- end_line
- 3632
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T07:57:55.409Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 3563
- text
- jamming-knot.
At last, puzzled to comprehend the meaning of such a knot, Captain
Delano addressed the knotter:—
“What are you knotting there, my man?”
“The knot,” was the brief reply, without looking up.
“So it seems; but what is it for?”
“For some one else to undo,” muttered back the old man, plying his
fingers harder than ever, the knot being now nearly completed.
While Captain Delano stood watching him, suddenly the old man threw the
knot towards him, saying in broken English—the first heard in the
ship—something to this effect: “Undo it, cut it, quick.” It was said
lowly, but with such condensation of rapidity, that the long, slow
words in Spanish, which had preceded and followed, almost operated as
covers to the brief English between.
For a moment, knot in hand, and knot in head, Captain Delano stood
mute; while, without further heeding him, the old man was now intent
upon other ropes. Presently there was a slight stir behind Captain
Delano. Turning, he saw the chained negro, Atufal, standing quietly
there. The next moment the old sailor rose, muttering, and, followed by
his subordinate negroes, removed to the forward part of the ship, where
in the crowd he disappeared.
An elderly negro, in a clout like an infant’s, and with a pepper and
salt head, and a kind of attorney air, now approached Captain Delano.
In tolerable Spanish, and with a good-natured, knowing wink, he
informed him that the old knotter was simple-witted, but harmless;
often playing his odd tricks. The negro concluded by begging the knot,
for of course the stranger would not care to be troubled with it.
Unconsciously, it was handed to him. With a sort of congé, the negro
received it, and, turning his back, ferreted into it like a detective
custom-house officer after smuggled laces. Soon, with some African
word, equivalent to pshaw, he tossed the knot overboard.
All this is very queer now, thought Captain Delano, with a qualmish
sort of emotion; but, as one feeling incipient sea-sickness, he strove,
by ignoring the symptoms, to get rid of the malady. Once more he looked
off for his boat. To his delight, it was now again in view, leaving the
rocky spur astern.
The sensation here experienced, after at first relieving his
uneasiness, with unforeseen efficacy soon began to remove it. The less
distant sight of that well-known boat—showing it, not as before, half
blended with the haze, but with outline defined, so that its
individuality, like a man’s, was manifest; that boat, Rover by name,
which, though now in strange seas, had often pressed the beach of
Captain Delano’s home, and, brought to its threshold for repairs, had
familiarly lain there, as a Newfoundland dog; the sight of that
household boat evoked a thousand trustful associations, which,
contrasted with previous suspicions, filled him not only with lightsome
confidence, but somehow with half humorous self-reproaches at his
former lack of it.
“What, I, Amasa Delano—Jack of the Beach, as they called me when a
lad—I, Amasa; the same that, duck-satchel in hand, used to paddle along
the water-side to the school-house made from the old hulk—I, little
Jack of the Beach, that used to go berrying with cousin Nat and the
rest; I to be murdered here at the ends of the earth, on board a
haunted pirate-ship by a horrible Spaniard? Too nonsensical to think
of! Who would murder Amasa Delano? His conscience is clean. There is
some one above. Fie, fie, Jack of the Beach! you are a child indeed; a
child of the second childhood, old boy; you are beginning to dote and
drule, I’m afraid.”
- title
- Chunk 10