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- 2026-01-30T07:57:55.409Z
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- 4488
- text
- conduct could justify it, Captain Delano’s pride began to be roused.
Himself became reserved. But all seemed one to the Spaniard. Quitting
him, therefore, Captain Delano once more went to the deck.
The ship was now within less than two miles of the sealer. The
whale-boat was seen darting over the interval.
To be brief, the two vessels, thanks to the pilot’s skill, ere long
neighborly style lay anchored together.
Before returning to his own vessel, Captain Delano had intended
communicating to Don Benito the smaller details of the proposed
services to be rendered. But, as it was, unwilling anew to subject
himself to rebuffs, he resolved, now that he had seen the San Dominick
safely moored, immediately to quit her, without further allusion to
hospitality or business. Indefinitely postponing his ulterior plans, he
would regulate his future actions according to future circumstances.
His boat was ready to receive him; but his host still tarried below.
Well, thought Captain Delano, if he has little breeding, the more need
to show mine. He descended to the cabin to bid a ceremonious, and, it
may be, tacitly rebukeful adieu. But to his great satisfaction, Don
Benito, as if he began to feel the weight of that treatment with which
his slighted guest had, not indecorously, retaliated upon him, now
supported by his servant, rose to his feet, and grasping Captain
Delano’s hand, stood tremulous; too much agitated to speak. But the
good augury hence drawn was suddenly dashed, by his resuming all his
previous reserve, with augmented gloom, as, with half-averted eyes, he
silently reseated himself on his cushions. With a corresponding return
of his own chilled feelings, Captain Delano bowed and withdrew.
He was hardly midway in the narrow corridor, dim as a tunnel, leading
from the cabin to the stairs, when a sound, as of the tolling for
execution in some jail-yard, fell on his ears. It was the echo of the
ship’s flawed bell, striking the hour, drearily reverberated in this
subterranean vault. Instantly, by a fatality not to be withstood, his
mind, responsive to the portent, swarmed with superstitious suspicions.
He paused. In images far swifter than these sentences, the minutest
details of all his former distrusts swept through him.
Hitherto, credulous good-nature had been too ready to furnish excuses
for reasonable fears. Why was the Spaniard, so superfluously
punctilious at times, now heedless of common propriety in not
accompanying to the side his departing guest? Did indisposition forbid?
Indisposition had not forbidden more irksome exertion that day. His
last equivocal demeanor recurred. He had risen to his feet, grasped his
guest’s hand, motioned toward his hat; then, in an instant, all was
eclipsed in sinister muteness and gloom. Did this imply one brief,
repentant relenting at the final moment, from some iniquitous plot,
followed by remorseless return to it? His last glance seemed to express
a calamitous, yet acquiescent farewell to Captain Delano forever. Why
decline the invitation to visit the sealer that evening? Or was the
Spaniard less hardened than the Jew, who refrained not from supping at
the board of him whom the same night he meant to betray? What imported
all those day-long enigmas and contradictions, except they were
intended to mystify, preliminary to some stealthy blow? Atufal, the
pretended rebel, but punctual shadow, that moment lurked by the
threshold without. He seemed a sentry, and more. Who, by his own
confession, had stationed him there? Was the negro now lying in wait?
The Spaniard behind—his creature before: to rush from darkness to light
was the involuntary choice.
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