover, as the
hatchets had anything but an attractive look,
and the handlers of them still less so, it was,
therefore, to tell the truth, not without some
lurking reluctance, or even shrinking, it may
be, that Captain Delano, with apparent complaisance,
acquiesced in his host's invitation. The
more so, since, with an untimely caprice of
punctilio, rendered distressing by his

[figure description] Page 140.[end figure description]

cadaverous aspect, Don Benito, with Castilian bows,
solemnly insisted upon his guest's preceding him
up the ladder leading to the elevation; where,
one on each side of the last step, sat for armorial
supporters and sentries two of the ominous
file. Gingerly enough stepped good Captain
Delano between them, and in the instant of
leaving them behind, like one running the
gauntlet, he felt an apprehensive twitch in the
calves of his legs.

But when, facing about, he saw the whole
file, like so many organ-grinders, still stupidly
intent on their work, unmindful of everything
beside, he could not but smile at his late
fidgety panic.

Presently, while standing with his host,
looking forward upon the decks below, he was
struck by one of those instances of insubordination
previously alluded to. Three black
boys, with two Spanish boys, were sitting
together on the hatches, scraping a rude wooden
platter, in which some scanty mess had
recently been cooked. Suddenly, one of the
black boys, enraged at a word dropped by one
of his white companions, seized a knife, and,

[figure description] Page 141.[end figure description]

though called to forbear by one of the oakum-pickers,
struck the lad over the head, inflicting
a gash from which blood flowed.

In amazement, Captain Delano inquired what
this meant. To which the pale Don Benito
dully muttered, that it was merely the sport
of the lad.

“Pretty serious sport, truly,” rejoined Captain
Delano. “Had such a thing happened on
board the Bachelor's Delight, instant punishment
would have followed.”

At these words the Spaniard turned upon
the American one of his sudden, staring, half-lunatic
looks; then, relapsing into his torpor,
answered, “Doubtless, doubtless, Señor.”

Is it, thought Captain Delano, that this hapless
man is one of those paper captains I've
known, who by policy wink at what by power
they cannot put down? I know no sadder
sight than a commander who has little of command
but the name.

“I should think, Don Benito,” he now said,
glancing towards the oakum-picker who had
sought to interfere with the boys, “that you
would find it advantageous to keep all your

[figure description] Page 142.[end figure description]

blacks employed, especially the younger ones,
no matter at what useless task, and no matter
what happens to the ship. Why, even with
my little band, I find such a course indispensable.
I once kept a crew on my quarter-deck
thrumming mats for my cabin, when, for three
days, I had given up my ship—mats, men, and
all—for a speedy loss, owing to the violence
of a gale, in which we could do nothing but
helplessly drive before it.”

“Doubtless, doubtless,” muttered Don Benito.

“But,” continued Captain Delano, again
glancing upon the oakum-pickers and then at
the hatchet-polishers, near by, “I see you keep
some, at least, of your host employed.”

“Yes,” was again the vacant response.

“Those old men there, shaking their pows
from their pulpits,” continued Captain Delano,
pointing to the oakum-pickers, “seem to act
the part of old dominies to the rest, little
heeded as their admonitions are at times. Is
this voluntary on their part, Don Benito, or
have you appointed them shepherds to your
flock of black sheep?”

[figure description] Page 143.[end figure description]

“What posts they fill, I appointed them,”
rejoined the Spaniard, in an acrid tone, as if
resenting some supposed satiric reflection.

“And these others, these Ashantee conjurors
here,” continued Captain Delano, rather uneasily
eying the brandished steel of the hatchet-polishers,
where, in spots, it had been brought
to a shine, “this seems a curious business they
are at, Don Benito?”

“In the gales we met,” answered the Spaniard,
“what of our general cargo was not
thrown overboard was much damaged by the
brine. Since coming into calm weather, I have
had several cases of knives and hatchets daily
brought up for overhauling and cleaning.”

“A prudent idea, Don Benito. You are
part owner of ship and cargo, I presume; but
none of the slaves, perhaps?”

`I am owner of all you see,” impatiently
returned Don Benito, “except the main company
of blacks, who belonged to my late friend,
Alexandro Aranda.”

As he mentioned this name, his air was
heart-broken; his knees shook; his servant
supported him.

[figure description] Page 144.[end figure description]

Thinking he divined the cause of such unusual
emotion, to confirm his surmise, Captain
Delano, after a pause, said: “And may I ask,
Don Benito, whether—since awhile ago you
spoke of some cabin passengers—the friend,
whose loss so afflicts you, at the outset of the
voyage accompanied his blacks?”

“Yes.”

“But died of the fever?”

`Died of the fever. Oh, could I but—”

Again quivering, the Spaniard paused.

“Pardon me,” said Captain Delano, lowly,
“but I think that, by a sympathetic experience,
I conjecture, Don Benito, what it is that
gives the keener edge to your grief. It was
once my hard fortune to lose, at sea, a dear
friend, my own brother, then supercargo. Assured
of the welfare of his spirit, its departure
I could have borne like a man; but that honest
eye, that honest hand—both of which had so
often met mine—and that warm heart; all,
all—like scraps to the dogs—to throw all to
the sharks! It was then I vowed never to
have for fellow-voyager a man I loved, unless,
unbeknown to him, I had provided every

[figure description] Page 145.[end figure description]

requisite, in case of a fatality, for embalming his
mortal part for interment on shore. Were
your friend's remains now on board this ship,
Don Benito, not thus strangely would the
mention of his name affect you.”

“On board this ship?” echoed the Spaniard.
Then, with horrified gestures, as directed against
some spectre, he unconsciously fell into the
ready arms of his attendant, who, with a silent
appeal toward Captain Delano, seemed beseeching
him not again to broach a theme so
unspeakably distressing to his master.

This poor fellow now, thought the pained
American, is the victim of that sad superstition
which associates goblins with the deserted
body of man, as ghosts with an abandoned
house. How unlike are we made! What to
me, in like case, would have been a solemn
satisfaction, the bare suggestion, even, terrifies
the Spaniard into this trance. Poor Alexandro
Aranda! what would you say could you here
see your friend—who, on former voyages,
when you, for months, were left behind, has,
I dare say, often longed, and longed, for one
peep at you—now transported with terror at

[figure description] Page 146.[end figure description]

the least thought of having you anyway nigh
him.

At this moment, with a dreary grave-yard
toll, betokening a flaw, the ship's forecastle
bell, smote by one of the grizzled oakum-pickers,
proclaimed ten o'clock, through the leaden
calm; when Captain Delano's attention was
caught by the moving figure of a gigantic
black, emerging from the general crowd below,
and slowly advancing towards the elevated
poop. An iron collar was about his neck,
from which depended a chain, thrice wound
round his body; the terminating links padlocked
together at a broad band of iron, his girdle.

“How like a mute Atufal moves,” murmured
the servant.

The black mounted the steps of the poop,
and, like a brave prisoner, brought up to receive
sentence, stood in unquailing muteness
before Don Benito, now recovered from his
attack.

At the first glimpse of his approach, Don
Benito had started, a resentful shadow swept
over his face; and, as with the sudden memory
of bootless rage, his white lips glued together.

[figure description] Page 147.[end figure description]

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.

[figure description] Page 148.[end figure description]

“Excuse me, Don Benito,” said Captain Delano,
“but this scene surprises me; what means
it, pray?”

“It means that that negro alone, of all the
band, has given me peculiar cause of offense.
I have put him in chains; I —”

Here he paused; his hand to his head, as if
there were a swimming there, or a sudden bewilderment
of memory had come over him; but
meeting his servant's kindly glance seemed reassured,
and proceeded:—

“I could not scourge such a form. But I
told him he must ask my pardon. As yet he
has not. At my command, every two hours he
stands before me.”

“And how long has this been?”

“Some sixty days.”

“And obedient in all else? And respectful?”

“Yes.”

“Upon my conscience, then,” exclaimed Captain
Delano, impulsively, “he has a royal spirit
in him, this fellow.”

“He may have some right to it,” bitterly returned
Don Benito, “he says he was king in his
own land.”

[figure description] Page 149.[end figure description]

“Yes,” said the servant, entering a word,
“those slits in Atufal's ears once held wedges
of gold; but poor Babo here, in his own land,
was only a poor slave; a black man's slave was
Babo, who now is the white's.”

Somewhat annoyed by these conversational
familiarities, Captain Delano turned curiously
upon the attendant, then glanced inquiringly
at his master; but, as if long wonted to these
little informalities, neither master nor man
seemed to understand him.

“What, pray, was Atufal's offense, Don
Benito?” asked Captain Delano; “if it was
not something very serious, take a fool's advice,
and, in view of his general docility, as well as
in some natural respect for his spirit, remit him
his penalty.”

“No, no, master never will do that,” here
murmured the servant to himself, “proud Atufal
must first ask master's pardon. The slave
there carries the padlock, but master here
carries the key.”

His attention thus directed, Captain Delano
now noticed for the first, that, suspended by a
slender silken cord, from Don Benito's neck,

[figure description] Page 150.[end figure description]

hung a key. At once, from the servant's muttered
syllables, divining the key's purpose, he
smiled and said:—“So, Don Benito—padlock
and key—significant symbols, truly.”

Biting his lip, Don Benito faltered.

Though the remark of Captain Delano, a
man of such native simplicity as to be incapable
of satire or irony, had been dropped in
playful allusion to the Spaniard's singularly
evidenced lordship over the black; yet the
hypochondriac seemed some way to have taken
it as a malicious reflection upon his confessed
inability thus far to break down, at least, on a
verbal summons, the entrenched will of the
slave. Deploring this supposed misconception,
yet despairing of correcting it, Captain Delano
shifted the subject; but finding his companion
more than ever withdrawn, as if still sourly
digesting the lees of the presumed affront
above-mentioned, by-and-by Captain Delano
likewise became less talkative, oppressed,
against his own will, by what seemed the secret
vindictiveness of the morbidly sensitive Spaniard.
But the good sailor, himself of a quite
contrary disposition, refrained, on his part,

[figure description] Page 151.[end figure description]

alike from the appearance as from the feeling
of resentment, and if silent, was only so from
contagion.

Presently the Spaniard, assisted by his servant
somewhat discourteously crossed over from
his guest; a procedure which, sensibly enough,
might have been allowed to pass for idle caprice
of ill-humor, had not master and man,
lingering round the corner of the elevated
skylight, began whispering together in low
voices. This was unpleasing. And more; the
moody air of the Spaniard, which at times had
not been without a sort of valetudinarian stateliness,
now seemed anything but dignified;
while the menial familiarity of the servant lost
its original charm of simple-hearted attachment.

In his embarrassment, the visitor turned his
face to the other side of the ship. By so doing,
his glance accidentally fell on a young
Spanish sailor, a coil of rope in his hand, just
stepped from the deck to the first round of
the mizzen-rigging. Perhaps the man would
not have been particularly noticed, were it
not that, during his ascent to one of the yards,

[figure description] Page 152.[end figure description]

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 illbreeding
in the Spanish captain were unaccountable,
except on one of two suppositions—
innocent lunacy, or wicked imposture.

But the first idea, though it might naturally
have occurred to an indifferent observer, and,
in some respect, had not hitherto been wholly
a stranger to Captain Delano's mind, yet, now
that, in an incipient way, he began to regard
the stranger's conduct something in the light
of an intentional affront, of course the idea of
lunacy was virtually vacated. But if not a
lunatic, what then? Under the circumstances,

[figure description] Page 153.[end figure description]

would a gentleman, nay, any honest boor, act
the part now acted by his host? The man was
an impostor. Some low-born adventurer, masquerading
as an oceanic grandee; yet so
ignorant of the first requisites of mere gentlemanhood
as to be betrayed into the present
remarkable indecorum. That strange ceremoniousness,
too, at other times evinced, seemed not
uncharacteristic of one playing a part above
his real level. Benito Cereno—Don Benito
Cereno—a sounding name. One, too, at that
period, not unknown, in the surname, to 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

[figure description] Page 154.[end figure description]

the degree of simulating mortal disease, the
craft of some tricksters had been known to
attain. To think that, under the aspect of infantile
weakness, the most savage energies
might be couched—those velvets of the Spaniard
but the silky paw to his fangs.

From no train of thought did these fancies
come; not from within, but from without;
suddenly, too, and in one throng, like hoar
frost; yet as soon to vanish as the mild sun of
Captain Delano's good-nature regained its meridian.

Glancing over once more towards his host—
whose side-face, revealed above the skylight,
was now turned towards him—he was struck
by the profile, whose clearness of cut was refined
by the thinness, incident to ill-health, as
well as ennobled about the chin by the beard.
Away with suspicion. He was a true off-shoot
of a true hidalgo Cereno.

Relieved by these and other better thoughts,
the visitor, lightly humming a tune, now began
indifferently pacing the poop, so as not to betray
to Don Benito that he had at all mistrusted
incivility, much less duplicity; for such

[figure description] Page 155.[end figure description]

mistrust would yet be proved illusory, and by
the event; though, for the present, the circumstance
which had provoked that distrust remained
unexplained. But when that little
mystery should have been cleared up, Captain
Delano thought he might extremely regret it,
did he allow Don Benito to become aware that
he had indulged in ungenerous surmises. In
short, to the Spaniard's black-letter text, it was
best, for awhile, to leave open margin.

Presently, his pale face twitching and overcast,
the Spaniard, still supported by his attendant,
moved over towards his guest, when, with
even more than his usual embarrassment, and a
strange sort of intriguing intonation in his
husky whisper, the following conversation began:—

“Señor, may I ask how long you have lain
at this isle?”

“Oh, but a day or two, Don Benito.”

“And from what port are you last?”

“Canton.”

“And there, Señor, you exchanged your sealskins
for teas and silks, I think you said?”

“Yes. Silks, mostly.”

[figure description] Page 156.[end figure description]

“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, Señor?”

Captain Delano slightly started, but answered—

“About five-and-twenty, all told.”

“And at present, Señor, all on board, I suppose?”

“All on board, Don Benito,” replied the
Captain, now with satisfaction.

“And will be to-night, Señor?”

At this last question, following so many pertinacious
ones, for the soul of him Captain
Delano could not but look very earnestly at
the questioner, who, instead of meeting the
glance, with every token of craven discomposure
dropped his eyes to the deck; presenting
an unworthy contrast to his servant, who, just
then, was kneeling at his feet, adjusting a loose
shoe-buckle; his disengaged face meantime,

[figure description] Page 157.[end figure description]

with humble curiosity, turned openly up into
his master's downcast one.

The Spaniard, still with a guilty shuffle, repeated
his question:

“And—and will be to-night, Señor?”

“Yes, for aught I know,” returned Captain
Delano—“but nay,” rallying himself into fearless
truth, “some of them talked of going off
on another fishing party about midnight.”

“Your ships generally go—go more or less
armed, I believe, Señor?”

“Oh, a six-pounder or two, in case of emergency,”
was the intrepidly indifferent reply,
“with a small stock of muskets, sealing-spears,
and cutlasses, you know.”

As he thus responded, Captain Delano again
glanced at Don Benito, but the latter's eyes
were averted; while abruptly and awkwardly
shifting the subject, he made some peevish allusion
to the calm, and then, without apology,
once more, with his attendant, withdrew to
the opposite bulwarks, where the whispering
was resumed.

At this moment, and ere Captain Delano
could cast a cool thought upon what had just

[figure description] Page 158.[end figure description]

passed, the young Spanish sailor, before mentioned,
was seen descending from the rigging.
In act of stooping over to spring inboard to
the deck, his voluminous, unconfined frock, or
shirt, of coarse woolen, much spotted with
tar, opened out far down the chest, revealing
a soiled under garment of what seemed the
finest linen, edged, about the neck, with a
narrow blue ribbon, sadly faded and worn. At
this moment the young sailor's eye was again
fixed on the whisperers, and Captain Delano
thought he observed a lurking significance in
it, as if silent signs, of some Freemason sort,
had that instant been interchanged.

This once more impelled his own glance in
the direction of Don Benito, and, as before,
he could not but infer that himself formed the
subject of the conference. He paused. The
sound of the hatchet-polishing fell on his ears.
He cast another swift side-look at the two.
They had the air of conspirators. In connection
with the late questionings, and the incident
of the young sailor, these things now
begat such return of involuntary suspicion, that
the singular guilelessness of the American could

[figure description] Page 159.[end figure description]

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 privycounselor,
in fact.”

Upon this, the servant looked up with a
good-natured grin, but the master started as
from a venomous bite. It was a moment or
two before the Spaniard sufficiently recovered
himself to reply; which he did, at last, with
cold constraint:—“Yes, Señor, I have trust in
Babo.”

Here Babo, changing his previous grin of
mere animal humor into an intelligent smile,
not ungratefully eyed his master.

Finding that the Spaniard now stood silent
and reserved, as if involuntarily, or purposely
giving hint that his guest's proximity was inconvenient
just then, Captain Delano, unwilling
to appear uncivil even to incivility itself,
made some trivial remark and moved off; again
and again turning over in his mind the mysterious
demeanor of Don Benito Cereno.

He had descended from the poop, and,
wrapped in thought, was passing near a dark

[figure description] Page 160.[end figure description]

hatchway, leading down into the steerage,
when, perceiving motion there, he looked to
see what moved. The same instant there was
a sparkle in the shadowy hatchway, and he
saw one of the Spanish sailors, prowling there
hurriedly placing his hand in the bosom of his
frock, as if hiding something. Before the man
could have been certain who it was that was
passing, he slunk below out of sight. But
enough was seen of him to make it sure that
he was the same young sailor before noticed in
the rigging.

What was that which so sparkled? thought
Captain Delano. It was no lamp—no match—
no live coal. Could it have been a jewel?
But how come sailors with jewels?—or with
silk-trimmed under-shirts either? Has he been
robbing the trunks of the dead cabin-passengers?
But if so, he would hardly wear one of
the stolen articles on board ship here. Ah, ah—
if, now, that was, indeed, a secret sign I saw
passing between this suspicious fellow and his
captain awhile since; if I could only be certain
that, in my uneasiness, my senses did not deceive
me, then—

[figure description] Page 161.[end figure description]

Here, passing from one suspicious thing to
another, his mind revolved the strange questions
put to him concerning his ship.

By a curious coincidence, as each point was
recalled, the black wizards of Ashantee would
strike up with their hatchets, as in ominous
comment on the white stranger's thoughts.
Pressed by such enigmas and portents, it would
have been almost against nature, had not, even
into the least distrustful heart, some ugly misgivings
obtruded.

Observing the ship, now helplessly fallen
into a current, with enchanted sails, drifting
with increased rapidity seaward; and noting
that, from a lately intercepted projection of the
land, the sealer was hidden, the stout mariner
began to quake at thoughts which he barely
durst confess to himself. Above all, he began
to feel a ghostly dread of Don Benito. And
yet, when he roused himself, dilated his chest,
felt himself strong on his legs, and coolly considered
it—what did all these phantoms amount
to?

Had the Spaniard any sinister scheme, it
must have reference not so much to him (

[figure description] Page 162.[end figure description]

Captain Delano) as to his ship (the Bachelor's
Delight). Hence the present drifting away of
the one ship from the other, instead of favoring
any such possible scheme, was, for the time, at
least, opposed to it. Clearly any suspicion,
combining such contradictions, must need be
delusive. Beside, was it not absurd to think
of a vessel in distress—a vessel by sickness
almost dismanned of her crew—a vessel whose
inmates were parched for water—was it not a
thousand times absurd that such a craft should,
at present, be of a piratical character; or her
commander, either for himself or those under
him, cherish any desire but for speedy relief
and refreshment? But then, might not general
distress, and thirst in particular, be affected?
And might not that same undiminished
Spanish crew, alleged to have perished off to a
remnant, be at that very moment lurking in
the hold? On heart-broken pretense of entreating
a cup of cold water, fiends in human
form had got into lonely dwellings, nor retired
until a dark deed had been done. And among
the Malay pirates, it was no unusual thing to
lure ships after them into their treacherous

[figure description] Page 163.[end figure description]

harbors, or entice boarders from a declared
enemy at sea, by the spectacle of thinly manned
or vacant decks, beneath which prowled a
hundred spears with yellow arms ready to
upthrust them through the mats. Not that
Captain Delano had entirely credited such
things. He had heard of them—and now, as
stories, they recurred. The present destination
of the ship was the anchorage. There
she would be near his own vessel. Upon gaining
that vicinity, might not the San Dominick,
like a slumbering volcano, suddenly let loose
energies now hid?

He recalled the Spaniard's manner while
telling his story. There was a gloomy hesitancy
and subterfuge about it. It was just the
manner of one making up his tale for evil
purposes, as he goes. But if that story was
not true, what was the truth? That the ship
had unlawfully come into the Spaniard's possession?
But in many of its details, especially
in reference to the more calamitous parts, such
as the fatalities among the seamen, the consequent
prolonged beating about, the past sufferings
from obstinate calms, and still continued

[figure description] Page 164.[end figure description]

suffering from thirst; in all these points, as
well as others, Don Benito's story had corroborated
not only the wailing ejaculations of
the indiscriminate multitude, white and black,
but likewise—what seemed impossible to be
counterfeit—by the very expression and play
of every human feature, which Captain Delano
saw. If Don Benito's story was, throughout,
an invention, then every soul on board, down
to the youngest negress, was his carefully
drilled recruit in the plot: an incredible inference.
And yet, if there was ground for mistrusting
his veracity, that inference was a
legitimate one.

But those questions of the Spaniard. There,
indeed, one might pause. Did they not seem
put with much the same object with which
the burglar or assassin, by day-time, reconnoitres
the walls of a house? But, with ill purposes,
to solicit such information openly of the
chief person endangered, and so, in effect, setting
him on his guard; how unlikely a procedure
was that? Absurd, then, to suppose
that those questions had been prompted by
evil designs. Thus, the same conduct, which,

[figure description] Page 165.[end figure description]

in this instance, had raised the alarm, served
to dispel it. In short, scarce any suspicion or
uneasiness, however apparently reasonable at
the time, which was not now, with equal apparent
reason, dismissed.

At last he began to laugh at his former forebodings;
and laugh at the strange ship for,
in its aspect, someway siding with them, as
it were; and laugh, too, at the odd-looking
blacks, particularly those old scissors-grinders,
the Ashantees; and those bed-ridden old knitting
women, the oakum-pickers; and almost at
the dark Spaniard himself, the central hobgoblin
of all.

For the rest, whatever in a serious way
seemed enigmatical, was now good-naturedly
explained away by the thought that, for the
most part, the poor invalid scarcely knew what
he was about; either sulking in black vapors,
or putting idle questions without sense or object.
Evidently for the present, the man was
not fit to be intrusted with the ship. On
some benevolent plea withdrawing the command
from him, Captain Delano would yet
have to send her to Conception, in charge of

[figure description] Page 166.[end figure description]

his second mate, a worthy person and good
navigator—a plan not more convenient for the
San Dominick than for Don Benito; for, relieved
from all anxiety, keeping wholly to his
cabin, the sick man, under the good nursing
of his servant, would, probably, by the end of
the passage, be in a measure restored to health,
and with that he should also be restored to
authority.

Such were the American's thoughts. They
were tranquilizing. There was a difference
between the idea of Don Benito's darkly
pre-ordaining Captain Delano's fate, and Captain
Delano's lightly arranging Don Benito's.
Nevertheless, it was not without something of
relief that the good seaman presently perceived
his whale-boat in the distance. Its absence
had been prolonged by unexpected detention
at the sealer's side, as well as its returning trip
lengthened by the continual recession of the
goal.

The advancing speck was observed by the
blacks. Their shouts attracted the attention
of Don Benito, who, with a return of courtesy,
approaching Captain Delano, expressed

[figure description] Page 167.[end figure description]

satisfaction at the coming of some supplies,
slight and temporary as they must necessarily
prove.

Captain Delano responded; but while doing
so, his attention was drawn to something passing
on the deck below: among the crowd
climbing the landward bulwarks, anxiously
watching the coming boat, two blacks, to all
appearances accidentally incommoded by one
of the sailors, violently pushed him aside, which
the sailor someway resenting, they dashed him
to the deck, despite the earnest cries of the
oakum-pickers.

“Don Benito,” said Captain Delano quickly,
“do you see what is going on there? Look!”

But, seized by his cough, the Spaniard staggered,
with both hands to his face, on the point
of falling. Captain Delano would have supported
him, but the servant was more alert,
who, with one hand sustaining his master, with
the other applied the cordial. Don Benito restored,
the black withdrew his support, slipping
aside a little, but dutifully remaining within
call of a whisper. Such discretion was here
evinced as quite wiped away, in the visitor's

[figure description] Page 168.[end figure description]

eyes, any blemish of impropriety which might
have attached to the attendant, from the indecorous
conferences before mentioned; showing,
too, that if the servant were to blame, it might
be more the master's fault than his own, since,
when left to himself, he could conduct thus
well.

His glance called away from the spectacle of
disorder to the more pleasing one before him,
Captain Delano could not avoid again congratulating
his host upon possessing such a servant,
who, though perhaps a little too forward now
and then, must upon the whole be invaluable
to one in the invalid's situation.

“Tell me, Don Benito,” he added, with a
smile—“I should like to have your man here,
myself—what will you take for him? Would
fifty doubloons be any object?”

“Master wouldn't part with Babo for a
thousand doubloons,” murmured the black,
overhearing the offer, and taking it in earnest,
and, with the strange vanity of a faithful slave,
appreciated by his master, scorning to hear so
paltry a valuation put upon him by a stranger.
But Don Benito, apparently hardly yet

[figure description] Page 169.[end figure description]

completely restored, and again interrupted by his
cough, made but some broken reply.

Soon his physical distress became so great,
affecting his mind, too, apparently, that, as
if to screen the sad spectacle, the servant
gently conducted his master below.

Left to himself, the American, to while
away the time till his boat should arrive,
would have pleasantly accosted some one of
the few Spanish seamen he saw; but recalling
something that Don Benito had said touching
their ill conduct, he refrained; as a shipmaster
indisposed to countenance cowardice
or unfaithfulness in seamen.

While, with these thoughts, standing with eye
directed forward towards that handful of sailors,
suddenly he thought that one or two of
them returned the glance and with a sort of
meaning. He rubbed his eyes, and looked
again; but again seemed to see the same
thing. Under a new form, but more obscure
than any previous one, the old suspicions recurred,
but, in the absence of Don Benito,
with less of panic than before. Despite the bad
account given of the sailors, Captain Delano

[figure description] Page 170.[end figure description]

resolved forthwith to accost one of them. Descending
the poop, he made his way through
the blacks, his movement drawing a queer
cry from the oakum-pickers, prompted by
whom, the negroes, twitching each other aside,
divided before him; but, as if curious to see
what was the object of this deliberate visit
to their Ghetto, closing in behind, in tolerable
order, followed the white stranger up.
His progress thus proclaimed as by mounted
kings-at-arms, and escorted as by a Caffre
guard of honor, Captain Delano, assuming a
good-humored, off-handed air, continued to
advance; now and then saying a blithe word
to the negroes, and his eye curiously surveying
the white faces, here and there sparsely
mixed in with the blacks, like stray white
pawns venturously involved in the ranks of
the chess-men opposed.

While thinking which of them to select for
his purpose, he chanced to observe a sailor
seated on the deck engaged in tarring the strap
of a large block, a circle of blacks squatted
round him inquisitively eying the process.

The mean employment of the man was in

[figure description] Page 171.[end figure description]

contrast with something superior in his figure.
His hand, black with continually thrusting
it into the tar-pot held for him by a
negro, seemed not naturally allied to his face,
a face which would have been a very fine one
but for its haggardness. Whether this haggardness
had aught to do with criminality,
could not be determined; since, as intense
heat and cold, though unlike, produce like
sensations, so innocence and guilt, when,
through casual association with mental pain,
stamping any visible impress, use one seal—
a hacked one.

Not again that this reflection occurred to
Captain Delano at the time, charitable man
as he was. Rather another idea. Because observing
so singular a haggardness combined
with a dark eye, averted as in trouble and
shame, and then again recalling Don Benito's
confessed ill opinion of his crew, insensibly he
was operated upon by certain general notions
which, while disconnecting pain and abashment
from virtue, invariably link them with
vice.

If, indeed, there by any wickedness on board

[figure description] Page 172.[end figure description]

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 weatherbeaten
visage, much as if a grizzly bear, instead
of growling and biting, should simper
and cast sheep's eyes. He was asked several

[figure description] Page 173.[end figure description]

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

[figure description] Page 174.[end figure description]

ill desert. No doubt, when he saw me coming,
he dreaded lest I, apprised by his Captain
of the crew's general misbehavior, came with
sharp words for him, and so down with his
head. And yet—and yet, now that I think of
it, that very old fellow, if I err not, was one of
those who seemed so earnestly eying me here
awhile since. Ah, these currents spin one's
head round almost as much as they do the ship.
Ha, there now's a pleasant sort of sunny sight;
quite sociable, too.

His attention had been drawn to a slumbering
negress, partly disclosed through the lacework
of some rigging, lying, with youthful
limbs carelessly disposed, under the lee of the
bulwarks, like a doe in the shade of a woodland
rock. Sprawling at her lapped breasts,
was her wide-awake fawn, stark naked, its
black little body half lifted from the deck,
crosswise with its dam's; its hands, like two
paws, clambering upon her; its mouth and
nose ineffectually rooting to get at the mark;
and meantime giving a vexatious half-grunt,
blending with the composed snore of the
negress.

[figure description] Page 175.[end figure description]

The uncommon vigor of the child at length
roused the mother. She started up, at a distance
facing Captain Delano. But as if not at
all concerned at the attitude in which she had
been caught, delightedly she caught the child
up, with maternal transports, covering it with
kisses.

There's naked nature, now; pure tenderness
and love, thought Captain Delano,
well pleased.

This incident prompted him to remark the
other negresses more particularly than before.
He was gratified with their manners: like most
uncivilized women, they seemed at once tender
of heart and tough of constitution; equally
ready to die for their infants or fight for
them. Unsophisticated as leopardesses; loving
as doves. Ah! thought Captain Delano, these,
perhaps, are some of the very women whom
Ledyard saw in Africa, and gave such a noble
account of.

These natural sights somehow insensibly
deepened his confidence and ease. At last he
looked to see how his boat was getting on;
but it was still pretty remote. He turned to

[figure description] Page 176.[end figure description]

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 mizzenchains,
he clambered his way into the starboard
quarter-gallery—one of those abandoned Venetian-looking
water-balconies previously mentioned—
retreats cut off from the deck. As his
foot pressed the half-damp, half-dry sea-mosses
matting the place, and a chance phantom cats-paw—
an islet of breeze, unheralded, unfollowed—
as this ghostly cats paw came fanning his
cheek; as his glance fell upon the row of small,
round dead-lights—all closed like coppered
eyes of the coffined—and the state-cabin door,
once connecting with the gallery, even as the
dead-lights had once looked out upon it, but
now calked fast like a sarcophagus lid; and to a
purple-black tarred-over, panel, threshold, and
post; and he bethought him of the time, when
that state-cabin and this state-balcony had
heard the voices of the Spanish king's officers,
and the forms of the Lima viceroy's daughters
had perhaps leaned where he stood—as these

[figure description] Page 177.[end figure description]

and other images flitted through his mind, as
the cats-paw through the calm, gradually he
felt rising a dreamy inquietude, like that of one
who alone on the prairie feels unrest from the
repose of the noon.

He leaned against the carved balustrade,
again looking off toward his boat; but found
his eye falling upon the ribbon grass, trailing
along the ship's water-line, straight as a border
of green box; and parterres of sea-weed, broad
ovals and crescents, floating nigh and far, with
what seemed long formal alleys between,
crossing the terraces of swells, and sweeping
round as if leading to the grottoes below. And
overhanging all was the balustrade by his arm,
which, partly stained with pitch and partly
embossed with moss, seemed the charred ruin
of some summer-house in a grand garden long
running to waste.

Trying to break one charm, he was but becharmed
anew. Though upon the wide sea, he
seemed in some far inland country; prisoner in
some deserted château, left to stare at empty
grounds, and peer out at vague roads, where
never wagon or wayfarer passed.

[figure description] Page 178.[end figure description]

But these enchantments were a little disenchanted
as his eye fell on the corroded main-chains.
Of an ancient style, massy and rusty
in link, shackle and bolt, they seemed even
more fit for the ship's present business than the
one for which she had been built.

Presently he thought something moved nigh
the chains. He rubbed his eyes, and looked
hard. Groves of rigging were about the chains;
and there, peering from behind a great stay,
like an Indian from behind a hemlock, a Spanish
sailor, a marlingspike in his hand, was
seen, who made what seemed an imperfect
gesture towards the balcony, but immediately
as if alarmed by some advancing step along the
deck within, vanished into the recesses of the
hempen forest, like a poacher.

What meant this? Something the man had
sought to communicate, unbeknown to any
one, even to his captain. Did the secret involve
aught unfavorable to his captain? Were
those previous misgivings of Captain Delano's
about to be verified? Or, in his haunted mood
at the moment, had some random, unintentional
motion of the man, while busy with the

[figure description] Page 179.[end figure description]

stay, as if repairing it, been mistaken for a
significant beckoning?

Not unbewildered, again he gazed off for his
boat. But it was temporarily hidden by a
rocky spur of the isle. As with some eagerness
he bent forward, watching for the first
shooting view of its beak, the balustrade gave
way before him like charcoal. Had he not
clutched an outreaching rope he would have
fallen into the sea. The crash, though feeble,
and the fall, though hollow, of the rotten fragments,
must have been overheard. He glanced
up. With sober curiosity peering down upon
him was one of the old oakum-pickers, slipped
from his perch to an outside boom; while below
the old negro, and, invisible to him, reconnoitering
from a port-hole like a fox from the
mouth of its den, crouched the Spanish sailor
again. From something suddenly suggested
by the man's air, the mad idea now darted into
Captain Delano's mind, that Don Benito's plea
of indisposition, in withdrawing below, was
but a pretense: that he was engaged there
maturing his plot, of which the sailor, by some
means gaining an inkling, had a mind to warn

[figure description] Page 180.[end figure description]

the stranger against; incited, it may be, by
gratitude for a kind word on first boarding the
ship. Was it from foreseeing some possible
interference like this, that Don Benito had, beforehand,
given such a bad character of his
sailors, while praising the negroes; though,
indeed, the former seemed as docile as the
latter the contrary? The whites, too, by
nature, were the shrewder race. A man with
some evil design, would he not be likely to
speak well of that stupidity which was blind
to his depravity, and malign that intelligence
from which it might not be hidden? Not unlikely,
perhaps. But if the whites had dark
secrets concerning Don Benito, could then Don
Benito be any way in complicity with the
blacks? But they were too stupid. Besides,
who ever heard of a white so far a renegade as
to apostatize from his very species almost, by
leaguing in against it with negroes? These
difficulties recalled former ones. Lost in their
mazes, Captain Delano, who had now regained
the deck, was uneasily advancing along it,
when he observed a new face; an aged sailor
seated cross-legged near the main hatchway

[figure description] Page 181.[end figure description]

His skin was shrunk up with wrinkles like a
pelican's empty pouch; his hair frosted; his
countenance grave and composed. His hands
were full of ropes, which he was working into
a large knot. Some blacks were about him
obligingly dipping the strands for him, here
and there, as the exigencies of the operation
demanded.

Captain Delano crossed over to him, and
stood in silence surveying the knot; his mind,
by a not uncongenial transition, passing from
its own entanglements to those of the hemp.
For intricacy, such a knot he had never seen in
an American ship, nor indeed any other. The
old man looked like an Egyptian priest, making
Gordian knots for the temple of Ammon. The
knot seemed a combination of double-bowline-knot,
treble-crown-knot, back-handed-wellknot,
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.

[figure description] Page 182.[end figure description]

“So it seems; but what is it for?”

“For some one else to undo,” muttered back
the old man, plying his fingers harder than
ever, the knot being now nearly completed.

While Captain Delano stood watching him,
suddenly the old man threw the knot towards
him, saying in broken English—the first heard
in the ship—something to this effect: “Undo
it, cut it, quick.” It was said lowly, but with
such condensation of rapidity, that the long,
slow words in Spanish, which had preceded
and followed, almost operated as covers to the
brief English between.

For a moment, knot in hand, and knot in
head, Captain Delano stood mute; while, without
further heeding him, the old man was now
intent upon other ropes. Presently there was
a slight stir behind Captain Delano. Turning,
he saw the chained negro, Atufal, standing
quietly there. The next moment the old
sailor rose, muttering, and, followed by his
subordinate negroes, removed to the forward
part of the ship, where in the crowd he disappeared.

An elderly negro, in a clout like an infant's,

[figure description] Page 183.[end figure description]

and with a pepper and salt head, and a kind of
attorney air, now approached Captain Delano.
In tolerable Spanish, and with a good-natured,
knowing wink, he informed him that the old
knotter was simple-witted, but harmless;
often playing his odd tricks. The negro concluded
by begging the knot, for of course the
stranger would not care to be troubled with it.
Unconsciously, it was handed to him. With a
sort of congé, the negro received it, and, turning
his back, ferreted into it like a detective
custom-house officer after smuggled laces.
Soon, with some African word, equivalent to
pshaw, he tossed the knot overboard.

All this is very queer now, thought Captain
Delano, with a qualmish sort of emotion; but,
as one feeling incipient sea-sickness, he strove,
by ignoring the symptoms, to get rid of the
malady. Once more he looked off for his boat.
To his delight, it was now again in view, leaving
the rocky spur astern.

The sensation here experienced, after at first
relieving his uneasiness, with unforeseen efficacy
soon began to remove it. The less distant
sight of that well-known boat—showing it, not

[figure description] Page 184.[end figure description]

as before, half blended with the haze, but with
outline defined, so that its individuality, like a
man's, was manifest; that boat, Rover by name,
which, though now in strange seas, had often
pressed the beach of Captain Delano's home,
and, brought to its threshold for repairs, had
familiarly lain there, as a Newfoundland dog;
the sight of that household boat evoked a
thousand trustful associations, which, contrasted
with previous suspicions, filled him not only
with lightsome confidence, but somehow with
half humorous self-reproaches at his former
lack of it.

“What, I, Amasa Delano—Jack of the
Beach, as they called me when a lad—I, Amasa;
the same that, duck-satchel in hand, used to
paddle along the water-side to the school-house
made from the old hulk—I, little Jack of the
Beach, that used to go berrying with cousin
Nat and the rest; I to be murdered here at the
ends of the earth, on board a haunted pirateship
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

[figure description] Page 185.[end figure description]

are a child indeed; a child of the second childhood,
old boy; you are beginning to dote and
drule, I'm afraid.”

Light of heart and foot, he stepped aft, and
there was met by Don Benito's servant, who,
with a pleasing expression, responsive to his
own present feelings, informed him that his
master had recovered from the effects of his
coughing fit, and had just ordered him to go
present his compliments to his good guest,
Don Amasa, and say that he (Don Benito)
would soon have the happiness to rejoin him.

There now, do you mark that? again thought
Captain Delano, walking the poop. What a
donkey I was. This kind gentleman who here
sends me his kind compliments, he, but ten
minutes ago, dark-lantern in had, was dodging
round some old grind-stone in the hold, sharpening
a hatchet for me, I thought. Well, well;
these long calms have a morbid effect on the
mind, I've often heard, though I never believed
it before. Ha! glancing towards the
boat; there's Rover; good dog; a white bone
in her mouth. A pretty big bone though,
seems to me.—What? Yes, she has fallen

[figure description] Page 186.[end figure description]

afoul of the bubbling tide-rip there. It sets
her the other way, too, for the time. Patience.

It was now about noon, though, from the
grayness of everything, it seemed to be getting
towards dusk.

The calm was confirmed. In the far distance,
away from the influence of land, the leaden
ocean seemed laid out and leaded up, its course
finished, soul gone, defunct. But the current
from landward, where the ship was, increased;
silently sweeping her further and further towards
the tranced waters beyond.

Still, from his knowledge of those latitudes,
cherishing hopes of a breeze, and a fair and
fresh one, at any moment, Captain Delano,
despite present prospects, buoyantly counted
upon bringing the San Dominick safely to
anchor ere night. The distance swept over
was nothing; since, with a good wind, ten
minutes' sailing would retrace more than sixty
minutes, drifting. Meantime, one moment turning
to mark “Rover” fighting the tide-rip, and
the next to see Don Benito approaching, he
continued walking the poop.

Gradually he felt a vexation arising from the

[figure description] Page 187.[end figure description]

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:

[figure description] Page 188.[end figure description]

First, the affair of the Spanish lad assailed
with a knife by the slave boy; an act winked
at by Don Benito. Second, the tyranny in
Don Benito's treatment of Atufal, the black;
as if a child should lead a bull of the Nile by
the ring in his nose. Third, the trampling of
the sailor by the two negroes; a piece of insolence
passed over without so much as a reprimand.
Fourth, the cringing submission to
their master, of all the ship's underlings, mostly
blacks; as if by the least inadvertence
they feared to draw down his despotic displeasure.

Coupling these points, they seemed somewhat
contradictory. But what then, thought
Captain Delano, glancing towards his now
nearing boat—what then? Why, Don Benito
is a very capricious commander. But he is not
the first of the sort I have seen; though it's
true he rather exceeds any other. But as a
nation—continued he in his reveries—these
Spaniards are all an odd set; the very word
Spaniard has a curious, conspirator, GuyFawkish
twang to it. And yet, I dare say,
Spaniards in the main are as good folks as any

[figure description] Page 189.[end figure description]

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

[figure description] Page 190.[end figure description]

Don Benito, yielding to the impulse of the
moment, with good-natured authority he bade
the blacks stand back; to enforce his words
making use of a half-mirthful, half-menacing
gesture. Instantly the blacks paused, just
where they were, each negro and negress suspended
in his or her posture, exactly as the
word had found them—for a few seconds continuing
so—while, as between the responsive
posts of a telegraph, an unknown syllable ran
from man to man among the perched oakum-pickers.
While the visitor's attention was
fixed by this scene, suddenly the hatchet-polishers
half rose, and a rapid cry came from
Don Benito.

Thinking that at the signal of the Spaniard
he was about to be massacred, Captain Delano
would have sprung for his boat, but paused, as
the oakum-pickers, dropping down into the
crowd with earnest exclamations, forced every
white and every negro back, at the same moment,
with gestures friendly and familiar,
almost jocose, bidding him, in substance, not
be a fool. Simultaneously the hatchet-polishers
resumed their seats, quietly as so many

[figure description] Page 191.[end figure description]

tailors, and at once, as if nothing had happened,
the work of hoisting in the casks was resumed,
whites and blacks singing at the tackle.

Captain Delano glanced towards Don Benito.
As he saw his meagre form in the act of recovering
itself from reclining in the servant's
arms, into which the agitated invalid had fallen,
he could not but marvel at the panic by
which himself had been surprised, on the darting
supposition that such a commander, who,
upon a legitimate occasion, so trivial, too, as
it now appeared, could lose all self-command,
was, with energetic iniquity, going to bring
about his murder.

The casks being on deck, Captain Delano
was handed a number of jars and cups by one
of the steward's aids, who, in the name of his
captain, entreated him to do as he had proposed—
dole out the water. He complied, with republican
impartiality as to this republican element,
which always seeks one level, serving the oldest
white no better than the youngest black; excepting,
indeed, poor Don Benito, whose condition,
if not rank, demanded an extra allowance.
To him, in the first place, Captain Delano

[figure description] Page 192.[end figure description]

presented a fair pitcher of the fluid; but, thirsting
as he was for it, the Spaniard quaffed not a drop
until after several grave bows and salutes. A
reciprocation of courtesies which the sight-loving
Africans hailed with clapping of hands.

Two of the less wilted pumpkins being reserved
for the cabin table, the residue were minced up
on the spot for the general regalement. But
the soft bread, sugar, and bottled cider, Captain
Delano would have given the whites alone, and
in chief Don Benito; but the latter objected;
which disinterestedness not a little pleased the
American; and so mouthfuls all around were
given alike to whites and blacks; excepting one
bottle of cider, which Babo insisted upon setting
aside for his master.

Here it may be observed that as, on the first
visit of the boat, the American had not permitted
his men to board the ship, neither did he
now; being unwilling to add to the confusion
of the decks.

Not uninfluenced by the peculiar good-humor
at present prevailing, and for the time oblivious
of any but benevolent thoughts, Captain Delano,
who, from recent indications, counted upon a

[figure description] Page 193.[end figure description]

breeze within an hour or two at furthest, dispatched
the boat back to the sealer, with orders
for all the hands that could be spared immediately
to set about rafting casks to the watering-place
and filling them. Likewise he bade
word be carried to his chief officer, that if,
against present expectation, the ship was not
brought to anchor by sunset, he need be under
no concern; for as there was to be a full moon
that night, he (Captain Delano) would remain
on board ready to play the pilot, come the wind
soon or late.

As the two Captains stood together, observing
the departing boat—the servant, as it happened,
having just spied a spot on his master's velvet
sleeve, and silently engaged rubbing it out—the
American expressed his regrets that the San
Dominick had no boats; none, at least, but the
unseaworthy old hulk of the long-boat, which,
warped as a camel's skeleton in the desert, and
almost as bleached, lay pot-wise inverted amidships,
one side a little tipped, furnishing a subterraneous
sort of den for family groups of the
blacks, mostly women and small children; who,
squatting on old mats below, or perched above

[figure description] Page 194.[end figure description]

in the dark dome, on the elevated seats, were
descried, some distance within, like a social circle
of bats, sheltering in some friendly cave; at
intervals, ebon flights of naked boys and girls,
three or four years old, darting in and out of the
den's mouth.

“Had you three or four boats now, Don
Benito,” said Captain Delano, “I think that, by
tugging at the oars, your negroes here might
help along matters some. Did you sail from
port without boats, Don Benito?”

“They were stove in the gales, Señor.”

“That was bad. Many men, too, you lost
then. Boats and men. Those must have been
hard gales, Don Benito.”

“Past all speech,” cringed the Spaniard.

“Tell me, Don Benito,” continued his companion
with increased interest, “tell me, were
these gales immediately off the pitch of Cape
Horn?”

“Cape Horn?—who spoke of Cape Horn?”

“Yourself did, when giving me an account
of your voyage,” answered Captain Delano, with
almost equal astonishment at this eating of his
own words, even as he ever seemed eating his

[figure description] Page 195.[end figure description]

own heart, on the part of the Spaniard. “You
yourself, Don Benito, spoke of Cape Horn,” he
emphatically repeated.

The Spaniard turned, in a sort of stooping
posture, pausing an instant, as one about to
make a plunging exchange of elements, as from
air to water.

At this moment a messenger-boy, a white,
hurried by, in the regular performance of his
function carrying the last expired half hour forward
to the forecastle, from the cabin time-piece,
to have it struck at the ship's large bell.

“Master,” said the servant, discontinuing his
work on the coat sleeve, and addressing the
rapt Spaniard with a sort of timid apprehensiveness,
as one charged with a duty, the discharge
of which, it was foreseen, would prove irksome
to the very person who had imposed it, and for
whose benefit it was intended, “master told me
never mind where he was, or how engaged, always
to remind him, to a minute, when shaving-time
comes. Miguel has gone to strike the half-hour
afternoon. It is now, master. Will master
go into the cuddy?”

“Ah—yes,” answered the Spaniard, starting,

[figure description] Page 196.[end figure description]

as from dreams into realities; then turning upon
Captain Delano, he said that ere long he would
resume the conversation.

“Then if master means to talk more to Don
Amasa,” said the servant, “why not let Don
Amasa sit by master in the cuddy, and master
can talk, and Don Amasa can listen, while Babo
here lathers and strops.”

“Yes,” said Captain Delano, not unpleased
with this sociable plan, “yes, Don Benito, unless
you had rather not, I will go with you.”

“Be it so, Señor.”

As the three passed aft, the American could
not but think it another strange instance of his
host's capriciousness, this being shaved with
such uncommon punctuality in the middle of
the day. But he deemed it more than likely
that the servant's anxious fidelity had something
to do with the matter; inasmuch as the timely
interruption served to rally his master from the
mood which had evidently been coming upon
him.

The place called the cuddy was a light deck-cabin
formed by the poop, a sort of attic to the
large cabin below. Part of it had formerly

[figure description] Page 197.[end figure description]

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 bachelorsquire
in the country, who hangs his shootingjacket
and tobacco-pouch on deer antlers, and
keeps his fishing-rod, tongs, and walking-stick
in the same corner.

The similitude was heightened, if not originally
suggested, by glimpses of the surrounding
sea; since, in one aspect, the country and the
ocean seem cousins-german.

The floor of the cuddy was matted. Overhead,
four or five old muskets were stuck into
horizontal holes along the beams. On one side
was a claw-footed old table lashed to the deck;
a thumbed missal on it, and over it a small,
meagre crucifix attached to the bulk-head. Urder
the table lay a dented cutlass or two, with
a hacked harpoon, among some melancholy
old rigging, like a heap of poor friars' girdles.
There were also two long, sharp-ribbed settees

[figure description] Page 198.[end figure description]

of Malacca cane, black with age, and uncomfortable
to look at as inquisitors' racks, with a
large, misshapen arm-chair, which, furnished
with a rude barber's crotch at the back, working
with a screw, seemed some grotesque engine
of torment. A flag locker was in one corner,
open, exposing various colored bunting, some
rolled up, others half unrolled, still others tumbled.
Opposite was a cumbrous washstand, of
black mahogany, all of one block, with a pedestal,
like a font, and over it a railed shelf,
containing combs, brushes, and other implements
of the toilet. A torn hammock of stained
grass swung near; the sheets toosed, and
the pillow wrinkled up like a brow, as if who
ever slept here slept but illy, with alternate
visitations of sad thoughts and bad dreams.

The further extremity of the cuddy, overhanging
the ship's stern, was pierced with three
openings, windows or port-holes, according as
men or cannon might peer, socially or unsocially,
out of them. At present neither men nor
cannon were seen, though huge ring-bolts and
other rusty iron fixtures of the wood-work hinted
of twenty-four-pounders.

[figure description] Page 199.[end figure description]

Glancing towards the hammock as he entered,
Captain Delano said, “You sleep here, Don
Benito?”

“Yes, Señor, since we got into mild weather.”

“This seems a sort of dormitory, sittingroom,
sail-loft, chapel, armory, and private
closet all together, Don Benito,” added Captain
Delano, looking round.

“Yes, Señor; events have not been favorable
to much order in my arrangements.”

Here the servant, napkin on arm, made a motion
as if waiting his master's good pleasure.
Don Benito signified his readiness, when, seating
him in the Malacca arm-chair, and for the
guest's convenience drawing opposite one of
the settees, the servant commenced operations
by throwing back his master's collar and loosening
his cravat.

There is something in the negro which, in a
peculiar way, fits him for avocations about
one's person. Most negroes are natural valets
and hair-dressers; taking to the comb and
brush congenially as to the castinets, and flourishing
them apparently with almost equal satisfaction.
There is, too, a smooth tact about

[figure description] Page 200.[end figure description]

them in this employment, with a marvelous,
noiseless, gliding briskness, not ungraceful in
its way, singularly pleasing to behold, and still
more so to be the manipulated subject of.
And above all is the great gift of good-humor.
Not the mere grin or laugh is here meant.
Those were unsuitable. But a certain easy
cheerfulness, harmonious in every glance and
gesture; as though God had set the whole
negro to some pleasant tune.

When to this is added the docility arising
from the unaspiring contentment of a limited
mind, and that susceptibility of blind attachment
sometimes inhering in indisputable inferiors,
one readily perceives why those hypochondriacs,
Johnson and Byron—it may be,
something like the hypochondriac Benito Cereno—
took to their hearts, almost to the exclusion
of the entire white race, their serving
men, the negroes, Barber and Fletcher. But
if there be that in the negro which exempts
him from the inflicted sourness of the morbid
or cynical mind, how, in his most prepossessing
aspects, must he appear to a benevolent one?
When at ease with respect to exterior things,

[figure description] Page 201.[end figure description]

Captain Delano's nature was not only benign,
but familiarly and humorously so. At home,
he had often taken rare satisfaction in sitting in
his door, watching some free man of color at
his work or play. If on a voyage he chanced
to have a black sailor, invariably he was on
chatty and half-gamesome terms with him. In
fact, like most men of a good, blithe heart,
Captain Delano took to negroes, not philanthropically,
but genially, just as other men to
Newfoundland dogs.

Hitherto, the circumstances in which he
found the San Dominick had repressed the
tendency. But in the cuddy, relieved from
his former uneasiness, and, for various reasons,
more sociably inclined than at any previous
period of the day, and seeing the colored servant,
napkin on arm, so debonair about his
master, in a business so familiar as that of
shaving, too, all his old weakness for negroes
returned.

Among other things, he was amused with
an odd instance of the African love of bright
colors and fine shows, in the black's informally
taking from the flag-locker a great piece of

[figure description] Page 202.[end figure description]

bunting of all hues, and lavishly tucking it
under his master's chin for an apron.

The mode of shaving among the Spaniards is
a little different from what it is with other
nations. They have a basin, specifically called
a barber's basin, which on one side is scooped
out, so as accurately to receive the chin, against
which it is closely held in lathering; which is
done, not with a brush, but with soap dipped
in the water of the basin and rubbed on the
face.

In the present instance salt-water was used
for lack of better; and the parts lathered were
only the upper lip, and low down under the
throat, all the rest being cultivated beard.

The preliminaries being somewhat novel to
Captain Delano, he sat curiously eying them,
so that no conversation took place, nor, for the
present, did Don Benito appear disposed to
renew any.

Setting down his basin, the negro searched
among the razors, as for the sharpest, and having
found it, gave it an additional edge by
expertly strapping it on the firm, smooth, oily
skin of his open palm; he then made a gesture

[figure description] Page 203.[end figure description]

as if to begin, but midway stood suspended for
an instant, one hand elevating the razor, the
other professionally dabbling among the bubbling
suds on the Spaniard's lank neck. Not
unaffected by the close sight of the gleaming
steel, Don Benito nervously shuddered; his
usual ghastliness was heightened by the lather,
which lather, again, was intensified in its hue
by the contrasting sootiness of the negro's body.
Altogether the scene was somewhat peculiar,
at least to Captain Delano, nor, as he saw the
two thus postured, could he resist the vagary,
that in the black he saw a headsman, and in
the white a man at the block. But this was
one of those antic conceits, appearing and vanishing
in a breath, from which, perhaps, the
best regulated mind is not always free.

Meantime the agitation of the Spaniard had
a little loosened the bunting from around him,
so that one broad fold swept curtain-like over
the chair-arm to the floor, revealing, amid a
profusion of armorial bars and ground-colors—
black, blue, and yellow—a closed castle in a
blood red field diagonal with a lion rampant in
a white.

[figure description] Page 204.[end figure description]

“The castle and the lion,” exclaimed Captain
Delano—“why, Don Benito, this is the
flag of Spain you use here. It's well it's only
I, and not the King, that sees this,” he added,
with a smile, “but”—turning towards the
black—“it's all one, I suppose, so the colors
be gay;” which playful remark did not fail
somewhat to tickle the negro.

“Now, master,” he said, readjusting the
flag, and pressing the head gently further back
into the crotch of the chair; “now, master,”
and the steel glanced nigh the throat.

Again Don Benito faintly shuddered.

“You must not shake so, master. See, Don
Amasa, master always shakes when I shave
him. And yet master knows I never yet have
drawn blood, though it's true, if master will
shake so, I may some of these times. Now
master,” he continued. “And now, Don Amasa,
please go on with your talk about the gale,
and all that; master can hear, and, between
times, master can answer.”

“Ah yes, these gales,” said Captain Delano;
“but the more I think of your voyage, Don
Benito, the more I wonder, not at the gales,

[figure description] Page 205.[end figure description]

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.”

[figure description] Page 206.[end figure description]

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

[figure description] Page 207.[end figure description]

Spaniard and the American, and seemed, by
its expression, to hint, that he was desirous, by
getting his master to go on with the conversation,
considerately to withdraw his attention
from the recent annoying accident. As if glad
to snatch the offered relief, Don Benito resumed,
rehearsing to Captain Delano, that not
only were the calms of unusual duration, but
the ship had fallen in with obstinate currents;
and other things he added, some of which were
but repetitions of former statements, to explain
how it came to pass that the passage from
Cape Horn to St. Maria had been so exceedingly
long; now and then mingling with his
words, incidental praises, less qualified than
before, to the blacks, for their general good
conduct. These particulars were not given
consecutively, the servant, at convenient times,
using his razor, and so, between the intervals
of shaving, the story and panegyric went on
with more than usual huskiness.

To Captain Delano's imagination, now again
not wholly at rest, there was something so
hollow in the Spaniard's manner, with apparently
some reciprocal hollowness in the

[figure description] Page 208.[end figure description]

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

[figure description] Page 209.[end figure description]

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 speak 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

[figure description] Page 210.[end figure description]

gloom, and still remaining seated, Captain Delano,
thinking that his presence was undesired
just then, withdrew, on pretense of seeing
whether, as he had prophesied, any signs of a
breeze were visible.

Walking forward to the main-mast, he stood
awhile thinking over the scene, and not without
some undefined misgivings, when he heard
a noise near the cuddy, and turning, saw the
negro, his hand to his cheek. Advancing,
Captain Delano perceived that the cheek was
bleeding. He was about to ask the cause,
when the negro's wailing soliloquy enlightened
him.

“Ah, when will master get better from his
sickness; only the sour heart that sour sickness
breeds made him serve Babo so; cutting Babo
with the razor, because, only by accident,
Babo had given master one little scratch; and
for the first time in so many a day, too. Ah,
ah, ah,” holding his hand to his face.

Is it possible, thought Captain Delano; was
it to wreak in private his Spanish spite against
this poor friend of his, that Don Benito, by his
sullen manner, impelled me to withdraw? Ah

[figure description] Page 211.[end figure description]

this slavery breeds ugly passions in man.—
Poor fellow!

He was about to speak in sympathy to the
negro, but with a timid reluctance he now re-entered
the cuddy.

Presently master and man came forth; Don
Benito leaning on his servant as if nothing had
happened.

But a sort of love-quarrel, after all, thought
Captain Delano.

He accosted Don Benito, and they slowly
walked together. They had gone but a few
paces, when the steward—a tall, rajah-looking
mulatto, orientally set off with a pagoda turban
formed by three or four Madras handker-chiefs
wound about his head, tier on tier—
approaching with a saalam, announced lunch
in the cabin.

On their way thither, the two captains were
preceded by the mulatto, who, turning round
as he advanced, with continual smiles and bows,
ushered them on, a display of elegance which
quite completed the insignificance of the small
bare-headed Babo, who, as if not unconscious
of inferiority, eyed askance the graceful

[figure description] Page 212.[end figure description]

steward. But in part, Captain Delano imputed
his jealous watchfulness to that peculiar feeling
which the full-blooded African entertains for
the adulterated one. As for the steward, his
manner, if not bespeaking much dignity of selfrespect,
yet evidenced his extreme desire to
please; which is doubly meritorious, as at once
Christian and Chesterfieldian.

Captain Delano observed with interest that
while the complexion of the mulatto was hybrid,
his physiognomy was European—classically
so.

“Don Benito,” whispered he, “I am glad to
see this usher-of-the-golden-rod of yours; the
sight refutes an ugly remark once made to me
by a Barbadoes planter; that when a mulatto
has a regular European face, look out for him;
he is a devil. But see, your steward here has
features more regular than King George's of
England; and yet there he nods, and bows,
and smiles; a king, indeed—the king of kind
hearts and polite fellows. What a pleasant
voice he has, too?

“He has, Señor.”

“But tell me, has he not, so far as you have

[figure description] Page 213.[end figure description]

known him, always proved a good, worthy
fellow?” said Captain Delano, pausing, while
with a final genuflexion the steward disappeared
into the cabin; “come, for the reason
just mentioned, I am curious to know.”

“Francesco is a good man,” a sort of sluggishly
responded Don Benito, like a phlegmatic
appreciator, who would neither find fault nor
flatter.

“Ah, I thought so. For it were strange,
indeed, and not very creditable to us whiteskins,
if a little of our blood mixed with the
African's, should, far from improving the
latter's quality, have the sad effect of pouring
vitriolic acid into black broth; improving
the hue, perhaps, but not the wholesomeness.”

“Doubtless, doubtless, Señor, but”—glancing
at Babo—“not to speak of negroes, your
planter's remark I have heard applied to the
Spanish and Indian intermixtures in our provinces.
But I know nothing about the matter,”
he listlessly added.

And here they entered the cabin.

The lunch was a frugal one. Some of

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Captain Delano's fresh fish and pumpkins, biscuit
and salt beef, the reserved bottle of cider, and
the San Dominick's last bottle of Canary.

As they entered, Francesco, with two or
three colored aids, was hovering over the table
giving the last adjustments. Upon perceiving
their master they withdrew, Francesco making
a smiling congé, and the Spaniard, without
condescending to notice it, fastidiously remarking
to his companion that he relished not superfluous
attendance.

Without companions, host and guest sat
down, like a childless married couple, at opposite
ends of the table, Don Benito waving
Captain Delano to his place, and, weak as he
was, insisting upon that gentleman being seated
before himself.

The negro placed a rug under Don Benito's
feet, and a cushion behind his back, and then
stood behind, not his master's chair, but Captain
Delano's. At first, this a little surprised
the latter. But it was soon evident that, in
taking his position, the black was still true to
his master; since by facing him he could the
more readily anticipate his slightest want.

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“This is an uncommonly intelligent fellow
of yours, Don Benito,” whispered Captain
Delano across the table.

“You say true, Señor.”

During the repast, the guest again reverted
to parts of Don Benito's story, begging further
particulars here and there. He inquired how
it was that the scurvy and fever should have
committed such wholesale havoc upon the
whites, while destroying less than half of the
blacks. As if this question reproduced the
whole scene of plague before the Spaniard's
eyes, miserably reminding him of his solitude
in a cabin where before he had had so many
friends and officers round him, his hand shook,
his face became hueless, broken words escaped;
but directly the sane memory of the past seemed
replaced by insane terrors of the present.
With starting eyes he stared before him at
vacancy. For nothing was to be seen but the
hand of his servant pushing the Canary over
towards him. At length a few sips served
partially to restore him. He made random reference
to the different constitution of races,
enabling one to offer more resistance to certain

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maladies than another. The thought was new
to his companion.

Presently Captain Delano, intending to say
something to his host concerning the pecuniary
part of the business he had undertaken for him,
especially—since he was strictly accountable
to his owners—with reference to the new suit
of sails, and other things of that sort; and
naturally preferring to conduct such affairs in
private, was desirous that the servant should
withdraw; imagining that Don Benito for a
few minutes could dispense with his attendance.
He, however, waited awhile; thinking that, as
the conversation proceeded, Don Benito, without
being prompted, would perceive the propriety
of the step.

But it was otherwise. At last catching his
host's eye, Captain Delano, with a slight backward
gesture of his thumb, whispered, “Don
Benito, pardon me, but there is an interference
with the full expression of what I have to say
to you.”

Upon this the Spaniard changed countenance;
which was imputed to his resenting the hint,
as in some way a reflection upon his servant.

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After a moment's pause, he assured his guest
that the black's remaining with them could be
of no disservice; because since losing his officers
he had made Babo (whose original office, it now
appeared, had been captain of the slaves) not
only his constant attendant and companion, but
in all things his confidant.

After this, nothing more could be said;
though, indeed, Captain Delano could hardly
avoid some little tinge of irritation upon being
left ungratified in so inconsiderable a wish, by
one, too, for whom he intended such solid services.
But it is only his querulousness, thought
he; and so filling his glass he proceeded to
business.

The price of the sails and other matters was
fixed upon. But while this was being done,
the American observed that, though his original
offer of assistance had been hailed with hectic
animation, yet now when it was reduced to a
business transaction, indifference and apathy
were betrayed. Don Benito, in fact, appeared
to submit to hearing the details more out of
regard to common propriety, than from any

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impression that weighty benefit to himself and
his voyage was involved.

Soon, his manner became still more reserved.
The effort was vain to seek to draw him into
social talk. Gnawed by his splenetic mood, he
sat twitching his beard, while to little purpose
the hand of his servant, mute as that on the
wall, slowly pushed over the Canary.

Lunch being over, they sat down on the
cushioned transom; the servant placing a pillow
behind his master. The long continuance
of the calm had now affected the atmosphere.
Don Benito sighed heavily, as if for
breath.

“Why not adjourn to the cuddy,” said Captain
Delano; “there is more air there.” But
the host sat silent and motionless.

Meantime his servant knelt before him, with
a large fan of feathers. And Francesco coming
in on tiptoes, handed the negro a little cup of
aromatic waters, with which at intervals he
chafed his master's brow; smoothing the hair
along the temples as a nurse does a child's. He
spoke no word. He only rested his eye on his
master's, as if, amid all Don Benito's distress,

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a little to refresh his spirit by the silent sight
of fidelity.

Presently the ship's bell sounded two o'clock;
and through the cabin windows a slight rippling
of the sea was discerned; and from the desired
direction.

“There,” exclaimed Captain Delano, “I
told you so, Don Benito, look!”

He had risen to his feet, speaking in a very animated
tone, with a view the more to rouse his
companion. But though the crimson curtain
of the stern-window near him that moment
fluttered against his pale cheek, Don Benito
seemed to have even less welcome for the breeze
than the calm.

Poor fellow, thought Captain Delano, bitter
experience has taught him that one ripple does
not make a wind, any more than one swallow
a summer. But he is mistaken for once. I
will get his ship in for him, and prove it.

Briefly alluding to his weak condition, he
urged his host to remain quietly where he was,
since he (Captain Delano) would with pleasure
take upon himself the responsibility of making
the best use of the wind.

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Upon gaining the deck, Captain Delano started
at the unexpected figure of Atufal, monumentally
fixed at the threshold, like one of
those sculptured porters of black marble guarding
the porches of Egyptian tombs.

But this time the start was, perhaps, purely
physical. Atufal's presence, singularly attesting
docility even in sullenness, was contrasted
with that of the hatchet-polishers, who in patience
evinced their industry; while both spectacles
showed, that lax as Don Benito's general
authority might be, still, whenever he chose to
exert it, no man so savage or colossal but must,
more or less, bow.

Snatching a trumpet which hung from the
bulwarks, with a free step Captain Delano advanced
to the forward edge of the poop, issuing
his orders in his best Spanish. The few sailors
and many negroes, all equally pleased, obediently
set about heading the ship towards the
harbor.

While giving some directions about setting
a lower stu'n'-sail, suddenly Captain Delano
heard a voice faithfully repeating his orders.
Turning, he saw Babo, now for the time acting,

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under the pilot, his original part of captain of
the slaves. This assistance proved valuable.
Tattered sails and warped yards were soon
brought into some trim. And no brace or halyard
was pulled but to the blithe songs of the
inspirited negroes.

Good fellows, thought Captain Delano, a little
training would make fine sailors of them.
Why see, the very women pull and sing too.
These must be some of those Ashantee negresses
that make such capital soldiers, I've heard.
But who's at the helm. I must have a good
hand there.

He went to see.

The San Dominick steered with a cumbrous
tiller, with large horizontal pullies attached. At
each pully-end stood a subordinate black, and
between them, at the tiller-head, there sponsible
post, a Spanish seaman, whose countenance
evinced his due share in the general hopefulness
and confidence at the coming of the breeze.

He proved the same man who had behaved
with so shame-faced an air on the windlass.

“Ah,—it is you, my man,” exclaimed Captain
Delano—“well, no more sheep's-eyes now;—

[figure description] Page 222.[end figure description]

look straight forward and keep the ship so.
Good hand, I trust? And want to get into the
harbor, don't you?”

The man assented with an inward chuckle,
grasping the tiller-head firmly. Upon this,
unperceived by the American, the two blacks
eyed the sailor intently.

Finding all right at the helm, the pilot went
forward to the forecastle, to see how matters
stood there.

The ship now had way enough to breast the
current. With the approach of evening, the
breeze would be sure to freshen.

Having done all that was needed for the present,
Captain Delano, giving his last orders to
the sailors, turned aft to report affairs to Don
Benito in the cabin; perhaps additionally incited
to rejoin him by the hope of snatching a
moment's private chat while the servant was
engaged upon deck.

From opposite sides, there were, beneath the
poop, two approaches to the cabin; one further
forward than the other, and consequently
communicating with a longer passage. Marking
the servant still above, Captain Delano,

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taking the nighest entrance — the one last
named, and at whose porch Atufal still stood—
hurried on his way, till, arrived at the cabin
threshold, he paused an instant, a little to recover
from his eagerness. Then, with the
words of his intended business upon his lips, he
entered. As he advanced toward the seated
Spaniard, he heard another footstep, keeping
time with his. From the opposite door, a salver
in hand, the servant was likewise advancing.

“Confound the faithful fellow,” thought Captain
Delano; “what a vexatious coincidence.”

Possibly, the vexation might have been something
different, were it not for the brisk confidence
inspired by the breeze. But even as it
was, he felt a slight twinge, from a sudden
indefinite association in his mind of Babo with
Atufal.

“Don Benito,” said he, “I give you joy;
the breeze will hold, and will increase. By the
way, your tall man and time-piece, Atufal,
stands without. By your order, of course?”

Don Benito recoiled, as if at some bland
satirical touch, delivered with such adroit

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garnish of apparent good breeding as to present
no handle for retort.

He is like one flayed alive, thought Captain
Delano; where may one touch him without
causing a shrink?

The servant moved before his master, adjusting
a cushion; recalled to civility, the Spaniard
stiffly replied: “you are right. The slave appears
where you saw him, according to my
command; which is, that if at the given hour
I am below, he must take his stand and abide
my coming.”

“Ah now, pardon me, but that is treating
the poor fellow like an ex-king indeed. Ah,
Don Benito,” smiling, “for all the license you
permit in some things, I fear lest, at bottom,
you are a bitter hard master.”

Again Don Benito shrank; and this time, as
the good sailor thought, from a genuine twinge
of his conscience.

Again conversation became constrained. In
vain Captain Delano called attention to the now
perceptible motion of the keel gently cleaving
the sea; with lack-lustre eye, Don Benito returned
words few and reserved.

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