Benito Cerno - Herman Melville

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Section one of Benito Serena. In the year seventeen ninety nine,
Captain Amasdellino of Duxbury in Massachusetts, commending a large sealer
and general trader, lay at anchor with a valuable cargo
in the harbor of Saint Maria, a small desert uninhabited

(00:20):
island towards the southern extremity of the Long Coast of Chile.
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

(00:43):
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
sleep at the surface, like waved lead that has cooled
and set in the smelter's mold. The sky seemed a

(01:07):
gray mantle. Flights of troubled gray fowl, kith and kin,
with flights of troubled gray vapors, among which they were mixed,
skimmed low and fitfully over the waters as swallows over
meadows before storms, shadows present foreshadowing deeper shadows to come.

(01:27):
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,

(01:51):
and the sort of stories at that day associated with
those seas, Captain Delano's surprise might have deepened into some
uneasynes had he not been a person of singularly undistrustful
good nature, not liable except on extraordinary and repeated excitement,
and hardily then to indulge in personal alarms any way

(02:13):
involving the imputation of malign evil in man. Whether in
view of what humanity is capable such a trade implies,
along with a benevolent heart, more than ordinary quickness and
accuracy of intellectual perception, may be left to the wise
to determine. But whatever misgivings might have obtruded on first

(02:36):
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 for her
own safety's sake. Owing to a sunken wreath making out
of her bow, this seemed to prove her a stranger, indeed,

(02:56):
not only to the sealer but the island. Consequently, she
could be no wanted freebooter in that ocean. With no
small interest, Captain Delano continued to watch her, a proceeding
not much facilitated by the vapors, partly mantling the hall,
through which the far matin light from her cabin streamed

(03:16):
equivocally enough much like the sun by this time crestened
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
Intraguante's one sinister eye peering across the plaza from the

(03:38):
Indian loophole of her dusk saya Emnta. It might have
been but a deception of the vapors. But the longer
the stranger was watched, the more singular appeared her maneuvers.
Ere long it seemed hard to decide whether she meant
to come in or know what she wanted or what
she was about. The wind, which had breezed up a

(04:01):
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

(04:21):
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 seiler, 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

(04:44):
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 sometime ere the boat
came up. The wind light, though it was having shifted,

(05:09):
had headed the vessel off as well as partly broken
the vapors from about her. Upon gaining a less remote
view the ship, when made signally visible on the verge
of the leaden hued swells, with the shreds of fog
here and there, raggedly furring her, appeared like a whitewashed
monastery after a thunder storm scene perched upon some dun

(05:32):
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 shipload of monks was
before him. Peering over the buldworks were what really seemed
in the hazy distance throngs of dark cows, while fitfully

(05:53):
revealed through the open portholes, other dark moving figures were
dimly descried as of black friar 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

(06:15):
freight from one colonial port to another. A very large
and in its time a very fine vessel, such as
in those days, were at intervals encountered along that main
sometimes superseded Acapulco treasure ships or retired frigates of the
Spanish King's Navy, which, like superannuated Italian palaces still under

(06:38):
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 wooly from long

(06:59):
eend acquaintance with the scraper tar and the brush. Her
keels 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 in freus Art pattern, however, no guns were seen.

(07:25):
The tops were large and were railed about with what
had once been octagonal network, all in sad disrepair. The
tops hung overhead like three ruinous aviaries, in one of
which was seen perched on a ratlin, a white knotty,
a strange fowl so called from its lethargic somnambulistic character,

(07:49):
being frequently caught by hand at sea, battered in moldy.
The castellated forecastle seen some ancient turret long ago taken
by assault and then left to decay towards the stern
two high raised quarter galleys, the balustrades here and there
covered with dry tindery sea moss, opening out from the

(08:09):
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

(08:32):
the arms of castile and leon, medallioned about by groups
of mythological or symbolical devices, uppermost and central of which
was a dark setter in a mask, holding his foot
on the prostrate neck of a writhing figure likewise mass.
Whether the ship had a figurehead or only a plain

(08:53):
beak was not quite certain, owing to canvas wrapped about
that part, either to protect it while under going a refurbishing,
or else decently to hide its decay, rudely painted or
chalked as in a sailor freak, along the forward side
of a sort of pedestal. Below the canvas was the
sentence seguid vethrojete follow your leader. While upon the tarnished

(09:19):
headboards near by appeared in stinately capitals, once gilt the
ship's name San Dominic, 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

(09:39):
name with every hearse like roll of the hull. As
at last the boat was hooked from the bow along
toward the gangway amidship its keel. While yet some inches
separated from the hull harshly grated as on a sunken
coral reef, it proved a huge bunch of conglobated barn

(10:00):
adhering below the water to the side like a wind.
A token of baffling airs and long calms passed somewhere
in those seas. End of section one, Section two of
Benito Sereno. Climbing the side, the visitor was at once

(10:25):
surrounded by a clamorous throng of whites and blacks, but
the latter outnumbering the former more than could have been expected.
Negro transportationship, as the stranger in port, was but in
one language, and as with one voice, all poured out
a common tale of suffering, in which the negresses, of

(10:46):
whom there were not a few, exceeded the others in
their dolorous vehemence. The scurvy, together with a fever, had
swept off a great part of their number, more especially
the Spaniards off Cape Horn. They had narrowly escaped shipwreck.
Then for days together they had lain entranced without wind.

(11:08):
Their provisions were low, their water next to none. Their
lips that moment were baked. While Captain Delano was thus
made the mark of all eager tongues, His one eager
glance took in all the faces, with every other object
about him. Always, upon first boarding a large and populous
ship at sea, especially a foreign one with a nondescript crew,

(11:33):
such as Lascar's 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, hoared from

(11:53):
view their interiors till the last moment. But in the
case of the ship, there is this addition that the
living spectacle it contains, upon its sudden and complete disclosure, has,
in contrast with the blank ocean which zones it, something
of the effect of enchantment. The ship seems unreal these

(12:15):
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,
as attempted to be described, which in Captain Delano's mind,
heightened whatever upon a staid scrutiny might have seemed unusual,

(12:38):
especially the conspicuous figures of four elderly grizzled negroes, their
heads like black dotted willow tops, who, in venerable contrast
to the tumult below them, were couched sphinx like, one
on the starboard cat head, another on the larboard, and
the remaining pair face to face on the opposite bulwarks

(13:01):
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 junkin to oakum, a
small heap of which lay by their sides. They accompanied
the task with a continuous, low, monotonous chant, droning and

(13:24):
drooling away like so many gray headed bagpipers 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

(13:44):
along in rows separated by irregular spaces, the cross legged
figures of six other blacks, each with a rusty hatchet
in his hand, which, with a bit of brick and rag,
he was engaged like a skull and scouring, while between
each two was a small stack of hatchets. Their rested

(14:07):
edges turned forward waiting alike 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

(14:31):
peculiar love in negroes of uniting industry with pastime. Two
and two, they sideways clashed their hatchets together like cymbals
with a barbarous din. All six, unlike the generality, had
the raw aspect of unsophisticated Africans, but the first comprehensive

(14:52):
glance which took in these 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

(15:14):
among his suffering charges 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
a singular richness, but bearing plain traces of sleepless cares
and disquietudes, stood passively by leaning against the mainmast, at

(15:39):
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 to the spa sorrow and affection were

(16:02):
equally blended. Struggling through the throng, the American advanced to
the Spaniard, assuring him of his sympathies and offering to
render whatever assistance might be in his power, to which
the Spaniard returned for the present but grave and ceremonious
acknowledgments his national formality. Dusked by the saturnine mood of

(16:27):
ill health, but losing no time in mere compliments, Captain
Delano returned to the gangway, had his baskets of fish
brought up, and, as the wind still continued light so
that some hours at least must elapse ere the ship
could be brought to the anchorage, he bade his men

(16:47):
return to the sealer and fetch back as much water
as the whale boat could carry, with whatever soft bread
the stewart 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

(17:11):
died away, and the tide turning began drifting back. The
ship helplessly seaward, but trusting this would not last. Captain
Delano sought with good hopes, to cheer up the strangers,
feeling no small satisfaction that with persons in their condition,
he could, thanks to his frequent voyages along the Spanish main,

(17:35):
converse with some freedom in their native tongue. While left
alone with them, he was not long in observing some
things tending to heighten his first impressions, But surprise was
lost in pity, both for the Spaniards and blacks alike,
evidently reduced from scarcity of water and provisions, while long

(17:57):
continued suffering seemed to have brought out the least good
natured quality 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

(18:20):
more relaxes good order than misery. Still, Captain Delano was
not without the idea that had Benito Sereno been a
man of greater energy, misrule could hardly have come to
the present paths. But the debility constitutional or induced by
the hardships bodily and mental of the Spanish captain was

(18:41):
too obvious to be overlooked, a prey to settled dejection,
as if long mocked with hope, he would not now
indulge it, even when it had ceased to be a mock.
The prospect of that day or evening at furthest lying
at anchor, with plenty of water for his people and
a brother captain to counsel and befriend, seemed in no

(19:05):
perceptible degree to encourage him. His mind appeared unstrung, if
not more seriously affected, shut up in the oaken walls,
chained to one dull round of command, whose unconditionality cloyed him.
Like some hypochondriac abbot. He moved slowly about, at times

(19:26):
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

(19:48):
rather tall, but seemed never to have been robust, and now,
with nervous suffering, was worn almost 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

(20:14):
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
in similar offices with that affectionate zeal which transmutes into
something filial or fraternal, acts in themselves but menial, and

(20:38):
which has gained for the Negro the repute of making
the most pleasing body servant in the world one two,
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 indecary of the blacks

(21:01):
in general, as well as what seemed the sullen inefficiency
of the whites, it was not without humane satisfaction that
Captain Delaino 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

(21:21):
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 conspicuous a feature in the ship's general affliction. Still,
Captain Delino was not a little concerned at what he

(21:43):
could not help taking, for the time to be Don
Benito's unfriendly indifference towards himself. The Spaniard's manner, too, conveyed
a note 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

(22:07):
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 slighter affront, be made to

(22:29):
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

(22:49):
but his personal attendant. Even the formal reports, which, according
to c Usage were at stated times made to him
by some petty underling, either a white Mula or black,
he hardly had patience enough to listen to without betraying
contemptuous aversion. His manner upon such occasions was, in its

(23:09):
degree not unlike that which might be supposed to have
been his imperial countrymen's Charles the Fifth, 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

(23:30):
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 alternate destination through runners alert
Spanish boys or slave boys like Pages or pilot fish
with an easy call, continually hovering around Don Benito, so

(23:54):
that to have beheld this undemonstrative, invalid, gliding about, app
athetic and mute. No landsman could have dreamed that in
him was lodged a dictatorship beyond which, while at sea,
there was no earthly appeal. Thus the Spaniard regarded in
his reserve seemed as the involuntary victim of mental disorder.

(24:18):
But in fact his reserve might in some degree have
proceeded from design. If so, then in Don Benito was
invinced the unhealthy climax of that icy though conscientious policy
more or less adopted by all commanders of large ships, which,
except in signal emergencies, obliterates alike the manifestation of sway

(24:41):
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 law course of such hard
self restraint, that, notwithstanding the present condition of his ship,

(25:06):
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 Dominic, 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

(25:29):
their cue. But more probably this appearance of slumbering dominion
might have been but an attempted disguise to conscious imbecility,
not deep policy, but shallow device. But be all as
this might, whether Don Benito's manner was designed or not.

(25:49):
The more Captain Delano noted its pervading reserve, the less
he felt uneasiness at any particular manifestation of that reserve
towards himself. Neither were his thoughts taken up by the
captain alone. Wanted to the quiet orderliness of the sealer's
comfortable family of a crew, the noisy confusion of the

(26:11):
Sandomic'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 described, in the main to
the absence of those subordinate deck officers, to whom, along
with higher duties, is intrusted what may be styled the

(26:34):
police department of a populous ship. True, the old Oakum
pickers appeared at times to act 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 towards establishing a general quiet.

(26:57):
The sand Dominic was in the condition of a transatlantic
immigrant ship, among whose multitude of living freight are some
individuals doubtless as little troublesome as crates and bales. But
the friendly remonstrances of such with their ruder companions are
of not so much avail as the unfriendly arm of

(27:18):
the mate. What the San Dominic wanted was what the
immigrant ship has stern superior officers. But on these decks
not so much as a fourth mate was to be seen.
End of Section two Section three of Benito Sereno. The

(27:44):
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 whales,
which at the first most moment had greeted him, yet
of the details no clear understanding had been had. The

(28:06):
best account would doubtless be given by the captain, Yet
at first the visitor was loath 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

(28:28):
the particulars of the ship's misfortunes, he would perhaps be
better able in the inn to relieve them. Would Don
Benito favor him with the whole story? Don Benito faltered, then,
like some somnambulist, suddenly interfered with vacantly stared at his visitor,

(28:49):
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

(29:12):
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

(29:32):
the servant. It is now one 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 Aires, bound to
Lima with a general cargo Paraguay, Tea and the like,

(29:55):
and pointing forward that parcel of Negro, now not more
than one 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,

(30:18):
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 laughed
on deck at the time. And this last necessity, it
was combined with the prolonged detentions afterwards experienced, which eventually

(30:43):
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 servants sustained him, and,
drawing a cordial from his pocket, placed it to his lips.
He a little revived, but unwilling to leave him unsupported,

(31:06):
while yet imperfectly restored the black with one arm still
encircled his master, at the same time keeping his eye
fixed on his face, as if to watch for the
first sign of complete restoration or relapse, as the event
might prove. The Spaniard proceeded, but brokenly and obscurely, as

(31:27):
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

(31:51):
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 to be patient,
signor again, turning to Captain Delano, These fits do not
last long. Master will soon be himself. Don Benito, reviving

(32:14):
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

(32:37):
and sails were so damaged and so inadequately handled by
the surviving mariners, most of whom were become invalids that,
unable to lay her northerly course by the wind which
was powerful, the unmanageable ship, for successive days at nights
was blown northwestward, where the breeze suddenly deserted her in

(32:59):
un 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,

(33:22):
making such short work of it as to sweep away,
as by billows, whole families of the Africans, and yet
a larger number proportionally of the Spaniards, including by a
luckless fatality every officer on board. Consequently, in the smart
west winds eventually following the calm, the already rent sails,

(33:45):
having to be simply dropped, not furled at need, had
been gradually reduced to the beggar's rags. They were now
to procure substitutes for his lost sailors, as well as
supplies of water and sails. The captain, at the earliest opportunity,
had made for Baldivia, the southernmost civilized port of Chile

(34:09):
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 Dominic had been battledored

(34:31):
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,

(34:55):
you see who, though to your inexperienced eyes appear 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

(35:15):
he rallied, and less obscurely proceeded. Yes, their owner was
quite right in assuring me that no fetters would be
needed with his blacks, so that while as his wont
in this transportation, those Negroes have always remained upon deck,
not thrust below as in the Guinea men. They have also,

(35:37):
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 own not only my
own preservation, but likewise to him. Chiefly the merit is

(36:00):
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

(36:21):
Benito I envy you such a friend slave, I cannot
call him. End of Section three.

Speaker 2 (36:35):
Chapter four. The blacks, as master and man stood before him,
the black upholding the white. Captain. Delano could not but
think of the beauty of that relationship, which could present
such a spectacle of fidelity on the one hand and
confidence on the other. The scene was heightened by the
contrast in dress to noting their relative positions. The Spaniard

(36:59):
wore loose the chili jacket of dark velvet, white small
clothes and stockings with silver buckles at the knee and
end step, a high crown, sombrero, fine grass, a slender sword,
silver mounted, hung from monotonous sash, the last being an
almost invariable adjunct, more for utility than ornament. Of a
South American general's dressed to this hour, excepting when his

(37:21):
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 mainmast,
wholly occupied by the Blacks. The servant wore nothing but
wide trousers, apparently from their coarseness in patches made out

(37:42):
of some old topsail. They were clean and confined to
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 Saint Francis. However unsuitable for
the time and place, at least in the blunt thinking
American's eyes, and however strangely surviving in the midst of
all his afflictions, the toilette of Don Benito might not,

(38:06):
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 Aires, he had avowed
himself a native and resident of Chile, whose inhabitants had
not so generally adopted the plain coat and once plebeian pantaloons,
but with a becoming modification, adhered to their provincial costume,

(38:26):
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 Spaniards 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

(38:47):
well as some surprise considering the latitudes in question, was
the long calms spoken of, and more particularly the ships
so long drifting about. Without communicating the opinion, of course,
the American could not but impute it part of the detentions,
both to clumsy seamanship and faulty navigation. Eyeing on Benito's
small yellow hands, he easily inferred that the young captain

(39:09):
had not got into command at the hall's hall, but
the cabin window, and if so, why wonder it incompetence
in youth, sickness and aristocracy united. Such was his democratic conclusion,
but drowning criticism and compassion. After a fresh repetition of
his sympathies, Captain Delano, having heard out his story, not

(39:29):
only engaged as in the first place, to see Don
Benito in his people supplied in their immediate bodily needs,
but also now further promise 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,

(39:52):
the ship might proceed to Concepcion, there fully to refit
for Lima, her destined port. Such generosity view was not
without its effect. Even upon the invalid. His face lighted up.
Eager and hectic, he met the honest glance of his
visitor with gratitude. He seemed overcome. This excitement is bad
for master, whispered the servant, taking his arm and with

(40:15):
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 joyless mien. Looking up toward the poop,
the host invited his guest to accompany him there for
the benefit of what little breath of wind might be stirring.

(40:37):
As during the telling of the story, Captain Delano had
once or twice started at the occasional sembling 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,

(40:58):
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 an untimely caprice of punctilio,
rendered distressing by his cadaverous aspect. Don Benito, with Castilian boughs,
solemnly insisted upon his guest preceding him up the ladder

(41:20):
leading to the elevation, where one on each side of
the last step sat four armorial supporters, and centuries 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,

(41:42):
he saw the whole file, like so many organ grinders,
still stupidly intent on their work, unmindful of everything beside.
He could not but smile at his late fidgeting panic. Presently,
while standing with Don Benito, looking forward upon the decks below,
he was struck by one of those instances of insubordination,
and previously alluded to. Three black boys with two Spanish

(42:04):
boys were sitting together on the hatches, scraping a rude
wooden platter in which some scanty mess had recently been cooked. Suddenly,
one of the black boys, enraged at a word dropped
by one of his white companions, seized a knife, and,
though called to forbear by one of the oakum pickers,
struck the lad over the head, inflicting a gash from
which blood flowed. In amazement, Captain Delano inquired what this meant,

(42:28):
to which the pale benito dully muttered that it was
merely the sport of the lad, pretty serious sport. Truly
rejoined Captain Delano. Had such a thing happened on board
the Bachelor's delight, instant punishment would have followed. At these words,
the Spaniard turned upon the American one of his sudden, staring,
half lunatic looks, then, relapsing into his torpor, answered doubtless,

(42:51):
doubtless signor is it thought, Captain Delano, that this helpless
man is one of those paper captains I've known, who,
by policy wink at what by power they cannot put down.
I know no sadder sight than a commander who has
little of command but the name, I should think Don Benito,
he now said, glancing toward the oakum picker who had

(43:11):
sought to interfere with the boys, that you invited advantageous
to keep all your blacks employed, especially the younger ones,
no matter at what useless task, and no matter what
happens to the ship. Why, even with my little band,
I find such a course indispensable. I once kept a
crew on my quarter deck thrumbing mats for my cabin,
when for three days I had given up my ship, mats,

(43:32):
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 Dolano, again glancing upon the oakum pickers,
and then at the hatchet polishers nearby. I see you
keep some at least if your host employed. Yes, was

(43:55):
again the vacant response. Those old men there, shaking their
powers from their pulpits. Continued Captain Delano, pointed to the
oakum pickers, seem to act the part of old dominies
to the rest little heeded, as their admonitions are at times.
Is this voluntary on their part, Don Benito? Or have
you appointed them shepherds to your flock of black sheep?
What posts they feel I appointed them? Rejoined the Spaniard

(44:18):
in an acrid tone, as if resenting some supposed satiric reflection.
And these others, these are shanti condres. Here continued Captain Delano,
rather uneasily, eyeing the brandish steel of the hatchet polishers,
wherein spots it had been brought to a shine. This
seems a curious business there at, Don Benito, in the
Gales we met, answered the Spaniard. What of our general

(44:41):
cargo was not thrown overboard? Was much damaged by the brine?
Since coming into calm weather, I have had several cases
of knives and hatchets daily brought up for overhauling and cleaning.
A prudent idea, Don Benito, You are part owner of
ship and cargo, I presume, but not of the slaves.
Perhaps I am owner of all you see, impatiently returned

(45:03):
Don Benito, except the main company of blacks who belonged
to my late friend Alejandro Aranda. As he mentioned this name,
his air was heart broken, his knees shook. His servants
supported him, thinking he divined the cause of such unusual emotion.
To confirm his surmise, Captain Delano, after a pause, said,

(45:24):
and may I ask Don Benito, whether since a while
ago you spoke of some cabin passengers, the friend whose
lawso 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.

(45:45):
Pardon me, said Captain Delano slowly. But I think that
by a sympathetic experience, I conjecture, Don Benito, what it
is that gives the keener edge to your grief. It
was once my hard fortune to lose at sea, you,
dear friend, my own brother, then supercargo, assured of the
welfare of his spirit its departure, I could have borne

(46:07):
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 fell a voyager a man I loved, unless,
unbeknown to him I had provided every requisite in case

(46:28):
of her fatality, for embalming his mortal part for interment
on shore. We your fringe remains now on board this ship, done, Benito?
Not thus strangely would the mention of his name affect
you on the board this ship, echoed the Spaniard. Then,
with horrified gestures as directed against some specter, he unconsciously

(46:48):
fell into the ready arms of his attendant, who, with
a silent appeal toward Captain Delano, seemed beseeching him not
again to approach 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 a man as ghosts with an abandoned house.

(47:10):
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 Arande,
what would you say? Could you see your friend who
on former voyages when you for months were left behind,
has I daresay often longed and longed for one Peepeche

(47:32):
now transported with terror at the least thought of having
you anyway nigh him at this moment, with a dreary
graveyard tull 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

(47:55):
the general crowd below and slowly advancing toward the elevated poop.
The iron collar was about his neck, from which depended
a chain thrice well round his body. The terminating lynx
pad luck together at a broad band of iron his girdle,
how like a mutato fall moves, murmured the servant. The

(48:16):
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.

(48:38):
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 shining
by anticipation some rebellious response. In a disconcert voice, thus

(49:00):
spoke artofoll, will you ask my pardon? Now? The black
was silent again, Master, reported the servant, with bitter upbraiding
eye in his countrymen. Again, Master, he will bend to master.
Yet answer, said Don Benito, still averting his glance, Say

(49:21):
but the one word pardon, and your chain shall be
off upon this The black, slowly raising both arms, let
them lifelessly fall, his lynx clanking. His head bowed as
much as to say no, I am content, Go, said
Don Benito, with inkept an unknown emotion, deliberately as he

(49:44):
had come. The black obeyed. Excuse me, Don Benito, said
Captain de Lano. But this scene surprises me. What means it?

Speaker 3 (49:51):
Pray?

Speaker 2 (49:53):
It means that that Negro alone of all the band,
has given me peculiar cause of a fit. I have
put him in chains. I here he paused, his hand
to his head as if there were swimming there, or
sudden bewilderment of memory had come over him. But meeting
his servant's kindly glance, seemed reassured, and proceeded. I could

(50:16):
not scourge such a form. But I told him he
must ask my pardon. And 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

(50:40):
exclaimed Captain Delano impulsively. He has a royal spirit in him,
this fellow, he may have some right to it. Bitterly,
returned Don Benito, He says he was king in his
own land, Yes, said the servant, entering a word. Those
slits and out the fall's ears once wedges of gold.

(51:01):
But poor Babo here in his own land, was only
a poor slave. A black man's slave, was Babo, who
now is the whites. 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.

(51:27):
What prey was that of all'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 a spirit,
remit his penalty. No, no, Master will never do that here,
murmured the servant to himself, proud that of all must

(51:47):
first ask master's pardon. The slave there carries the padlock,
but master here carries the key. His attention thus directed,
Captain Delano now noticed for the first time that suspended
by a slender silken cord from Don Benito's neck hunger
key at once from the servant's muttered syllables divining the
key's purpose, he smiled and said, so, Don Benito, padlock

(52:11):
and key symbolic 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 Hypochontriac seemed in

(52:32):
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
Dolano shifted the subject, but finding his companion more than
ever withdrawn, as if still slowly digesting the leaves of

(52:54):
the presumed affront above mentioned by and by Captain Delano
likewise became less talkative, oppressed against his own will by
what seemed the secret vindictiveness of the morbidly sensitive Spaniard.
But the good sailor himself, of a quite contrary disposition,
refrained on his part, alike from the appearances, from the
feeling of resentment, and if silent, was only so from contagion. Presently,

(53:19):
the Spaniard, assisted by a servant, somewhat discourteously, crossed over
from Captain Delano, 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, begun whispering together in low voices. This
was unpleasing, and more the moody air of the Spaniard,

(53:41):
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.

Speaker 4 (53:57):
End of Chapter four Questions. 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

(54:18):
mizzen rigging. Perhaps the man would not have been particularly noticed,
were it not that, during his ascent to one of
the yards, he, with a sort of covert intentness, kept
his eye fixed on Captain Delano, from whom presently it passed,
as if by a natural sequence to the two whisperers,

(54:40):
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 gees as
it was little flattering to the host. The singular alternations

(55:05):
of courtesy and ill breeding in the Spanish captain were
unaccountable except on one of two suppositions, innocent lunacy or
wicked impostor. But the first idea, though it might naturally
have occurred to an indifferent observer, and in some respects,
had not hitherto been wholly a stranger to Captain Delano's mind.

(55:29):
Yet now that in an incipient way he began to
regard the stranger's conduct something in the light of an
intentional affront, of course, the idea of lunacy was virtually vacated.
But if not a lunatic, what then, under the circumstances,
would a gentleman, nay, any honest boor act the part

(55:51):
now acted by his host. The man was an impostor,
some low born adventurer masquerading as an ocean grandee, yet
so ignorant of the first requisites of mere gentlemanhood as
to be betrayed into the present remarkable in decorum. That

(56:11):
strange ceremoniousness too. At other times events seemed not uncharacteristic
of one playing a part above his real level. Benito
Cereno Don Benito Cereno, a sounding name one two at
that period not unknown in the surname to supercargoes and

(56:31):
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 rothchild with a noble brother or cousin
in every great trading town of South America. The alleged

(56:52):
Don Benito was in early manhood about twenty nine or
thirty to assume a sort of roving cadet in the
maritime affairs of such a house. What more likely scheme
for a young knave of talent and spirit. But the
Spaniard was a pale invalid. Never mind, for even to
the degree of simulating mortal disease, the craft of some

(57:16):
tricksters had been known to attain to think that under
the aspect of infantile weakness, the most savage energies might
be couched those velvets of the Spaniard. But the velvet
paw to his fangs. From no train of thought did
these fancies come not from within but from without. Suddenly too,

(57:38):
and in one throng like hoarfrost, yet as soon to
vanish as the mild sun of Captain Delano's good nature
regained its meridian, glancing over once again toward Don Benito,
whose side face revealed above the skylight was now turned
toward him. Captain Delano was struck by the profile, whose

(58:00):
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 offshoot
of a true Idalgo Sereno. Relieved by these and other
better thoughts, the visitor, lightly humming a tune, now began

(58:22):
indifferently pacing the poop, so as not to betray to
Don Benito that he had at all mistrusted incivility, much
less duplicity, for such mistrust would yet be proved illusory,
and by the event, though for the present, the circumstance
which had provoked that distrust remained unexplained. But when that

(58:45):
little mystery should have been cleared up, Captain Delano thought
he might extremely regret it. Did he allow Don Benito
to become aware that he had indulged in ungenerous surmises
in short to the Spaniard's black letter text, it was
best for a while to leave open margin. Presently, his

(59:07):
pale face twitching and overcast, the Spaniard, still supported by
his attendant, moved over toward his guest, when with even
more than unusual embarrassment and a strange sort of intriguing
intonation in his husky whisper, the following conversation began. Senor,

(59:28):
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, Signor, you exchanged
your seal skins for teas and silks. I think you said, yes,
silks mostly, and the balance you took in specie perhaps.

(59:52):
Captain Delano, fidgeting a little, answered yes, some silver. Not
a very great deal though, Ah well, May I ask
how many men have you on board, Senor. Captain Delano
slightly started, but answered about five and twenty all told,
and at present, Signor, all on board. I suppose all

(01:00:15):
on board, Don Benito, replied the captain, now with satisfaction,
and will be tonight Senor. At this last question, following
so many pertinacious ones, for the soul of him, Captain
Delano could not but look very earnestly at the questioner, who,
instead of meeting the glance with every token of craven discomposure,

(01:00:38):
dropped his eyes to the deck, presenting an unworthy contrast
to his servant, who just then was kneeling at his
feet adjusting a loose shoe buckle. His disengaged face, meantime,
with humble curiosity, turned openly up into his master's downcast one.
The Spaniard, still with a guilty shuffle, repeated his question,

(01:01:03):
and and will be to night, Senor? Yes, for aught,
I know, returned Captain Delano, but nay, rallying himself into
fearless truth. Some of them talked of going off on
another fishing party about midnight. Your ships generally go go
more or less armed, I believe, Senor. Oh a six

(01:01:27):
pounder or two in case of emergency, was the intrepidly
indifferent reply, with a small stock of muskets, sealing spears,
and cutlasses.

Speaker 5 (01:01:35):
You know.

Speaker 4 (01:01:37):
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

(01:02:01):
this moment and ere Captain Delano could cast a cool
thought upon what had just passed. The young Spanish sailor
before mentioned was seen descending from the rigging in act
of stooping over to spring inboard to the deck. His
voluminous unconfined frock or shirt of coarse woolen, much spotted

(01:02:21):
with tar, opened out far down the chest, revealing a
soiled undergarment 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

(01:02:43):
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

(01:03:06):
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

(01:03:27):
the American could not endure it. Plucking up a gay
and humorous expression, he crossed over to the two rapidly, saying, Ah,
don Benito, your black hair seems high in your trust,
a sort of privy counselor in fact. Upon this, the
servant looked up with a good natured grin, but the

(01:03:48):
master started as from a venomous bite. It was a
moment or two before the Spaniard sufficiently recovered himself to reply,
which he did at last with cold constraint. Yes, Senor,
I have trust in Babo. Here Babo, changing his previous
grin of mere animal humor into an intelligent smile not

(01:04:11):
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

(01:04:32):
trivial remark, and moved off again and again, turning over
in his mind the mysterious demeanor of Don Benito Sereno.
He had descended from the poop and wrapped in thought,
was passing near a dark hatchway leading down into the steerage.
When perceiving motion there, he looked to see what moved

(01:04:54):
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

(01:05:15):
make it sure that he was the same young sailor
before noticed in the rigging. What was that which so sparkled,
thought Captain Delano. It was no lamp, no match, no
live coal. Could it have been a jewel? But how
come sailors with jewels or with silk trimmed undershirts either?

(01:05:37):
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 a while since, if
I could only be certain that in my uneasiness my

(01:05:59):
sae did not deceive me, then here, passing from one
suspicious thing to another, his mind revolved the point of
the strange questions put to him concerning his ship. By
a curious coincidence, as each point was recalled, the black
wizards of Ashanti would strike up with their hatchets as

(01:06:19):
an 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,

(01:06:42):
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.

(01:07:06):
What did all these phantoms amount to? Had the Spaniard
any sinister scheme, it must have reference not so much
to him, Captain Delano, as to his ship the Bachelor's Delight.
Hence the present drifting away of the one ship from
the other. Instead of favoring any such possible scheme, was

(01:07:28):
for the time at least opposed to it. Clearly, any
suspicion combining such contradictions must need be delusive. Besides, 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

(01:07:51):
a thousand times absurd that such a craft should at
present be of a piratical character, or her commander either
or 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

(01:08:13):
that same undiminished Spanish crew alleged to have perished off
to a remnant be at that very moment, lurking in
the hold on heartbroken 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

(01:08:34):
among the Malay pirates it was no unusual thing to
lure ships after them into their treacherous harbors or entice
borders 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,

(01:08:59):
he had heard 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 Dominic, like a slumbering volcano, suddenly
let loose energies now hid, he recalled the spaniard's manner

(01:09:21):
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,

(01:09:41):
But in many of its details, especially in reference to
the more calamitous parts, such as the fatalities among the seamen,
the consequent prolonged beating about the past sufferings from obstinate calms,
and still continued suffering from thirst. In all these points,
as well as others, Don Benito's story had been corroborated

(01:10:03):
not only by the wailing ejaculations of the indiscriminate multitude,
white and black, but likewise what seemed impossible to be
counterfeit by the very expression and play of every human
feature which Captain Delano saw. If Don Benito's story was
throughout an invention, then every soul on board, down to

(01:10:25):
the youngest negress, was his carefully drilled recruit in the plot,
an incredible inference. And yet if there was ground for
mistrusting the Spanish captain's veracity, that inference was a legitimate one.
In short, scarce and uneasiness entered the honest sailor's mind,
but by a subsequent spontaneous act of good sense it

(01:10:48):
was ejected. At last, he began to laugh at these forebodings,
and laugh at the strange ship, for in its aspects
some way siding with them, as it were, laughed too
at the odd looking blacks, particularly those old scissors grinders,
the ashantes, and those bed ridden old knitting women, the

(01:11:09):
oakum pickers, and in a human way, he almost began
to laugh at the dark spaniard himself, the central hobgoblin
of all. For the rest whatever, in a serious way
seemed enigmatical, was now good naturedly explained away by the
thought that for the most part the poor invalids scarcely

(01:11:30):
knew what he was about, either sulking in black vapors
or putting random questions without sense or object. Evidently, for
the present the man was not fit to be entrusted
with the ship. On some benevolent plea. Withdrawing the command
from him, Captain Delano would yet have to send her
to Concepcion in charge of his second mate, a worthy

(01:11:52):
person and good navigator, a plan which would prove no
wiser for the San Dominic 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

(01:12:15):
restored to authority. End of chapter five, the boat appears,
such were the Americans 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,

(01:12:40):
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 seiler's side,
as well as its returning trip lengthened by the continual
recession of the goal. The advancing speck was observed by

(01:13:03):
the Blacks. Their shouts attracted the attention of Don Benito, who,
with a return of courtesy approaching Captain Delano, expressed satisfaction
at the coming of some supplies, slight and temporary, as
they must necessarily prove. Captain Delano responded, but while doing so,

(01:13:25):
his attention was drawn to something passing on the deck below.
Among the crowd climbing the landward bulwarks. Anxiously watching the
coming boat, two blacks, to all appearances, accidentally incommoded by
one of the sailors, flew out against him with horrible curses,
which the sailor, some way resenting the two blacks, dashed

(01:13:45):
him to the deck and jumped upon him, despite the
earnest cries of the oakum pickers. Don Benito said Captain
Delano quickly, do you see what is going on there? Look?
But seized by his cough, the Spaniard staggered with both
hands to his face, on the point of falling. Captain

(01:14:07):
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

(01:14:30):
away in the visitor's eyes any blemish of impropriety which
might have attached to the attendant from the in decorous
conferences before mentioned, showing too that if the servant were
to blame, it might be more the master's fault than
his own, since when left to himself, he could conduct
thus well. His glance thus called away from the spectacle

(01:14:55):
of disorder to the more pleasing one before him. Captain
Delano could not avoid it, again, congratulating Don Benito upon
possessing such a servant, who, though perhaps a little too
forward now and then, must upon the whole be invaluable
to one in the invalid's situation. Tell me, Don Benito,
he added, with a smile, I should like to have

(01:15:17):
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 dobloons, 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

(01:15:39):
to hear so paltry a valuation put upon him by
a stranger. But Don Benito, apparently hardly yet completely restored,
and again interrupted by his cough, made but some broken reply.
Soon his physical distress became so great, affecting his mind too, apparently, that,

(01:16:00):
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

(01:16:25):
to countenance cowardice or unfaithfulness in seamen. While with these thoughts,
standing with eye directed forward toward that handful of sailors,
suddenly he thought that some of them returned the glance,
and with a sort of meaning, he rubbed his eyes
and looked again, but again seemed to see the same thing,

(01:16:48):
under a new form, but more obscure than any previous one.
The old suspicions recurred, but in the absence of Don Benito,
with less of panic than before. Despite the bad account
given of the sailors, Captain Delano resolved forthwith to accost
one of them. Descending the poop, he made his way

(01:17:10):
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

(01:17:34):
kings at arms and escorted as by a Kaffir guard
of honor. Captain Delano, assuming a good humored off hand air,
continued to advance now and then, saying a blithe word
to the negroes, and his eye curiously surveying the white
faces here and there, sparsely mixed in with the blacks,
like stray white ponds, venturously involved in the ranks of

(01:17:58):
the chessmen opposed. While thinking which of them to select
for his purpose, he chanced to observe a sailor seated
on the deck, engaged in tarring the strap of a
large block, with a circle of blacks squatted round him,
inquisitively eyeing the process. The mean employment of the man

(01:18:19):
was in contrast with something superior in his figure. His
hand black, with continually thrusting it into the tar pot
held for him by a Negro, seemed not naturally alied
to his face, a face which would have been a
very fine one but for its haggardness. Whether this haggardness
had ought to do with criminality could not be determined,

(01:18:42):
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

(01:19:03):
the time charitable man as he was, rather another idea,
because observing so singular a haggardness to be combined with
a dark eye averted as in trouble and shame. And then, however,
illogically uniting in his mind his own private suspicions of
the crew with the confessed ill opinion on the part

(01:19:24):
of their captain, he was insensibly operated upon by certain
general notions which, while disconnecting pain and abashment from virtue
as invariably linked them with vice. If indeed there be
any wickedness on board this ship, thought Captain Delano, be

(01:19:44):
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 nightcap,

(01:20:05):
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,

(01:20:29):
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

(01:20:50):
on his weather beaten visage, much as if a grizzly bear,
instead of growling and biting, should simper and cast sheep's eyes.
He was asked several questions concerning the voyage, questions purposely
referring to several particulars in Don Benito's narrative not previously
corroborated by those impulsive cries greeting the visitor on first

(01:21:14):
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.

(01:21:37):
And yet all the while this ersine 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,

(01:21:59):
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 beneath o Sereno,
how plainly thought he did that old whiskerindo yonder betray
a consciousness of ill desert, no doubt, when he saw

(01:22:21):
me coming he dreaded lest I, apprized 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 eyeing me here a while since, Ah, these

(01:22:46):
currents spin one's head round almost as much as they
do the ship. Huh. There now's a pleasant sort of
sunny sight. Quite sociable too. His attention had been drawn
to a slumbering negress, partly disclosed through the lace work
of some rigging, lying with youthful limbs, carelessly disposed under

(01:23:09):
the lee of the bulwarks like a dough 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 dams,
its hands like two paws clambering upon her, its mouth
and nose ineffectually rooting to get at the mark, and

(01:23:33):
meantime giving a vexatious half grunt, blending with the composed
snore of the negress. The uncommon vigor of the child
at length roused the mother. She started up at distance,
facing Captain Delano, but as if not at all concerned
at the attitude in which she had been caught, Delightedly,

(01:23:55):
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

(01:24:16):
gratified with their manners. Like most uncivilized women, they seemed
at once tender of heart and tough of constitution, equally
ready to die for their infants or fight for them.
Unsophisticated as leopardesses, loving as doves, ah, thought Captain Delano.
These perhaps are some of the very women whom Mungo

(01:24:37):
Park saw in Africa, and gave such a noble account
of these natural sights. Somehow insensibly deepened his confidence and ease.
At last, he looked to see how his boat was
getting on, but it was still pretty remote. He turned
to see if Don Benito had returned, but he had

(01:24:59):
not to change the scene, as well as to please
himself with a leisurely observation of the coming boat. Stepping
over into the mizzen chains, he clambered his way into
the starboard quarter galley, one of those abandoned Venetian looking
water balconies previously mentioned retreats cut off from the deck.

(01:25:21):
As his foot pressed the half damp, half dry sea
mosses matting the place, and a chance phantom cat's paw
an islet of breeze unherlded unfollowed. As this ghostly cat's
paw came fanning his cheek, his glance fell upon the
row of small, round dead lights, all closed like coppered

(01:25:43):
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 to a purple black tarred over panel,
threshold and post. And he bethought him of the time
when that state cabin and the state balcony had heard

(01:26:06):
the voices of the Spanish king's officers, and the forms
of thelem of Viceroy's daughters had perhaps leaned where he stood.
As these and other images flitted through his mind as
the cat's paw through the calm, gradually he felt rising
a dreamy inquietude, like that of one who alone on

(01:26:27):
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 seaweed, broad ovals

(01:26:50):
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

(01:27:13):
ruin of some summer house in a grand garden, long
running to waste. Trying to break one charm, he was
but becharmed new, though upon the wide sea he seemed
in some far inland country, prisoner in some deserted chateau,
left to stare at empty grounds and peer out at

(01:27:35):
vague roads where never wagon or wayfarer passed. But these
enchantments were a little disenchanted as his eye fell on
the corroded main chains of an ancient style, massy and
rusty in link, shackle and bolt. They seemed even more
fit for the ship's present business than the one for

(01:27:56):
which probably she had been built. Presently, he thought something
moved nigh the chains. He rubbed his eyes and looked hard.
Groves of rigging were about the chains, and there, peering
from behind a great stay like an Indian, from behind
a hemlock, a Spanish sailor a marling spike in his hand,

(01:28:19):
was seen, who made what seemed an imperfect gesture toward
the balcony, but immediately, as if alarmed by some advancing
step along the deck within, vanished into the recesses of
the hempen forest like a poacher. What meant this something
the man had sought to communicate unbeknown to any one,

(01:28:40):
even to his captain. Did the secret involve ought unfavorable
to his captain? Were those previous misgivings of Captain Delano's
about to be verified, or, in his haunted mood at
the moment, had some random unintentional motion of the man,
while busy with the stay, as if repairing it, been

(01:29:01):
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 aisle. As with some eagerness
he bent forward, watching for the first shooting view of
its beak. The balustrade gave way before him like charcoal.

(01:29:23):
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

(01:29:45):
perch to an outside boom. While below the old negro,
and invisible to him, reconnoitering from a porthole like a
fox from the mouth of its den, crouched the Spanish sailor.
Again from something suddenly suggested by the man's heir, the
mad idea now darted into Captain Delano's mind that Don

(01:30:09):
Benito's plea of indisposition and withdrawing below was but a
pretense that he was engaged there maturing some plot of
which the sailor, by some means gaining an inkling, had
a mind to warn the stranger against incited, it may
be by gratitude for a kind word on first boarding

(01:30:31):
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

(01:30:55):
man with some evil design? Would not he be likely
to speak well of that stupidity which was blind to
his depravity, and beligned 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

(01:31:19):
were too stupid. Besides, whoever 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

(01:31:43):
when he observed a new face, an aged sailor seated
cross legged near the main hatchway. His skin was shrunk
up with wrinkles, like a pelican's empty pouch, His hair frosted,
his countenance grave and composed. His hands were full of ropes,
which he was working into a large knot. Some blacks

(01:32:05):
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.

(01:32:30):
Such a knot he had never seen in an American ship,
or indeed any other. The old man looked like an
Egyptian priest making Gordian knots for the temple of a man.
The knot seemed a combination of double bowline knot, trouble
crown knot, backhanded well knot not in an out knot,

(01:32:52):
and jamming knot. At last, puzzled to comprehend the meaning
of such a knot, Captain de la addressed the nootter,
What are you nodding there, my man? The knot, was
the brief reply, without looking up, so it seems, But
what is it for for someone else to undo? Muttered

(01:33:15):
back the old man, plying his fingers harder than ever,
the not being now nearly completed. While Captain Delano stood
watching him. Suddenly, the old man threw the knot toward
him and said, in broken English, the first herd in
the ship, something to this effect. Undo it cut it quick,

(01:33:42):
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, not in hand and not in head,
Captain Delano stood mute, while without further heeding him, the

(01:34:06):
old man was now intent upon other ropes. Presently, there
was a slight stir behind Captain Delano. Turning, he saw
the chained negro at to fall, 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,

(01:34:29):
where in the crowd he disappeared. An elderly negro in
a clout like an infant's and with a pepper and
salt head and a kind of atturney air, now approached
Captain Delano, intolerable Spanish, and with a good natured, knowing wink,
he informed him that the old notter was simple witted

(01:34:52):
but harmless, often playing his old tricks. The negro concluded
by begging the knot for a of course, the stranger
would not care to be troubled with it. Unconsciously, it
was handed to him with a sort of kannga. The
negro received it, and, turning his back, ferreted into it

(01:35:14):
like a detective custom house officer. After smuggled laces. Soon
with some African word equivalent to psh, he tossed the
knot overboard. End of chapter six, The boat arrives. All
this is very queer, now, thought Captain Delano, with a

(01:35:37):
qualmish sort of emotion, But as one feeling incipient seasickness,
he strove by ignoring the symptoms to get rid of
the malady. Once more, he looked off for his boat.
To his delight, it was now again in view, leaving
the rocky spur astern the sensation nation here experienced. After

(01:36:01):
at first relieving his uneasiness with unforeseen efficiency, soon began
to remove it the less distant sight of that well
known boat, showing it not as before half blended with
the haze, but with outline defined so that its individuality
like a man's, was manifest. That boat rover by name,

(01:36:24):
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,

(01:36:50):
but somehow with half humorous self reproaches at his former
lack of it. What I a Masa Delano, Jack of
the beach, as they called me? When a lad I
a masa the same that duck satchel in hand used
to paddle along the water side to the schoolhouse made
from the old hulk, I little jack of the beach

(01:37:13):
that used to go bearing with cousin Nat and the rest.
I to be murdered here at the ends of the earth,
on board a haunted pirate ship by a horrible spaniard
too nonsensical to think of. Who would murder a Masa Delano.
His conscience is clean. There is someone above fi fi

(01:37:34):
Jack of the beach. You are a child, indeed a
child of the second childhood. Old boy, you are beginning
to dote and drool. I'm afraid light of heart and foot.
He stepped aft and there was met by Don Benito's servant, who,
with a pleasing expression responsive to his own present feelings,

(01:37:57):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:38:13):
There.

Speaker 4 (01:38:14):
Now do you mark that again? Thought Captain Delano, walking
the poop, What a donkey, I was, this kind gentleman
who here sends me his kind compliments. He but ten
minutes ago, dark lantern in hand, was dodging round some
old grindstone in the hold, sharpening a hatchet for me.
I thought, well, well, these long calms have a morbid

(01:38:38):
effect on the mind, I've often heard, though I never
believed it before. Humph. Glancing toward the boat, there's Rover,
a good dog, a white bone in her mouth, a
pretty big bone, though, seems to me. What, Yes, she
has fallen a foul of the bubbling tide rip there
it sets her the other way too, for the time patience.

(01:39:05):
It was now about noon, though from the grayness of
everything it seemed to be getting toward dusk. The calm
was confirmed. In the far distance, away from the influence
of land, the leaden ocean seemed laid out and let
it up, its course finished, soul gone defunct, but the

(01:39:26):
current from landward where the ship was increased, silently sweeping
her further and further toward the tranced waters beyond. Still
from his knowledge of those latitudes, cherishing hopes of a
breeze and a fair and fresh one at any moment,
Captain Delano, despite present prospects, buoyantly counted upon bringing the

(01:39:50):
San Dominique safely to anchor Ere night. The distance swept
over was nothing, since with a good wind, ten minutes
sailing would reach trace 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

(01:40:11):
walking the poop. Gradually he felt a vexation arising from
the delay of his boat. This soon merged into uneasiness,
and at last his eye falling continually as from a
stage box into the pit, upon the strange crowd before
and below him, and by and by recognizing there the

(01:40:32):
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 ag Hu. Because it went off, it
follows not that it won't come back. Though ashamed of

(01:40:54):
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.

(01:41:15):
By way of keeping his mind out of mischief till
the boat should arrive, he tried to occupy it with
turning over and over in a purely speculative sort of way,
some lesser peculiarities of the captain and crew, among others.
Four curious points recurred. First the affair of the Spanish

(01:41:37):
lad assailed with a knife by the slave boy and
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 without

(01:42:00):
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 fear to draw down
his despotic displeasure. Coupling these points, they seem somewhat contradictory.

(01:42:20):
But what then, thought Captain Delano, glancing toward his now
nearing boat, What then, why this done? Benito is a
very capricious commander, but he is not the first of
the sword 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

(01:42:44):
very word spaniard has a curious conspirator guy fawkish twang
to it. And yet I dare say Spaniards in the
main are as good folks as any in Dukesbury, Massachusetts.
Ah good. At last roverus come as with its welcome freight.

(01:43:07):
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

(01:43:27):
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,

(01:43:51):
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

(01:44:11):
he stood by the gangway, so that, unmindful of Don Benito,
yielding to the impulse of the moment, with good natured authority,
he bade the Blacks stand back to enforce his words,
making use of a half mirthful, half menacing gesture. Instantly,
the Blacks paused just where they were, each Negro and

(01:44:32):
Negress suspended in his or her posture exactly as the
word had found them. For a few seconds, continuing so
while as between the responsive posts of a telegraph, an
unknown syllable ran from man to man among the perched
oakum pickers. While Captain Delano's attention was fixed by this scene,
Suddenly the hatchet polishers half rose, and a rapid cry

(01:44:56):
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

(01:45:20):
substance not be a fool. Simultaneously, the hatchet polishers resumed
their seats quietly as so many tailors, and at once,
as if nothing had happened, the work of hoisting in
the casks was resumed, whites and blacks singing at the tackle.
Captain Delano glanced toward Don Benito as he saw his

(01:45:43):
meager 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 an occasion so trivial too,
as it now appeared, could lose all self command, was,

(01:46:06):
with energetic iniquity, going to bring about his murder. The
casks being on deck, Captain Delano was handed a number
of jars and cups by one of the steward's aides, who,
in the name of Don Benito, entreated him to do
as he had proposed, dole out the water. He complied

(01:46:26):
with republican impartiality as to this Republican element, which always
seeks one level, serving the oldest white no better than
the youngest black, excepting, indeed, poor Don Benito, whose condition,
if not rank, demanded an extra allowance to him in
the first place. Captain Delano presented a fair pitcher of

(01:46:49):
the fluid, but thirsting as he was for fresh water,
Don Benito quaffed not a drop until after several grave
bows and salutes, a reciprocate 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

(01:47:11):
residue were minced up on the spot for the general regalement.
But the soft bread, sugar, and bottled cider Captain Delano
would have given the Spaniards alone and in chief Don Benito,
but the latter objected, which disinterestedness on his part not
a little pleased the American, and so mouthfuls all around

(01:47:32):
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

(01:47:57):
uninfluenced by the peculiar good humor at pre prevailing, and
for the time oblivious of any but benevolent thoughts, Captain Delano,
who from recent indications counted upon a breeze within an
hour or two at furthest dispatched the boat back to
the Seiler, with orders for all the hands that could

(01:48:17):
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

(01:48:40):
remain on board, ready to play the pilot should the
wind come soon or late. As the two captains stood
together observing the departing boat, the servant, as it happened,
having just spied a spot on his master's velvet sleeve
and silently engaged rubbing it out, the American expressed his
regrets that the San Dominic had no boats, none at least,

(01:49:03):
but the unseaworthy old hulk of the longboat, which warped
as a camel 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

(01:49:23):
old mats below or perched above in the dark dome
on the elevated seats, were descried some distance within, like
a social circle of bats sheltering in some friendly cave
at intervals, even 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,

(01:49:47):
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 the gaels, Senor, that was bad. Many men too,
you lost? Then boats and men? Those must have been

(01:50:08):
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

(01:50:28):
did when giving me an account of your voyage, answered
Captain Delano, with almost equal astonishment at this eating of
his own words, even as he ever seemed eating his
own heart on the part of the Spaniard, You yourself,
Don Benito, spoke of cape horn, he emphatically repeated. The
Spaniard turned in a sort of stooping posture, pausing an

(01:50:51):
instant as one about to make a plunging exchange of elements,
as from air to water.

Speaker 3 (01:50:59):
End of chapter chapter eight. In the Cuddy, 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

(01:51:20):
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

(01:51:41):
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,

(01:52:04):
answered the Spaniard, starting somewhat as from dreams into realities.
Then turning upon Captain Delano, he said that ere long
he would resume the conversation. Then, if Master means to
talk more to don Amasa, said the servant, why not
let Don Amasa sit by Master in the cuddy, and
Master can talk, and Don Amasa can listen while Babo

(01:52:28):
here lathers and stops. Yes, said Captain Delano, not unleased
with this sociable plan. Yes, don Benito, unless you had
rather not, I will go with you. Be it so signor.
As the three passed aft, the American could not but
think it another strange instance of his host's capriciousness, this

(01:52:52):
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.

(01:53:13):
The place called the cutty was a light deck cabin
formed by the poop, a sort of attic to the
large cabin below. Part of it had formerly been the
quarters of the officers, but since their death all the
partitionings had been thrown down, and the whole interior converted
into one spacious and airy marine hall or absence of

(01:53:37):
fine furniture and picturesque disarray of odd appurtenances, somewhat answering
to the wide cluttered hall of some eccentric bachelor's squire
in the country who hangs his shooting jacket and tobacco
pouch on deer antlers, and keeps his fishing rod, tongs
and walking stick in the same corner. The similitude was heightened,

(01:54:02):
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 cutty was matted. Overhead,
four or five old muskets were stuck into horizontal holes
along the beams. On one side was a claw footed

(01:54:25):
old table lashed to the deck, a thumbed missile on it,
and over it a small meager crucifix attached to the bulkhead.
Under the table lay dented cutlass or two with a
hacked harpoon, among some melancholy old rigging like a heap
of poor friar's girdles. There were also two long, sharp

(01:54:50):
ribbed settees of malacca cane, black with age and uncomfortable
to look at as inquisitor's racks, with a large misshapen armchair,
which furnished with a rude barber's crutch at the back,
working with a screw, seemed some grotesque middle age engine

(01:55:10):
of torments. A flag locker was in one corner, exposing
various colored bunting, some rolled up, others half unrolled, still
others tumbled. Opposite was a cumbrous washstand, a black mahogany
all of one block with a pedestal like a font,

(01:55:32):
and over it a railed shelf containing combs, brushes, and
other implements of the toilet. A tom hammock of stained
grass swung near the sheets tossed, and the pillow wrinkled
up like a brow, as if whoever slept here slept
but illy, with alternate visitations of sad thoughts and bad dreams.

(01:56:00):
Further extremity of the cuddy overhanging the ship's stern was
pierced with three openings windows or portholes, according as men
or cannon might peer socially or unsocially out of them.
At present, neither men nor cannon were seen, though huge

(01:56:20):
ring bolts and other rusty iron fixtures of the woodwork
hinted of twenty four pounders glancing toward the hammock. As
he entered, Captain Delano said you sleep here, dom Benito, Yes, signor,
since we got into mild weather, this seems a sort

(01:56:41):
of dormitory, sitting room, sail loft, chapel, armory, and private
closet together, Dominito added Captain Delano looking around, Yes, signor,
events have not been favorable too much order in my arrangements.
The servant, napkin on arm, made a motion as if

(01:57:03):
waiting his master's good pleasure. Dominito signified his readiness when
seating him in the Malacca armchair, and for the guest's convenience,
drawing opposite it one of the settees. The servant commenced
operations by throwing back his master's collar and loosening his cravat.

(01:57:24):
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 hairdressers, taking to the comb and
brush congenially as to the castanets, and flourishing them apparently
with almost equal satisfaction. There is to a smooth tact

(01:57:50):
about them in this employment, with a marvelous, noiseless gliding briskness,
not ungraceful in it 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

(01:58:12):
the mere grin or laugh is here meant. Those were unsuitable,
but a certain easy cheerfulness, harmonious in every glance and gesture,
as though God had set the whole Negro to some
pleasant tune. When to all this has added the docility

(01:58:34):
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 Sereno took to

(01:58:58):
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 appear to a benevolent

(01:59:23):
one when at ease with respect to exterior things. Captain
Delano's nature was not only benign, but familiarly and humorously
so at home he had often taken rare satisfaction in
sitting in his door watching some free man of color
at his work or play. If on a voyage he

(01:59:45):
chanced to have a black sailor, invariably he was on
chatty and half gain some 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

(02:00:10):
found the Sandomenik had repressed the tendency, but in the cutting,
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

(02:00:30):
about his master in a business so familiar as that
of shaving, to all his old weakness for negroes returned.
Among the things he was amused with an odd instance
of the African love of bright colors and fine shows

(02:00:51):
in the blacks, in formally taking from the flag locker
a great piece of bunting of all hues, and lavishly
tucking it under his master's chin, brun Apron. The mode
of shaving among the Spaniards is a little different from
what it is with other nations. They have a basin
specially called a barber's basin, which on one side is

(02:01:14):
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

(02:01:37):
and low down under the throat, all the rest being
cultivated beard. These preliminaries being somewhat novel to Captain delano
Is sat curiously eyeing them, so that no conversation took place,
nor for the present did Don Benito appear disposed to
renew any Setting down his basin, the Negro searched among

(02:01:59):
the rays as for the sharpest, and, having found it,
gave it an additional edge by expertly dropping it on
the firm, smooth, oily skin of his open palm. He
then made a gesture as if to begin, but midway
stood suspended for an instant. One hand elevating the razor,

(02:02:22):
the other professionally dabbling among the bubbly SuDS on the
Spaniard's lank neck. Not unaffected by the close side of
the gleaming steel dom Benito nervously shuddered. His usual ghastliness
was heightened by the lather, which lather again was intensified

(02:02:43):
in its hue by the sootiness of the negro's body. Altogether,
the scene was somewhat peculiar, at least to Captain Delano,
Nor as he saw the two thus postured, could he
resist the vagary that in the black he saw a headsman,

(02:03:03):
and in the white a man at the block. But
this was one of those antique conceits, appearing and vanishing
in a breath from which perhaps the best regulated mind
is not free. Meantime, the agitation of the spaniard had
a little loosened the bunting from around him, so that

(02:03:25):
one broad fold swept curtainlike over the chair arm to
the floor, revealing amid a profusion of armorial bars and
ground colors black blue and yellow, a closed castle and
a blood red field diagonal with a lion rampant in
a white The castle and the lion exclaimed Captain Delano.

(02:03:49):
Why don't, Benito, this is the flag of Spain you
use here. It's well, it's only I and not the
king that sees this, he added, with a smile, but
turning toward the black it's all one, I suppose, so
the colors be gay, which playful remark did not fail

(02:04:09):
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 neither throats again. Dominito faintly shuddered. You must not shake,
so Master, see Donomasa, Master always shakes when I shave him,

(02:04:34):
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 Donomasa,
please go on with your talk about the gale and
all that Master can hear, and between times Master can answer. Ah, yes,

(02:04:57):
these gales, said Captain de Laano. But the more I
think of your voyage, Don Benito, the more I wonder
not at the gales, terrible as they must have been,
but at the disastrous interval following them. For here by
your account have you been these two months and more
getting from Cape Horn to Saint Maria, a distance which

(02:05:18):
I myself and a good wind have sailed in a
few days. True, you had calms and long ones, but
to be be calmed 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

(02:05:43):
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
creamy lather under the throat. Immediately, the black barber drew

(02:06:04):
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,
the seamaster you shook. So here's Babo's first blood. No
sword drawn before James the first of England, No assassination

(02:06:29):
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

(02:06:49):
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 a Maasa? Well, well he looks
like a murderer, does he? More like as if himself

(02:07:13):
were to be done for?

Speaker 1 (02:07:15):
Well?

Speaker 3 (02:07:15):
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 answered, on Amasa, please, master,
while I wiped his ugly stuff off the razor and

(02:07:36):
strop it again. As he said these words, his face
was turned half round so as to be alike visible
to the Spaniard and the American, and seemed, by its
expression to hint that he was desirous by getting his
master to go on with the conversation considerately, to withdraw
his attention from the recent annoying accidents. As if glad

(02:08:00):
to snatch the offered relief dom, 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

(02:08:21):
that the passage from Cape Warren to Saint Maria had
been so exceedingly long. Now, and then, mingling with his
words incidental praises less qualified than before to the Blacks
for their general good conduct, These particulars were not given consecutively.
The servant now and then using his razor, and so

(02:08:44):
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

(02:09:07):
in the servant's dusky comment of silence, that the idea
flash across him that possibly master and man, or some
unknown purpose were acting out both in word and deed, nay,
to the very tremor of dom Benito's limbs, some juggling

(02:09:27):
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

(02:09:48):
notion as a whimsy insensibly suggested, perhaps by the theatrical
aspect of dom Benito in his harlequin ensign, kept Sindolano
speedily banished it. The shaving over, the servant bestirred himself
with a small bottle of scented waters, pouring a few

(02:10:10):
drops on the head, and then diligently rubbing the vehemits
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

(02:10:33):
to the temple lock. With other impromptu touches evincing the
hand of a master while like any resigned gentleman in
barber's hands, Dominito bore all much less uneasily, at least
than he had done the razoring. Indeed, he sat so

(02:10:55):
pale and rigid now that the Negro seemed a nubian's 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

(02:11:18):
neck collar, and gravat readjusted a speck of lint whist
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

(02:11:38):
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

(02:12:03):
him relapsing into forbidding gloom, and still remaining seated. Captain Delano,
thinking that his presence was undesired, just then withdrew on
pretense of seeing whether, as he had prophesied, any signs
of a breeze were visible. Walking forward toward the mainmast,
he stood a while, thinking over the scene, and not

(02:12:26):
without some undefined misgivings, when he heard a noise near
the cutting, and turning saw the Negro his hand to
his cheek. Advancing, Captain Delano perceived that the cheek was pleading.
He was about to ask the cause when the negroes
wailing soliloquy enlightened him. Ah, when will Master get better

(02:12:49):
from his sickness? Only the sour heart that sour sickness
breeds made him deserve Babo's soul. 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

(02:13:11):
his face. Is it possible, thought, Captain Delano, was it
to wreck in private this Spanish spite against this poor
friend of his, that Don Benito, by his sullen manner,
impelled me to withdraw? Ah, This slavery breathes ugly passions

(02:13:34):
in man, poor fellow, he is about to speak in
sympathy to the Negro, though with a timid reluctance. He
now re entered the cutting. 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

(02:13:57):
Captain Delano. He accosted Dominito, and they slowly walked together.
They had gone but a few paces when the steward,
a tall rajah looking mulatto Orientaly, set off with a
pagoda turban formed by three or four madras, handkerchiefs wound
about his head, tier on tier, approaching with a Salaam

(02:14:22):
announced lunch in the cabin. On their way, the two
captains were preceded by the mulatto, who, turning round as
he advanced, with continual smiles and bows, ushered them in
a display of elegance, which quite completed the insignificance of
the small, bareheaded babo, who, as if not unconscious of inferiority,

(02:14:45):
eyed askance the graceful steward. But in part Captain Delano
imputed his jealous watchfulness to that peculiar feeling which the
full blooded African entertains for the the adulterated one. As
for the steward, his manner, if not bespeaking much dignity

(02:15:07):
of self respect, yet evidenced his extreme desire to please,
which is doubly meritorious. As at once Christian and Chesterfieldian,
Captain Delano observed with interest that while the complexion of

(02:15:27):
the mulatto was hybrid, his physiognomy was European classically. So
Don Benito, whispered he, I'm glad to see this usher
of the golden rod of yours. The site refutes an
ugly remark once made to me by a Barbados planter
that when a mulatto has a regular European face, look

(02:15:51):
out for him he is a devil. But see your
steward here has features more regular than King George's of England.
And yet here 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 signor but tell

(02:16:16):
me has he not? So far as you have known him,
always proved a good worthy fellow, said Captain Delano, pausing,
while with a final genuflection, the Steward disappeared into the cabin.
Come for the reason just mentioned, I am curious to
know Franaisco is a good man, rather sluggishly responded dom Benito,

(02:16:40):
like a fledgmatic appreciator who would neither find faults nor flatter. Ah.
I thought so, for it were strange, indeed, and not
very creditable to us white skins. If a little of
our blood mixed with the Africans should, far from improving
the latter's quality, have the sad effect of pouring vitriolic

(02:17:03):
acid into black broth, improving the hue perhaps, but not
the wholesomeness doubtless, doubtless sgnor 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,

(02:17:25):
but I know nothing about the matter, he listlessly added,
And here they entered the cabin end of chapter eight.

Speaker 5 (02:17:37):
Business. The lunch was a frugal one, some of Captain
Delano's fresh fish and pumpkins, biscuit and salt beef, the
reserved bottle of cider, and the San Dominique's last bottle
of canary As they entered, Francesco, with two or three
colored aids, was hovering over the table giving the last adjustments.

(02:18:00):
Upon perceiving their master, they withdrew Francesco making a smiling conch,
and the Spaniard, without condescending to notice it, fastidiously remarking
to his companion that he relished not superfluous attendants. Without companions,
host and guests sat down like a childless married couple
at opposite ends of the table. Don Benito waving Captain

(02:18:23):
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,

(02:18:44):
but it was soon evident that in taking his position,
the black was still true to his master, since by
facing him he could the more readily anticipate his slightest want.
This is an uncommonly intelligent fellow of yours, Don Benito,
whispered Captain Delano across the table. You say, true signour.
During the repast, the guest again reverted to parts of

(02:19:07):
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 white 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

(02:19:31):
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

(02:19:52):
over towards him. At length, a few SIPs served partially
to restore him. He made random refaceference to the different
constitutions of races, enabling one to offer more resistance to
certain maladies than another. The thought was new to his companion. Presently,
Captain Delano, intending to say something to his host concerning

(02:20:16):
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 sales 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

(02:20:38):
his attendants. 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

(02:21:01):
there is an interference with the full expression of what
I have to say to you. Upon this, the Spaniard
changed countenance, which was imputed to his, resenting the hint
as in some way a reflection upon his servant. After
a moment's pause, he assured his guest that the blacks
remaining with them would be of no disservice beaus since

(02:21:22):
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

(02:21:42):
irritation upon being left ungratified in so inconsiderable a wish
by one two for whom he intended such solid services.
But it is only his quarrelousness, thought he, and so
filling his glass, he proceeded to business. The price of
the sales and other matters was fixed upon. But while

(02:22:03):
this was being done, the American observed that though his
original offer of assistance had been hailed with hectic animation,
yet now when it was reduced to a business transaction,
indifference and apathy were betrayed. Don Benito in fact appeared
to submit to hearing the details more out of regard
to common propriety than from any impression that weighty benefit

(02:22:27):
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

(02:22:50):
down on the cushioned transom, the servant placing a pillow
behind his master. The long continuance of the calm had
now effected 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

(02:23:14):
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,

(02:23:34):
as if amid all Don Benito's distress, a little to
refresh his spirit by the silent sight of fidelity. End
of Chapter nine.

Speaker 4 (02:23:50):
Safe Harbor. 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

(02:24:12):
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

(02:24:37):
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,

(02:24:57):
Captain Delano, would with pleasure to upon himself the responsibility
of making the best use of the wind. Upon gaining
the deck, Captain Delano started at the unexpected figure of Atufal,
monumentally fixed at the threshold, like one of those sculptured
porters of black marble guarding the porches of Egyptian tombs.

(02:25:22):
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

(02:25:42):
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.

(02:26:05):
The few sailors and many negroes, all equally pleased, obediently
set about heading the ship toward the harbor, while giving
some directions about setting a lower stunsil. Suddenly Captain Delano
heard a voice faithfully repeating his orders. Turning, he saw Babo,
now for the time, acting under the pilot, his original

(02:26:28):
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 halliard was pulled. But to the
blithe songs of the inspirited negroes good fellows, thought Captain Delano,

(02:26:49):
A little training would make fine sailors of them. Why
see the very women pull and sing too These must
be some of those ashanti 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 sea. The

(02:27:10):
San Dominic steered with a cumbrous tiller with large horizontal
pulleys attached. At each pulley end stood a subordinate black,
and between them at the tiller head the responsible post
a Spanish seaman, whose countenance evinced his due share in
the general hopefulness and confidence. At the coming of the breeze,

(02:27:33):
he proved the same man who had behaved with so
shamefaced an air on the windlass. Ah it is you,
my man, exclaimed Captain Delano. Well no more sheep's eyes.
Now look straightforward and keep the ship so good hand
I trust and want to get into the harbor, don't you,

(02:27:55):
si signor, assented the man with an inward chuckle, grasping
the tiller head firm Upon this, unperceived by the American,
the two blacks eyed the sailor askance. Finding all right
at the helm, the pilot went forward to the forecastle
to see how matters stood there. The ship now had

(02:28:16):
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

(02:28:39):
chat while his 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 servants still above kept taking

(02:29:01):
the nightest 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 Spaniard on the transom, he heard another

(02:29:24):
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

(02:29:45):
for the buoyant confidence inspired by the breeze. But even
as it was, he felt a slight twinge from a
sudden involuntary association in his mind of Babo with atufal
Bano said he, I give you joy. The breeze will
hold and will increase by the way your tall man

(02:30:07):
and time piece at to fall stands without by your order.
Of course, Don Benito recoiled, as if at some bland
satirical touch, delivered with such a droit garnish of apparent
good breeding as to present no handle for retort. He
is like one flayed alive, thought Captain Delano. Where may

(02:30:31):
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

(02:30:52):
take his stand and abide my coming. Ah. Now, pardon me,
but that is treating the poor fellow like an execs king,
denied 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,

(02:31:15):
this time as the good sailor thought from a genuine
twinge of his conscience, conversation now became constrained in vain.
Captain Delano called attention to the now perceptible motion of
the keel, gently cleaving the sea. With lackluster eye, Don

(02:31:35):
Benito returned words few and reserved by and bye. The
wind having steadily risen and still blowing right into the
harbor bore the San Dominic. Swiftly, on rounding a point
of land, the sealer, at distance, came into open view. Meantime,

(02:31:55):
Captain Delano had again repaired to the deck, remaining there
some time, Having at last altered the ship's course so
as to give the reef a wide berth. He returned
for a few moments below. I will cheer up my
poor friend this time, thought he better and better, Don Benito,

(02:32:16):
he cried, as he blithely re entered. There will soon
be an end to your cares, at least for a while.
For when after a long sad voyage, you know, the
anchor drops into the heaven all its vast weight seems
lifted from the captain's heart. We are getting on famously,
Don Benito, my ship is in sight. Look through the
side light. Here there she is all a taunt. Oh,

(02:32:40):
the bachelor's delight, My good friend. Ah, how this wind
braces one up. Come, you must take a cup of
coffee with me this evening. My old steward will give
you as fine a cup as ever any sultan tasted.
What say you, Don Benito? Will you? At first, the
spaniard glanced feverishly up, casting a longing look toward the seiler,

(02:33:03):
while with mute concern his servant gazed into his face. Suddenly,
the old a u of coldness returned, and dropping back
to his cushions, he was silent. You do not answer.
Come all day you have been my host. Would you
have hospitality all on one side? I cannot go, was

(02:33:25):
the response. What it will not fatigue you. The ships
will lie together as near as they can without swinging fowl.
It will be little more than stepping from deck to deck,
which is but as from room to room. Come, Come,
you must not refuse me. I cannot go. Decisively and
repulsively repeated Don Benito, renouncing all but the last appearance

(02:33:52):
of courtesy with a sort of cadaverous sullenness, and biting
his thin nails to the quick. He glanced, almost glared
at his guest, as if impatient that a stranger's presence
should interfere with the full indulgence of his morbid hour. Meantime,
the sound of the parted waters came more and more,
gurglingly and merrily in at the windows, as reproaching him

(02:34:16):
for his dark spleen as telling him that sulk as
he might and go mad with it. Nature cared not
a jot, since whose fault was it, pray, But the
foul mood was now at its depth, as the fair
wind at its height. There was something in the man,
so far beyond any mere unsociality or sourness previously evinced

(02:34:41):
that even the forbearing good nature of his guest could
no longer endure it wholly at a loss to account
for such demeanor and deeming sickness with eccentricity, however extreme
no adequate excuse. Well satisfied too, that nothing in his
own condom duct could justify it. Captain Delano's pride began

(02:35:03):
to be roused himself became reserved, but all seemed one
to the Spaniard, quitting him. Therefore, Captain Delano once more
went to the deck. The ship was now within less
than two miles of the seiler. The whale boat was
seen darting over the interval to be brief. The two vessels,

(02:35:24):
thanks to the pilot's skill, ere long in neighborly style,
lay anchored together before returning to his own vessel. Captain
Delano had intended communicating to Don Benito the practical details
of the proposed services to be rendered, but as it
was unwilling anew to subject himself to rebuffs, he resolved,

(02:35:49):
now that he had seen the send Dominic safely moored,
immediately to quit her without further allusion to hospitality or business.
Indefinitely postponed his ulterior plans. He would regulate his future
actions according to future circumstances. His boat was ready to
receive him, but his host still tarried below. Well, thought

(02:36:13):
Captain Delano, if he has little breeding, the more need
to show mine. He descended to the cabin to bid
a ceremonious, and it may be tacitly rebukeful adieu, but
to his great satisfaction Don Benito, as if he began
to feel the weight of that treatment with which his
slighted guest had not indecorously retaliated upon him. Now supported

(02:36:38):
by his servant, rose to his feet and grasping Captain
Delano's hand stood tremulous, too much agitated to speak. But
the good augury hents drawn was suddenly dashed by his
resuming all his previous reserve with augmented gloom, as with
half averted eyes, he silently re seated himself on his cushions,

(02:37:02):
with a corresponding return of his own chilled feelings. Captain
Delano bowed and withdrew. He was hardly midway in the
narrow corridor dim as a tunnel leading from the cabin
to the stairs, when as sound as of the tolling
for execution in some jail yard fell on his ears.

(02:37:24):
It was the echo of the ship's flawed bell striking
the hour drearily reverberated in this subterranean vault, instantly by
a fatality not to be withstood. His mind, responsive to
the portent, swarmed with superstitious suspicions, he paused in images

(02:37:44):
far swifter than these sentences. The minutest detail of all
his former distrusts swept through him, hitherto credulous good nature
had been too ready to furnish excuses for reasonable fear.
Why was the Spaniard so superfluously punctilious at times now

(02:38:06):
heedless of common propriety? In not accompanying to the side
his departing guest, did indisposition forbid? Indisposition had not forbidden
more irksome exertion that day his last equivocal demeanor recurred.
He had risen to his feet, grasped his guest's hand,

(02:38:28):
motioned toward his hat. Then in an instant, all was
eclipsed in sinister muteness and gloom. Did this imply one
brief repentant relenting at the final moment from some iniquitous plot,
followed by remorseless return to it. His last glance seemed
to express a calamitous, yet acquiescent farewell to Captain Delano forever?

(02:38:54):
Why declined the invitation to visit the Sealer that evening?
Or was the Spaniard less hardened than the jew who
refrained not from supping at the board of him whom
the same night he meant to betray what imported all
those day long enigmas and contradictions, except they were intended
to mystify, preliminary to some stealthy blow atu fall the

(02:39:18):
pretended rebel but punctual shadow. That moment lurked by the
threshold without he seemed a sentry and more who, by
his own confession, had stationed him. There was the Negro
now lying in wait, the Spaniard behind his creature. Before

(02:39:40):
to rush from darkness to light was the involuntary choice.
The next moment, with clenched jaw and hand, he passed
Atufall and stood unarmed in the light, as he saw
his trim ship lying peacefully at her anchor and almost
within ordinary call. As he saw his household boat with

(02:40:01):
familiar faces in it, patiently rising and falling on the
short waves by the Sandominic's side, and then glancing about
the decks where he stood, saw the oakum pickers still
gravely plying their fingers, and heard the low buzzing whistle
and industrious hum of the hatchet polishers, still bestirring themselves

(02:40:22):
over their endless occupation. And more than all, as he
saw the benign aspect of nature taking her innocent repose
in the evening, the screened sun in the quiet camp
of the west, shining out like the mild light from
Abraham's tent. As his charmed eye and ear took in

(02:40:43):
all these with the chained figure of the black the
clenched jaw and hand relaxed once again. He smiled at
the phantoms which had mocked him, and felt something like
a tinge of remorse that by indulging them, even for
a moment, he should, by implication, have betrayed an almost
atheistic doubt of the ever watchful providence above end of

(02:41:10):
chapter ten. Into the boat. There was a few minutes delay, while,
in obedience to his orders, the boat was being hooked
along to the gangway. During this interval, a sort of
saddened satisfaction stole over Captain Delano at thinking of the
kindly offices he had that day discharged for a stranger,

(02:41:35):
Ah thought he after good actions. One's conscience is never ungrateful,
however much so the benefited party may be. Presently his
foot in the first act of descent into the boat,
pressed the first round of the side ladder, his face
presented inward upon the deck. In the same moment he

(02:41:57):
heard his name courteously sounded, and to his pleased surprise,
saw Don Benito advancing an unwonted energy in his air,
as if at the last moment, intent upon making amends
for his recent discourtesy. With instinctive good feeling, Captain Delano,

(02:42:18):
revoking his foot, turned and reciprocally advanced. As he did so,
the Spaniard's nervous eagerness increased, but his vital energy failed,
so that the better to support him, the servant, placing
his master's hand on his naked shoulder and gently holding
it there, formed himself into a sort of crutch. When

(02:42:41):
the two captains met, the Spaniard again fervently took the
hand of the American, at the same time casting an
earnest glance into his eyes. But as before, too much
overcome to speak, I have done him wrong self, reproachfully,
thought Captain Delano. His apparent coldness has deceived me. In

(02:43:03):
no instance has he meant to offend meantime, as if
fearful that the continuance of the scene might too much
unstring his master, the servant seemed anxious to terminate it,
and so, still presenting himself as a crutch, and walking
between the two captains. He advanced with them toward the gangway,

(02:43:26):
while still as if full of kindly contrition, Don Benito
would not let go the hand of Captain Delano, but
retained it in his across the black's body. Soon they
were standing by the side, looking over into the boat,
whose crew turned up their curious eyes, waiting a moment

(02:43:47):
for the Spaniard to relinquish his hold. The now embarrassed
Captain Delano lifted his foot to overstep the threshold of
the open gangway, but still Don Benito would not let
go his hand, and yet with an agitated tone, he said,
I can go no further here. I must bid you adieu. Adieu,

(02:44:07):
my dear dear Donamasa, go go, suddenly tearing his hand,
loose go and God guard you better than me, my
best friend. Not unaffected, Captain Delano would now have lingered,
but catching the meekly admonitory eye of the servant, with
a hasty farewell, he descended into his boat, followed by

(02:44:31):
the continual adieus of Don Benito, standing rooted in the gangway.
Seating himself in the stern, Captain Delano, making a last salute,
ordered the boat shoved off. The crew had their oars
on end. The bowsmen pushed the boat a sufficient distance
for the oars to be lengthwise dropped. The instant that

(02:44:54):
was done, Don Benito sprang over the bulwarks, falling at
the feet of Captain Delano, at the same time, calling
towards his ship, but in tones so frenzied that none
in the boat could understand him. But as if not
equally obtuse, three Spanish sailors from three different and distant
parts of the ship splashed into the sea, swimming after

(02:45:17):
their captain, as if intent upon his rescue. The dismayed
officer of the boat eagerly asked what this meant, to
which Captain Delano, turning a disdainful smile upon the unaccountable
Benito Cereno, answered that for his part, he neither knew
nor cared, but it seemed as if the Spaniard had

(02:45:38):
taken it into his head to produce the impression among
his people that the boat wanted to kidnap him or else.
Give way for your lives, he wildly added, starting at
a clattering hubub in the ship, above which rang the
tocsin of the hatchet polishers and seizing Don Benito by
the throat. He added, this plotting pirate means murder. Here,

(02:46:03):
in apparent verification of the words, the servant, a dagger
in his hand, was seen on the rail overhead, poised
in the act of leaping, as if with desperate fidelity
to befriend his master to the last, while seemingly to
aid the Black. The three Spanish sailors were trying to
clamber into the hampered bow. Meantime, the whole host of Negroes,

(02:46:29):
as if inflamed at the sight of their jeopardized captain,
impended in one sooty avalanche over the bulwarks. All this
with what preceded and what followed, occurred with such involutions
of rapidity, that past, present and future seemed one. Seeing

(02:46:49):
the Negro coming, Captain Delano had flung the Spaniard aside,
almost in the very act of clutching him, and by
the unconscious recoil shifting his place with arms thrown up,
so promptly grappled the servant in his descent, that, with
dagger presented at Captain Delano's heart, the Black seemed of
purpose to have leaped there as to his mark, but

(02:47:13):
the weapon was wrenched away, and the assailant dashed down
into the bottom of the boat, which, now with disentangled oars,
began to speed through the sea. At this juncture, the
left hand of Captain Delano, on one side, again clutched
the half reclined Don Benito, heedless that he was in

(02:47:33):
a speechless feint, while his right foot on the other
side ground the prostrate Negro, and his right arm pressed
for added speed on the after oar, his eye bent forward,
encouraging his men to their utmost. But here the officer
of the boat, who had at last succeeded in beating
off the towing Spanish sailors, and was now with face

(02:47:56):
turned aft, assisting the bowsman at his oar, suddenly called
to Captain Delano to see what the black was about,
while a Portuguese oarsman shouted to him to give heed
to what the Spaniard was saying. Glancing down at his feet,
Captain Delano saw the freed hand of the servant aiming

(02:48:16):
with a second dagger, a small one before concealed in
his wool. With this he was snakishly writhing up from
the boat's bottom at the heart of his master. His
countenance lividly vindictive, expressing the centered purpose of his soul,
while the Spaniard, half choked, was vainly shrinking away with

(02:48:37):
husky words incoherent to all but the Portuguese. That moment
across the long benighted mind of Captain Delano, a flash
of revelation swept, illuminating in unanticipated clearness Benito Sedeno's whole
mysterious demeanor with every enigmatic event of the day, as

(02:48:59):
well as the entire past voyage of the San Dominic.
He smote Babo's hand down, but his own heart smote
him harder. With infinite pity, he withdrew his hold from
Don Benito, not Captain Delano, but Don Benito the Black,
and leaping into the boat, had intended to stab.

Speaker 1 (02:49:21):
Both.

Speaker 4 (02:49:21):
The Black's hands were held as glancing up toward the
San Dominic. Captain Delano now would these scales drop from
his eyes. Saw the Negroes, not in misrule, not in tumult,
not as if frantically concerned for Don Benito, but with
masks torn away, flourishing hatchets and knives, in ferocious piratical revolt,

(02:49:44):
like delirious black dervishes, the six Ashantis danced on the poop.
Prevented by their foes from springing into the water, The
Spanish boys were hurrying up to the topmost spars, while
such of the few Spanish sailors not all ready and
the sea less alert, were descried helplessly mixed in on

(02:50:05):
deck with the blacks. Meantime, Captain Delano hailed his own vessel,
ordering the ports up and the guns run out. But
by this time the cable of the San Dominic had
been cut and the fag end in lashing out, whipped
away the canvas shroud about the beak, suddenly revealing as

(02:50:25):
the bleached hull swung round toward the open ocean. Death
for the figurehead in a human skeleton chalky comment on
the chalked words below, follow your leader. At the sight,
Don Benito, covering his face, wailed out, tis he arnda

(02:50:46):
my murdered unburied friend. Upon reaching the seiler, calling for ropes,
Captain Delano bound the Negro, who made no resistance, and
had him hoisted to the deck. He would then have
assisted the now almost helpless Don Benito up the side,
but Don Benito won as he was refused to move

(02:51:08):
or be moved until the Negro should have been first
put below out of view. When presently assured that it
was done, he no more shrank from the ascent. The
boat was immediately dispatched back to pick up the three
swimming sailors. Meantime, the guns were in readiness, though owing

(02:51:29):
to the San Dominic having glided somewhat astern of the seiler,
only the aftermost one could be brought to bear with this,
they fired six times, thinking to cripple the fugitive ship
by bringing down her spars, but only a few inconsiderable
ropes were shot away. Soon the ship was beyond the

(02:51:49):
gun's range, steering broad out of the bay. The blacks,
thickly clustering round the bowsprit one moment with taunting cries
toward the whites, the next with upthrown gestures hailing the
now dusky expanse of ocean. Cawing crows escaped from the
hand of the fowler end of Chapter eleven. Pursuit. The

(02:52:17):
first impulse was to slip the cables and give chase,
but upon second thought, to pursue with whale boat and
yawl seemed more promising. Upon inquiring of Don Benito, what
firearms they had on board the San Dominic Captain Delano

(02:52:37):
was answered that they had none that could be used, because,
in the earlier stages of the mutiny, a cabin passenger
since dead, had secretly put out of order the locks
of what few muskets there were. But with all his
remaining strength, Don Benito entreated the Americans not to give chase,

(02:52:58):
either with ship or boat, for the Negroes had already
proved themselves such desperadoes that in case of a present assault,
nothing but a total massacre of the whites could be
looked for. But regarding this warning as coming from one
whose spirit had been crushed by misery, the American did

(02:53:19):
not give up his design. The boats were got ready
and armed. Captain Delano ordered twenty five men into them.
He was going himself when Don Benito grasped his arm.
What have you saved my life?

Speaker 1 (02:53:35):
Signor?

Speaker 4 (02:53:36):
And are you now going to throw away your own?
The officers, also, for reasons connected with their interests and
those of the voyage and a duty owing to the owners,
strongly objected against their commander's going. Weighing their remonstrances a moment,
Captain Delano felt bound to remain appointing his chief mate,

(02:53:59):
an athletic, resolute men who had been a privateersman, and
as his enemies whispered a pirate to head the party.
The more to encourage the sailors, they were told that
the Spanish captain considered his ship as good as lost,
that she and her cargo, including some gold and silver,

(02:54:19):
were worth upwards of ten thousand doubloons. Take her, and
no small part should be theirs. The sailors replied with
a shout. The fugitives had now almost gained an offing.
It was nearly night, but the moon was rising. After hard,
prolonged pulling, the boats came up on the ship's quarters

(02:54:43):
at a suitable distance, laying upon their oars to discharge
their muskets. Having no bullets to return, the negroes sent
their yells, but upon the second volley, indian like, they
hurtled their hatchets. One took off a sailor's fingers. Another
struck the whaleboat's bow, cutting off the rope there and

(02:55:05):
remaining stuck in the gunwale like a woodman's axe. Snatching
it quivering from its lodgment, the mate hurled it back.
The returned gauntlet now stuck in the ship's broken quarter gallery,
and so remained the Negroes giving too hot a reception.
The Whites kept a more respectful distance, hovering now just

(02:55:28):
out of reach of the hurtling hatchets. They, with a
view to the close encounter which must soon come, sought
to decoy the Blacks into entirely disarming themselves of their
most murderous weapons and a hand to hand fight by
foolishly flinging them as missiles short of the mark into
the sea. But ere long perceiving the stratagem, the Negroes desisted,

(02:55:53):
though not before many of them had to replace their
lost hatchets with hand spikes, an exchange which, as mounted upon,
proved in the end favorable to the assailants. Meantime, with
a strong wind, the ship still clove the water, the
boats alternately falling behind and pulling up to discharge fresh volleys.

(02:56:17):
The fire was mostly directed toward the stern, since there
chiefly the Negroes at present were clustering. But to kill
or maim the Negroes was not the object. To take
them with the ship was the object. To do it,
the ship must be boarded, which could not be done
by boats. While she was sailing so fast A thought

(02:56:41):
now struck the Mate. Observing the Spanish boys still aloft
high as they could get, he called to them to
descend to the yards and cut adrift the sails. It
was done about this time, owing to causes hereafter to
be shown, two Spaniards, in the dress of sailors, and

(02:57:01):
conspicuously showing themselves, were killed not by volleys, but by
deliberate marksmen's shots, while, as it afterwards appeared, during one
of the general discharges, a to fall the black and
the Spaniard at the helm likewise were killed. What now,
with the loss of the sails and loss of leaders,

(02:57:24):
the ship became unmanageable to the Negroes, with creaking masts.
She came heavily round to the wind, the prow slowly
swinging into view of the boats, its skeleton gleaming in
the horizontal moonlight and casting a gigantic ribbed shadow.

Speaker 1 (02:57:41):
Upon the water.

Speaker 4 (02:57:43):
One extended arm of the ghost seemed beckoning the Whites
to avenge it. Follow your leader, cried the mate, and
one on each bow. The boats boarded ceiling spears and cutlasses,
crossed hats and handspikes. Huddled upon the long boat amidships,

(02:58:05):
the Negresses raised a wailing chant whose chorus was the
clash of the steel. For a time the attack wavered
the Negroes, wedging themselves to beat it back. The half
repelled sailors, as yet unable to gain a footing, fighting
as troopers in the saddle, one leg sideways, flung over

(02:58:25):
the bulwarks and one without plying their cutlasses like Carter's whips,
but in vain they were almost overborne. When rallying themselves
into a squad as one man with a huzzah, they
sprang inboard, where entangled they involuntarily separated again for a

(02:58:48):
few breath space. There was a vague, muffled inner sound,
as of submerged swordfish rushing hither and thither through shoals
of black fish. Soon, in a reunited band, and joined
by the Spanish seamen, the whites came to the surface irresistibly,
driving the Negroes toward the stern, But a barricade of

(02:59:10):
casks and sacks from side to side had been thrown
up by the mainmast. Here the Negroes faced about, and
those scorning peace or truce yet fane would have had
a respite, but without pause overleaping the barrier, the unflagging
sailors again closed. Exhausted, the blacks now fought in despair.

(02:59:33):
Their red tongues lolled wolf like from their black mouths,
but the pale sailor's teeth were set. Not a word
was spoken, and in five minutes more the ship was won.
Nearly a score of the Negroes were killed. Exclusive of
those by the balls, many were mangled, their wounds mostly

(02:59:54):
inflicted by the long edged ceiling spears resembling those shaven
ones of the English at Preston pans made by the
polled skithes of the Highlanders. On the other side, none
were killed, though several were wounded, some severely, including the mate.
The surviving Negroes were temporarily secured, and the ship towed

(03:00:17):
back into the harbor at midnight once more lay anchored.
End of chapter twelve.

Speaker 6 (03:00:25):
Chapter thirteen, a deposition omitting the incidents and arrangements ensuing
suffice it that after two days spent in refitting, the
two ships sailed in company for Concepcion in Chile, and
thence for Lima in Peru, where before the vice regal courts.

(03:00:46):
The whole affair from the beginning underwent investigation, though midway
on the passage, the ill fated Spaniard relaxed from constraint,
showed some signs of regaining health with free will, yet
agreeably to his own foreboding. Shortly before arriving at Lima,
he relapsed, finally becoming so reduced as to be carried

(03:01:10):
ashore in arms. Hearing of his story and plight, one
of the many religious institutions of the city of Kings
opened an hospitable refuge to him, where both physician and
priest were his nurses, and a member of the order
volunteered to be his one special guardian and consoler by

(03:01:31):
night and by day. The following extracts, translated from one
of the official Spanish documents, will, it is hoped, shed
light on the preceding narrative, as well as in the
first place, revealed the true port of departure and true
history of the San Dominique's voyage down to the time
of her touching at the island of Santa Maria. But

(03:01:54):
ere the extracts come, it may be well to preface
them with a remark. The documents selected from among many others.
For partial translation, contains the deposition of Benito Serno, the
first taken in the case. Some disclosures therein were at
the time held dubious for both learned and natural reasons.

(03:02:17):
The Tribunal inclined to the opinion that the deponent, not
undisturbed in his mind by recent events, raved of some
things which could never have happened. But subsequent depositions of
the surviving sailors, bearing out the revelations of their captain
and several of the strangest particulars, gave credence to the

(03:02:37):
rest so that the Tribunal, in its final decision, rested
its capital sentences upon statements which, had they lacked confirmation,
it would have deemed it but duty to reject. I
Don Jose de Abos and Padija, his Majesty's Notary for
the Royal Revenue and Register of this Province, and Notary

(03:02:59):
public of the Holy Crusade of this Bishopric, et cetera,
do certify and declare, as much as is requisite in law,
that in the criminal case commenced the twenty fourth of
the month of September in the year seventeen hundred and
ninety nine, against the Senegal Negroes of the ship San Dominique.

(03:03:19):
The following declaration before me was made declaration of the
first witness, Dom Benito seer Reno. The same day and
month and year, his Honor Doctr. Juan Martinez de doosas
Counselor of the Royal Audience of this Kingdom, and learned
in the law of this Intendency, ordered the captain of

(03:03:40):
the ship San Dominique, Dom Benito Serno, to appear, which
he did in his litter, attended by the Monk in Felees,
of whom he received before Don Jose the Abbosimpadija, notary
public of the Holy Crusade, the oath which he took
by God, our Lord, and a sign of the Cross,

(03:04:01):
under which he promised to tell the truth of whatever
he should know and should be asked, and being interrogated
agreeably to the tenor of the act. Commencing the process,
he said that on the twentieth of May last, he
set sail with his ship from the port of Alparaiso,
bound to that of Caaijao, loaded with the produce of

(03:04:23):
the country and one hundred and sixty blacks of both sexes,
mostly belonging to Donallejandro Aranda, gentlemen of the city of Mendoza,
that the crew of the ship consisted of thirty six men,
beside the persons who went as passengers, that the Negroes
were in part as follows here in the original follows

(03:04:44):
a list of some fifty names, descriptions and ages, compiled
from certain recovered documents of Arandas and also from recollections
of the Deponent, from which portions only are extracted. One
from about eighteen to nineteen years named Jose and this
was the man that waited upon his master, Don Alejandro,

(03:05:07):
and who speaks well the Spanish, having served him four
or five years. A Mulatto named Francesco, the cabin steward
of a good person and voice, having sung in the
Valparaiso churches, native of the province of Buenos Aires, aged
about thirty five years. A smart Negro named Dago, who

(03:05:27):
had been for many years a grave digger among the Spaniards,
aged forty six years. Four old Negroes born in Africa
from sixty to seventy but sound cockers by trade, whose
names are his follows. The first was named Mooi, and
he was killed, as was also his son named Diamelo.

(03:05:48):
The second Nacta, the third Jola likewise killed the fourth
Gofan and six full grown negroes aged from thirty to
forty five, all all raw and born among the Ashantes
Martiniki Yan Lecbe, Mapenda, Yambayo Akim, four of whom were killed,

(03:06:11):
a powerful Negro named Atufal, who being supposed to have
been a chief in Africa, his owners set great store
by him, and a small negro of Senegal, but some
years among the Spaniards aged about thirty, which negro's name
was Babo, that he does not remember the names of
the others, but that still expecting the residue of Don

(03:06:33):
Alejandro's papers will be found, will then take due account
of them all and remit to the court and thirty
nine women and children of all ages. After the catalog.
The deposition goes on as follows, that all the negroes
slept upon deck, as is customary in this navigation, and
none wore fetters because the owner, his friend Aranda, told

(03:06:57):
him that they were all tractable. That on the dam
the seventh day after leaving port, at three o'clock in
the morning, all the Spaniards being asleep except the two
officers on the watch, who were the bosun Juan Trobles
and the carpenter Juan Bautista Gagette, and the helmsman and
his boy. The Negroes revolted, suddenly wounded dangerously the bosun

(03:07:20):
and the carpenter, and successively killed eighteen men of those
who were sleeping upon deck, some with handspikes and hatchets,
and others by throwing them alive overboard after tying them.
That of the Spaniards upon deck, they left about seven,
as he thinks, alive and tied to maneuver the ship,

(03:07:41):
and three or four more who hid themselves, remained also alive.
Although in the act of revolt the Negroes made themselves
masters of the hatchway, six or seven wounded went through
it to the cockpit without any hindrance on their part.
That in the act of revolt, the mate and another
person whose name he does not recollect attempted to come

(03:08:03):
up through the hatchway, but having been wounded at the onset,
they were obliged to return to the cabin. That the
deponent resolved at break of day to come up the companionway,
where the negro Babo was being the ringleader, and Atufal,
who assisted him, and having spoken to them, exhorted them
to cease committing such atrocities, asking them at the same

(03:08:27):
time what they wanted and intended to do, offering himself
to obey their commands. That notwithstanding this, they threw in
his presence three men alive and tide overboard. That they
told the opponent to come up and that they would
not kill him, which having done, the negro Babo asked

(03:08:49):
him whether there were in those seas any Negro countries
where they might be carried, and he answered them no.
That the Negro Babo afterwards told him to carry them to,
say Senegal, or to the neighboring islands of Saint Nicholas.
And he answered that this was impossible on account of
the great distance, the necessity involved of rounding Cape Horn,

(03:09:12):
the bad condition of the vessel, the want of provisions,
sails and water. But that the Negro Babo replied to
him he must carry them in any way, that they
would do and conform themselves to everything the opponent should
require as to eating and drinking. That, after a long conference,
being absolutely compelled to please them, for they threatened him

(03:09:34):
to kill all the whites if they were not, at
all events carried to Senegal. He told them that what
was most wanting for the voyage was water, that they
would go near the coast to take it, and hence
they would proceed on their course. That the Negro Babo
agreed to it, and the opponent steered toward the intermediate ports,

(03:09:55):
hoping to meet some Spanish or foreign vessel that would
save them. That within ten or eleven days they saw
the land and continued their course by it in the
vicinity of Nasca. That the deponent observed that the Negroes
were now restless and mutinous because he did not effect
the taking inn of water, the Negro Babo having required

(03:10:18):
with threats that it should be done without fail. The
following day he told him he saw plainly that the
coast was steep and the rivers designated in the maps
were not to be found, with other reasons suitable to
the circumstances, that the best way would be to go
to the island of Santa Maria, where they might water
and victual easily, it being a desert island. As the

(03:10:42):
foreigners did. That the opponent did not go to Pisco.
That was near nor make any other port of the coast,
because the Negro Babo had intimated to him several times
that he would kill all the whites the very moment
he should perceive any city, town or settlement of any
kind on the shores to which they should be carried.

(03:11:03):
That having determined to go to the island of Santa Maria,
as the Deponent had planned, for the purpose of trying
whether in the passage or in the island itself they
could find any vessel that should favor them, or whether
he could escape from it in a boat to the
neighboring coast of Aruco. To adopt the necessary means, he
immediately changed his course, steering for the island. That the

(03:11:27):
negroes Babo and Ottufal held daily conferences in which they
discussed what was necessary for their design of returning to Senegal,
whether they were to kill all the Spaniards, in particularly
the deponent. That eight days after parting from the coast
of Nasca, the deponent being on the watch, a little
after daybreak and soon after the Negroes had their meeting,

(03:11:51):
the Negro Babo came to the place where the deponent
was and told him that he had determined to kill
his master, Don Alejandro Aranda, both because he and his
companions could not otherwise be sure of their liberty, and
that to keep the seamen in subjection, he wanted to
prepare a warning of what road they should be made

(03:12:12):
to take did they or any of them oppose him,
and that by means of the death of Don Alejandro,
that warning would best be given. But that what this
last meant the opponent did not at the time comprehend,
nor could not further than that the death of Don
Alejandro was intended. And moreover, the negro Babo proposed to

(03:12:36):
the deponent to call the mate Ranids, who was sleeping
in the cabin before the thing was done, for fear,
as the opponent understood it, that the mate, who was
a good navigator, should be killed with Don Alejandro, and
the rest that the opponent, who was the friend from
youth of Don Alejandro, prayed and conjured, but all was useless,

(03:12:58):
for the Negro Babo answered him that the thing could
not be prevented, and that all the Spaniards risked their
death if they should attempt to frustrate his will in
this matter or in any other. That in this conflict
the opponent called the mate Ranids, who was forced to
go apart, and immediately the Negro Babo commanded the Ashanti

(03:13:20):
Martiniqui and the Ashanti Lekbe to go and commit the murder.
That those two went down with the hatchets to the
birth of Don Alejandro, that yet half alive and mangled,
they dragged him on deck, that they were going to
throw him overboard in that state, but the Negro Babo
stopped them, bidding the murder be completed on the deck

(03:13:43):
before him, which was done, when by his orders the
body was carried below forward, that nothing more was seen
of it by the deponent for three days. That Don
Alonzo Sidonia, an old man, long resident of Valparaiso, and
lately appointed to a civil office in Peru, whither he

(03:14:03):
had taken passage, was at the time sleeping in the
berth opposite Don Alejandros. That awakening at his cries, surprised
by them, and at the sight of the Negroes with
their bloody hatchets in their hands, he threw himself into
the sea through a window which was near him, and
was drowned without its being in the power of the
deponent to assist or take him up. That a short

(03:14:27):
time after killing Aranda, they brought upon deck his German
cousin of middle age, Don Francisco Masa of Mendoza, and
the young Don Joaquin Marques de arambolasa then lately from Spain,
with his Spanish servant Ponce, and the three young clerks
of Aranda, Jose Mozairi, Dorenzo Bargas and er Menehildo Gandiks,

(03:14:51):
all of Goddis that Don Joaquin and at Minnehildo Gandiks
the Negro Babo for purposes hereafter to appear preserved alive.
But Don Francisco Masa, Jose Mozairi, and Lorenzo Bargas with
Ponce the servant, besides the Boson Juan Robles, the Bosun's

(03:15:12):
mates Manuel Biskaija and Rodrigo Urda, and four of the
sailors the Negro Babo ordered to be thrown alive into
the sea, although they made no resistance nor begged for
anything else but mercy. That the Bozen Juan Roblis, who
knew how to swim, kept the longest above water, making

(03:15:33):
acts of contrition, and in the last words he uttered
charged this deponent to cause mass to be said for
his soul to our Lady of succor that during the
three days which followed, the opponent, uncertain what fate had
befallen the remains of Don Alejandro, frequently asked the negro
Babo where they were, and, if still on board, whether

(03:15:56):
they were to be preserved for interment Ashore, treating him
so to order it that the negro Babo answered nothing
till the fourth day, when at sunrise the opponent, coming
on deck, the negro Babo showed him a skeleton which
had substituted for the ship's proper figurehead, the image of
Christopher Cologne, the discoverer of the New World. That the

(03:16:20):
negro Babo asked him whose skeleton that was, and whether
from its whiteness he should not think at a whites That,
upon his covering his face, the negro Babo, coming close,
said words to this effect quote, keep faith with the
Blacks from here to Senegal, or you shall in spirit,
as now in body, follow your leader end quote, pointing

(03:16:43):
to the prow That the same morning the negro Babo took,
by succession each Spaniard forward and asked him whose skeleton
that was, and whether from its whiteness he should not
think at a whites. That each Spaniard covered his face,
that then to each the Negro Babo repeated the words
in the first place, said to the Deponent that they

(03:17:06):
the Spaniards being then assembled aft the Negro Babo, who
rangued them, saying that he had now done all that
the Deponent, as navigator for the Negroes, might pursue his course,
warning him and all of them that they should soul
and body go the way of Don Alejandro if he
saw them the Spaniards speak or plot anything against them

(03:17:29):
the Negroes, a threat which was repeated every day. That
before the events last mentioned, they had tied the cook
to throw him overboard, for it is not known what
thing they heard him speak. But finally the Negro Babo
spared his life at the request of the Deponent. That
a few days after the Deponent, endeavoring not to omit

(03:17:52):
any means to preserve the lives of the remaining whites,
spoke to the Negroes peace and tranquility, and agreed to
draw up a paper signed by the Deponent and the
sailors who could write, as also by the Negro Babo
for himself and all the blacks, in which the opponent
obliged himself to carry them to Senegal, and they not

(03:18:14):
to kill any more, and he formerly to make over
to them the ship with a cargo with which they
were for that time satisfied and quieted. But the next
day the more surely, to guard against the sailor's escape,
the Negro Babo commanded all the boats to be destroyed,
but the long boat, which was unseaworthy, and another a

(03:18:36):
cutter in good condition, which, knowing it would yet be
wanted for lowering the water casks, he had it lowered
down into the hold. Various particulars of the prolonged and
perplexed navigation ensuing here follow with incidents of a calamitous calm,
from which portion one passage is extracted, to wit that,

(03:19:00):
on the fifth day of the calm, all on board,
suffering much from the heat and want of water, and
five having died in fits and mad, the Negroes became irritable,
and for a chance gesture which they deemed suspicious, though
it was harmless, made by the mate Ranids to the
deponent in the act of handing a quadrant, they killed

(03:19:22):
him but that for this they afterwards were sorry, the
mate being the only remaining navigator on board except the opponent,
that omitting other events which daily happened and which can
only serve uselessly to recall past misfortunes and conflicts. After
seventy three days navigation reckoned from the time they sailed

(03:19:43):
from Nasca, during which they navigated under a scanty allowance
of water and were afflicted with the calms before mentioned,
They at last arrived at the island of Santa Maria
on the seventeenth of the month of August, at about
six o'clock in the afternoon, at which hour they cast
anchor very near the American ship Bachelor's Delight, which lay

(03:20:06):
in the same bay, commanded by the generous Captain Amasa Delano.
But at six o'clock in the morning they had already
descried the port, and the Negroes became uneasy as soon
as at a distance they saw the ship, not having
expected to see one there. That the Negro Babo pacified them,
assuring them that no fear need be had that straightway,

(03:20:30):
he ordered the figure on the bow to be covered
with canvas as four repairs, and had the decks a
little set in order that for a time the negro
Babo and the Negro Atufal conferred that the Negro Atufal
was for sailing away, but the negro Babo would not,
and by himself cast about what to do. That at

(03:20:53):
last he came to the deponent, proposing to him to
say and do all that the deponent declares to have
said and done to the American captain. That the negro
Babo warned him that if he varied in the least
or uttered any word, or gave any look that should
give the least intimation of the past events or present state,

(03:21:13):
he would instantly kill him with all his companions, showing
a dagger which he carried hid saying something which, as
he understood it meant that the dagger would be alert
as his eye. That the negro Babo then announced the
plan to all his companions, which pleased them. That he, then,
the better to disguise the truth, devised many expedients, in

(03:21:37):
some of them uniting deceit and defense. That of this
sort was the device of the six ashantees before named,
who were his bravoes. That them he stationed on the
break of the poop, as if to clean certain hatchets
in cases which were part of the cargo, but in
reality to use them and distribute them at need and

(03:21:58):
at a given word. He'd told them that, among other devices,
was the device of presenting Atufal his right hand man
as chained, though in a moment the change could be dropped.
That in every particular he informed the opponent what part
he was expected to enact in every device, and what
story he was to tell on every occasion, always threatening

(03:22:21):
him with instant death if he varied in the least That,
conscious that many of the Negroes would be turbulent, the
Negro Babo appointed the four aged Negroes who were conquers,
to keep what domestic order they could on the decks.
That again and again he harangued the Spaniards and his companions,

(03:22:42):
informing them of his intent and of his devices, and
of the invented story that this deponent was to tell,
charging them lest any of them varied from that story.
That these arrangements were made and matured during the interval
of two or three hours between their first siding of
the ship and the arrival on board of Captain Amasa Delano.

(03:23:05):
That this happened at about half past seven in the morning,
Captain Amasa Delano coming in his boat, and all gladly
receiving him that that opponent as well as he could
force himself, acting then the part of principal owner and
a free captain of the ship, told Captain Amasa Delano,
when called upon, that he came from Buenos Aires bound

(03:23:27):
to Lima with three hundred negroes that off Cape Horn,
and in a subsequent fever, many negroes had died. That also,
by similar casualties, all the sea officers and the greatest
part of the crew had died. And so the deposition
goes on circumstantially recounting the fictitious story dictated to the

(03:23:49):
deponent by Babo, and through the deponent, imposed upon Captain Delano,
and also recounting the friendly offers of Captain Delano with
other things, but all of which were omitted after the
fictitious strange story, et cetera. The deposition proceeds that the
generous Captain Amasa Delano remained on board all the day

(03:24:12):
till he left the ship anchored at six o'clock in
the evening, deponent speaking to him always of his pretended
misfortunes under the foe mentioned principles, without having had it
in his power to tell a single word or give
him the least hint that he might know the truth
and state of things. Because the negro Babo, performing the

(03:24:33):
office of an officious servant, with all the appearance of
submission of the humble slave, did not leave the deponent
one moment. That this was in order to observe the
deponent's actions and words, for the negro Babo understands well
the Spanish, And besides, there were thereabouts some others who
were constantly on the watch and likewise understood the Spanish.

(03:24:56):
That upon one occasion, while duponent was standing on the
deck conversing with a Masa Delano, by a secret sign,
the negro Babo drew him the deponent aside, the act
appearing as if originating with the deponent. That then he
being drawn aside, the negro Babo proposed to him to

(03:25:17):
gain from a Massa Delano full particulars about his ship
and crew and arms. That the opponent asked for what
that the negro Babo answered, he might conceive that grieved
at the prospect of what might overtake the generous captain
a Massa Delano. The opponent at first refused to ask

(03:25:38):
the desired questions, and used every argument to induce the
negro Babo to give up this new design, that the
negro Babo showed the point of his dagger. That after
the information had been obtained, the negro Babo again drew
him aside, telling him that very night he the opponent,
would be captain of two ships instead of one, for

(03:26:01):
that great part of the American ship's crew being to
be absent fishing, the six essentees without any one else
would easily take it. That at this time, he said
other things to the same purpose, that no entreaties availed,
that before Amasa Delano's coming on board, no hint had

(03:26:21):
been given touching the capture of the American ship. That
to prevent this project, the deponent was powerless. That in
some things his memory is confused. He cannot distinctly recall
every event. That as soon as they had cast Anchor
at six of the clock in the evening, as has
before been stated, the American captain took leave to return

(03:26:43):
to his vessel. That upon a sudden impulse, which the
deponent believes to a come from God and his angels. He,
after the farewell had been said, followed the generous Captain
Amasa Delano as far as the gunwale, where he stayed
under the pretense of taking leave, until Amasa Delano should
have been seated in his boat. That on shoving off,

(03:27:06):
the opponent sprang from the gunwale into the boat and
fell into it. He knows not how God guarding him that.
Here in the original follows the account of what further
happened at the escape and how the San Dominique was retaken,
and of the passage to the coast, including in the
recital many expressions of eternal gratitude to the generous Captain

(03:27:29):
Amasa Delano. The deposition then proceeds with recapitulatory remarks and
a partial remuneration of the Negroes, making record of their
individual part in the past events, with a view to furnishing,
according to command of the court, the data whereon to
found the criminal sentences to be pronounced. From this portion

(03:27:52):
is the following that he believes that all the Negroes,
though not in the first place knowing to the design
of revolt when it was accomplished, approved it that the
negro Jose, eighteen years old and in the personal service
of Don Alejandro, was the one who communicated the information
to the Negro Babo about the state of things in

(03:28:14):
the cabin before the revolt. That this is known because
in the preceding midnight he used to come from his berth,
which was under his masters in the cabin, to the
deck where the ringleader and his associates were, and had
secret conversations with the Negro Babo, in which he was
several times seen by the mate. That one night the

(03:28:36):
mate drove him away twice. That this same Negro Jose
was the one who, without being commanded to do so
by the Negro Babo, as Lecbe and Martinki were stabbed
his master, Don Alejandro, after he had been dragged half
lifeless to the deck, that the mulatto steward Francesco was

(03:28:56):
of the first band of revolters, that he was, in
all things the creature and tool of the Negro Babo,
that to make his court, he, just before a repassed
in the cabin, proposed to the Negro Babo poisoning a
dish for the generous captain a Massa Delano. This is
known and believed because the Negroes have said it, but

(03:29:19):
that the Negro Babo, having another design forbade Francisco, that
the Ashanti Lecbe was one of the worst of them,
for that on the day the ship was retaken, he
assisted in the defense of her with a hatchet in
each hand, with one of which he wounded in the
breast the chief mate of a Massa Delano. And the

(03:29:39):
first act of boarding this all knew that inside of
the deponent Legbay struck with a hatchet Don Francisco Masa,
when by the Negro Babo's orders, he was carrying him,
to throw him overboard alive, Beside participating in the murder
before mentioned of Dona le Handro Randa and others of

(03:30:02):
the cabin passengers, that owing to the fury with which
the Ashantis fought in the engagement with the boats, but
this Alekbe and Jan survived, that Jan was bad as Lekbay,
that John was the man who, by Babo's command, willingly
prepared the skeleton of Don Alejandro, in a way the
Negroes afterwards told the Deponent, but which he, so long

(03:30:25):
as reason is left him, can never divulge, that Jean
and Lecbe were the two who in a calm by night,
riveted the skeleton to the bow. This also the Negroes
told him that the negro Babo was he who traced
the inscription below it, that the negro Babo was the
plotter from first to last, He ordered every murder and

(03:30:49):
was the helm and keel of the revolt. That Atufal
was his lieutenant in all but Atufal, with his own hand,
committed no murder, nor did the negro Babo. That Atufal
was shot being killed in the fight with the boats
air boarding. That the negresses of age were knowing to
the revolt, and testified themselves satisfied at the death of

(03:31:12):
their master Donalejandro, that had the Negroes not restrained them,
they would have tortured to death instead of simply killing
the Spaniards slain by command of the negro Babo. That
the Negresses used their utmost influence to have the deponent
made away with that in the various acts of murder
they sang songs and danced not gaily but solemnly, and

(03:31:37):
before the engagement with the boats, as well as during
the action, they sang melancholy songs to the Negroes, and
that this melancholy tone was more inflaming than a different
one would have been, and was so intended. That all
this is believed because the Negroes have said it. That
of the thirty six men of the crew excled elusive

(03:32:00):
of the passengers, all of whom are now dead, which
the opponent had knowledge of, six only remained alive, with
four cabin boys and ship boys not included with the crew.
That the Negroes broke an arm of one of the
cabin boys and gave him strokes with hatchets. Then follow
various random disclosures referring to various periods of time. The

(03:32:24):
following are extracted that during the presence of Captain Amasa
Delano on board, some attempts were made by the sailors
and one by Edminnehilo Gandiks, to convey hints to him
of the true state of affairs, but that these attempts
were ineffectual owing to fear of incurring death and furthermore,

(03:32:46):
owing to the devices which offered contradictions to the true
state of affairs, as well as owing to the generosity
and piety of Amasa Delano incapable of sounding such wickedness
that Luis Galgo, as sailor about sixty years of age
and formerly of the King's navy, was one of those
who sought to convey tokens to Captain Amasa Delano, but

(03:33:09):
his intent, though undiscovered, being suspected, he was on a
pretense made to retire out of sight and at last
into the hold, and there was made away with this.
The Negroes have since said that one of the ship boys,
feeling from Captain Amaso Delano's presence some hopes of release,

(03:33:31):
and not having enough prudence, dropped some chance word respecting
his expectations, which, being overheard and understood by a slave
boy with whom he was eating at the time, the
latter struck him on the head with a knife, inflicting
a bad wound, but of which the boy is now healing.
That likewise, not long before the ship was brought to anchor,

(03:33:55):
one of the seamen steering at the time endangered himself
by letting the blacks remark a certain unconscious hopeful expression
in his countenance, arising from some cause similar to the above.
But this sailor, by his heedful after conduct, escaped. That
these statements are made to show the court that from

(03:34:16):
the beginning to the end of the revolt it was
impossible for the opponent and his men to act otherwise
than they did. That the third Clerk ed Minehildo Gandiks,
who before had been forced to live among the seamen,
wearing a seaman's habit, and in all respects appearing to
be won for the time. He Gandiks was killed by

(03:34:38):
a musket ball fired through a mistake from the American
boats before boarding, having in his fright, ran up the
mizzen rigging, calling to the boats don't board, lest upon
their boarding the Negroes should kill him. That this inducing
the Americans to believe he some way favored the cause
of the Negroes, they fired two balls at him, so

(03:35:00):
that he fell wounded from the rigging and was drowned
in the sea. That the young Don Joaquin Marques de
arambolasa like Edmenechilo Gandik's, the third Clerk, was degraded to
the office and appearance of a common seaman. That upon
one occasion, when Don Joaquin shrank, the Negro Babo commanded

(03:35:21):
the ashantee Lecbe to take tar and heat it and
pour it upon Don Joaquin's hands, that Don Joaquin was
killed owing to another mistake of the Americans, but one
impossible to be avoided, as upon the approach of the boats,
Don Joaquin, with a hatchet tied edge out and upright
to his hand, was made by the Negroes to appear

(03:35:44):
on the bulwarks, whereupon seen with arms in his hands
and in a questionable attitude, he was shot for a
renegade seaman, that on the person of Don Joaquin was
found secreted a jewel, which, by papers that were covered,
proved to have been meant for the shrine of our
Lady of Mercy in Lima, a vote of offering beforehand,

(03:36:07):
prepared and guarded to attest his gratitude when he should
have landed in Peru, his last destination, for the safe
conclusion of his entire voyage from Spain. That the jewel,
with the other effects of the late Don Joaquin, is
in the custody of the brethren of the os Pitad Sasserdotes,
awaiting the decision of the Honorable Court that, owing to

(03:36:31):
the condition of the deponent, as well as the haste
in which the boats departed for the attack, the Americans
were not forewarned that there were among the apparent crew
a passenger and one of the clerks disguised by the
Negro Babo, that besides the Negroes killed in the action,
some were killed after the capture and re anchoring at night,

(03:36:54):
when shackled to the ring bolts on the deck, that
these deaths were committed by the sailors, ere they could
be prevented, that so soon as informed of it, Captain
Amasa Delano used all his authority, and in particular with
his own hand, struck down Martinez Gola, who, having found

(03:37:14):
a razor in the pocket of an old jacket of his,
which one of the shackled negroes had on, was aiming
it at the negro's throat. That the noble Captain Amasa
Delano also wrenched from the hand of Bartholomew Barlo a
dagger secreted at the time of the massacre of the whites,
with which he was in the act of stabbing a

(03:37:35):
shackled Negro, who the same day, with another Negro, had
thrown him down and jumped upon him. That for all
the events befalling through so long a time during which
the ship was in the hands of the Negro Babo.
He cannot here give account, but that what he has
said is the most substantial of what occurs to him

(03:37:56):
at present, and is the truth under the oath which
he has taken, which declaration he affirmed and ratified, after
hearing it read to him, he said that he is
twenty nine years of age, and broken in body and mind,
that when finally dismissed by the court, he shall not
return home to Chile, but betake himself to the monastery

(03:38:17):
of the mount Agonia without and signed with his honor,
and crossed himself and for the time departed as he
came in his litter with a monk in Felese to
the ospitald Sasserrotes end of Chapter thirteen.

Speaker 4 (03:38:44):
Conclusion. If the deposition of Benito Cereno has served as
the key to fit into the lock of the complications
which preceded it, then as a vault whose door has
been flung back, the San Dominic's hull lies open today.
Hitherto the nature of this narrative, besides rendering the intricacies

(03:39:08):
in the beginning unavoidable, has more or less required that
many things, instead of being set down in the order
of occurrence, should be retrospectively or irregularly. Given. This last
is the case with the following passages, which will conclude
the account. During the Long Mild Voyage Telema, there was,

(03:39:31):
as before hinted, a period during which Don Benito a
little recovered his health, or at least in some degree
his tranquility. Ere the decided relapse which came. The two
captains had many cordial conversations, their fraternal unreserve in singular
contrast with former withdrawmns. Again and again it was repeated

(03:39:57):
how hard it had been to enact the art forced
on the Spaniard by Babo. Ah, My dear Donamasa, Don
Benito once said, at those very times when you thought
me so morose and ungrateful, Nay, when as you now admit,
you half thought me plotting your murder, at those very times,

(03:40:19):
my heart was frozen. I could not look at you,
thinking of what both on board this ship and your
own hung from other hands over my kind benefactor, and
as God lives, Donamasa, I know not whether desire for
my own safety alone could have nerved me to that
leap into your boat, had it not been for the

(03:40:40):
thought that did you unenlightened return to your ship. You,
my best friend, with all who might be with you,
stolen upon that night in your hammocks, would never in
this world have wakened again. Do but think how you
walk this deck, how you sat in this cabin, Every
inch of mined into honeycombs under you. Had I dropped

(03:41:04):
the least hint, made the least advance toward an understanding
between us death explosive death, yours and mine, would have
ended the scene. True, true, cried Captain Delano, starting you
saved my life, don Benito, more than I Yours saved
it too, against my knowledge and will nay, my friend

(03:41:27):
rejoined the Spaniard, courteous even to the point of religion.
God charmed your life, but you saved mine. To think
of some things you did, those smilings and chattings, rash
pointings and gesturings, for less than these they slew my
mate renids. But you had the Prince of Heaven's safe

(03:41:48):
conduct through all ambuscades. Yes, all is owing to providence,
I know. But the temper of my mind that morning
was more than commonly pleasant, while the sight of so
much suffering, more apparent than real, added to my good nature,
compassion and charity, happily interweaving the three. Had it been otherwise, doubtless,

(03:42:11):
as you hint, some of my interferences with the Blacks
might have ended unhappily enough. Besides that, those feelings I
spoke of enabled me to get the better of momentary
distrust at times when acuteness might have cost me my
life without saving another's. Only at the end did my
suspicions get the better of me. And you know how

(03:42:33):
wide of the mark they then proved?

Speaker 1 (03:42:37):
Wide?

Speaker 4 (03:42:37):
Indeed, said Don Benito, sadly you were with me all day,
stood with me, sat with me, talked with me, looked
at me, ate with me, drank with me. And yet
your last act was to clutch for a villain, not
only an innocent man, but the most pitiable of all men.
To such degree may malign machinations and deceptions impose, so

(03:43:01):
far may even the best men err in judging the
conduct of one with the recesses of whose condition he
is not acquainted. But you were forced to it, and
you were, in time undeceived. Would that in both respects
it was? So? Ever, and with all men, I think
I understand you. You generalized, Don Benito, and mournfully enough.

(03:43:27):
But the past is past. Why moralize upon it? Forget it?
See Yon, bright sun has forgotten it all, And the
blue sea and the blue sky, these have turned over
new leaves because they have no memory, he dejectedly replied,
because they are not human. But these mild trades that

(03:43:48):
now fan your cheeked on, Benito, do they not come
with a human like healing to you? Warm friends? Steadfast friends?
Are the trades? Would their starf ahe at fastness? They
but wafft me to my tomb? Senor was the foreboding response.
You are saved, don Benito, cried Captain Delano, more and

(03:44:10):
more astonished and pained. You are saved? What is cast
such a shadow upon you? The negro? There was silence,
while the moody man sat slowly and unconsciously, gathering his
mantle about him as if it were appall. There was

(03:44:31):
no more conversation that day. But if the Spaniard's melancholy
sometimes ended in muteness upon topics like the above, there
were others upon which he never spoke at all, on which,
indeed all his old reserves were piled pass over the
worst and only to elucidate let an item or two

(03:44:52):
of these be sighted the dress so precise and costly
warned by him on the day whose events have been near,
had not willingly been put on. And that silver mounted sword,
apparent symbol of despotic command, was not indeed a sword,
but the ghost of one. The scabbard, artificially stiffened, was empty.

(03:45:16):
As for the black, whose brain not body, had schemed
and led the revolt with the plot, his slight frame,
inadequate to that which it held, had at once yielded
to the superior muscular strength of his captor in the boat.
Seeing all was over, he uttered no sound, and could
not be forced to his aspects. Seemed to say, since

(03:45:39):
I cannot do deeds, I will not speak words. Put
in irons in the hold with the rest. He was
carried to Lima. During the passage, Don Benito did not
visit him, nor then, nor at any time after. Would
he look at him. Before the tribunal, he refused. When
pressed by the judge, he fainted. On the testimony of

(03:46:03):
the sailors alone rested the legal identity of Babo. And
yet the Spaniard would, upon occasion verbally refer to the
Negro as has been shown, but look on him he
would not or could not. Some months after, dragged to
the gibbet at the tail of a mule, the black

(03:46:25):
met his voiceless end. The body was burned to ashes,
but for many days the head, that hive of subtlety,
fixed on a pole in the plaza, met unabashed the
gaze of the whites, and across the plaza looked towards
Saint Bartholomew's Church, in whose vaults slept then as now

(03:46:46):
the recovered bones of Aranda, And across the Rimac Bridge
looked toward the monastery on Mount Agonna, without where, three
months after being dismissed by the court, Benito Cereno, born
on the bier, did indeed follow his leader.

Speaker 1 (03:47:05):
The end.

Speaker 4 (03:47:07):
End of chapter fourteen. End of Benito Cereno by Hermann
Melville