- end_line
- 3363
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T07:57:55.409Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 3296
- text
- to something passing on the deck below: among the crowd climbing the
landward bulwarks, anxiously watching the coming boat, two blacks, to
all appearances accidentally incommoded by one of the sailors,
violently pushed him aside, which the sailor someway resenting, they
dashed him to the deck, despite the earnest cries of the oakum-pickers.
“Don Benito,” said Captain Delano quickly, “do you see what is going on
there? Look!”
But, seized by his cough, the Spaniard staggered, with both hands to
his face, on the point of falling. Captain Delano would have supported
him, but the servant was more alert, who, with one hand sustaining his
master, with the other applied the cordial. Don Benito restored, the
black withdrew his support, slipping aside a little, but dutifully
remaining within call of a whisper. Such discretion was here evinced as
quite wiped away, in the visitor’s eyes, any blemish of impropriety
which might have attached to the attendant, from the indecorous
conferences before mentioned; showing, too, that if the servant were to
blame, it might be more the master’s fault than his own, since, when
left to himself, he could conduct thus well.
His glance called away from the spectacle of disorder to the more
pleasing one before him, Captain Delano could not avoid again
congratulating his host upon possessing such a servant, who, though
perhaps a little too forward now and then, must upon the whole be
invaluable to one in the invalid’s situation.
“Tell me, Don Benito,” he added, with a smile—“I should like to have
your man here, myself—what will you take for him? Would fifty doubloons
be any object?”
“Master wouldn’t part with Babo for a thousand doubloons,” murmured the
black, overhearing the offer, and taking it in earnest, and, with the
strange vanity of a faithful slave, appreciated by his master, scorning
to hear so paltry a valuation put upon him by a stranger. But Don
Benito, apparently hardly yet completely restored, and again
interrupted by his cough, made but some broken reply.
Soon his physical distress became so great, affecting his mind, too,
apparently, that, as if to screen the sad spectacle, the servant gently
conducted his master below.
Left to himself, the American, to while away the time till his boat
should arrive, would have pleasantly accosted some one of the few
Spanish seamen he saw; but recalling something that Don Benito had said
touching their ill conduct, he refrained; as a shipmaster indisposed to
countenance cowardice or unfaithfulness in seamen.
While, with these thoughts, standing with eye directed forward towards
that handful of sailors, suddenly he thought that one or two of them
returned the glance and with a sort of meaning. He rubbed his eyes, and
looked again; but again seemed to see the same thing. Under a new form,
but more obscure than any previous one, the old suspicions recurred,
but, in the absence of Don Benito, with less of panic than before.
Despite the bad account given of the sailors, Captain Delano resolved
forthwith to accost one of them. Descending the poop, he made his way
through the blacks, his movement drawing a queer cry from the
oakum-pickers, prompted by whom, the negroes, twitching each other
aside, divided before him; but, as if curious to see what was the
object of this deliberate visit to their Ghetto, closing in behind, in
tolerable order, followed the white stranger up. His progress thus
proclaimed as by mounted kings-at-arms, and escorted as by a Caffre
guard of honor, Captain Delano, assuming a good-humored, off-handed
air, continued to advance; now and then saying a blithe word to the
negroes, and his eye curiously surveying the white faces, here and
there sparsely mixed in with the blacks, like stray white pawns
venturously involved in the ranks of the chess-men opposed.
- title
- Chunk 5