- end_line
- 5493
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:48:15.023Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 5444
- text
- “But these mild trades that now fan your cheek, do they not come with a
human-like healing to you? Warm friends, steadfast friends are the
trades.”
“With their steadfastness they but waft me to my tomb, Señor,” was the
foreboding response.
“You are saved,” cried Captain Delano, more and more astonished and
pained; “you are saved: what has cast such a shadow upon you?”
“The negro.”
There was silence, while the moody man sat, slowly and unconsciously
gathering his mantle about him, as if it were a pall.
There was no more conversation that day.
But if the Spaniard’s melancholy sometimes ended in muteness upon
topics like the above, there were others upon which he never spoke at
all; on which, indeed, all his old reserves were piled. Pass over the
worst, and, only to elucidate let an item or two of these be cited. The
dress, so precise and costly, worn by him on the day whose events have
been narrated, had not willingly been put on. And that silver-mounted
sword, apparent symbol of despotic command, was not, indeed, a sword,
but the ghost of one. The scabbard, artificially stiffened, was empty.
As for the black—whose brain, not body, had schemed and led the revolt,
with the plot—his slight frame, inadequate to that which it held, had
at once yielded to the superior muscular strength of his captor, in the
boat. Seeing all was over, he uttered no sound, and could not be forced
to. His aspect seemed to say, since I cannot do deeds, I will not speak
words. Put in irons in the hold, with the rest, he was carried to Lima.
During the passage, Don Benito did not visit him. Nor then, nor at any
time after, would he look at him. Before the tribunal he refused. When
pressed by the judges he fainted. On the testimony of the sailors alone
rested the legal identity of Babo.
Some months after, dragged to the gibbet at the tail of a mule, the
black met his voiceless end. The body was burned to ashes; but for many
days, the head, that hive of subtlety, fixed on a pole in the Plaza,
met, unabashed, the gaze of the whites; and across the Plaza looked
towards St. Bartholomew’s church, in whose vaults slept then, as now,
the recovered bones of Aranda: and across the Rimac bridge looked
towards the monastery, on Mount Agonia without; where, three months
after being dismissed by the court, Benito Cereno, borne on the bier,
did, indeed, follow his leader.
- title
- Chunk 2