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- 2501
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T07:57:55.409Z
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- structure-extraction-lambda
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- 2442
- text
- negro the repute of making the most pleasing body-servant in the world;
one, too, whom a master need be on no stiffly superior terms with, but
may treat with familiar trust; less a servant than a devoted companion.
Marking the noisy indocility of the blacks in general, as well as what
seemed the sullen inefficiency of the whites it was not without humane
satisfaction that Captain Delano witnessed the steady good conduct of
Babo.
But the good conduct of Babo, hardly more than the ill-behavior of
others, seemed to withdraw the half-lunatic Don Benito from his cloudy
languor. Not that such precisely was the impression made by the
Spaniard on the mind of his visitor. The Spaniard’s individual unrest
was, for the present, but noted as a conspicuous feature in the ship’s
general affliction. Still, Captain Delano was not a little concerned at
what he could not help taking for the time to be Don Benito’s
unfriendly indifference towards himself. The Spaniard’s manner, too,
conveyed a sort of sour and gloomy disdain, which he seemed at no pains
to disguise. But this the American in charity ascribed to the harassing
effects of sickness, since, in former instances, he had noted that
there are peculiar natures on whom prolonged physical suffering seems
to cancel every social instinct of kindness; as if, forced to black
bread themselves, they deemed it but equity that each person coming
nigh them should, indirectly, by some slight or affront, be made to
partake of their fare.
But ere long Captain Delano bethought him that, indulgent as he was at
the first, in judging the Spaniard, he might not, after all, have
exercised charity enough. At bottom it was Don Benito’s reserve which
displeased him; but the same reserve was shown towards all but his
faithful personal attendant. Even the formal reports which, according
to sea-usage, were, at stated times, made to him by some petty
underling, either a white, mulatto or black, he hardly had patience
enough to listen to, without betraying contemptuous aversion. His
manner upon such occasions was, in its degree, not unlike that which
might be supposed to have been his imperial countryman’s, Charles V.,
just previous to the anchoritish retirement of that monarch from the
throne.
This splenetic disrelish of his place was evinced in almost every
function pertaining to it. Proud as he was moody, he condescended to no
personal mandate. Whatever special orders were necessary, their
delivery was delegated to his body-servant, who in turn transferred
them to their ultimate destination, through runners, alert Spanish boys
or slave boys, like pages or pilot-fish within easy call continually
hovering round Don Benito. So that to have beheld this undemonstrative
invalid gliding about, apathetic and mute, no landsman could have
dreamed that in him was lodged a dictatorship beyond which, while at
sea, there was no earthly appeal.
Thus, the Spaniard, regarded in his reserve, seemed the involuntary
victim of mental disorder. But, in fact, his reserve might, in some
degree, have proceeded from design. If so, then here was evinced the
unhealthy climax of that icy though conscientious policy, more or less
adopted by all commanders of large ships, which, except in signal
emergencies, obliterates alike the manifestation of sway with every
trace of sociality; transforming the man into a block, or rather into a
loaded cannon, which, until there is call for thunder, has nothing to
say.
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