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- 3690
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T07:57:55.409Z
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- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 3625
- text
- 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.”
Light of heart and foot, he stepped aft, and there was met by Don
Benito’s servant, who, with a pleasing expression, responsive to his
own present feelings, informed him that his master had recovered from
the effects of his coughing fit, and had just ordered him to go present
his compliments to his good guest, Don Amasa, and say that he (Don
Benito) would soon have the happiness to rejoin him.
There now, do you mark that? again thought Captain Delano, walking the
poop. What a donkey I was. This kind gentleman who here sends me his
kind compliments, he, but ten minutes ago, dark-lantern in had, was
dodging round some old grind-stone in the hold, sharpening a hatchet
for me, I thought. Well, well; these long calms have a morbid effect on
the mind, I’ve often heard, though I never believed it before. Ha!
glancing towards the boat; there’s Rover; good dog; a white bone in her
mouth. A pretty big bone though, seems to me.—What? Yes, she has fallen
afoul of the bubbling tide-rip there. It sets her the other way, too,
for the time. Patience.
It was now about noon, though, from the grayness of everything, it
seemed to be getting towards dusk.
The calm was confirmed. In the far distance, away from the influence of
land, the leaden ocean seemed laid out and leaded up, its course
finished, soul gone, defunct. But the current from landward, where the
ship was, increased; silently sweeping her further and further towards
the tranced waters beyond.
Still, from his knowledge of those latitudes, cherishing hopes of a
breeze, and a fair and fresh one, at any moment, Captain Delano,
despite present prospects, buoyantly counted upon bringing the San
Dominick safely to anchor ere night. The distance swept over was
nothing; since, with a good wind, ten minutes’ sailing would retrace
more than sixty minutes, drifting. Meantime, one moment turning to mark
“Rover” fighting the tide-rip, and the next to see Don Benito
approaching, he continued walking the poop.
Gradually he felt a vexation arising from the delay of his boat; this
soon merged into uneasiness; and at last—his eye falling continually,
as from a stage-box into the pit, upon the strange crowd before and
below him, and, by-and-by, recognizing there the face—now composed to
indifference—of the Spanish sailor who had seemed to beckon from the
main-chains—something of his old trepidations returned.
Ah, thought he—gravely enough—this is like the ague: because it went
off, it follows not that it won’t come back.
Though ashamed of the relapse, he could not altogether subdue it; and
so, exerting his good-nature to the utmost, insensibly he came to a
compromise.
Yes, this is a strange craft; a strange history, too, and strange folks
on board. But—nothing more.
By way of keeping his mind out of mischief till the boat should arrive,
he tried to occupy it with turning over and over, in a purely
speculative sort of way, some lesser peculiarities of the captain and
crew. Among others, four curious points recurred:
- title
- Chunk 11