- end_line
- 4043
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T07:57:55.409Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 3973
- text
- 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, and low down under the throat,
all the rest being cultivated beard.
The preliminaries being somewhat novel to Captain Delano, he sat
curiously eying 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 the razors, as for the
sharpest, and having found it, gave it an additional edge by expertly
strapping 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, the other professionally
dabbling among the bubbling suds on the Spaniard’s lank neck. Not
unaffected by the close sight of the gleaming steel, Don Benito
nervously shuddered; his usual ghastliness was heightened by the
lather, which lather, again, was intensified in its hue by the
contrasting 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, and in the white a man at the block. But this was one of
those antic conceits, appearing and vanishing in a breath, from which,
perhaps, the best regulated mind is not always free.
Meantime the agitation of the Spaniard had a little loosened the
bunting from around him, so that one broad fold swept curtain-like over
the chair-arm to the floor, revealing, amid a profusion of armorial
bars and ground-colors—black, blue, and yellow—a closed castle in a
blood red field diagonal with a lion rampant in a white.
“The castle and the lion,” exclaimed Captain Delano—“why, Don 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
towards the black—“it’s all one, I suppose, so the colors be gay;”
which playful remark did not fail 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 nigh the throat.
Again Don Benito faintly shuddered.
“You must not shake so, master. See, Don Amasa, master always shakes
when I shave him. 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, Don Amasa, please go on with your
talk about the gale, and all that; master can hear, and, between times,
master can answer.”
“Ah yes, these gales,” said Captain Delano; “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 St. Maria, a distance which I myself, with a
good wind, have sailed in a few days. True, you had calms, and long
ones, but to be becalmed 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 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 the creamy lather under the throat: immediately
the black barber drew 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, “See, master—you shook so—here’s Babo’s first blood.”
- title
- Chunk 17