<SPAN name="startofbook"></SPAN>
<h1>The Piazza Tales</h1>
<h2 class="no-break">by Herman Melville</h2>
<p class="center">
Author of “Typee,” “Omoo,” etc., etc., etc.</p>
<p class="center">
New York;<br/>
Dix & Edwards, 321 Broadway.<br/>
London: Sampson Low, Son & Co.<br/>
Miller & Holman,<br/>
Printers & Stereotypers, N.Y.</p>
<p class="center">
1856</p>
<hr />
<h2>Contents</h2>
<table summary="" >
<tr>
<td> <SPAN href="#chap01">The Piazza</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <SPAN href="#chap02">Bartleby</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <SPAN href="#chap03">Benito Cereno</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <SPAN href="#chap04">The Lightning-Rod Man</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <SPAN href="#chap05">The Encantadas</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <SPAN href="#chap06">The Bell-Tower</SPAN></td>
</tr>
</table>
<h2><SPAN name="chap01"></SPAN>THE PIAZZA.</h2>
<p class="poem">
“With fairest flowers,<br/>
Whilst summer lasts, and I live here, Fidele—”</p>
<p>When I removed into the country, it was to occupy an old-fashioned farm-house,
which had no piazza—a deficiency the more regretted, because not only did
I like piazzas, as somehow combining the coziness of in-doors with the freedom
of out-doors, and it is so pleasant to inspect your thermometer there, but the
country round about was such a picture, that in berry time no boy climbs hill
or crosses vale without coming upon easels planted in every nook, and sun-burnt
painters painting there. A very paradise of painters. The circle of the stars
cut by the circle of the mountains. At least, so looks it from the house;
though, once upon the mountains, no circle of them can you see. Had the site
been chosen five rods off, this charmed ring would not have been.</p>
<p>The house is old. Seventy years since, from the heart of the Hearth Stone
Hills, they quarried the Kaaba, or Holy Stone, to which, each Thanksgiving, the
social pilgrims used to come. So long ago, that, in digging for the foundation,
the workmen used both spade and axe, fighting the Troglodytes of those
subterranean parts—sturdy roots of a sturdy wood, encamped upon what is
now a long land-slide of sleeping meadow, sloping away off from my poppy-bed.
Of that knit wood, but one survivor stands—an elm, lonely through
steadfastness.</p>
<p>Whoever built the house, he builded better than he knew; or else Orion in the
zenith flashed down his Damocles’ sword to him some starry night, and
said, “Build there.” For how, otherwise, could it have entered the
builder’s mind, that, upon the clearing being made, such a purple
prospect would be his?—nothing less than Greylock, with all his hills
about him, like Charlemagne among his peers.</p>
<p>Now, for a house, so situated in such a country, to have no piazza for the
convenience of those who might desire to feast upon the view, and take their
time and ease about it, seemed as much of an omission as if a picture-gallery
should have no bench; for what but picture-galleries are the marble halls of
these same limestone hills?—galleries hung, month after month anew, with
pictures ever fading into pictures ever fresh. And beauty is like
piety—you cannot run and read it; tranquillity and constancy, with,
now-a-days, an easy chair, are needed. For though, of old, when reverence was
in vogue, and indolence was not, the devotees of Nature, doubtless, used to
stand and adore—just as, in the cathedrals of those ages, the worshipers
of a higher Power did—yet, in these times of failing faith and feeble
knees, we have the piazza and the pew.</p>
<p>During the first year of my residence, the more leisurely to witness the
coronation of Charlemagne (weather permitting, they crown him every sunrise and
sunset), I chose me, on the hill-side bank near by, a royal lounge of
turf—a green velvet lounge, with long, moss-padded back; while at the
head, strangely enough, there grew (but, I suppose, for heraldry) three tufts
of blue violets in a field-argent of wild strawberries; and a trellis, with
honeysuckle, I set for canopy. Very majestical lounge, indeed. So much so, that
here, as with the reclining majesty of Denmark in his orchard, a sly ear-ache
invaded me. But, if damps abound at times in Westminster Abbey, because it is
so old, why not within this monastery of mountains, which is older?</p>
<p>A piazza must be had.</p>
<p>The house was wide—my fortune narrow; so that, to build a panoramic
piazza, one round and round, it could not be—although, indeed,
considering the matter by rule and square, the carpenters, in the kindest way,
were anxious to gratify my furthest wishes, at I’ve forgotten how much a
foot.</p>
<p>Upon but one of the four sides would prudence grant me what I wanted. Now,
which side?</p>
<p>To the east, that long camp of the Hearth Stone Hills, fading far away towards
Quito; and every fall, a small white flake of something peering suddenly, of a
coolish morning, from the topmost cliff—the season’s new-dropped
lamb, its earliest fleece; and then the Christmas dawn, draping those dim
highlands with red-barred plaids and tartans—goodly sight from your
piazza, that. Goodly sight; but, to the north is Charlemagne—can’t
have the Hearth Stone Hills with Charlemagne.</p>
<p>Well, the south side. Apple-trees are there. Pleasant, of a balmy morning, in
the month of May, to sit and see that orchard, white-budded, as for a bridal;
and, in October, one green arsenal yard; such piles of ruddy shot. Very fine, I
grant; but, to the north is Charlemagne.</p>
<p>The west side, look. An upland pasture, alleying away into a maple wood at top.
Sweet, in opening spring, to trace upon the hill-side, otherwise gray and
bare—to trace, I say, the oldest paths by their streaks of earliest
green. Sweet, indeed, I can’t deny; but, to the north is Charlemagne.</p>
<p>So Charlemagne, he carried it. It was not long after 1848; and, somehow, about
that time, all round the world, these kings, they had the casting vote, and
voted for themselves.</p>
<p>No sooner was ground broken, than all the neighborhood, neighbor Dives, in
particular, broke, too—into a laugh. Piazza to the north! Winter piazza!
Wants, of winter midnights, to watch the Aurora Borealis, I suppose; hope
he’s laid in good store of Polar muffs and mittens.</p>
<p>That was in the lion month of March. Not forgotten are the blue noses of the
carpenters, and how they scouted at the greenness of the cit, who would build
his sole piazza to the north. But March don’t last forever; patience, and
August comes. And then, in the cool elysium of my northern bower, I, Lazarus in
Abraham’s bosom, cast down the hill a pitying glance on poor old Dives,
tormented in the purgatory of his piazza to the south.</p>
<p>But, even in December, this northern piazza does not repel—nipping cold
and gusty though it be, and the north wind, like any miller, bolting by the
snow, in finest flour—for then, once more, with frosted beard, I pace the
sleety deck, weathering Cape Horn.</p>
<p>In summer, too, Canute-like, sitting here, one is often reminded of the sea.
For not only do long ground-swells roll the slanting grain, and little wavelets
of the grass ripple over upon the low piazza, as their beach, and the blown
down of dandelions is wafted like the spray, and the purple of the mountains is
just the purple of the billows, and a still August noon broods upon the deep
meadows, as a calm upon the Line; but the vastness and the lonesomeness are so
oceanic, and the silence and the sameness, too, that the first peep of a
strange house, rising beyond the trees, is for all the world like spying, on
the Barbary coast, an unknown sail.</p>
<p>And this recalls my inland voyage to fairy-land. A true voyage; but, take it
all in all, interesting as if invented.</p>
<p>From the piazza, some uncertain object I had caught, mysteriously snugged away,
to all appearance, in a sort of purpled breast-pocket, high up in a hopper-like
hollow, or sunken angle, among the northwestern mountains—yet, whether,
really, it was on a mountain-side, or a mountain-top, could not be determined;
because, though, viewed from favorable points, a blue summit, peering up away
behind the rest, will, as it were, talk to you over their heads, and plainly
tell you, that, though he (the blue summit) seems among them, he is not of them
(God forbid!), and, indeed, would have you know that he considers
himself—as, to say truth, he has good right—by several cubits their
superior, nevertheless, certain ranges, here and there double-filed, as in
platoons, so shoulder and follow up upon one another, with their irregular
shapes and heights, that, from the piazza, a nigher and lower mountain will, in
most states of the atmosphere, effacingly shade itself away into a higher and
further one; that an object, bleak on the former’s crest, will, for all
that, appear nested in the latter’s flank. These mountains, somehow, they
play at hide-and-seek, and all before one’s eyes.</p>
<p>But, be that as it may, the spot in question was, at all events, so situated as
to be only visible, and then but vaguely, under certain witching conditions of
light and shadow.</p>
<p>Indeed, for a year or more, I knew not there was such a spot, and might,
perhaps, have never known, had it not been for a wizard afternoon in
autumn—late in autumn—a mad poet’s afternoon; when the turned
maple woods in the broad basin below me, having lost their first vermilion
tint, dully smoked, like smouldering towns, when flames expire upon their prey;
and rumor had it, that this smokiness in the general air was not all Indian
summer—which was not used to be so sick a thing, however mild—but,
in great part, was blown from far-off forests, for weeks on fire, in Vermont;
so that no wonder the sky was ominous as Hecate’s cauldron—and two
sportsmen, crossing a red stubble buck-wheat field, seemed guilty Macbeth and
foreboding Banquo; and the hermit-sun, hutted in an Adullum cave, well towards
the south, according to his season, did little else but, by indirect reflection
of narrow rays shot down a Simplon pass among the clouds, just steadily paint
one small, round, strawberry mole upon the wan cheek of northwestern hills.
Signal as a candle. One spot of radiance, where all else was shade.</p>
<p>Fairies there, thought I; some haunted ring where fairies dance.</p>
<p>Time passed; and the following May, after a gentle shower upon the
mountains—a little shower islanded in misty seas of sunshine; such a
distant shower—and sometimes two, and three, and four of them, all
visible together in different parts—as I love to watch from the piazza,
instead of thunder storms, as I used to, which wrap old Greylock, like a Sinai,
till one thinks swart Moses must be climbing among scathed hemlocks there;
after, I say, that, gentle shower, I saw a rainbow, resting its further end
just where, in autumn, I had marked the mole. Fairies there, thought I;
remembering that rainbows bring out the blooms, and that, if one can but get to
the rainbow’s end, his fortune is made in a bag of gold. Yon
rainbow’s end, would I were there, thought I. And none the less I wished
it, for now first noticing what seemed some sort of glen, or grotto, in the
mountain side; at least, whatever it was, viewed through the rainbow’s
medium, it glowed like the Potosi mine. But a work-a-day neighbor said, no
doubt it was but some old barn—an abandoned one, its broadside beaten in,
the acclivity its background. But I, though I had never been there, I knew
better.</p>
<p>A few days after, a cheery sunrise kindled a golden sparkle in the same spot as
before. The sparkle was of that vividness, it seemed as if it could only come
from glass. The building, then—if building, after all, it
was—could, at least, not be a barn, much less an abandoned one; stale hay
ten years musting in it. No; if aught built by mortal, it must be a cottage;
perhaps long vacant and dismantled, but this very spring magically fitted up
and glazed.</p>
<p>Again, one noon, in the same direction, I marked, over dimmed tops of terraced
foliage, a broader gleam, as of a silver buckler, held sunwards over some
croucher’s head; which gleam, experience in like cases taught, must come
from a roof newly shingled. This, to me, made pretty sure the recent occupancy
of that far cot in fairy land.</p>
<p>Day after day, now, full of interest in my discovery, what time I could spare
from reading the Midsummer’s Night Dream, and all about Titania,
wishfully I gazed off towards the hills; but in vain. Either troops of shadows,
an imperial guard, with slow pace and solemn, defiled along the steeps; or,
routed by pursuing light, fled broadcast from east to west—old wars of
Lucifer and Michael; or the mountains, though unvexed by these mirrored sham
fights in the sky, had an atmosphere otherwise unfavorable for fairy views. I
was sorry; the more so, because I had to keep my chamber for some time
after—which chamber did not face those hills.</p>
<p>At length, when pretty well again, and sitting out, in the September morning,
upon the piazza, and thinking to myself, when, just after a little flock of
sheep, the farmer’s banded children passed, a-nutting, and said,
“How sweet a day”—it was, after all, but what their fathers
call a weather-breeder—and, indeed, was become so sensitive through my
illness, as that I could not bear to look upon a Chinese creeper of my
adoption, and which, to my delight, climbing a post of the piazza, had burst
out in starry bloom, but now, if you removed the leaves a little, showed
millions of strange, cankerous worms, which, feeding upon those blossoms, so
shared their blessed hue, as to make it unblessed evermore—worms, whose
germs had doubtless lurked in the very bulb which, so hopefully, I had planted:
in this ingrate peevishness of my weary convalescence, was I sitting there;
when, suddenly looking off, I saw the golden mountain-window, dazzling like a
deep-sea dolphin. Fairies there, thought I, once more; the queen of fairies at
her fairy-window; at any rate, some glad mountain-girl; it will do me good, it
will cure this weariness, to look on her. No more; I’ll launch my
yawl—ho, cheerly, heart! and push away for fairy-land—for
rainbow’s end, in fairy-land.</p>
<p>How to get to fairy-land, by what road, I did not know; nor could any one
inform me; not even one Edmund Spenser, who had been there—so he wrote
me—further than that to reach fairy-land, it must be voyaged to, and with
faith. I took the fairy-mountain’s bearings, and the first fine day, when
strength permitted, got into my yawl—high-pommeled, leather
one—cast off the fast, and away I sailed, free voyager as an autumn leaf.
Early dawn; and, sallying westward, I sowed the morning before me.</p>
<p>Some miles brought me nigh the hills; but out of present sight of them. I was
not lost; for road-side golden-rods, as guide-posts, pointed, I doubted not,
the way to the golden window. Following them, I came to a lone and languid
region, where the grass-grown ways were traveled but by drowsy cattle, that,
less waked than stirred by day, seemed to walk in sleep. Browse, they did
not—the enchanted never eat. At least, so says Don Quixote, that sagest
sage that ever lived.</p>
<p>On I went, and gained at last the fairy mountain’s base, but saw yet no
fairy ring. A pasture rose before me. Letting down five mouldering
bars—so moistly green, they seemed fished up from some sunken
wreck—a wigged old Aries, long-visaged, and with crumpled horn, came
snuffing up; and then, retreating, decorously led on along a milky-way of
white-weed, past dim-clustering Pleiades and Hyades, of small forget-me-nots;
and would have led me further still his astral path, but for golden flights of
yellow-birds—pilots, surely, to the golden window, to one side flying
before me, from bush to bush, towards deep woods—which woods themselves
were luring—and, somehow, lured, too, by their fence, banning a dark
road, which, however dark, led up. I pushed through; when Aries, renouncing me
now for some lost soul, wheeled, and went his wiser way. Forbidding and
forbidden ground—to him.</p>
<p>A winter wood road, matted all along with winter-green. By the side of pebbly
waters—waters the cheerier for their solitude; beneath swaying
fir-boughs, petted by no season, but still green in all, on I
journeyed—my horse and I; on, by an old saw-mill, bound down and hushed
with vines, that his grating voice no more was heard; on, by a deep flume clove
through snowy marble, vernal-tinted, where freshet eddies had, on each side,
spun out empty chapels in the living rock; on, where Jacks-in-the-pulpit, like
their Baptist namesake, preached but to the wilderness; on, where a huge,
cross-grain block, fern-bedded, showed where, in forgotten times, man after man
had tried to split it, but lost his wedges for his pains—which wedges yet
rusted in their holes; on, where, ages past, in step-like ledges of a cascade,
skull-hollow pots had been churned out by ceaseless whirling of a
flintstone—ever wearing, but itself unworn; on, by wild rapids pouring
into a secret pool, but soothed by circling there awhile, issued forth
serenely; on, to less broken ground, and by a little ring, where, truly,
fairies must have danced, or else some wheel-tire been heated—for all was
bare; still on, and up, and out into a hanging orchard, where maidenly looked
down upon me a crescent moon, from morning.</p>
<p>My horse hitched low his head. Red apples rolled before him; Eve’s
apples; seek-no-furthers. He tasted one, I another; it tasted of the ground.
Fairy land not yet, thought I, flinging my bridle to a humped old tree, that
crooked out an arm to catch it. For the way now lay where path was none, and
none might go but by himself, and only go by daring. Through blackberry brakes
that tried to pluck me back, though I but strained towards fruitless growths of
mountain-laurel; up slippery steeps to barren heights, where stood none to
welcome. Fairy land not yet, thought I, though the morning is here before me.</p>
<p>Foot-sore enough and weary, I gained not then my journey’s end, but came
ere long to a craggy pass, dipping towards growing regions still beyond. A
zigzag road, half overgrown with blueberry bushes, here turned among the
cliffs. A rent was in their ragged sides; through it a little track branched
off, which, upwards threading that short defile, came breezily out above, to
where the mountain-top, part sheltered northward, by a taller brother, sloped
gently off a space, ere darkly plunging; and here, among fantastic rocks,
reposing in a herd, the foot-track wound, half beaten, up to a little,
low-storied, grayish cottage, capped, nun-like, with a peaked roof.</p>
<p>On one slope, the roof was deeply weather-stained, and, nigh the turfy
eaves-trough, all velvet-napped; no doubt the snail-monks founded mossy
priories there. The other slope was newly shingled. On the north side, doorless
and windowless, the clap-boards, innocent of paint, were yet green as the north
side of lichened pines or copperless hulls of Japanese junks, becalmed. The
whole base, like those of the neighboring rocks, was rimmed about with shaded
streaks of richest sod; for, with hearth-stones in fairy land, the natural
rock, though housed, preserves to the last, just as in open fields, its
fertilizing charm; only, by necessity, working now at a remove, to the sward
without. So, at least, says Oberon, grave authority in fairy lore. Though
setting Oberon aside, certain it is, that, even in the common world, the soil,
close up to farm-houses, as close up to pasture rocks, is, even though
untended, ever richer than it is a few rods off—such gentle, nurturing
heat is radiated there.</p>
<p>But with this cottage, the shaded streaks were richest in its front and about
its entrance, where the ground-sill, and especially the doorsill had, through
long eld, quietly settled down.</p>
<p>No fence was seen, no inclosure. Near by—ferns, ferns, ferns;
further—woods, woods, woods; beyond—mountains, mountains,
mountains; then—sky, sky, sky. Turned out in aerial commons, pasture for
the mountain moon. Nature, and but nature, house and, all; even a low
cross-pile of silver birch, piled openly, to season; up among whose silvery
sticks, as through the fencing of some sequestered grave, sprang vagrant
raspberry bushes—willful assertors of their right of way.</p>
<p>The foot-track, so dainty narrow, just like a sheep-track, led through long
ferns that lodged. Fairy land at last, thought I; Una and her lamb dwell here.
Truly, a small abode—mere palanquin, set down on the summit, in a pass
between two worlds, participant of neither.</p>
<p>A sultry hour, and I wore a light hat, of yellow sinnet, with white duck
trowsers—both relics of my tropic sea-going. Clogged in the muffling
ferns, I softly stumbled, staining the knees a sea-green.</p>
<p>Pausing at the threshold, or rather where threshold once had been, I saw,
through the open door-way, a lonely girl, sewing at a lonely window. A
pale-cheeked girl, and fly-specked window, with wasps about the mended upper
panes. I spoke. She shyly started, like some Tahiti girl, secreted for a
sacrifice, first catching sight, through palms, of Captain Cook. Recovering,
she bade me enter; with her apron brushed off a stool; then silently resumed
her own. With thanks I took the stool; but now, for a space, I, too, was mute.
This, then, is the fairy-mountain house, and here, the fairy queen sitting at
her fairy window.</p>
<p>I went up to it. Downwards, directed by the tunneled pass, as through a leveled
telescope, I caught sight of a far-off, soft, azure world. I hardly knew it,
though I came from it.</p>
<p>“You must find this view very pleasant,” said I, at last.</p>
<p>“Oh, sir,” tears starting in her eyes, “the first time I
looked out of this window, I said ‘never, never shall I weary of
this.’”</p>
<p>“And what wearies you of it now?”</p>
<p>“I don’t know,” while a tear fell; “but it is not the
view, it is Marianna.”</p>
<p>Some months back, her brother, only seventeen, had come hither, a long way from
the other side, to cut wood and burn coal, and she, elder sister, had
accompanied, him. Long had they been orphans, and now, sole inhabitants of the
sole house upon the mountain. No guest came, no traveler passed. The zigzag,
perilous road was only used at seasons by the coal wagons. The brother was
absent the entire day, sometimes the entire night. When at evening, fagged out,
he did come home, he soon left his bench, poor fellow, for his bed; just as
one, at last, wearily quits that, too, for still deeper rest. The bench, the
bed, the grave.</p>
<p>Silent I stood by the fairy window, while these things were being told.</p>
<p>“Do you know,” said she at last, as stealing from her story,
“do you know who lives yonder?—I have never been down into that
country—away off there, I mean; that house, that marble one,”
pointing far across the lower landscape; “have you not caught it? there,
on the long hill-side: the field before, the woods behind; the white shines out
against their blue; don’t you mark it? the only house in sight.”</p>
<p>I looked; and after a time, to my surprise, recognized, more by its position
than its aspect, or Marianna’s description, my own abode, glimmering much
like this mountain one from the piazza. The mirage haze made it appear less a
farm-house than King Charming’s palace.</p>
<p>“I have often wondered who lives there; but it must be some happy one;
again this morning was I thinking so.”</p>
<p>“Some happy one,” returned I, starting; “and why do you think
that? You judge some rich one lives there?”</p>
<p>“Rich or not, I never thought; but it looks so happy, I can’t tell
how; and it is so far away. Sometimes I think I do but dream it is there. You
should see it in a sunset.”</p>
<p>“No doubt the sunset gilds it finely; but not more than the sunrise does
this house, perhaps.”</p>
<p>“This house? The sun is a good sun, but it never gilds this house. Why
should it? This old house is rotting. That makes it so mossy. In the morning,
the sun comes in at this old window, to be sure—boarded up, when first we
came; a window I can’t keep clean, do what I may—and half burns,
and nearly blinds me at my sewing, besides setting the flies and wasps
astir—such flies and wasps as only lone mountain houses know. See, here
is the curtain—this apron—I try to shut it out with then. It fades
it, you see. Sun gild this house? not that ever Marianna saw.”</p>
<p>“Because when this roof is gilded most, then you stay here within.”</p>
<p>“The hottest, weariest hour of day, you mean? Sir, the sun gilds not this
roof. It leaked so, brother newly shingled all one side. Did you not see it?
The north side, where the sun strikes most on what the rain has wetted. The sun
is a good sun; but this roof, in first scorches, and then rots. An old house.
They went West, and are long dead, they say, who built it. A mountain house. In
winter no fox could den in it. That chimney-place has been blocked up with
snow, just like a hollow stump.”</p>
<p>“Yours are strange fancies, Marianna.”</p>
<p>“They but reflect the things.”</p>
<p>“Then I should have said, ‘These are strange things,’ rather
than, ‘Yours are strange fancies.’”</p>
<p>“As you will;” and took up her sewing.</p>
<p>Something in those quiet words, or in that quiet act, it made me mute again;
while, noting, through the fairy window, a broad shadow stealing on, as cast by
some gigantic condor, floating at brooding poise on outstretched wings, I
marked how, by its deeper and inclusive dusk, it wiped away into itself all
lesser shades of rock or fern.</p>
<p>“You watch the cloud,” said Marianna.</p>
<p>“No, a shadow; a cloud’s, no doubt—though that I cannot see.
How did you know it? Your eyes are on your work.”</p>
<p>“It dusked my work. There, now the cloud is gone, Tray comes back.”</p>
<p>“How?”</p>
<p>“The dog, the shaggy dog. At noon, he steals off, of himself, to change
his shape—returns, and lies down awhile, nigh the door. Don’t you
see him? His head is turned round at you; though, when you came, he looked
before him.”</p>
<p>“Your eyes rest but on your work; what do you speak of?”</p>
<p>“By the window, crossing.”</p>
<p>“You mean this shaggy shadow—the nigh one? And, yes, now that I
mark it, it is not unlike a large, black Newfoundland dog. The invading shadow
gone, the invaded one returns. But I do not see what casts it.”</p>
<p>“For that, you must go without.”</p>
<p>“One of those grassy rocks, no doubt.”</p>
<p>“You see his head, his face?”</p>
<p>“The shadow’s? You speak as if <i>you</i> saw it, and all the time
your eyes are on your work.”</p>
<p>“Tray looks at you,” still without glancing up; “this is his
hour; I see him.”</p>
<p>“Have you then, so long sat at this mountain-window, where but clouds
and, vapors pass, that, to you, shadows are as things, though you speak of them
as of phantoms; that, by familiar knowledge, working like a second sight, you
can, without looking for them, tell just where they are, though, as having
mice-like feet, they creep about, and come and go; that, to you, these lifeless
shadows are as living friends, who, though out of sight, are not out of mind,
even in their faces—is it so?”</p>
<p>“That way I never thought of it. But the friendliest one, that used to
soothe my weariness so much, coolly quivering on the ferns, it was taken from
me, never to return, as Tray did just now. The shadow of a birch. The tree was
struck by lightning, and brother cut it up. You saw the cross-pile
out-doors—the buried root lies under it; but not the shadow. That is
flown, and never will come back, nor ever anywhere stir again.”</p>
<p>Another cloud here stole along, once more blotting out the dog, and blackening
all the mountain; while the stillness was so still, deafness might have forgot
itself, or else believed that noiseless shadow spoke.</p>
<p>“Birds, Marianna, singing-birds, I hear none; I hear nothing. Boys and
bob-o-links, do they never come a-berrying up here?”</p>
<p>“Birds, I seldom hear; boys, never. The berries mostly ripe and
fall—few, but me, the wiser.”</p>
<p>“But yellow-birds showed me the way—part way, at least.”</p>
<p>“And then flew back. I guess they play about the mountain-side, but
don’t make the top their home. And no doubt you think that, living so
lonesome here, knowing nothing, hearing nothing—little, at least, but
sound of thunder and the fall of trees—never reading, seldom speaking,
yet ever wakeful, this is what gives me my strange thoughts—for so you
call them—this weariness and wakefulness together Brother, who stands and
works in open air, would I could rest like him; but mine is mostly but dull
woman’s work—sitting, sitting, restless sitting.”</p>
<p>“But, do you not go walk at times? These woods are wide.”</p>
<p>“And lonesome; lonesome, because so wide. Sometimes, ’tis true, of
afternoons, I go a little way; but soon come back again. Better feel lone by
hearth, than rock. The shadows hereabouts I know—those in the woods are
strangers.”</p>
<p>“But the night?”</p>
<p>“Just like the day. Thinking, thinking—a wheel I cannot stop; pure
want of sleep it is that turns it.”</p>
<p>“I have heard that, for this wakeful weariness, to say one’s
prayers, and then lay one’s head upon a fresh hop pillow—”</p>
<p>“Look!”</p>
<p>Through the fairy window, she pointed down the steep to a small garden patch
near by—mere pot of rifled loam, half rounded in by sheltering
rocks—where, side by side, some feet apart, nipped and puny, two
hop-vines climbed two poles, and, gaining their tip-ends, would have then
joined over in an upward clasp, but the baffled shoots, groping awhile in empty
air, trailed back whence they sprung.</p>
<p>“You have tried the pillow, then?”</p>
<p>“Yes.”</p>
<p>“And prayer?”</p>
<p>“Prayer and pillow.”</p>
<p>“Is there no other cure, or charm?”</p>
<p>“Oh, if I could but once get to yonder house, and but look upon whoever
the happy being is that lives there! A foolish thought: why do I think it? Is
it that I live so lonesome, and know nothing?”</p>
<p>“I, too, know nothing; and, therefore, cannot answer; but, for your sake,
Marianna, well could wish that I were that happy one of the happy house you
dream you see; for then you would behold him now, and, as you say, this
weariness might leave you.”</p>
<p>—Enough. Launching my yawl no more for fairy-land, I stick to the piazza.
It is my box-royal; and this amphitheatre, my theatre of San Carlo. Yes, the
scenery is magical—the illusion so complete. And Madam Meadow Lark, my
prima donna, plays her grand engagement here; and, drinking in her sunrise
note, which, Memnon-like, seems struck from the golden window, how far from me
the weary face behind it.</p>
<p>But, every night, when the curtain falls, truth comes in with darkness. No
light shows from the mountain. To and fro I walk the piazza deck, haunted by
Marianna’s face, and many as real a story.</p>
<h2><SPAN name="chap02"></SPAN>BARTLEBY.</h2>
<p>I am a rather elderly man. The nature of my avocations, for the last thirty
years, has brought me into more than ordinary contact with what would seem an
interesting and somewhat singular set of men, of whom, as yet, nothing, that I
know of, has ever been written—I mean, the law-copyists, or scriveners. I
have known very many of them, professionally and privately, and, if I pleased,
could relate divers histories, at which good-natured gentlemen might smile, and
sentimental souls might weep. But I waive the biographies of all other
scriveners, for a few passages in the life of Bartleby, who was a scrivener,
the strangest I ever saw, or heard of. While, of other law-copyists, I might
write the complete life, of Bartleby nothing of that sort can be done. I
believe that no materials exist, for a full and satisfactory biography of this
man. It is an irreparable loss to literature. Bartleby was one of those beings
of whom nothing is ascertainable, except from the original sources, and, in his
case, those are very small. What my own astonished eyes saw of Bartleby,
<i>that</i> is all I know of him, except, indeed, one vague report, which will
appear in the sequel.</p>
<p>Ere introducing the scrivener, as he first appeared to me, it is fit I make
some mention of myself, my <i>employés</i>, my business, my chambers, and
general surroundings; because some such description is indispensable to an
adequate understanding of the chief character about to be presented. Imprimis:
I am a man who, from his youth upwards, has been filled with a profound
conviction that the easiest way of life is the best. Hence, though I belong to
a profession proverbially energetic and nervous, even to turbulence, at times,
yet nothing of that sort have I ever suffered to invade my peace. I am one of
those unambitious lawyers who never addresses a jury, or in any way draws down
public applause; but, in the cool tranquillity of a snug retreat, do a snug
business among rich men’s bonds, and mortgages, and title-deeds. All who
know me, consider me an eminently <i>safe</i> man. The late John Jacob Astor, a
personage little given to poetic enthusiasm, had no hesitation in pronouncing
my first grand point to be prudence; my next, method. I do not speak it in
vanity, but simply record the fact, that I was not unemployed in my profession
by the late John Jacob Astor; a name which, I admit, I love to repeat; for it
hath a rounded and orbicular sound to it, and rings like unto bullion. I will
freely add, that I was not insensible to the late John Jacob Astor’s good
opinion.</p>
<p>Some time prior to the period at which this little history begins, my
avocations had been largely increased. The good old office, now extinct in the
State of New York, of a Master in Chancery, had been conferred upon me. It was
not a very arduous office, but very pleasantly remunerative. I seldom lose my
temper; much more seldom indulge in dangerous indignation at wrongs and
outrages; but, I must be permitted to be rash here, and declare, that I
consider the sudden and violent abrogation of the office of Master in Chancery,
by the new Constitution, as a —— premature act; inasmuch as I had
counted upon a life-lease of the profits, whereas I only received those of a
few short years. But this is by the way.</p>
<p>My chambers were up stairs, at No. —— Wall street. At one end, they
looked upon the white wall of the interior of a spacious skylight shaft,
penetrating the building from top to bottom.</p>
<p>This view might have been considered rather tame than otherwise, deficient in
what landscape painters call “life.” But, if so, the view from the
other end of my chambers offered, at least, a contrast, if nothing more. In
that direction, my windows commanded an unobstructed view of a lofty brick
wall, black by age and everlasting shade; which wall required no spy-glass to
bring out its lurking beauties, but, for the benefit of all near-sighted
spectators, was pushed up to within ten feet of my window panes. Owing to the
great height of the surrounding buildings, and my chambers being on the second
floor, the interval between this wall and mine not a little resembled a huge
square cistern.</p>
<p>At the period just preceding the advent of Bartleby, I had two persons as
copyists in my employment, and a promising lad as an office-boy. First, Turkey;
second, Nippers; third, Ginger Nut. These may seem names, the like of which are
not usually found in the Directory. In truth, they were nicknames, mutually
conferred upon each other by my three clerks, and were deemed expressive of
their respective persons or characters. Turkey was a short, pursy Englishman,
of about my own age—that is, somewhere not far from sixty. In the
morning, one might say, his face was of a fine florid hue, but after twelve
o’clock, meridian—his dinner hour—it blazed like a grate full
of Christmas coals; and continued blazing—but, as it were, with a gradual
wane—till six o’clock, P.M., or thereabouts; after which, I saw no
more of the proprietor of the face, which, gaining its meridian with the sun,
seemed to set with it, to rise, culminate, and decline the following day, with
the like regularity and undiminished glory. There are many singular
coincidences I have known in the course of my life, not the least among which
was the fact, that, exactly when Turkey displayed his fullest beams from his
red and radiant countenance, just then, too, at that critical moment, began the
daily period when I considered his business capacities as seriously disturbed
for the remainder of the twenty-four hours. Not that he was absolutely idle, or
averse to business, then; far from it. The difficulty was, he was apt to be
altogether too energetic. There was a strange, inflamed, flurried, flighty
recklessness of activity about him. He would be incautious in dipping his pen
into his inkstand. All his blots upon my documents were dropped there after
twelve o’clock, meridian. Indeed, not only would he be reckless, and
sadly given to making blots in the afternoon, but, some days, he went further,
and was rather noisy. At such times, too, his face flamed with augmented
blazonry, as if cannel coal had been heaped on anthracite. He made an
unpleasant racket with his chair; spilled his sand-box; in mending his pens,
impatiently split them all to pieces, and threw them on the floor in a sudden
passion; stood up, and leaned over his table, boxing his papers about in a most
indecorous manner, very sad to behold in an elderly man like him. Nevertheless,
as he was in many ways a most valuable person to me, and all the time before
twelve o’clock, meridian, was the quickest, steadiest creature, too,
accomplishing a great deal of work in a style not easily to be
matched—for these reasons, I was willing to overlook his eccentricities,
though, indeed, occasionally, I remonstrated with him. I did this very gently,
however, because, though the civilest, nay, the blandest and most reverential
of men in the morning, yet, in the afternoon, he was disposed, upon
provocation, to be slightly rash with his tongue—in fact, insolent. Now,
valuing his morning services as I did, and resolved not to lose them—yet,
at the same time, made uncomfortable by his inflamed ways after twelve
o’clock—and being a man of peace, unwilling by my admonitions to
call forth unseemly retorts from him, I took upon me, one Saturday noon (he was
always worse on Saturdays) to hint to him, very kindly, that, perhaps, now that
he was growing old, it might be well to abridge his labors; in short, he need
not come to my chambers after twelve o’clock, but, dinner over, had best
go home to his lodgings, and rest himself till tea-time. But no; he insisted
upon his afternoon devotions. His countenance became intolerably fervid, as he
oratorically assured me—gesticulating with a long ruler at the other end
of the room—that if his services in the morning were useful, how
indispensable, then, in the afternoon?</p>
<p>“With submission, sir,” said Turkey, on this occasion, “I
consider myself your right-hand man. In the morning I but marshal and deploy my
columns; but in the afternoon I put myself at their head, and gallantly charge
the foe, thus”—and he made a violent thrust with the ruler.</p>
<p>“But the blots, Turkey,” intimated I.</p>
<p>“True; but, with submission, sir, behold these hairs! I am getting old.
Surely, sir, a blot or two of a warm afternoon is not to be severely urged
against gray hairs. Old age—even if it blot the page—is honorable.
With submission, sir, we <i>both</i> are getting old.”</p>
<p>This appeal to my fellow-feeling was hardly to be resisted. At all events, I
saw that go he would not. So, I made up my mind to let him stay, resolving,
nevertheless, to see to it that, during the afternoon, he had to do with my
less important papers.</p>
<p>Nippers, the second on my list, was a whiskered, sallow, and, upon the whole,
rather piratical-looking young man, of about five and twenty. I always deemed
him the victim of two evil powers—ambition and indigestion. The ambition
was evinced by a certain impatience of the duties of a mere copyist, an
unwarrantable usurpation of strictly professional affairs, such as the original
drawing up of legal documents. The indigestion seemed betokened in an
occasional nervous testiness and grinning irritability, causing the teeth to
audibly grind together over mistakes committed in copying; unnecessary
maledictions, hissed, rather than spoken, in the heat of business; and
especially by a continual discontent with the height of the table where he
worked. Though of a very ingenious mechanical turn, Nippers could never get
this table to suit him. He put chips under it, blocks of various sorts, bits of
pasteboard, and at last went so far as to attempt an exquisite adjustment, by
final pieces of folded blotting-paper. But no invention would answer. If, for
the sake of easing his back, he brought the table lid at a sharp angle well up
towards his chin, and wrote, there like a man using the steep roof of a Dutch
house for his desk, then he declared that it stopped the circulation in his
arms. If now he lowered the table to his waistbands, and stooped over it in
writing, then there was a sore aching in his back. In short, the truth of the
matter was, Nippers knew not what he wanted. Or, if he wanted anything, it was
to be rid of a scrivener’s table altogether. Among the manifestations of
his diseased ambition was a fondness he had for receiving visits from certain
ambiguous-looking fellows in seedy coats, whom he called his clients. Indeed, I
was aware that not only was he, at times, considerable of a ward-politician,
but he occasionally did a little business at the Justices’ courts, and
was not unknown on the steps of the Tombs. I have good reason to believe,
however, that one individual who called upon him at my chambers, and who, with
a grand air, he insisted was his client, was no other than a dun, and the
alleged title-deed, a bill. But, with all his failings, and the annoyances he
caused me, Nippers, like his compatriot Turkey, was a very useful man to me;
wrote a neat, swift hand; and, when he chose, was not deficient in a
gentlemanly sort of deportment. Added to this, he always dressed in a
gentlemanly sort of way; and so, incidentally, reflected credit upon my
chambers. Whereas, with respect to Turkey, I had much ado to keep him from
being a reproach to me. His clothes were apt to look oily, and smell of
eating-houses. He wore his pantaloons very loose and baggy in summer. His coats
were execrable; his hat not to be handled. But while the hat was a thing of
indifference to me, inasmuch as his natural civility and deference, as a
dependent Englishman, always led him to doff it the moment he entered the room,
yet his coat was another matter. Concerning his coats, I reasoned with him; but
with no effect. The truth was, I suppose, that a man with so small an income
could not afford to sport such a lustrous face and a lustrous coat at one and
the same time. As Nippers once observed, Turkey’s money went chiefly for
red ink. One winter day, I presented Turkey with a highly respectable-looking
coat of my own—a padded gray coat, of a most comfortable warmth, and
which buttoned straight up from the knee to the neck. I thought Turkey would
appreciate the favor, and abate his rashness and obstreperousness of
afternoons. But no; I verily believe that buttoning himself up in so downy and
blanket-like a coat had a pernicious effect upon him—upon the same
principle that too much oats are bad for horses. In fact, precisely as a rash,
restive horse is said to feel his oats, so Turkey felt his coat. It made him
insolent. He was a man whom prosperity harmed.</p>
<p>Though, concerning the self-indulgent habits of Turkey, I had my own private
surmises, yet, touching Nippers, I was well persuaded that, whatever might be
his faults in other respects, he was, at least, a temperate young man. But,
indeed, nature herself seemed to have been his vintner, and, at his birth,
charged him so thoroughly with an irritable, brandy-like disposition, that all
subsequent potations were needless. When I consider how, amid the stillness of
my chambers, Nippers would sometimes impatiently rise from his seat, and
stooping over his table, spread his arms wide apart, seize the whole desk, and
move it, and jerk it, with a grim, grinding motion on the floor, as if the
table were a perverse voluntary agent, intent on thwarting and vexing him, I
plainly perceive that, for Nippers, brandy-and-water were altogether
superfluous.</p>
<p>It was fortunate for me that, owing to its peculiar
cause—indigestion—the irritability and consequent nervousness of
Nippers were mainly observable in the morning, while in the afternoon he was
comparatively mild. So that, Turkey’s paroxysms only coming on about
twelve o’clock, I never had to do with their eccentricities at one time.
Their fits relieved each other, like guards. When Nippers’s was on,
Turkey’s was off; and <i>vice versa</i>. This was a good natural
arrangement, under the circumstances.</p>
<p>Ginger Nut, the third on my list, was a lad, some twelve years old. His, father
was a carman, ambitious of seeing his son on the bench instead of a cart,
before he died. So he sent him to my office, as student at law, errand-boy,
cleaner and sweeper, at the rate of one dollar a week. He had a little desk to
himself, but he did not use it much. Upon inspection, the drawer exhibited a
great array of the shells of various sorts of nuts. Indeed, to this
quick-witted youth, the whole noble science of the law was contained in a
nut-shell. Not the least among the employments of Ginger Nut, as well as one
which he discharged with the most alacrity, was his duty as cake and apple
purveyor for Turkey and Nippers. Copying law-papers being proverbially a dry,
husky sort of business, my two scriveners were fain to moisten their mouths
very often with Spitzenbergs, to be had at the numerous stalls nigh the Custom
House and Post Office. Also, they sent Ginger Nut very frequently for that
peculiar cake—small, flat, round, and very spicy—after which he had
been named by them. Of a cold morning, when business was but dull, Turkey would
gobble up scores of these cakes, as if they were mere wafers—indeed, they
sell them at the rate of six or eight for a penny—the scrape of his pen
blending with the crunching of the crisp particles in his mouth. Of all the
fiery afternoon blunders and flurried rashnesses of Turkey, was his once
moistening a ginger-cake between his lips, and clapping it on to a mortgage,
for a seal. I came within an ace of dismissing him then. But he mollified me by
making an oriental bow, and saying—</p>
<p>“With submission, sir, it was generous of me to find you in stationery on
my own account.”</p>
<p>Now my original business—that of a conveyancer and title hunter, and
drawer-up of recondite documents of all sorts—was considerably increased
by receiving the master’s office. There was now great work for
scriveners. Not only must I push the clerks already with me, but I must have
additional help.</p>
<p>In answer to my advertisement, a motionless young man one morning stood upon my
office threshold, the door being open, for it was summer. I can see that figure
now—pallidly neat, pitiably respectable, incurably forlorn! It was
Bartleby.</p>
<p>After a few words touching his qualifications, I engaged him, glad to have
among my corps of copyists a man of so singularly sedate an aspect, which I
thought might operate beneficially upon the flighty temper of Turkey, and the
fiery one of Nippers.</p>
<p>I should have stated before that ground glass folding-doors divided my premises
into two parts, one of which was occupied by my scriveners, the other by
myself. According to my humor, I threw open these doors, or closed them. I
resolved to assign Bartleby a corner by the folding-doors, but on my side of
them, so as to have this quiet man within easy call, in case any trifling thing
was to be done. I placed his desk close up to a small side-window in that part
of the room, a window which originally had afforded a lateral view of certain
grimy backyards and bricks, but which, owing to subsequent erections, commanded
at present no view at all, though it gave some light. Within three feet of the
panes was a wall, and the light came down from far above, between two lofty
buildings, as from a very small opening in a dome. Still further to a
satisfactory arrangement, I procured a high green folding screen, which might
entirely isolate Bartleby from my sight, though not remove him from my voice.
And thus, in a manner, privacy and society were conjoined.</p>
<p>At first, Bartleby did an extraordinary quantity of writing. As if long
famishing for something to copy, he seemed to gorge himself on my documents.
There was no pause for digestion. He ran a day and night line, copying by
sun-light and by candle-light. I should have been quite delighted with his
application, had he been cheerfully industrious. But he wrote on silently,
palely, mechanically.</p>
<p>It is, of course, an indispensable part of a scrivener’s business to
verify the accuracy of his copy, word by word. Where there are two or more
scriveners in an office, they assist each other in this examination, one
reading from the copy, the other holding the original. It is a very dull,
wearisome, and lethargic affair. I can readily imagine that, to some sanguine
temperaments, it would be altogether intolerable. For example, I cannot credit
that the mettlesome poet, Byron, would have contentedly sat down with Bartleby
to examine a law document of, say five hundred pages, closely written in a
crimpy hand.</p>
<p>Now and then, in the haste of business, it had been my habit to assist in
comparing some brief document myself, calling Turkey or Nippers for this
purpose. One object I had, in placing Bartleby so handy to me behind the
screen, was, to avail myself of his services on such trivial occasions. It was
on the third day, I think, of his being with me, and before any necessity had
arisen for having his own writing examined, that, being much hurried to
complete a small affair I had in hand, I abruptly called to Bartleby. In my
haste and natural expectancy of instant compliance, I sat with my head bent
over the original on my desk, and my right hand sideways, and somewhat
nervously extended with the copy, so that, immediately upon emerging from his
retreat, Bartleby might snatch it and proceed to business without the least
delay.</p>
<p>In this very attitude did I sit when I called to him, rapidly stating what it
was I wanted him to do—namely, to examine a small paper with me. Imagine
my surprise, nay, my consternation, when, without moving from his privacy,
Bartleby, in a singularly mild, firm voice, replied, “I would prefer not
to.”</p>
<p>I sat awhile in perfect silence, rallying my stunned faculties. Immediately it
occurred to me that my ears had deceived me, or Bartleby had entirely
misunderstood my meaning. I repeated my request in the clearest tone I could
assume; but in quite as clear a one came the previous reply, “I would
prefer not to.”</p>
<p>“Prefer not to,” echoed I, rising in high excitement, and crossing
the room with a stride. “What do you mean? Are you moon-struck? I want
you to help me compare this sheet here—take it,” and I thrust it
towards him.</p>
<p>“I would prefer not to,” said he.</p>
<p>I looked at him steadfastly. His face was leanly composed; his gray eye dimly
calm. Not a wrinkle of agitation rippled him. Had there been the least
uneasiness, anger, impatience or impertinence in his manner; in other words,
had there been any thing ordinarily human about him, doubtless I should have
violently dismissed him from the premises. But as it was, I should have as soon
thought of turning my pale plaster-of-paris bust of Cicero out of doors. I
stood gazing at him awhile, as he went on with his own writing, and then
reseated myself at my desk. This is very strange, thought I. What had one best
do? But my business hurried me. I concluded to forget the matter for the
present, reserving it for my future leisure. So calling Nippers from the other
room, the paper was speedily examined.</p>
<p>A few days after this, Bartleby concluded four lengthy documents, being
quadruplicates of a week’s testimony taken before me in my High Court of
Chancery. It became necessary to examine them. It was an important suit, and
great accuracy was imperative. Having all things arranged, I called Turkey,
Nippers and Ginger Nut, from the next room, meaning to place the four copies in
the hands of my four clerks, while I should read from the original.
Accordingly, Turkey, Nippers, and Ginger Nut had taken their seats in a row,
each with his document in his hand, when I called to Bartleby to join this
interesting group.</p>
<p>“Bartleby! quick, I am waiting.”</p>
<p>I heard a slow scrape of his chair legs on the uncarpeted floor, and soon he
appeared standing at the entrance of his hermitage.</p>
<p>“What is wanted?” said he, mildly.</p>
<p>“The copies, the copies,” said I, hurriedly. “We are going to
examine them. There”—and I held towards him the fourth
quadruplicate.</p>
<p>“I would prefer not to,” he said, and gently disappeared behind the
screen.</p>
<p>For a few moments I was turned into a pillar of salt, standing at the head of
my seated column of clerks. Recovering myself, I advanced towards the screen,
and demanded the reason for such extraordinary conduct.</p>
<p>“<i>Why</i> do you refuse?”</p>
<p>“I would prefer not to.”</p>
<p>With any other man I should have flown outright into a dreadful passion,
scorned all further words, and thrust him ignominiously from my presence. But
there was something about Bartleby that not only strangely disarmed me, but, in
a wonderful manner, touched and disconcerted me. I began to reason with him.</p>
<p>“These are your own copies we are about to examine. It is labor saving to
you, because one examination will answer for your four papers. It is common
usage. Every copyist is bound to help examine his copy. Is it not so? Will you
not speak? Answer!”</p>
<p>“I prefer not to,” he replied in a flutelike tone. It seemed to me
that, while I had been addressing him, he carefully revolved every statement
that I made; fully comprehended the meaning; could not gainsay the irresistible
conclusion; but, at the same time, some paramount consideration prevailed with
him to reply as he did.</p>
<p>“You are decided, then, not to comply with my request—a request
made according to common usage and common sense?”</p>
<p>He briefly gave me to understand, that on that point my judgment was sound.
Yes: his decision was irreversible.</p>
<p>It is not seldom the case that, when a man is browbeaten in some unprecedented
and violently unreasonable way, he begins to stagger in his own plainest faith.
He begins, as it were, vaguely to surmise that, wonderful as it may be, all the
justice and all the reason is on the other side. Accordingly, if any
disinterested persons are present, he turns to them for some reinforcement for
his own faltering mind.</p>
<p>“Turkey,” said I, “what do you think of this? Am I not
right?”</p>
<p>“With submission, sir,” said Turkey, in his blandest tone, “I
think that you are.”</p>
<p>“Nippers,” said I, “what do <i>you</i> think of it?”</p>
<p>“I think I should kick him out of the office.”</p>
<p>(The reader, of nice perceptions, will here perceive that, it being morning,
Turkey’s answer is couched in polite and tranquil terms, but Nippers
replies in ill-tempered ones. Or, to repeat a previous sentence,
Nippers’s ugly mood was on duty, and Turkey’s off.)</p>
<p>“Ginger Nut,” said I, willing to enlist the smallest suffrage in my
behalf, “what do <i>you</i> think of it?”</p>
<p>“I think, sir, he’s a little <i>luny</i>,” replied Ginger
Nut, with a grin.</p>
<p>“You hear what they say,” said I, turning towards the screen,
“come forth and do your duty.”</p>
<p>But he vouchsafed no reply. I pondered a moment in sore perplexity. But once
more business hurried me. I determined again to postpone the consideration of
this dilemma to my future leisure. With a little trouble we made out to examine
the papers without Bartleby, though at every page or two Turkey deferentially
dropped his opinion, that this proceeding was quite out of the common; while
Nippers, twitching in his chair with a dyspeptic nervousness, ground out,
between his set teeth, occasional hissing maledictions against the stubborn oaf
behind the screen. And for his (Nippers’s) part, this was the first and
the last time he would do another man’s business without pay.</p>
<p>Meanwhile Bartleby sat in his hermitage, oblivious to everything but his own
peculiar business there.</p>
<p>Some days passed, the scrivener being employed upon another lengthy work. His
late remarkable conduct led me to regard his ways narrowly. I observed that he
never went to dinner; indeed, that he never went anywhere. As yet I had never,
of my personal knowledge, known him to be outside of my office. He was a
perpetual sentry in the corner. At about eleven o’clock though, in the
morning, I noticed that Ginger Nut would advance toward the opening in
Bartleby’s screen, as if silently beckoned thither by a gesture invisible
to me where I sat. The boy would then leave the office, jingling a few pence,
and reappear with a handful of ginger-nuts, which he delivered in the
hermitage, receiving two of the cakes for his trouble.</p>
<p>He lives, then, on ginger-nuts, thought I; never eats a dinner, properly
speaking; he must be a vegetarian, then; but no; he never eats even vegetables,
he eats nothing but ginger-nuts. My mind then ran on in reveries concerning the
probable effects upon the human constitution of living entirely on ginger-nuts.
Ginger-nuts are so called, because they contain ginger as one of their peculiar
constituents, and the final flavoring one. Now, what was ginger? A hot, spicy
thing. Was Bartleby hot and spicy? Not at all. Ginger, then, had no effect upon
Bartleby. Probably, he preferred it should have none.</p>
<p>Nothing so aggravates an earnest person as a passive resistance. If the
individual so resisted be of a not inhumane temper, and the resisting one
perfectly harmless in his passivity, then, in the better moods of the former,
he will endeavor charitably to construe to his imagination what proves
impossible to be solved by his judgment. Even so, for the most part, I regarded
Bartleby and his ways. Poor fellow! thought I, he means no mischief; it is
plain he intends no insolence; his aspect sufficiently evinces that his
eccentricities are involuntary. He is useful to me. I can get along with him.
If I turn him away, the chances are he will fall in with some less-indulgent
employer, and then he will be rudely treated, and perhaps driven forth
miserably to starve. Yes. Here I can cheaply purchase a delicious
self-approval. To befriend Bartleby; to humor him in his strange willfulness,
will cost me little or nothing, while I lay up in my soul what will eventually
prove a sweet morsel for my conscience. But this mood was not invariable, with
me. The passiveness of Bartleby sometimes irritated me. I felt strangely goaded
on to encounter him in new opposition—to elicit some angry spark from him
answerable to my own. But, indeed, I might as well have essayed to strike fire
with my knuckles against a bit of Windsor soap. But one afternoon the evil
impulse in me mastered me, and the following little scene ensued:</p>
<p>“Bartleby,” said I, “when those papers are all copied, I will
compare them with you.”</p>
<p>“I would prefer not to.”</p>
<p>“How? Surely you do not mean to persist in that mulish vagary?”</p>
<p>No answer.</p>
<p>I threw open the folding-doors near by, and, turning upon Turkey and Nippers,
exclaimed:</p>
<p>“Bartleby a second time says, he won’t examine his papers. What do
you think of it, Turkey?”</p>
<p>It was afternoon, be it remembered. Turkey sat glowing like a brass boiler; his
bald head steaming; his hands reeling among his blotted papers.</p>
<p>“Think of it?” roared Turkey; “I think I’ll just step
behind his screen, and black his eyes for him!”</p>
<p>So saying, Turkey rose to his feet and threw his arms into a pugilistic
position. He was hurrying away to make good his promise, when I detained him,
alarmed at the effect of incautiously rousing Turkey’s combativeness
after dinner.</p>
<p>“Sit down, Turkey,” said I, “and hear what Nippers has to
say. What do you think of it, Nippers? Would I not be justified in immediately
dismissing Bartleby?”</p>
<p>“Excuse me, that is for you to decide, sir. I think his conduct quite
unusual, and, indeed, unjust, as regards Turkey and myself. But it may only be
a passing whim.”</p>
<p>“Ah,” exclaimed I, “you have strangely changed your mind,
then—you speak very gently of him now.”</p>
<p>“All beer,” cried Turkey; “gentleness is effects of
beer—Nippers and I dined together to-day. You see how gentle <i>I</i> am,
sir. Shall I go and black his eyes?”</p>
<p>“You refer to Bartleby, I suppose. No, not to-day, Turkey,” I
replied; “pray, put up your fists.”</p>
<p>I closed the doors, and again advanced towards Bartleby. I felt additional
incentives tempting me to my fate. I burned to be rebelled against again. I
remembered that Bartleby never left the office.</p>
<p>“Bartleby,” said I, “Ginger Nut is away; just step around to
the Post Office, won’t you? (it was but a three minutes’ walk), and
see if there is anything for me.”</p>
<p>“I would prefer not to.”</p>
<p>“You <i>will</i> not?”</p>
<p>“I <i>prefer</i> not.”</p>
<p>I staggered to my desk, and sat there in a deep study. My blind inveteracy
returned. Was there any other thing in which I could procure myself to be
ignominiously repulsed by this lean, penniless wight?—my hired clerk?
What added thing is there, perfectly reasonable, that he will be sure to refuse
to do?</p>
<p>“Bartleby!”</p>
<p>No answer.</p>
<p>“Bartleby,” in a louder tone.</p>
<p>No answer.</p>
<p>“Bartleby,” I roared.</p>
<p>Like a very ghost, agreeably to the laws of magical invocation, at the third
summons, he appeared at the entrance of his hermitage.</p>
<p>“Go to the next room, and tell Nippers to come to me.”</p>
<p>“I prefer not to,” he respectfully and slowly said, and mildly
disappeared.</p>
<p>“Very good, Bartleby,” said I, in a quiet sort of serenely-severe
self-possessed tone, intimating the unalterable purpose of some terrible
retribution very close at hand. At the moment I half intended something of the
kind. But upon the whole, as it was drawing towards my dinner-hour, I thought
it best to put on my hat and walk home for the day, suffering much from
perplexity and distress of mind.</p>
<p>Shall I acknowledge it? The conclusion of this whole business was, that it soon
became a fixed fact of my chambers, that a pale young scrivener, by the name of
Bartleby, had a desk there; that he copied for me at the usual rate of four
cents a folio (one hundred words); but he was permanently exempt from examining
the work done by him, that duty being transferred to Turkey and Nippers, out of
compliment, doubtless, to their superior acuteness; moreover, said Bartleby was
never, on any account, to be dispatched on the most trivial errand of any sort;
and that even if entreated to take upon him such a matter, it was generally
understood that he would “prefer not to”—in other words, that
he would refuse point-blank.</p>
<p>As days passed on, I became considerably reconciled to Bartleby. His
steadiness, his freedom from all dissipation, his incessant industry (except
when he chose to throw himself into a standing revery behind his screen), his
great stillness, his unalterableness of demeanor under all circumstances, made
him a valuable acquisition. One prime thing was this—<i>he was always
there</i>—first in the morning, continually through the day, and the last
at night. I had a singular confidence in his honesty. I felt my most precious
papers perfectly safe in his hands. Sometimes, to be sure, I could not, for the
very soul of me, avoid falling into sudden spasmodic passions with him. For it
was exceeding difficult to bear in mind all the time those strange
peculiarities, privileges, and unheard of exemptions, forming the tacit
stipulations on Bartleby’s part under which he remained in my office. Now
and then, in the eagerness of dispatching pressing business, I would
inadvertently summon Bartleby, in a short, rapid tone, to put his finger, say,
on the incipient tie of a bit of red tape with which I was about compressing
some papers. Of course, from behind the screen the usual answer, “I
prefer not to,” was sure to come; and then, how could a human creature,
with the common infirmities of our nature, refrain from bitterly exclaiming
upon such perverseness—such unreasonableness. However, every added
repulse of this sort which I received only tended to lessen the probability of
my repeating the inadvertence.</p>
<p>Here it must be said, that according to the custom of most legal gentlemen
occupying chambers in densely-populated law buildings, there were several keys
to my door. One was kept by a woman residing in the attic, which person weekly
scrubbed and daily swept and dusted my apartments. Another was kept by Turkey
for convenience sake. The third I sometimes carried in my own pocket. The
fourth I knew not who had.</p>
<p>Now, one Sunday morning I happened to go to Trinity Church, to hear a
celebrated preacher, and finding myself rather early on the ground I thought I
would walk round to my chambers for a while. Luckily I had my key with me; but
upon applying it to the lock, I found it resisted by something inserted from
the inside. Quite surprised, I called out; when to my consternation a key was
turned from within; and thrusting his lean visage at me, and holding the door
ajar, the apparition of Bartleby appeared, in his shirt sleeves, and otherwise
in a strangely tattered deshabille, saying quietly that he was sorry, but he
was deeply engaged just then, and—preferred not admitting me at present.
In a brief word or two, he moreover added, that perhaps I had better walk round
the block two or three times, and by that time he would probably have concluded
his affairs.</p>
<p>Now, the utterly unsurmised appearance of Bartleby, tenanting my law-chambers
of a Sunday morning, with his cadaverously gentlemanly <i>nonchalance</i>, yet
withal firm and self-possessed, had such a strange effect upon me, that
incontinently I slunk away from my own door, and did as desired. But not
without sundry twinges of impotent rebellion against the mild effrontery of
this unaccountable scrivener. Indeed, it was his wonderful mildness chiefly,
which not only disarmed me, but unmanned me as it were. For I consider that
one, for the time, is a sort of unmanned when he tranquilly permits his hired
clerk to dictate to him, and order him away from his own premises. Furthermore,
I was full of uneasiness as to what Bartleby could possibly be doing in my
office in his shirt sleeves, and in an otherwise dismantled condition of a
Sunday morning. Was anything amiss going on? Nay, that was out of the question.
It was not to be thought of for a moment that Bartleby was an immoral person.
But what could he be doing there?—copying? Nay again, whatever might be
his eccentricities, Bartleby was an eminently decorous person. He would be the
last man to sit down to his desk in any state approaching to nudity. Besides,
it was Sunday; and there was something about Bartleby that forbade the
supposition that he would by any secular occupation violate the proprieties of
the day.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, my mind was not pacified; and full of a restless curiosity, at
last I returned to the door. Without hindrance I inserted my key, opened it,
and entered. Bartleby was not to be seen. I looked round anxiously, peeped
behind his screen; but it was very plain that he was gone. Upon more closely
examining the place, I surmised that for an indefinite period Bartleby must
have ate, dressed, and slept in my office, and that, too without plate, mirror,
or bed. The cushioned seat of a ricketty old sofa in one corner bore the faint
impress of a lean, reclining form. Rolled away under his desk, I found a
blanket; under the empty grate, a blacking box and brush; on a chair, a tin
basin, with soap and a ragged towel; in a newspaper a few crumbs of ginger-nuts
and a morsel of cheese. Yes, thought I, it is evident enough that Bartleby has
been making his home here, keeping bachelor’s hall all by himself.
Immediately then the thought came sweeping across me, what miserable
friendlessness and loneliness are here revealed! His poverty is great; but his
solitude, how horrible! Think of it. Of a Sunday, Wall-street is deserted as
Petra; and every night of every day it is an emptiness. This building, too,
which of week-days hums with industry and life, at nightfall echoes with sheer
vacancy, and all through Sunday is forlorn. And here Bartleby makes his home;
sole spectator, of a solitude which he has seen all populous—a sort of
innocent and transformed Marius brooding among the ruins of Carthage!</p>
<p>For the first time in my life a feeling of overpowering stinging melancholy
seized me. Before, I had never experienced aught but a not unpleasing sadness.
The bond of a common humanity now drew me irresistibly to gloom. A fraternal
melancholy! For both I and Bartleby were sons of Adam. I remembered the bright
silks and sparkling faces I had seen that day, in gala trim, swan-like sailing
down the Mississippi of Broadway; and I contrasted them with the pallid
copyist, and thought to myself, Ah, happiness courts the light, so we deem the
world is gay; but misery hides aloof, so we deem that misery there is none.
These sad fancyings—chimeras, doubtless, of a sick and silly
brain—led on to other and more special thoughts, concerning the
eccentricities of Bartleby. Presentiments of strange discoveries hovered round
me. The scriveners pale form appeared to me laid out, among uncaring strangers,
in its shivering winding sheet.</p>
<p>Suddenly I was attracted by Bartleby’s closed desk, the key in open sight
left in the lock.</p>
<p>I mean no mischief, seek the gratification of no heartless curiosity, thought
I; besides, the desk is mine, and its contents, too, so I will make bold to
look within. Everything was methodically arranged, the papers smoothly placed.
The pigeon holes were deep, and removing the files of documents, I groped into
their recesses. Presently I felt something there, and dragged it out. It was an
old bandanna handkerchief, heavy and knotted. I opened it, and saw it was a
savings’ bank.</p>
<p>I now recalled all the quiet mysteries which I had noted in the man. I
remembered that he never spoke but to answer; that, though at intervals he had
considerable time to himself, yet I had never seen him reading—no, not
even a newspaper; that for long periods he would stand looking out, at his pale
window behind the screen, upon the dead brick wall; I was quite sure he never
visited any refectory or eating house; while his pale face clearly indicated
that he never drank beer like Turkey, or tea and coffee even, like other men;
that he never went anywhere in particular that I could learn; never went out
for a walk, unless, indeed, that was the case at present; that he had declined
telling who he was, or whence he came, or whether he had any relatives in the
world; that though so thin and pale, he never complained of ill health. And
more than all, I remembered a certain unconscious air of pallid—how shall
I call it?—of pallid haughtiness, say, or rather an austere reserve about
him, which had positively awed me into my tame compliance with his
eccentricities, when I had feared to ask him to do the slightest incidental
thing for me, even though I might know, from his long-continued motionlessness,
that behind his screen he must be standing in one of those dead-wall reveries
of his.</p>
<p>Revolving all these things, and coupling them with the recently discovered
fact, that he made my office his constant abiding place and home, and not
forgetful of his morbid moodiness; revolving all these things, a prudential
feeling began to steal over me. My first emotions had been those of pure
melancholy and sincerest pity; but just in proportion as the forlornness of
Bartleby grew and grew to my imagination, did that same melancholy merge into
fear, that pity into repulsion. So true it is, and so terrible, too, that up to
a certain point the thought or sight of misery enlists our best affections;
but, in certain special cases, beyond that point it does not. They err who
would assert that invariably this is owing to the inherent selfishness of the
human heart. It rather proceeds from a certain hopelessness of remedying
excessive and organic ill. To a sensitive being, pity is not seldom pain. And
when at last it is perceived that such pity cannot lead to effectual succor,
common sense bids the soul be rid of it. What I saw that morning persuaded me
that the scrivener was the victim of innate and incurable disorder. I might
give alms to his body; but his body did not pain him; it was his soul that
suffered, and his soul I could not reach.</p>
<p>I did not accomplish the purpose of going to Trinity Church that morning.
Somehow, the things I had seen disqualified me for the time from church-going.
I walked homeward, thinking what I would do with Bartleby. Finally, I resolved
upon this—I would put certain calm questions to him the next morning,
touching his history, etc., and if he declined to answer them openly and
unreservedly (and I supposed he would prefer not), then to give him a twenty
dollar bill over and above whatever I might owe him, and tell him his services
were no longer required; but that if in any other way I could assist him, I
would be happy to do so, especially if he desired to return to his native
place, wherever that might be, I would willingly help to defray the expenses.
Moreover, if, after reaching home, he found himself at any time in want of aid,
a letter from him would be sure of a reply.</p>
<p>The next morning came.</p>
<p>“Bartleby,” said I, gently calling to him behind his screen.</p>
<p>No reply.</p>
<p>“Bartleby,” said I, in a still gentler tone, “come here; I am
not going to ask you to do anything you would prefer not to do—I simply
wish to speak to you.”</p>
<p>Upon this he noiselessly slid into view.</p>
<p>“Will you tell me, Bartleby, where you were born?”</p>
<p>“I would prefer not to.”</p>
<p>“Will you tell me <i>anything</i> about yourself?”</p>
<p>“I would prefer not to.”</p>
<p>“But what reasonable objection can you have to speak to me? I feel
friendly towards you.”</p>
<p>He did not look at me while I spoke, but kept his glance fixed upon my bust of
Cicero, which, as I then sat, was directly behind me, some six inches above my
head.</p>
<p>“What is your answer, Bartleby,” said I, after waiting a
considerable time for a reply, during which his countenance remained immovable,
only there was the faintest conceivable tremor of the white attenuated mouth.</p>
<p>“At present I prefer to give no answer,” he said, and retired into
his hermitage.</p>
<p>It was rather weak in me I confess, but his manner, on this occasion, nettled
me. Not only did there seem to lurk in it a certain calm disdain, but his
perverseness seemed ungrateful, considering the undeniable good usage and
indulgence he had received from me.</p>
<p>Again I sat ruminating what I should do. Mortified as I was at his behavior,
and resolved as I had been to dismiss him when I entered my office,
nevertheless I strangely felt something superstitious knocking at my heart, and
forbidding me to carry out my purpose, and denouncing me for a villain if I
dared to breathe one bitter word against this forlornest of mankind. At last,
familiarly drawing my chair behind his screen, I sat down and said:
“Bartleby, never mind, then, about revealing your history; but let me
entreat you, as a friend, to comply as far as may be with the usages of this
office. Say now, you will help to examine papers to-morrow or next day: in
short, say now, that in a day or two you will begin to be a little
reasonable:—say so, Bartleby.”</p>
<p>“At present I would prefer not to be a little reasonable,” was his
mildly cadaverous reply.</p>
<p>Just then the folding-doors opened, and Nippers approached. He seemed suffering
from an unusually bad night’s rest, induced by severer indigestion than
common. He overheard those final words of Bartleby.</p>
<p>“<i>Prefer not</i>, eh?” gritted Nippers—“I’d
<i>prefer</i> him, if I were you, sir,” addressing
me—“I’d <i>prefer</i> him; I’d give him preferences,
the stubborn mule! What is it, sir, pray, that he <i>prefers</i> not to do
now?”</p>
<p>Bartleby moved not a limb.</p>
<p>“Mr. Nippers,” said I, “I’d prefer that you would
withdraw for the present.”</p>
<p>Somehow, of late, I had got into the way of involuntarily using this word
“prefer” upon all sorts of not exactly suitable occasions. And I
trembled to think that my contact with the scrivener had already and seriously
affected me in a mental way. And what further and deeper aberration might it
not yet produce? This apprehension had not been without efficacy in determining
me to summary measures.</p>
<p>As Nippers, looking very sour and sulky, was departing, Turkey blandly and
deferentially approached.</p>
<p>“With submission, sir,” said he, “yesterday I was thinking
about Bartleby here, and I think that if he would but prefer to take a quart of
good ale every day, it would do much towards mending him, and enabling him to
assist in examining his papers.”</p>
<p>“So you have got the word, too,” said I, slightly excited.</p>
<p>“With submission, what word, sir,” asked Turkey, respectfully
crowding himself into the contracted space behind the screen, and by so doing,
making me jostle the scrivener. “What word, sir?”</p>
<p>“I would prefer to be left alone here,” said Bartleby, as if
offended at being mobbed in his privacy.</p>
<p>“<i>That’s</i> the word, Turkey,” said
I—“<i>that’s</i> it.”</p>
<p>“Oh, <i>prefer</i>? oh yes—queer word. I never use it myself. But,
sir, as I was saying, if he would but prefer—”</p>
<p>“Turkey,” interrupted I, “you will please withdraw.”</p>
<p>“Oh certainly, sir, if you prefer that I should.”</p>
<p>As he opened the folding-door to retire, Nippers at his desk caught a glimpse
of me, and asked whether I would prefer to have a certain paper copied on blue
paper or white. He did not in the least roguishly accent the word prefer. It
was plain that it involuntarily rolled from his tongue. I thought to myself,
surely I must get rid of a demented man, who already has in some degree turned
the tongues, if not the heads of myself and clerks. But I thought it prudent
not to break the dismission at once.</p>
<p>The next day I noticed that Bartleby did nothing but stand at his window in his
dead-wall revery. Upon asking him why he did not write, he said that he had
decided upon doing no more writing.</p>
<p>“Why, how now? what next?” exclaimed I, “do no more
writing?”</p>
<p>“No more.”</p>
<p>“And what is the reason?”</p>
<p>“Do you not see the reason for yourself,” he indifferently replied.</p>
<p>I looked steadfastly at him, and perceived that his eyes looked dull and
glazed. Instantly it occurred to me, that his unexampled diligence in copying
by his dim window for the first few weeks of his stay with me might have
temporarily impared his vision.</p>
<p>I was touched. I said something in condolence with him. I hinted that of course
he did wisely in abstaining from writing for a while; and urged him to embrace
that opportunity of taking wholesome exercise in the open air. This, however,
he did not do. A few days after this, my other clerks being absent, and being
in a great hurry to dispatch certain letters by the mail, I thought that,
having nothing else earthly to do, Bartleby would surely be less inflexible
than usual, and carry these letters to the post-office. But he blankly
declined. So, much to my inconvenience, I went myself.</p>
<p>Still added days went by. Whether Bartleby’s eyes improved or not, I
could not say. To all appearance, I thought they did. But when I asked him if
they did, he vouchsafed no answer. At all events, he would do no copying. At
last, in reply to my urgings, he informed me that he had permanently given up
copying.</p>
<p>“What!” exclaimed I; “suppose your eyes should get entirely
well—better than ever before—would you not copy then?”</p>
<p>“I have given up copying,” he answered, and slid aside.</p>
<p>He remained as ever, a fixture in my chamber. Nay—if that were
possible—he became still more of a fixture than before. What was to be
done? He would do nothing in the office; why should he stay there? In plain
fact, he had now become a millstone to me, not only useless as a necklace, but
afflictive to bear. Yet I was sorry for him. I speak less than truth when I say
that, on his own account, he occasioned me uneasiness. If he would but have
named a single relative or friend, I would instantly have written, and urged
their taking the poor fellow away to some convenient retreat. But he seemed
alone, absolutely alone in the universe. A bit of wreck in the mid Atlantic. At
length, necessities connected with my business tyrannized over all other
considerations. Decently as I could, I told Bartleby that in six days time he
must unconditionally leave the office. I warned him to take measures, in the
interval, for procuring some other abode. I offered to assist him in this
endeavor, if he himself would but take the first step towards a removal.
“And when you finally quit me, Bartleby,” added I, “I shall
see that you go not away entirely unprovided. Six days from this hour,
remember.”</p>
<p>At the expiration of that period, I peeped behind the screen, and lo! Bartleby
was there.</p>
<p>I buttoned up my coat, balanced myself; advanced slowly towards him, touched
his shoulder, and said, “The time has come; you must quit this place; I
am sorry for you; here is money; but you must go.”</p>
<p>“I would prefer not,” he replied, with his back still towards me.</p>
<p>“You <i>must</i>.”</p>
<p>He remained silent.</p>
<p>Now I had an unbounded confidence in this man’s common honesty. He had
frequently restored to me sixpences and shillings carelessly dropped upon the
floor, for I am apt to be very reckless in such shirt-button affairs. The
proceeding, then, which followed will not be deemed extraordinary.</p>
<p>“Bartleby,” said I, “I owe you twelve dollars on account;
here are thirty-two; the odd twenty are yours—Will you take it?”
and I handed the bills towards him.</p>
<p>But he made no motion.</p>
<p>“I will leave them here, then,” putting them under a weight on the
table. Then taking my hat and cane and going to the door, I tranquilly turned
and added—“After you have removed your things from these offices,
Bartleby, you will of course lock the door—since every one is now gone
for the day but you—and if you please, slip your key underneath the mat,
so that I may have it in the morning. I shall not see you again; so good-by to
you. If, hereafter, in your new place of abode, I can be of any service to you,
do not fail to advise me by letter. Good-by, Bartleby, and fare you
well.”</p>
<p>But he answered not a word; like the last column of some ruined temple, he
remained standing mute and solitary in the middle of the otherwise deserted
room.</p>
<p>As I walked home in a pensive mood, my vanity got the better of my pity. I
could not but highly plume myself on my masterly management in getting rid of
Bartleby. Masterly I call it, and such it must appear to any dispassionate
thinker. The beauty of my procedure seemed to consist in its perfect quietness.
There was no vulgar bullying, no bravado of any sort, no choleric hectoring,
and striding to and fro across the apartment, jerking out vehement commands for
Bartleby to bundle himself off with his beggarly traps. Nothing of the kind.
Without loudly bidding Bartleby depart—as an inferior genius might have
done—I <i>assumed</i> the ground that depart he must; and upon that
assumption built all I had to say. The more I thought over my procedure, the
more I was charmed with it. Nevertheless, next morning, upon awakening, I had
my doubts—I had somehow slept off the fumes of vanity. One of the coolest
and wisest hours a man has, is just after he awakes in the morning. My
procedure seemed as sagacious as ever—but only in theory. How it would
prove in practice—there was the rub. It was truly a beautiful thought to
have assumed Bartleby’s departure; but, after all, that assumption was
simply my own, and none of Bartleby’s. The great point was, not whether I
had assumed that he would quit me, but whether he would prefer so to do. He was
more a man of preferences than assumptions.</p>
<p>After breakfast, I walked down town, arguing the probabilities <i>pro</i> and
<i>con</i>. One moment I thought it would prove a miserable failure, and
Bartleby would be found all alive at my office as usual; the next moment it
seemed certain that I should find his chair empty. And so I kept veering about.
At the corner of Broadway and Canal street, I saw quite an excited group of
people standing in earnest conversation.</p>
<p>“I’ll take odds he doesn’t,” said a voice as I passed.</p>
<p>“Doesn’t go?—done!” said I, “put up your
money.”</p>
<p>I was instinctively putting my hand in my pocket to produce my own, when I
remembered that this was an election day. The words I had overheard bore no
reference to Bartleby, but to the success or non-success of some candidate for
the mayoralty. In my intent frame of mind, I had, as it were, imagined that all
Broadway shared in my excitement, and were debating the same question with me.
I passed on, very thankful that the uproar of the street screened my momentary
absent-mindedness.</p>
<p>As I had intended, I was earlier than usual at my office door. I stood
listening for a moment. All was still. He must be gone. I tried the knob. The
door was locked. Yes, my procedure had worked to a charm; he indeed must be
vanished. Yet a certain melancholy mixed with this: I was almost sorry for my
brilliant success. I was fumbling under the door mat for the key, which
Bartleby was to have left there for me, when accidentally my knee knocked
against a panel, producing a summoning sound, and in response a voice came to
me from within—“Not yet; I am occupied.”</p>
<p>It was Bartleby.</p>
<p>I was thunderstruck. For an instant I stood like the man who, pipe in mouth,
was killed one cloudless afternoon long ago in Virginia, by summer lightning;
at his own warm open window he was killed, and remained leaning out there upon
the dreamy afternoon till some one touched him, when he fell.</p>
<p>“Not gone!” I murmured at last. But again obeying that wondrous
ascendancy which the inscrutable scrivener had over me, and from which
ascendancy, for all my chafing, I could not completely escape, I slowly went
down stairs and out into the street, and while walking round the block,
considered what I should next do in this unheard-of perplexity. Turn the man
out by an actual thrusting I could not; to drive him away by calling him hard
names would not do; calling in the police was an unpleasant idea; and yet,
permit him to enjoy his cadaverous triumph over me—this, too, I could not
think of. What was to be done? or, if nothing could be done, was there anything
further that I could <i>assume</i> in the matter? Yes, as before I had
prospectively assumed that Bartleby would depart, so now I might
retrospectively assume that departed he was. In the legitimate carrying out of
this assumption, I might enter my office in a great hurry, and pretending not
to see Bartleby at all, walk straight against him as if he were air. Such a
proceeding would in a singular degree have the appearance of a home-thrust. It
was hardly possible that Bartleby could withstand such an application of the
doctrine of assumptions. But upon second thoughts the success of the plan
seemed rather dubious. I resolved to argue the matter over with him again.</p>
<p>“Bartleby,” said I, entering the office, with a quietly severe
expression, “I am seriously displeased. I am pained, Bartleby. I had
thought better of you. I had imagined you of such a gentlemanly organization,
that in any delicate dilemma a slight hint would suffice—in short, an
assumption. But it appears I am deceived. Why,” I added, unaffectedly
starting, “you have not even touched that money yet,” pointing to
it, just where I had left it the evening previous.</p>
<p>He answered nothing.</p>
<p>“Will you, or will you not, quit me?” I now demanded in a sudden
passion, advancing close to him.</p>
<p>“I would prefer <i>not</i> to quit you,” he replied gently
emphasizing the <i>not</i>.</p>
<p>“What earthly right have you to stay here? Do you pay any rent? Do you
pay my taxes? Or is this property yours?”</p>
<p>He answered nothing.</p>
<p>“Are you ready to go on and write now? Are your eyes recovered? Could you
copy a small paper for me this morning? or help examine a few lines? or step
round to the post-office? In a word, will you do anything at all, to give a
coloring to your refusal to depart the premises?”</p>
<p>He silently retired into his hermitage.</p>
<p>I was now in such a state of nervous resentment that I thought it but prudent
to check myself at present from further demonstrations. Bartleby and I were
alone. I remembered the tragedy of the unfortunate Adams and the still more
unfortunate Colt in the solitary office of the latter; and how poor Colt, being
dreadfully incensed by Adams, and imprudently permitting himself to get wildly
excited, was at unawares hurried into his fatal act—an act which
certainly no man could possibly deplore more than the actor himself. Often it
had occurred to me in my ponderings upon the subject, that had that altercation
taken place in the public street, or at a private residence, it would not have
terminated as it did. It was the circumstance of being alone in a solitary
office, up stairs, of a building entirely unhallowed by humanizing domestic
associations—an uncarpeted office, doubtless, of a dusty, haggard sort of
appearance—this it must have been, which greatly helped to enhance the
irritable desperation of the hapless Colt.</p>
<p>But when this old Adam of resentment rose in me and tempted me concerning
Bartleby, I grappled him and threw him. How? Why, simply by recalling the
divine injunction: “A new commandment give I unto you, that ye love one
another.” Yes, this it was that saved me. Aside from higher
considerations, charity often operates as a vastly wise and prudent
principle—a great safeguard to its possessor. Men have committed murder
for jealousy’s sake, and anger’s sake, and hatred’s sake, and
selfishness’ sake, and spiritual pride’s sake; but no man, that
ever I heard of, ever committed a diabolical murder for sweet charity’s
sake. Mere self-interest, then, if no better motive can be enlisted, should,
especially with high-tempered men, prompt all beings to charity and
philanthropy. At any rate, upon the occasion in question, I strove to drown my
exasperated feelings towards the scrivener by benevolently construing his
conduct.—Poor fellow, poor fellow! thought I, he don’t mean
anything; and besides, he has seen hard times, and ought to be indulged.</p>
<p>I endeavored, also, immediately to occupy myself, and at the same time to
comfort my despondency. I tried to fancy, that in the course of the morning, at
such time as might prove agreeable to him, Bartleby, of his own free accord,
would emerge from his hermitage and take up some decided line of march in the
direction of the door. But no. Half-past twelve o’clock came; Turkey
began to glow in the face, overturn his inkstand, and become generally
obstreperous; Nippers abated down into quietude and courtesy; Ginger Nut
munched his noon apple; and Bartleby remained standing at his window in one of
his profoundest dead-wall reveries. Will it be credited? Ought I to acknowledge
it? That afternoon I left the office without saying one further word to him.</p>
<p>Some days now passed, during which, at leisure intervals I looked a little into
“Edwards on the Will,” and “Priestley on Necessity.”
Under the circumstances, those books induced a salutary feeling. Gradually I
slid into the persuasion that these troubles of mine, touching the scrivener,
had been all predestinated from eternity, and Bartleby was billeted upon me for
some mysterious purpose of an allwise Providence, which it was not for a mere
mortal like me to fathom. Yes, Bartleby, stay there behind your screen, thought
I; I shall persecute you no more; you are harmless and noiseless as any of
these old chairs; in short, I never feel so private as when I know you are
here. At last I see it, I feel it; I penetrate to the predestinated purpose of
my life. I am content. Others may have loftier parts to enact; but my mission
in this world, Bartleby, is to furnish you with office-room for such period as
you may see fit to remain.</p>
<p>I believe that this wise and blessed frame of mind would have continued with
me, had it not been for the unsolicited and uncharitable remarks obtruded upon
me by my professional friends who visited the rooms. But thus it often is, that
the constant friction of illiberal minds wears out at last the best resolves of
the more generous. Though to be sure, when I reflected upon it, it was not
strange that people entering my office should be struck by the peculiar aspect
of the unaccountable Bartleby, and so be tempted to throw out some sinister
observations concerning him. Sometimes an attorney, having business with me,
and calling at my office, and finding no one but the scrivener there, would
undertake to obtain some sort of precise information from him touching my
whereabouts; but without heeding his idle talk, Bartleby would remain standing
immovable in the middle of the room. So after contemplating him in that
position for a time, the attorney would depart, no wiser than he came.</p>
<p>Also, when a reference was going on, and the room full of lawyers and
witnesses, and business driving fast, some deeply-occupied legal gentleman
present, seeing Bartleby wholly unemployed, would request him to run round to
his (the legal gentleman’s) office and fetch some papers for him.
Thereupon, Bartleby would tranquilly decline, and yet remain idle as before.
Then the lawyer would give a great stare, and turn to me. And what could I say?
At last I was made aware that all through the circle of my professional
acquaintance, a whisper of wonder was running round, having reference to the
strange creature I kept at my office. This worried me very much. And as the
idea came upon me of his possibly turning out a long-lived man, and keep
occupying my chambers, and denying my authority; and perplexing my visitors;
and scandalizing my professional reputation; and casting a general gloom over
the premises; keeping soul and body together to the last upon his savings (for
doubtless he spent but half a dime a day), and in the end perhaps outlive me,
and claim possession of my office by right of his perpetual occupancy: as all
these dark anticipations crowded upon me more and more, and my friends
continually intruded their relentless remarks upon the apparition in my room; a
great change was wrought in me. I resolved to gather all my faculties together,
and forever rid me of this intolerable incubus.</p>
<p>Ere revolving any complicated project, however, adapted to this end, I first
simply suggested to Bartleby the propriety of his permanent departure. In a
calm and serious tone, I commanded the idea to his careful and mature
consideration. But, having taken three days to meditate upon it, he apprised
me, that his original determination remained the same; in short, that he still
preferred to abide with me.</p>
<p>What shall I do? I now said to myself, buttoning up my coat to the last button.
What shall I do? what ought I to do? what does conscience say I <i>should</i>
do with this man, or, rather, ghost. Rid myself of him, I must; go, he shall.
But how? You will not thrust him, the poor, pale, passive mortal—you will
not thrust such a helpless creature out of your door? you will not dishonor
yourself by such cruelty? No, I will not, I cannot do that. Rather would I let
him live and die here, and then mason up his remains in the wall. What, then,
will you do? For all your coaxing, he will not budge. Bribes he leaves under
your own paper-weight on your table; in short, it is quite plain that he
prefers to cling to you.</p>
<p>Then something severe, something unusual must be done. What! surely you will
not have him collared by a constable, and commit his innocent pallor to the
common jail? And upon what ground could you procure such a thing to be
done?—a vagrant, is he? What! he a vagrant, a wanderer, who refuses to
budge? It is because he will <i>not</i> be a vagrant, then, that you seek to
count him <i>as</i> a vagrant. That is too absurd. No visible means of support:
there I have him. Wrong again: for indubitably he <i>does</i> support himself,
and that is the only unanswerable proof that any man can show of his possessing
the means so to do. No more, then. Since he will not quit me, I must quit him.
I will change my offices; I will move elsewhere, and give him fair notice, that
if I find him on my new premises I will then proceed against him as a common
trespasser.</p>
<p>Acting accordingly, next day I thus addressed him: “I find these chambers
too far from the City Hall; the air is unwholesome. In a word, I propose to
remove my offices next week, and shall no longer require your services. I tell
you this now, in order that you may seek another place.”</p>
<p>He made no reply, and nothing more was said.</p>
<p>On the appointed day I engaged carts and men, proceeded to my chambers, and,
having but little furniture, everything was removed in a few hours. Throughout,
the scrivener remained standing behind the screen, which I directed to be
removed the last thing. It was withdrawn; and, being folded up like a huge
folio, left him the motionless occupant of a naked room. I stood in the entry
watching him a moment, while something from within me upbraided me.</p>
<p>I re-entered, with my hand in my pocket—and—and my heart in my
mouth.</p>
<p>“Good-by, Bartleby; I am going—good-by, and God some way bless you;
and take that,” slipping something in his hand. But it dropped upon the
floor, and then—strange to say—I tore myself from him whom I had so
longed to be rid of.</p>
<p>Established in my new quarters, for a day or two I kept the door locked, and
started at every footfall in the passages. When I returned to my rooms, after
any little absence, I would pause at the threshold for an instant, and
attentively listen, ere applying my key. But these fears were needless.
Bartleby never came nigh me.</p>
<p>I thought all was going well, when a perturbed-looking stranger visited me,
inquiring whether I was the person who had recently occupied rooms at No.
—— Wall street.</p>
<p>Full of forebodings, I replied that I was.</p>
<p>“Then, sir,” said the stranger, who proved a lawyer, “you are
responsible for the man you left there. He refuses to do any copying; he
refuses to do anything; he says he prefers not to; and he refuses to quit the
premises.”</p>
<p>“I am very sorry, sir,” said I, with assumed tranquillity, but an
inward tremor, “but, really, the man you allude to is nothing to
me—he is no relation or apprentice of mine, that you should hold me
responsible for him.”</p>
<p>“In mercy’s name, who is he?”</p>
<p>“I certainly cannot inform you. I know nothing about him. Formerly I
employed him as a copyist; but he has done nothing for me now for some time
past.”</p>
<p>“I shall settle him, then—good morning, sir.”</p>
<p>Several days passed, and I heard nothing more; and, though I often felt a
charitable prompting to call at the place and see poor Bartleby, yet a certain
squeamishness, of I know not what, withheld me.</p>
<p>All is over with him, by this time, thought I, at last, when, through another
week, no further intelligence reached me. But, coming to my room the day after,
I found several persons waiting at my door in a high state of nervous
excitement.</p>
<p>“That’s the man—here he comes,” cried the foremost one,
whom I recognized as the lawyer who had previously called upon me alone.</p>
<p>“You must take him away, sir, at once,” cried a portly person among
them, advancing upon me, and whom I knew to be the landlord of No.
—— Wall street. “These gentlemen, my tenants, cannot stand it
any longer; Mr. B——,” pointing to the lawyer, “has
turned him out of his room, and he now persists in haunting the building
generally, sitting upon the banisters of the stairs by day, and sleeping in the
entry by night. Everybody is concerned; clients are leaving the offices; some
fears are entertained of a mob; something you must do, and that without
delay.”</p>
<p>Aghast at this torrent, I fell back before it, and would fain have locked
myself in my new quarters. In vain I persisted that Bartleby was nothing to
me—no more than to any one else. In vain—I was the last person
known to have anything to do with him, and they held me to the terrible
account. Fearful, then, of being exposed in the papers (as one person present
obscurely threatened), I considered the matter, and, at length, said, that if
the lawyer would give me a confidential interview with the scrivener, in his
(the lawyer’s) own room, I would, that afternoon, strive my best to rid
them of the nuisance they complained of.</p>
<p>Going up stairs to my old haunt, there was Bartleby silently sitting upon the
banister at the landing.</p>
<p>“What are you doing here, Bartleby?” said I.</p>
<p>“Sitting upon the banister,” he mildly replied.</p>
<p>I motioned him into the lawyer’s room, who then left us.</p>
<p>“Bartleby” said I, “are you aware that you are the cause of
great tribulation to me, by persisting in occupying the entry after being
dismissed from the office?”</p>
<p>No answer.</p>
<p>“Now one of two things must take place. Either you must do something, or
something must be done to you. Now what sort of business would you like to
engage in? Would you like to re-engage in copying for some one?”</p>
<p>“No; I would prefer not to make any change.”</p>
<p>“Would you like a clerkship in a dry-goods store?”</p>
<p>“There is too much confinement about that. No, I would not like a
clerkship; but I am not particular.”</p>
<p>“Too much confinement,” I cried, “why you keep yourself
confined all the time!”</p>
<p>“I would prefer not to take a clerkship,” he rejoined, as if to
settle that little item at once.</p>
<p>“How would a bar-tender’s business suit you? There is no trying of
the eye-sight in that.”</p>
<p>“I would not like it at all; though, as I said before, I am not
particular.”</p>
<p>His unwonted wordiness inspirited me. I returned to the charge.</p>
<p>“Well, then, would you like to travel through the country collecting
bills for the merchants? That would improve your health.”</p>
<p>“No, I would prefer to be doing something else.”</p>
<p>“How, then, would going as a companion to Europe, to entertain some young
gentleman with your conversation—how would that suit you?”</p>
<p>“Not at all. It does not strike me that there is anything definite about
that. I like to be stationary. But I am not particular.”</p>
<p>“Stationary you shall be, then,” I cried, now losing all patience,
and, for the first time in all my exasperating connection with him, fairly
flying into a passion. “If you do not go away from these premises before
night, I shall feel bound—indeed, I <i>am</i>
bound—to—to—to quit the premises myself!” I rather
absurdly concluded, knowing not with what possible threat to try to frighten
his immobility into compliance. Despairing of all further efforts, I was
precipitately leaving him, when a final thought occurred to me—one which
had not been wholly unindulged before.</p>
<p>“Bartleby,” said I, in the kindest tone I could assume under such
exciting circumstances, “will you go home with me now—not to my
office, but my dwelling—and remain there till we can conclude upon some
convenient arrangement for you at our leisure? Come, let us start now, right
away.”</p>
<p>“No: at present I would prefer not to make any change at all.”</p>
<p>I answered nothing; but, effectually dodging every one by the suddenness and
rapidity of my flight, rushed from the building, ran up Wall street towards
Broadway, and, jumping into the first omnibus, was soon removed from pursuit.
As soon as tranquillity returned, I distinctly perceived that I had now done
all that I possibly could, both in respect to the demands of the landlord and
his tenants, and with regard to my own desire and sense of duty, to benefit
Bartleby, and shield him from rude persecution, I now strove to be entirely
care-free and quiescent; and my conscience justified me in the attempt; though,
indeed, it was not so successful as I could have wished. So fearful was I of
being again hunted out by the incensed landlord and his exasperated tenants,
that, surrendering my business to Nippers, for a few days, I drove about the
upper part of the town and through the suburbs, in my rockaway; crossed over to
Jersey City and Hoboken, and paid fugitive visits to Manhattanville and
Astoria. In fact, I almost lived in my rockaway for the time.</p>
<p>When again I entered my office, lo, a note from the landlord lay upon the desk.
I opened it with trembling hands. It informed me that the writer had sent to
the police, and had Bartleby removed to the Tombs as a vagrant. Moreover, since
I knew more about him than any one else, he wished me to appear at that place,
and make a suitable statement of the facts. These tidings had a conflicting
effect upon me. At first I was indignant; but, at last, almost approved. The
landlord’s energetic, summary disposition, had led him to adopt a
procedure which I do not think I would have decided upon myself; and yet, as a
last resort, under such peculiar circumstances, it seemed the only plan.</p>
<p>As I afterwards learned, the poor scrivener, when told that he must be
conducted to the Tombs, offered not the slightest obstacle, but, in his pale,
unmoving way, silently acquiesced.</p>
<p>Some of the compassionate and curious bystanders joined the party; and headed
by one of the constables arm in arm with Bartleby, the silent procession filed
its way through all the noise, and heat, and joy of the roaring thoroughfares
at noon.</p>
<p>The same day I received the note, I went to the Tombs, or, to speak more
properly, the Halls of Justice. Seeking the right officer, I stated the purpose
of my call, and was informed that the individual I described was, indeed,
within. I then assured the functionary that Bartleby was a perfectly honest
man, and greatly to be compassionated, however unaccountably eccentric. I
narrated all I knew and closed by suggesting the idea of letting him remain in
as indulgent confinement as possible, till something less harsh might be
done—though, indeed, I hardly knew what. At all events, if nothing else
could be decided upon, the alms-house must receive him. I then begged to have
an interview.</p>
<p>Being under no disgraceful charge, and quite serene and harmless in all his
ways, they had permitted him freely to wander about the prison, and,
especially, in the inclosed grass-platted yards thereof. And so I found him
there, standing all alone in the quietest of the yards, his face towards a high
wall, while all around, from the narrow slits of the jail windows, I thought I
saw peering out upon him the eyes of murderers and thieves.</p>
<p>“Bartleby!”</p>
<p>“I know you,” he said, without looking round—“and I
want nothing to say to you.”</p>
<p>“It was not I that brought you here, Bartleby,” said I, keenly
pained at his implied suspicion. “And to you, this should not be so vile
a place. Nothing reproachful attaches to you by being here. And see, it is not
so sad a place as one might think. Look, there is the sky, and here is the
grass.”</p>
<p>“I know where I am,” he replied, but would say nothing more, and so
I left him.</p>
<p>As I entered the corridor again, a broad meat-like man, in an apron, accosted
me, and, jerking his thumb over his shoulder, said—“Is that your
friend?”</p>
<p>“Yes.”</p>
<p>“Does he want to starve? If he does, let him live on the prison fare,
that’s all.”</p>
<p>“Who are you?” asked I, not knowing what to make of such an
unofficially speaking person in such a place.</p>
<p>“I am the grub-man. Such gentlemen as have friends here, hire me to
provide them with something good to eat.”</p>
<p>“Is this so?” said I, turning to the turnkey.</p>
<p>He said it was.</p>
<p>“Well, then,” said I, slipping some silver into the
grub-man’s hands (for so they called him), “I want you to give
particular attention to my friend there; let him have the best dinner you can
get. And you must be as polite to him as possible.”</p>
<p>“Introduce me, will you?” said the grub-man, looking at me with an
expression which seem to say he was all impatience for an opportunity to give a
specimen of his breeding.</p>
<p>Thinking it would prove of benefit to the scrivener, I acquiesced; and, asking
the grub-man his name, went up with him to Bartleby.</p>
<p>“Bartleby, this is a friend; you will find him very useful to you.”</p>
<p>“Your sarvant, sir, your sarvant,” said the grub-man, making a low
salutation behind his apron. “Hope you find it pleasant here, sir; nice
grounds—cool apartments—hope you’ll stay with us some
time—try to make it agreeable. What will you have for dinner
to-day?”</p>
<p>“I prefer not to dine to-day,” said Bartleby, turning away.
“It would disagree with me; I am unused to dinners.” So saying, he
slowly moved to the other side of the inclosure, and took up a position
fronting the dead-wall.</p>
<p>“How’s this?” said the grub-man, addressing me with a stare
of astonishment. “He’s odd, ain’t he?”</p>
<p>“I think he is a little deranged,” said I, sadly.</p>
<p>“Deranged? deranged is it? Well, now, upon my word, I thought that friend
of yourn was a gentleman forger; they are always pale, and genteel-like, them
forgers. I can’t help pity ’em—can’t help it, sir. Did
you know Monroe Edwards?” he added, touchingly, and paused. Then, laying
his hand piteously on my shoulder, sighed, “he died of consumption at
Sing-Sing. So you weren’t acquainted with Monroe?”</p>
<p>“No, I was never socially acquainted with any forgers. But I cannot stop
longer. Look to my friend yonder. You will not lose by it. I will see you
again.”</p>
<p>Some few days after this, I again obtained admission to the Tombs, and went
through the corridors in quest of Bartleby; but without finding him.</p>
<p>“I saw him coming from his cell not long ago,” said a turnkey,
“may be he’s gone to loiter in the yards.”</p>
<p>So I went in that direction.</p>
<p>“Are you looking for the silent man?” said another turnkey, passing
me. “Yonder he lies—sleeping in the yard there. ’Tis not
twenty minutes since I saw him lie down.”</p>
<p>The yard was entirely quiet. It was not accessible to the common prisoners. The
surrounding walls, of amazing thickness, kept off all sounds behind them. The
Egyptian character of the masonry weighed upon me with its gloom. But a soft
imprisoned turf grew under foot. The heart of the eternal pyramids, it seemed,
wherein, by some strange magic, through the clefts, grass-seed, dropped by
birds, had sprung.</p>
<p>Strangely huddled at the base of the wall, his knees drawn up, and lying on his
side, his head touching the cold stones, I saw the wasted Bartleby. But nothing
stirred. I paused; then went close up to him; stooped over, and saw that his
dim eyes were open; otherwise he seemed profoundly sleeping. Something prompted
me to touch him. I felt his hand, when a tingling shiver ran up my arm and down
my spine to my feet.</p>
<p>The round face of the grub-man peered upon me now. “His dinner is ready.
Won’t he dine to-day, either? Or does he live without dining?”</p>
<p>“Lives without dining,” said I, and closed the eyes.</p>
<p>“Eh!—He’s asleep, ain’t he?”</p>
<p>“With kings and counselors,” murmured I.</p>
<hr />
<p>There would seem little need for proceeding further in this history.
Imagination will readily supply the meagre recital of poor Bartleby’s
interment. But, ere parting with the reader, let me say, that if this little
narrative has sufficiently interested him, to awaken curiosity as to who
Bartleby was, and what manner of life he led prior to the present
narrator’s making his acquaintance, I can only reply, that in such
curiosity I fully share, but am wholly unable to gratify it. Yet here I hardly
know whether I should divulge one little item of rumor, which came to my ear a
few months after the scrivener’s decease. Upon what basis it rested, I
could never ascertain; and hence, how true it is I cannot now tell. But,
inasmuch as this vague report has not been without a certain suggestive
interest to me, however sad, it may prove the same with some others; and so I
will briefly mention it. The report was this: that Bartleby had been a
subordinate clerk in the Dead Letter Office at Washington, from which he had
been suddenly removed by a change in the administration. When I think over this
rumor, hardly can I express the emotions which seize me. Dead letters! does it
not sound like dead men? Conceive a man by nature and misfortune prone to a
pallid hopelessness, can any business seem more fitted to heighten it than that
of continually handling these dead letters, and assorting them for the flames?
For by the cart-load they are annually burned. Sometimes from out the folded
paper the pale clerk takes a ring—the finger it was meant for, perhaps,
moulders in the grave; a bank-note sent in swiftest charity—he whom it
would relieve, nor eats nor hungers any more; pardon for those who died
despairing; hope for those who died unhoping; good tidings for those who died
stifled by unrelieved calamities. On errands of life, these letters speed to
death.</p>
<p>Ah, Bartleby! Ah, humanity!</p>
<h2><SPAN name="chap03"></SPAN>BENITO CERENO.</h2>
<p>In the year 1799, Captain Amasa Delano, of Duxbury, in Massachusetts,
commanding a large sealer and general trader, lay at anchor with a valuable
cargo, in the harbor of St. Maria—a small, desert, uninhabited island
toward the southern extremity of the long coast of Chili. There he had touched
for water.</p>
<p>On the second day, not long after dawn, while lying in his berth, his mate came
below, informing him that a strange sail was coming into the bay. Ships were
then not so plenty in those waters as now. He rose, dressed, and went on deck.</p>
<p>The morning was one peculiar to that coast. Everything was mute and calm;
everything gray. The sea, though undulated into long roods of swells, seemed
fixed, and was sleeked at the surface like waved lead that has cooled and set
in the smelter’s mould. The sky seemed a gray surtout. Flights of
troubled gray fowl, kith and kin with flights of troubled gray vapors among
which they were mixed, skimmed low and fitfully over the waters, as swallows
over meadows before storms. Shadows present, foreshadowing deeper shadows to
come.</p>
<p>To Captain Delano’s surprise, the stranger, viewed through the glass,
showed no colors; though to do so upon entering a haven, however uninhabited in
its shores, where but a single other ship might be lying, was the custom among
peaceful seamen of all nations. Considering the lawlessness and loneliness of
the spot, and the sort of stories, at that day, associated with those seas,
Captain Delano’s surprise might have deepened into some uneasiness had he
not been a person of a singularly undistrustful good-nature, not liable, except
on extraordinary and repeated incentives, and hardly then, to indulge in
personal alarms, any way involving the imputation of malign evil in man.
Whether, in view of what humanity is capable, such a trait implies, along with
a benevolent heart, more than ordinary quickness and accuracy of intellectual
perception, may be left to the wise to determine.</p>
<p>But whatever misgivings might have obtruded on first seeing the stranger, would
almost, in any seaman’s mind, have been dissipated by observing that, the
ship, in navigating into the harbor, was drawing too near the land; a sunken
reef making out off her bow. This seemed to prove her a stranger, indeed, not
only to the sealer, but the island; consequently, she could be no wonted
freebooter on that ocean. With no small interest, Captain Delano continued to
watch her—a proceeding not much facilitated by the vapors partly mantling
the hull, through which the far matin light from her cabin streamed equivocally
enough; much like the sun—by this time hemisphered on the rim of the
horizon, and, apparently, in company with the strange ship entering the
harbor—which, wimpled by the same low, creeping clouds, showed not unlike
a Lima intriguante’s one sinister eye peering across the Plaza from the
Indian loop-hole of her dusk <i>saya-y-manta.</i></p>
<p>It might have been but a deception of the vapors, but, the longer the stranger
was watched the more singular appeared her manoeuvres. Ere long it seemed hard
to decide whether she meant to come in or no—what she wanted, or what she
was about. The wind, which had breezed up a little during the night, was now
extremely light and baffling, which the more increased the apparent uncertainty
of her movements. Surmising, at last, that it might be a ship in distress,
Captain Delano ordered his whale-boat to be dropped, and, much to the wary
opposition of his mate, prepared to board her, and, at the least, pilot her in.
On the night previous, a fishing-party of the seamen had gone a long distance
to some detached rocks out of sight from the sealer, and, an hour or two before
daybreak, had returned, having met with no small success. Presuming that the
stranger might have been long off soundings, the good captain put several
baskets of the fish, for presents, into his boat, and so pulled away. From her
continuing too near the sunken reef, deeming her in danger, calling to his men,
he made all haste to apprise those on board of their situation. But, some time
ere the boat came up, the wind, light though it was, having shifted, had headed
the vessel off, as well as partly broken the vapors from about her.</p>
<p>Upon gaining a less remote view, the ship, when made signally visible on the
verge of the leaden-hued swells, with the shreds of fog here and there raggedly
furring her, appeared like a white-washed monastery after a thunder-storm, seen
perched upon some dun cliff among the Pyrenees. But it was no purely fanciful
resemblance which now, for a moment, almost led Captain Delano to think that
nothing less than a ship-load of monks was before him. Peering over the
bulwarks were what really seemed, in the hazy distance, throngs of dark cowls;
while, fitfully revealed through the open port-holes, other dark moving figures
were dimly descried, as of Black Friars pacing the cloisters.</p>
<p>Upon a still nigher approach, this appearance was modified, and the true
character of the vessel was plain—a Spanish merchantman of the first
class, carrying negro slaves, amongst other valuable freight, from one colonial
port to another. A very large, and, in its time, a very fine vessel, such as in
those days were at intervals encountered along that main; sometimes superseded
Acapulco treasure-ships, or retired frigates of the Spanish king’s navy,
which, like superannuated Italian palaces, still, under a decline of masters,
preserved signs of former state.</p>
<p>As the whale-boat drew more and more nigh, the cause of the peculiar
pipe-clayed aspect of the stranger was seen in the slovenly neglect pervading
her. The spars, ropes, and great part of the bulwarks, looked woolly, from long
unacquaintance with the scraper, tar, and the brush. Her keel seemed laid, her
ribs put together, and she launched, from Ezekiel’s Valley of Dry Bones.</p>
<p>In the present business in which she was engaged, the ship’s general
model and rig appeared to have undergone no material change from their original
warlike and Froissart pattern. However, no guns were seen.</p>
<p>The tops were large, and were railed about with what had once been octagonal
net-work, all now in sad disrepair. These tops hung overhead like three ruinous
aviaries, in one of which was seen, perched, on a ratlin, a white noddy, a
strange fowl, so called from its lethargic, somnambulistic character, being
frequently caught by hand at sea. Battered and mouldy, the castellated
forecastle seemed some ancient turret, long ago taken by assault, and then left
to decay. Toward the stern, two high-raised quarter galleries—the
balustrades here and there covered with dry, tindery sea-moss—opening out
from the unoccupied state-cabin, whose dead-lights, for all the mild weather,
were hermetically closed and calked—these tenantless balconies hung over
the sea as if it were the grand Venetian canal. But the principal relic of
faded grandeur was the ample oval of the shield-like stern-piece, intricately
carved with the arms of Castile and Leon, medallioned about by groups of
mythological or symbolical devices; uppermost and central of which was a dark
satyr in a mask, holding his foot on the prostrate neck of a writhing figure,
likewise masked.</p>
<p>Whether the ship had a figure-head, or only a plain beak, was not quite
certain, owing to canvas wrapped about that part, either to protect it while
undergoing a re-furbishing, or else decently to hide its decay. Rudely painted
or chalked, as in a sailor freak, along the forward side of a sort of pedestal
below the canvas, was the sentence, “<i>Seguid vuestro jefe</i>”
(follow your leader); while upon the tarnished headboards, near by, appeared,
in stately capitals, once gilt, the ship’s name, “SAN
DOMINICK,” each letter streakingly corroded with tricklings of
copper-spike rust; while, like mourning weeds, dark festoons of sea-grass
slimily swept to and fro over the name, with every hearse-like roll of the
hull.</p>
<p>As, at last, the boat was hooked from the bow along toward the gangway
amidship, its keel, while yet some inches separated from the hull, harshly
grated as on a sunken coral reef. It proved a huge bunch of conglobated
barnacles adhering below the water to the side like a wen—a token of
baffling airs and long calms passed somewhere in those seas.</p>
<p>Climbing the side, the visitor was at once surrounded by a clamorous throng of
whites and blacks, but the latter outnumbering the former more than could have
been expected, negro transportation-ship as the stranger in port was. But, in
one language, and as with one voice, all poured out a common tale of suffering;
in which the negresses, of whom there were not a few, exceeded the others in
their dolorous vehemence. The scurvy, together with the fever, had swept off a
great part of their number, more especially the Spaniards. Off Cape Horn they
had narrowly escaped shipwreck; then, for days together, they had lain tranced
without wind; their provisions were low; their water next to none; their lips
that moment were baked.</p>
<p>While Captain Delano was thus made the mark of all eager tongues, his one eager
glance took in all faces, with every other object about him.</p>
<p>Always upon first boarding a large and populous ship at sea, especially a
foreign one, with a nondescript crew such as Lascars or Manilla men, the
impression varies in a peculiar way from that produced by first entering a
strange house with strange inmates in a strange land. Both house and
ship—the one by its walls and blinds, the other by its high bulwarks like
ramparts—hoard from view their interiors till the last moment: but in the
case of the ship there is this addition; that the living spectacle it contains,
upon its sudden and complete disclosure, has, in contrast with the blank ocean
which zones it, something of the effect of enchantment. The ship seems unreal;
these strange costumes, gestures, and faces, but a shadowy tableau just emerged
from the deep, which directly must receive back what it gave.</p>
<p>Perhaps it was some such influence, as above is attempted to be described,
which, in Captain Delano’s mind, heightened whatever, upon a staid
scrutiny, might have seemed unusual; especially the conspicuous figures of four
elderly grizzled negroes, their heads like black, doddered willow tops, who, in
venerable contrast to the tumult below them, were couched, sphynx-like, one on
the starboard cat-head, another on the larboard, and the remaining pair face to
face on the opposite bulwarks above the main-chains. They each had bits of
unstranded old junk in their hands, and, with a sort of stoical self-content,
were picking the junk into oakum, a small heap of which lay by their sides.
They accompanied the task with a continuous, low, monotonous, chant; droning
and drilling away like so many gray-headed bag-pipers playing a funeral march.</p>
<p>The quarter-deck rose into an ample elevated poop, upon the forward verge of
which, lifted, like the oakum-pickers, some eight feet above the general
throng, sat along in a row, separated by regular spaces, the cross-legged
figures of six other blacks; each with a rusty hatchet in his hand, which, with
a bit of brick and a rag, he was engaged like a scullion in scouring; while
between each two was a small stack of hatchets, their rusted edges turned
forward awaiting a like operation. Though occasionally the four oakum-pickers
would briefly address some person or persons in the crowd below, yet the six
hatchet-polishers neither spoke to others, nor breathed a whisper among
themselves, but sat intent upon their task, except at intervals, when, with the
peculiar love in negroes of uniting industry with pastime, two and two they
sideways clashed their hatchets together, like cymbals, with a barbarous din.
All six, unlike the generality, had the raw aspect of unsophisticated Africans.</p>
<p>But that first comprehensive glance which took in those ten figures, with
scores less conspicuous, rested but an instant upon them, as, impatient of the
hubbub of voices, the visitor turned in quest of whomsoever it might be that
commanded the ship.</p>
<p>But as if not unwilling to let nature make known her own case among his
suffering charge, or else in despair of restraining it for the time, the
Spanish captain, a gentlemanly, reserved-looking, and rather young man to a
stranger’s eye, dressed with singular richness, but bearing plain traces
of recent sleepless cares and disquietudes, stood passively by, leaning against
the main-mast, at one moment casting a dreary, spiritless look upon his excited
people, at the next an unhappy glance toward his visitor. By his side stood a
black of small stature, in whose rude face, as occasionally, like a
shepherd’s dog, he mutely turned it up into the Spaniard’s, sorrow
and affection were equally blended.</p>
<p>Struggling through the throng, the American advanced to the Spaniard, assuring
him of his sympathies, and offering to render whatever assistance might be in
his power. To which the Spaniard returned for the present but grave and
ceremonious acknowledgments, his national formality dusked by the saturnine
mood of ill-health.</p>
<p>But losing no time in mere compliments, Captain Delano, returning to the
gangway, had his basket of fish brought up; and as the wind still continued
light, so that some hours at least must elapse ere the ship could be brought to
the anchorage, he bade his men return to the sealer, and fetch back as much
water as the whale-boat could carry, with whatever soft bread the steward might
have, all the remaining pumpkins on board, with a box of sugar, and a dozen of
his private bottles of cider.</p>
<p>Not many minutes after the boat’s pushing off, to the vexation of all,
the wind entirely died away, and the tide turning, began drifting back the ship
helplessly seaward. But trusting this would not long last, Captain Delano
sought, with good hopes, to cheer up the strangers, feeling no small
satisfaction that, with persons in their condition, he could—thanks to
his frequent voyages along the Spanish main—converse with some freedom in
their native tongue.</p>
<p>While left alone with them, he was not long in observing some things tending to
heighten his first impressions; but surprise was lost in pity, both for the
Spaniards and blacks, alike evidently reduced from scarcity of water and
provisions; while long-continued suffering seemed to have brought out the less
good-natured qualities of the negroes, besides, at the same time, impairing the
Spaniard’s authority over them. But, under the circumstances, precisely
this condition of things was to have been anticipated. In armies, navies,
cities, or families, in nature herself, nothing more relaxes good order than
misery. Still, Captain Delano was not without the idea, that had Benito Cereno
been a man of greater energy, misrule would hardly have come to the present
pass. But the debility, constitutional or induced by hardships, bodily and
mental, of the Spanish captain, was too obvious to be overlooked. A prey to
settled dejection, as if long mocked with hope he would not now indulge it,
even when it had ceased to be a mock, the prospect of that day, or evening at
furthest, lying at anchor, with plenty of water for his people, and a brother
captain to counsel and befriend, seemed in no perceptible degree to encourage
him. His mind appeared unstrung, if not still more seriously affected. Shut up
in these oaken walls, chained to one dull round of command, whose
unconditionality cloyed him, like some hypochondriac abbot he moved slowly
about, at times suddenly pausing, starting, or staring, biting his lip, biting
his finger-nail, flushing, paling, twitching his beard, with other symptoms of
an absent or moody mind. This distempered spirit was lodged, as before hinted,
in as distempered a frame. He was rather tall, but seemed never to have been
robust, and now with nervous suffering was almost worn to a skeleton. A
tendency to some pulmonary complaint appeared to have been lately confirmed.
His voice was like that of one with lungs half gone—hoarsely suppressed,
a husky whisper. No wonder that, as in this state he tottered about, his
private servant apprehensively followed him. Sometimes the negro gave his
master his arm, or took his handkerchief out of his pocket for him; performing
these and similar offices with that affectionate zeal which transmutes into
something filial or fraternal acts in themselves but menial; and which has
gained for the negro the repute of making the most pleasing body-servant in the
world; one, too, whom a master need be on no stiffly superior terms with, but
may treat with familiar trust; less a servant than a devoted companion.</p>
<p>Marking the noisy indocility of the blacks in general, as well as what seemed
the sullen inefficiency of the whites it was not without humane satisfaction
that Captain Delano witnessed the steady good conduct of Babo.</p>
<p>But the good conduct of Babo, hardly more than the ill-behavior of others,
seemed to withdraw the half-lunatic Don Benito from his cloudy languor. Not
that such precisely was the impression made by the Spaniard on the mind of his
visitor. The Spaniard’s individual unrest was, for the present, but noted
as a conspicuous feature in the ship’s general affliction. Still, Captain
Delano was not a little concerned at what he could not help taking for the time
to be Don Benito’s unfriendly indifference towards himself. The
Spaniard’s manner, too, conveyed a sort of sour and gloomy disdain, which
he seemed at no pains to disguise. But this the American in charity ascribed to
the harassing effects of sickness, since, in former instances, he had noted
that there are peculiar natures on whom prolonged physical suffering seems to
cancel every social instinct of kindness; as if, forced to black bread
themselves, they deemed it but equity that each person coming nigh them should,
indirectly, by some slight or affront, be made to partake of their fare.</p>
<p>But ere long Captain Delano bethought him that, indulgent as he was at the
first, in judging the Spaniard, he might not, after all, have exercised charity
enough. At bottom it was Don Benito’s reserve which displeased him; but
the same reserve was shown towards all but his faithful personal attendant.
Even the formal reports which, according to sea-usage, were, at stated times,
made to him by some petty underling, either a white, mulatto or black, he
hardly had patience enough to listen to, without betraying contemptuous
aversion. His manner upon such occasions was, in its degree, not unlike that
which might be supposed to have been his imperial countryman’s, Charles
V., just previous to the anchoritish retirement of that monarch from the
throne.</p>
<p>This splenetic disrelish of his place was evinced in almost every function
pertaining to it. Proud as he was moody, he condescended to no personal
mandate. Whatever special orders were necessary, their delivery was delegated
to his body-servant, who in turn transferred them to their ultimate
destination, through runners, alert Spanish boys or slave boys, like pages or
pilot-fish within easy call continually hovering round Don Benito. So that to
have beheld this undemonstrative invalid gliding about, apathetic and mute, no
landsman could have dreamed that in him was lodged a dictatorship beyond which,
while at sea, there was no earthly appeal.</p>
<p>Thus, the Spaniard, regarded in his reserve, seemed the involuntary victim of
mental disorder. But, in fact, his reserve might, in some degree, have
proceeded from design. If so, then here was evinced the unhealthy climax of
that icy though conscientious policy, more or less adopted by all commanders of
large ships, which, except in signal emergencies, obliterates alike the
manifestation of sway with every trace of sociality; transforming the man into
a block, or rather into a loaded cannon, which, until there is call for
thunder, has nothing to say.</p>
<p>Viewing him in this light, it seemed but a natural token of the perverse habit
induced by a long course of such hard self-restraint, that, notwithstanding the
present condition of his ship, the Spaniard should still persist in a demeanor,
which, however harmless, or, it may be, appropriate, in a well-appointed
vessel, such as the San Dominick might have been at the outset of the voyage,
was anything but judicious now. But the Spaniard, perhaps, thought that it was
with captains as with gods: reserve, under all events, must still be their cue.
But probably this appearance of slumbering dominion might have been but an
attempted disguise to conscious imbecility—not deep policy, but shallow
device. But be all this as it might, whether Don Benito’s manner was
designed or not, the more Captain Delano noted its pervading reserve, the less
he felt uneasiness at any particular manifestation of that reserve towards
himself.</p>
<p>Neither were his thoughts taken up by the captain alone. Wonted to the quiet
orderliness of the sealer’s comfortable family of a crew, the noisy
confusion of the San Dominick’s suffering host repeatedly challenged his
eye. Some prominent breaches, not only of discipline but of decency, were
observed. These Captain Delano could not but ascribe, in the main, to the
absence of those subordinate deck-officers to whom, along with higher duties,
is intrusted what may be styled the police department of a populous ship. True,
the old oakum-pickers appeared at times to act the part of monitorial
constables to their countrymen, the blacks; but though occasionally succeeding
in allaying trifling outbreaks now and then between man and man, they could do
little or nothing toward establishing general quiet. The San Dominick was in
the condition of a transatlantic emigrant ship, among whose multitude of living
freight are some individuals, doubtless, as little troublesome as crates and
bales; but the friendly remonstrances of such with their ruder companions are
of not so much avail as the unfriendly arm of the mate. What the San Dominick
wanted was, what the emigrant ship has, stern superior officers. But on these
decks not so much as a fourth-mate was to be seen.</p>
<p>The visitor’s curiosity was roused to learn the particulars of those
mishaps which had brought about such absenteeism, with its consequences;
because, though deriving some inkling of the voyage from the wails which at the
first moment had greeted him, yet of the details no clear understanding had
been had. The best account would, doubtless, be given by the captain. Yet at
first the visitor was loth to ask it, unwilling to provoke some distant rebuff.
But plucking up courage, he at last accosted Don Benito, renewing the
expression of his benevolent interest, adding, that did he (Captain Delano) but
know the particulars of the ship’s misfortunes, he would, perhaps, be
better able in the end to relieve them. Would Don Benito favor him with the
whole story.</p>
<p>Don Benito faltered; then, like some somnambulist suddenly interfered with,
vacantly stared at his visitor, and ended by looking down on the deck. He
maintained this posture so long, that Captain Delano, almost equally
disconcerted, and involuntarily almost as rude, turned suddenly from him,
walking forward to accost one of the Spanish seamen for the desired
information. But he had hardly gone five paces, when, with a sort of eagerness,
Don Benito invited him back, regretting his momentary absence of mind, and
professing readiness to gratify him.</p>
<p>While most part of the story was being given, the two captains stood on the
after part of the main-deck, a privileged spot, no one being near but the
servant.</p>
<p>“It is now a hundred and ninety days,” began the Spaniard, in his
husky whisper, “that this ship, well officered and well manned, with
several cabin passengers—some fifty Spaniards in all—sailed from
Buenos Ayres bound to Lima, with a general cargo, hardware, Paraguay tea and
the like—and,” pointing forward, “that parcel of negroes, now
not more than a hundred and fifty, as you see, but then numbering over three
hundred souls. Off Cape Horn we had heavy gales. In one moment, by night, three
of my best officers, with fifteen sailors, were lost, with the main-yard; the
spar snapping under them in the slings, as they sought, with heavers, to beat
down the icy sail. To lighten the hull, the heavier sacks of mata were thrown
into the sea, with most of the water-pipes lashed on deck at the time. And this
last necessity it was, combined with the prolonged detections afterwards
experienced, which eventually brought about our chief causes of suffering.
When—”</p>
<p>Here there was a sudden fainting attack of his cough, brought on, no doubt, by
his mental distress. His servant sustained him, and drawing a cordial from his
pocket placed it to his lips. He a little revived. But unwilling to leave him
unsupported while yet imperfectly restored, the black with one arm still
encircled his master, at the same time keeping his eye fixed on his face, as if
to watch for the first sign of complete restoration, or relapse, as the event
might prove.</p>
<p>The Spaniard proceeded, but brokenly and obscurely, as one in a dream.</p>
<p>—“Oh, my God! rather than pass through what I have, with joy I
would have hailed the most terrible gales; but—”</p>
<p>His cough returned and with increased violence; this subsiding; with reddened
lips and closed eyes he fell heavily against his supporter.</p>
<p>“His mind wanders. He was thinking of the plague that followed the
gales,” plaintively sighed the servant; “my poor, poor
master!” wringing one hand, and with the other wiping the mouth.
“But be patient, Señor,” again turning to Captain Delano,
“these fits do not last long; master will soon be himself.”</p>
<p>Don Benito reviving, went on; but as this portion of the story was very
brokenly delivered, the substance only will here be set down.</p>
<p>It appeared that after the ship had been many days tossed in storms off the
Cape, the scurvy broke out, carrying off numbers of the whites and blacks. When
at last they had worked round into the Pacific, their spars and sails were so
damaged, and so inadequately handled by the surviving mariners, most of whom
were become invalids, that, unable to lay her northerly course by the wind,
which was powerful, the unmanageable ship, for successive days and nights, was
blown northwestward, where the breeze suddenly deserted her, in unknown waters,
to sultry calms. The absence of the water-pipes now proved as fatal to life as
before their presence had menaced it. Induced, or at least aggravated, by the
more than scanty allowance of water, a malignant fever followed the scurvy;
with the excessive heat of the lengthened calm, making such short work of it as
to sweep away, as by billows, whole families of the Africans, and a yet larger
number, proportionably, of the Spaniards, including, by a luckless fatality,
every remaining officer on board. Consequently, in the smart west winds
eventually following the calm, the already rent sails, having to be simply
dropped, not furled, at need, had been gradually reduced to the beggars’
rags they were now. To procure substitutes for his lost sailors, as well as
supplies of water and sails, the captain, at the earliest opportunity, had made
for Baldivia, the southernmost civilized port of Chili and South America; but
upon nearing the coast the thick weather had prevented him from so much as
sighting that harbor. Since which period, almost without a crew, and almost
without canvas and almost without water, and, at intervals giving its added
dead to the sea, the San Dominick had been battle-dored about by contrary
winds, inveigled by currents, or grown weedy in calms. Like a man lost in
woods, more than once she had doubled upon her own track.</p>
<p>“But throughout these calamities,” huskily continued Don Benito,
painfully turning in the half embrace of his servant, “I have to thank
those negroes you see, who, though to your inexperienced eyes appearing unruly,
have, indeed, conducted themselves with less of restlessness than even their
owner could have thought possible under such circumstances.”</p>
<p>Here he again fell faintly back. Again his mind wandered; but he rallied, and
less obscurely proceeded.</p>
<p>“Yes, their owner was quite right in assuring me that no fetters would be
needed with his blacks; so that while, as is wont in this transportation, those
negroes have always remained upon deck—not thrust below, as in the
Guinea-men—they have, also, from the beginning, been freely permitted to
range within given bounds at their pleasure.”</p>
<p>Once more the faintness returned—his mind roved—but, recovering, he
resumed:</p>
<p>“But it is Babo here to whom, under God, I owe not only my own
preservation, but likewise to him, chiefly, the merit is due, of pacifying his
more ignorant brethren, when at intervals tempted to murmurings.”</p>
<p>“Ah, master,” sighed the black, bowing his face, “don’t
speak of me; Babo is nothing; what Babo has done was but duty.”</p>
<p>“Faithful fellow!” cried Captain Delano. “Don Benito, I envy
you such a friend; slave I cannot call him.”</p>
<p>As master and man stood before him, the black upholding the white, Captain
Delano could not but bethink him of the beauty of that relationship which could
present such a spectacle of fidelity on the one hand and confidence on the
other. The scene was heightened by, the contrast in dress, denoting their
relative positions. The Spaniard wore a loose Chili jacket of dark velvet;
white small-clothes and stockings, with silver buckles at the knee and instep;
a high-crowned sombrero, of fine grass; a slender sword, silver mounted, hung
from a knot in his sash—the last being an almost invariable adjunct, more
for utility than ornament, of a South American gentleman’s dress to this
hour. Excepting when his occasional nervous contortions brought about disarray,
there was a certain precision in his attire curiously at variance with the
unsightly disorder around; especially in the belittered Ghetto, forward of the
main-mast, wholly occupied by the blacks.</p>
<p>The servant wore nothing but wide trowsers, apparently, from their coarseness
and patches, made out of some old topsail; they were clean, and confined at the
waist by a bit of unstranded rope, which, with his composed, deprecatory air at
times, made him look something like a begging friar of St. Francis.</p>
<p>However unsuitable for the time and place, at least in the blunt-thinking
American’s eyes, and however strangely surviving in the midst of all his
afflictions, the toilette of Don Benito might not, in fashion at least, have
gone beyond the style of the day among South Americans of his class. Though on
the present voyage sailing from Buenos Ayres, he had avowed himself a native
and resident of Chili, whose inhabitants had not so generally adopted the plain
coat and once plebeian pantaloons; but, with a becoming modification, adhered
to their provincial costume, picturesque as any in the world. Still, relatively
to the pale history of the voyage, and his own pale face, there seemed
something so incongruous in the Spaniard’s apparel, as almost to suggest
the image of an invalid courtier tottering about London streets in the time of
the plague.</p>
<p>The portion of the narrative which, perhaps, most excited interest, as well as
some surprise, considering the latitudes in question, was the long calms spoken
of, and more particularly the ship’s so long drifting about. Without
communicating the opinion, of course, the American could not but impute at
least part of the detentions both to clumsy seamanship and faulty navigation.
Eying Don Benito’s small, yellow hands, he easily inferred that the young
captain had not got into command at the hawse-hole, but the cabin-window; and
if so, why wonder at incompetence, in youth, sickness, and gentility united?</p>
<p>But drowning criticism in compassion, after a fresh repetition of his
sympathies, Captain Delano, having heard out his story, not only engaged, as in
the first place, to see Don Benito and his people supplied in their immediate
bodily needs, but, also, now farther promised to assist him in procuring a
large permanent supply of water, as well as some sails and rigging; and, though
it would involve no small embarrassment to himself, yet he would spare three of
his best seamen for temporary deck officers; so that without delay the ship
might proceed to Conception, there fully to refit for Lima, her destined port.</p>
<p>Such generosity was not without its effect, even upon the invalid. His face
lighted up; eager and hectic, he met the honest glance of his visitor. With
gratitude he seemed overcome.</p>
<p>“This excitement is bad for master,” whispered the servant, taking
his arm, and with soothing words gently drawing him aside.</p>
<p>When Don Benito returned, the American was pained to observe that his
hopefulness, like the sudden kindling in his cheek, was but febrile and
transient.</p>
<p>Ere long, with a joyless mien, looking up towards the poop, the host invited
his guest to accompany him there, for the benefit of what little breath of wind
might be stirring.</p>
<p>As, during the telling of the story, Captain Delano had once or twice started
at the occasional cymballing of the hatchet-polishers, wondering why such an
interruption should be allowed, especially in that part of the ship, and in the
ears of an invalid; and moreover, as the hatchets had anything but an
attractive look, and the handlers of them still less so, it was, therefore, to
tell the truth, not without some lurking reluctance, or even shrinking, it may
be, that Captain Delano, with apparent complaisance, acquiesced in his
host’s invitation. The more so, since, with an untimely caprice of
punctilio, rendered distressing by his cadaverous aspect, Don Benito, with
Castilian bows, solemnly insisted upon his guest’s preceding him up the
ladder leading to the elevation; where, one on each side of the last step, sat
for armorial supporters and sentries two of the ominous file. Gingerly enough
stepped good Captain Delano between them, and in the instant of leaving them
behind, like one running the gauntlet, he felt an apprehensive twitch in the
calves of his legs.</p>
<p>But when, facing about, he saw the whole file, like so many organ-grinders,
still stupidly intent on their work, unmindful of everything beside, he could
not but smile at his late fidgety panic.</p>
<p>Presently, while standing with his host, looking forward upon the decks below,
he was struck by one of those instances of insubordination previously alluded
to. Three black boys, with two Spanish boys, were sitting together on the
hatches, scraping a rude wooden platter, in which some scanty mess had recently
been cooked. Suddenly, one of the black boys, enraged at a word dropped by one
of his white companions, seized a knife, and, though called to forbear by one
of the oakum-pickers, struck the lad over the head, inflicting a gash from
which blood flowed.</p>
<p>In amazement, Captain Delano inquired what this meant. To which the pale Don
Benito dully muttered, that it was merely the sport of the lad.</p>
<p>“Pretty serious sport, truly,” rejoined Captain Delano. “Had
such a thing happened on board the Bachelor’s Delight, instant punishment
would have followed.”</p>
<p>At these words the Spaniard turned upon the American one of his sudden,
staring, half-lunatic looks; then, relapsing into his torpor, answered,
“Doubtless, doubtless, Señor.”</p>
<p>Is it, thought Captain Delano, that this hapless man is one of those paper
captains I’ve known, who by policy wink at what by power they cannot put
down? I know no sadder sight than a commander who has little of command but the
name.</p>
<p>“I should think, Don Benito,” he now said, glancing towards the
oakum-picker who had sought to interfere with the boys, “that you would
find it advantageous to keep all your blacks employed, especially the younger
ones, no matter at what useless task, and no matter what happens to the ship.
Why, even with my little band, I find such a course indispensable. I once kept
a crew on my quarter-deck thrumming mats for my cabin, when, for three days, I
had given up my ship—mats, men, and all—for a speedy loss, owing to
the violence of a gale, in which we could do nothing but helplessly drive
before it.”</p>
<p>“Doubtless, doubtless,” muttered Don Benito.</p>
<p>“But,” continued Captain Delano, again glancing upon the
oakum-pickers and then at the hatchet-polishers, near by, “I see you keep
some, at least, of your host employed.”</p>
<p>“Yes,” was again the vacant response.</p>
<p>“Those old men there, shaking their pows from their pulpits,”
continued Captain Delano, pointing to the oakum-pickers, “seem to act the
part of old dominies to the rest, little heeded as their admonitions are at
times. Is this voluntary on their part, Don Benito, or have you appointed them
shepherds to your flock of black sheep?”</p>
<p>“What posts they fill, I appointed them,” rejoined the Spaniard, in
an acrid tone, as if resenting some supposed satiric reflection.</p>
<p>“And these others, these Ashantee conjurors here,” continued
Captain Delano, rather uneasily eying the brandished steel of the
hatchet-polishers, where, in spots, it had been brought to a shine, “this
seems a curious business they are at, Don Benito?”</p>
<p>“In the gales we met,” answered the Spaniard, “what of our
general cargo was not thrown overboard was much damaged by the brine. Since
coming into calm weather, I have had several cases of knives and hatchets daily
brought up for overhauling and cleaning.”</p>
<p>“A prudent idea, Don Benito. You are part owner of ship and cargo, I
presume; but none of the slaves, perhaps?”</p>
<p>“I am owner of all you see,” impatiently returned Don Benito,
“except the main company of blacks, who belonged to my late friend,
Alexandro Aranda.”</p>
<p>As he mentioned this name, his air was heart-broken; his knees shook; his
servant supported him.</p>
<p>Thinking he divined the cause of such unusual emotion, to confirm his surmise,
Captain Delano, after a pause, said: “And may I ask, Don Benito,
whether—since awhile ago you spoke of some cabin passengers—the
friend, whose loss so afflicts you, at the outset of the voyage accompanied his
blacks?”</p>
<p>“Yes.”</p>
<p>“But died of the fever?”</p>
<p>“Died of the fever. Oh, could I but—”</p>
<p>Again quivering, the Spaniard paused.</p>
<p>“Pardon me,” said Captain Delano, lowly, “but I think that,
by a sympathetic experience, I conjecture, Don Benito, what it is that gives
the keener edge to your grief. It was once my hard fortune to lose, at sea, a
dear friend, my own brother, then supercargo. Assured of the welfare of his
spirit, its departure I could have borne like a man; but that honest eye, that
honest hand—both of which had so often met mine—and that warm
heart; all, all—like scraps to the dogs—to throw all to the sharks!
It was then I vowed never to have for fellow-voyager a man I loved, unless,
unbeknown to him, I had provided every requisite, in case of a fatality, for
embalming his mortal part for interment on shore. Were your friend’s
remains now on board this ship, Don Benito, not thus strangely would the
mention of his name affect you.”</p>
<p>“On board this ship?” echoed the Spaniard. Then, with horrified
gestures, as directed against some spectre, he unconsciously fell into the
ready arms of his attendant, who, with a silent appeal toward Captain Delano,
seemed beseeching him not again to broach a theme so unspeakably distressing to
his master.</p>
<p>This poor fellow now, thought the pained American, is the victim of that sad
superstition which associates goblins with the deserted body of man, as ghosts
with an abandoned house. How unlike are we made! What to me, in like case,
would have been a solemn satisfaction, the bare suggestion, even, terrifies the
Spaniard into this trance. Poor Alexandro Aranda! what would you say could you
here see your friend—who, on former voyages, when you, for months, were
left behind, has, I dare say, often longed, and longed, for one peep at
you—now transported with terror at the least thought of having you anyway
nigh him.</p>
<p>At this moment, with a dreary grave-yard toll, betokening a flaw, the
ship’s forecastle bell, smote by one of the grizzled oakum-pickers,
proclaimed ten o’clock, through the leaden calm; when Captain
Delano’s attention was caught by the moving figure of a gigantic black,
emerging from the general crowd below, and slowly advancing towards the
elevated poop. An iron collar was about his neck, from which depended a chain,
thrice wound round his body; the terminating links padlocked together at a
broad band of iron, his girdle.</p>
<p>“How like a mute Atufal moves,” murmured the servant.</p>
<p>The black mounted the steps of the poop, and, like a brave prisoner, brought up
to receive sentence, stood in unquailing muteness before Don Benito, now
recovered from his attack.</p>
<p>At the first glimpse of his approach, Don Benito had started, a resentful
shadow swept over his face; and, as with the sudden memory of bootless rage,
his white lips glued together.</p>
<p>This is some mulish mutineer, thought Captain Delano, surveying, not without a
mixture of admiration, the colossal form of the negro.</p>
<p>“See, he waits your question, master,” said the servant.</p>
<p>Thus reminded, Don Benito, nervously averting his glance, as if shunning, by
anticipation, some rebellious response, in a disconcerted voice, thus
spoke:—</p>
<p>“Atufal, will you ask my pardon, now?”</p>
<p>The black was silent.</p>
<p>“Again, master,” murmured the servant, with bitter upbraiding
eyeing his countryman, “Again, master; he will bend to master yet.”</p>
<p>“Answer,” said Don Benito, still averting his glance, “say
but the one word, <i>pardon</i>, and your chains shall be off.”</p>
<p>Upon this, the black, slowly raising both arms, let them lifelessly fall, his
links clanking, his head bowed; as much as to say, “no, I am
content.”</p>
<p>“Go,” said Don Benito, with inkept and unknown emotion.</p>
<p>Deliberately as he had come, the black obeyed.</p>
<p>“Excuse me, Don Benito,” said Captain Delano, “but this scene
surprises me; what means it, pray?”</p>
<p>“It means that that negro alone, of all the band, has given me peculiar
cause of offense. I have put him in chains; I—”</p>
<p>Here he paused; his hand to his head, as if there were a swimming there, or a
sudden bewilderment of memory had come over him; but meeting his
servant’s kindly glance seemed reassured, and proceeded:—</p>
<p>“I could not scourge such a form. But I told him he must ask my pardon.
As yet he has not. At my command, every two hours he stands before me.”</p>
<p>“And how long has this been?”</p>
<p>“Some sixty days.”</p>
<p>“And obedient in all else? And respectful?”</p>
<p>“Yes.”</p>
<p>“Upon my conscience, then,” exclaimed Captain Delano, impulsively,
“he has a royal spirit in him, this fellow.”</p>
<p>“He may have some right to it,” bitterly returned Don Benito,
“he says he was king in his own land.”</p>
<p>“Yes,” said the servant, entering a word, “those slits in
Atufal’s ears once held wedges of gold; but poor Babo here, in his own
land, was only a poor slave; a black man’s slave was Babo, who now is the
white’s.”</p>
<p>Somewhat annoyed by these conversational familiarities, Captain Delano turned
curiously upon the attendant, then glanced inquiringly at his master; but, as
if long wonted to these little informalities, neither master nor man seemed to
understand him.</p>
<p>“What, pray, was Atufal’s offense, Don Benito?” asked Captain
Delano; “if it was not something very serious, take a fool’s
advice, and, in view of his general docility, as well as in some natural
respect for his spirit, remit him his penalty.”</p>
<p>“No, no, master never will do that,” here murmured the servant to
himself, “proud Atufal must first ask master’s pardon. The slave
there carries the padlock, but master here carries the key.”</p>
<p>His attention thus directed, Captain Delano now noticed for the first, that,
suspended by a slender silken cord, from Don Benito’s neck, hung a key.
At once, from the servant’s muttered syllables, divining the key’s
purpose, he smiled, and said:—“So, Don Benito—padlock and
key—significant symbols, truly.”</p>
<p>Biting his lip, Don Benito faltered.</p>
<p>Though the remark of Captain Delano, a man of such native simplicity as to be
incapable of satire or irony, had been dropped in playful allusion to the
Spaniard’s singularly evidenced lordship over the black; yet the
hypochondriac seemed some way to have taken it as a malicious reflection upon
his confessed inability thus far to break down, at least, on a verbal summons,
the entrenched will of the slave. Deploring this supposed misconception, yet
despairing of correcting it, Captain Delano shifted the subject; but finding
his companion more than ever withdrawn, as if still sourly digesting the lees
of the presumed affront above-mentioned, by-and-by Captain Delano likewise
became less talkative, oppressed, against his own will, by what seemed the
secret vindictiveness of the morbidly sensitive Spaniard. But the good sailor,
himself of a quite contrary disposition, refrained, on his part, alike from the
appearance as from the feeling of resentment, and if silent, was only so from
contagion.</p>
<p>Presently the Spaniard, assisted by his servant somewhat discourteously crossed
over from his guest; a procedure which, sensibly enough, might have been
allowed to pass for idle caprice of ill-humor, had not master and man,
lingering round the corner of the elevated skylight, began whispering together
in low voices. This was unpleasing. And more; the moody air of the Spaniard,
which at times had not been without a sort of valetudinarian stateliness, now
seemed anything but dignified; while the menial familiarity of the servant lost
its original charm of simple-hearted attachment.</p>
<p>In his embarrassment, the visitor turned his face to the other side of the
ship. By so doing, his glance accidentally fell on a young Spanish sailor, a
coil of rope in his hand, just stepped from the deck to the first round of the
mizzen-rigging. Perhaps the man would not have been particularly noticed, were
it not that, during his ascent to one of the yards, he, with a sort of covert
intentness, kept his eye fixed on Captain Delano, from whom, presently, it
passed, as if by a natural sequence, to the two whisperers.</p>
<p>His own attention thus redirected to that quarter, Captain Delano gave a slight
start. From something in Don Benito’s manner just then, it seemed as if
the visitor had, at least partly, been the subject of the withdrawn
consultation going on—a conjecture as little agreeable to the guest as it
was little flattering to the host.</p>
<p>The singular alternations of courtesy and ill-breeding in the Spanish captain
were unaccountable, except on one of two suppositions—innocent lunacy, or
wicked imposture.</p>
<p>But the first idea, though it might naturally have occurred to an indifferent
observer, and, in some respect, had not hitherto been wholly a stranger to
Captain Delano’s mind, yet, now that, in an incipient way, he began to
regard the stranger’s conduct something in the light of an intentional
affront, of course the idea of lunacy was virtually vacated. But if not a
lunatic, what then? Under the circumstances, would a gentleman, nay, any honest
boor, act the part now acted by his host? The man was an impostor. Some
low-born adventurer, masquerading as an oceanic grandee; yet so ignorant of the
first requisites of mere gentlemanhood as to be betrayed into the present
remarkable indecorum. That strange ceremoniousness, too, at other times
evinced, seemed not uncharacteristic of one playing a part above his real
level. Benito Cereno—Don Benito Cereno—a sounding name. One, too,
at that period, not unknown, in the surname, to super-cargoes and sea captains
trading along the Spanish Main, as belonging to one of the most enterprising
and extensive mercantile families in all those provinces; several members of it
having titles; a sort of Castilian Rothschild, with a noble brother, or cousin,
in every great trading town of South America. The alleged Don Benito was in
early manhood, about twenty-nine or thirty. To assume a sort of roving
cadetship in the maritime affairs of such a house, what more likely scheme for
a young knave of talent and spirit? But the Spaniard was a pale invalid. Never
mind. For even to the degree of simulating mortal disease, the craft of some
tricksters had been known to attain. To think that, under the aspect of
infantile weakness, the most savage energies might be couched—those
velvets of the Spaniard but the silky paw to his fangs.</p>
<p>From no train of thought did these fancies come; not from within, but from
without; suddenly, too, and in one throng, like hoar frost; yet as soon to
vanish as the mild sun of Captain Delano’s good-nature regained its
meridian.</p>
<p>Glancing over once more towards his host—whose side-face, revealed above
the skylight, was now turned towards him—he was struck by the profile,
whose clearness of cut was refined by the thinness, incident to ill-health, as
well as ennobled about the chin by the beard. Away with suspicion. He was a
true off-shoot of a true hidalgo Cereno.</p>
<p>Relieved by these and other better thoughts, the visitor, lightly humming a
tune, now began indifferently pacing the poop, so as not to betray to Don
Benito that he had at all mistrusted incivility, much less duplicity; for such
mistrust would yet be proved illusory, and by the event; though, for the
present, the circumstance which had provoked that distrust remained
unexplained. But when that little mystery should have been cleared up, Captain
Delano thought he might extremely regret it, did he allow Don Benito to become
aware that he had indulged in ungenerous surmises. In short, to the
Spaniard’s black-letter text, it was best, for awhile, to leave open
margin.</p>
<p>Presently, his pale face twitching and overcast, the Spaniard, still supported
by his attendant, moved over towards his guest, when, with even more than his
usual embarrassment, and a strange sort of intriguing intonation in his husky
whisper, the following conversation began:—</p>
<p>“Señor, may I ask how long you have lain at this isle?”</p>
<p>“Oh, but a day or two, Don Benito.”</p>
<p>“And from what port are you last?”</p>
<p>“Canton.”</p>
<p>“And there, Señor, you exchanged your sealskins for teas and silks, I
think you said?”</p>
<p>“Yes, Silks, mostly.”</p>
<p>“And the balance you took in specie, perhaps?”</p>
<p>Captain Delano, fidgeting a little, answered—</p>
<p>“Yes; some silver; not a very great deal, though.”</p>
<p>“Ah—well. May I ask how many men have you, Señor?”</p>
<p>Captain Delano slightly started, but answered—</p>
<p>“About five-and-twenty, all told.”</p>
<p>“And at present, Señor, all on board, I suppose?”</p>
<p>“All on board, Don Benito,” replied the Captain, now with
satisfaction.</p>
<p>“And will be to-night, Señor?”</p>
<p>At this last question, following so many pertinacious ones, for the soul of him
Captain Delano could not but look very earnestly at the questioner, who,
instead of meeting the glance, with every token of craven discomposure dropped
his eyes to the deck; presenting an unworthy contrast to his servant, who, just
then, was kneeling at his feet, adjusting a loose shoe-buckle; his disengaged
face meantime, with humble curiosity, turned openly up into his master’s
downcast one.</p>
<p>The Spaniard, still with a guilty shuffle, repeated his question:</p>
<p>“And—and will be to-night, Señor?”</p>
<p>“Yes, for aught I know,” returned Captain Delano—“but
nay,” rallying himself into fearless truth, “some of them talked of
going off on another fishing party about midnight.”</p>
<p>“Your ships generally go—go more or less armed, I believe,
Señor?”</p>
<p>“Oh, a six-pounder or two, in case of emergency,” was the
intrepidly indifferent reply, “with a small stock of muskets,
sealing-spears, and cutlasses, you know.”</p>
<p>As he thus responded, Captain Delano again glanced at Don Benito, but the
latter’s eyes were averted; while abruptly and awkwardly shifting the
subject, he made some peevish allusion to the calm, and then, without apology,
once more, with his attendant, withdrew to the opposite bulwarks, where the
whispering was resumed.</p>
<p>At this moment, and ere Captain Delano could cast a cool thought upon what had
just passed, the young Spanish sailor, before mentioned, was seen descending
from the rigging. In act of stooping over to spring inboard to the deck, his
voluminous, unconfined frock, or shirt, of coarse woolen, much spotted with
tar, opened out far down the chest, revealing a soiled under garment of what
seemed the finest linen, edged, about the neck, with a narrow blue ribbon,
sadly faded and worn. At this moment the young sailor’s eye was again
fixed on the whisperers, and Captain Delano thought he observed a lurking
significance in it, as if silent signs, of some Freemason sort, had that
instant been interchanged.</p>
<p>This once more impelled his own glance in the direction of Don Benito, and, as
before, he could not but infer that himself formed the subject of the
conference. He paused. The sound of the hatchet-polishing fell on his ears. He
cast another swift side-look at the two. They had the air of conspirators. In
connection with the late questionings, and the incident of the young sailor,
these things now begat such return of involuntary suspicion, that the singular
guilelessness of the American could not endure it. Plucking up a gay and
humorous expression, he crossed over to the two rapidly,
saying:—“Ha, Don Benito, your black here seems high in your trust;
a sort of privy-counselor, in fact.”</p>
<p>Upon this, the servant looked up with a good-natured grin, but the master
started as from a venomous bite. It was a moment or two before the Spaniard
sufficiently recovered himself to reply; which he did, at last, with cold
constraint:—“Yes, Señor, I have trust in Babo.”</p>
<p>Here Babo, changing his previous grin of mere animal humor into an intelligent
smile, not ungratefully eyed his master.</p>
<p>Finding that the Spaniard now stood silent and reserved, as if involuntarily,
or purposely giving hint that his guest’s proximity was inconvenient just
then, Captain Delano, unwilling to appear uncivil even to incivility itself,
made some trivial remark and moved off; again and again turning over in his
mind the mysterious demeanor of Don Benito Cereno.</p>
<p>He had descended from the poop, and, wrapped in thought, was passing near a
dark hatchway, leading down into the steerage, when, perceiving motion there,
he looked to see what moved. The same instant there was a sparkle in the
shadowy hatchway, and he saw one of the Spanish sailors, prowling there
hurriedly placing his hand in the bosom of his frock, as if hiding something.
Before the man could have been certain who it was that was passing, he slunk
below out of sight. But enough was seen of him to make it sure that he was the
same young sailor before noticed in the rigging.</p>
<p>What was that which so sparkled? thought Captain Delano. It was no
lamp—no match—no live coal. Could it have been a jewel? But how
come sailors with jewels?—or with silk-trimmed under-shirts either? Has
he been robbing the trunks of the dead cabin-passengers? But if so, he would
hardly wear one of the stolen articles on board ship here. Ah, ah—if,
now, that was, indeed, a secret sign I saw passing between this suspicious
fellow and his captain awhile since; if I could only be certain that, in my
uneasiness, my senses did not deceive me, then—</p>
<p>Here, passing from one suspicious thing to another, his mind revolved the
strange questions put to him concerning his ship.</p>
<p>By a curious coincidence, as each point was recalled, the black wizards of
Ashantee would strike up with their hatchets, as in ominous comment on the
white stranger’s thoughts. Pressed by such enigmas and portents, it would
have been almost against nature, had not, even into the least distrustful
heart, some ugly misgivings obtruded.</p>
<p>Observing the ship, now helplessly fallen into a current, with enchanted sails,
drifting with increased rapidity seaward; and noting that, from a lately
intercepted projection of the land, the sealer was hidden, the stout mariner
began to quake at thoughts which he barely durst confess to himself. Above all,
he began to feel a ghostly dread of Don Benito. And yet, when he roused
himself, dilated his chest, felt himself strong on his legs, and coolly
considered it—what did all these phantoms amount to?</p>
<p>Had the Spaniard any sinister scheme, it must have reference not so much to him
(Captain Delano) as to his ship (the Bachelor’s Delight). Hence the
present drifting away of the one ship from the other, instead of favoring any
such possible scheme, was, for the time, at least, opposed to it. Clearly any
suspicion, combining such contradictions, must need be delusive. Beside, was it
not absurd to think of a vessel in distress—a vessel by sickness almost
dismanned of her crew—a vessel whose inmates were parched for
water—was it not a thousand times absurd that such a craft should, at
present, be of a piratical character; or her commander, either for himself or
those under him, cherish any desire but for speedy relief and refreshment? But
then, might not general distress, and thirst in particular, be affected? And
might not that same undiminished Spanish crew, alleged to have perished off to
a remnant, be at that very moment lurking in the hold? On heart-broken pretense
of entreating a cup of cold water, fiends in human form had got into lonely
dwellings, nor retired until a dark deed had been done. And among the Malay
pirates, it was no unusual thing to lure ships after them into their
treacherous harbors, or entice boarders from a declared enemy at sea, by the
spectacle of thinly manned or vacant decks, beneath which prowled a hundred
spears with yellow arms ready to upthrust them through the mats. Not that
Captain Delano had entirely credited such things. He had heard of
them—and now, as stories, they recurred. The present destination of the
ship was the anchorage. There she would be near his own vessel. Upon gaining
that vicinity, might not the San Dominick, like a slumbering volcano, suddenly
let loose energies now hid?</p>
<p>He recalled the Spaniard’s manner while telling his story. There was a
gloomy hesitancy and subterfuge about it. It was just the manner of one making
up his tale for evil purposes, as he goes. But if that story was not true, what
was the truth? That the ship had unlawfully come into the Spaniard’s
possession? But in many of its details, especially in reference to the more
calamitous parts, such as the fatalities among the seamen, the consequent
prolonged beating about, the past sufferings from obstinate calms, and still
continued suffering from thirst; in all these points, as well as others, Don
Benito’s story had corroborated not only the wailing ejaculations of the
indiscriminate multitude, white and black, but likewise—what seemed
impossible to be counterfeit—by the very expression and play of every
human feature, which Captain Delano saw. If Don Benito’s story was,
throughout, an invention, then every soul on board, down to the youngest
negress, was his carefully drilled recruit in the plot: an incredible
inference. And yet, if there was ground for mistrusting his veracity, that
inference was a legitimate one.</p>
<p>But those questions of the Spaniard. There, indeed, one might pause. Did they
not seem put with much the same object with which the burglar or assassin, by
day-time, reconnoitres the walls of a house? But, with ill purposes, to solicit
such information openly of the chief person endangered, and so, in effect,
setting him on his guard; how unlikely a procedure was that? Absurd, then, to
suppose that those questions had been prompted by evil designs. Thus, the same
conduct, which, in this instance, had raised the alarm, served to dispel it. In
short, scarce any suspicion or uneasiness, however apparently reasonable at the
time, which was not now, with equal apparent reason, dismissed.</p>
<p>At last he began to laugh at his former forebodings; and laugh at the strange
ship for, in its aspect, someway siding with them, as it were; and laugh, too,
at the odd-looking blacks, particularly those old scissors-grinders, the
Ashantees; and those bed-ridden old knitting women, the oakum-pickers; and
almost at the dark Spaniard himself, the central hobgoblin of all.</p>
<p>For the rest, whatever in a serious way seemed enigmatical, was now
good-naturedly explained away by the thought that, for the most part, the poor
invalid scarcely knew what he was about; either sulking in black vapors, or
putting idle questions without sense or object. Evidently for the present, the
man was not fit to be intrusted with the ship. On some benevolent plea
withdrawing the command from him, Captain Delano would yet have to send her to
Conception, in charge of his second mate, a worthy person and good
navigator—a plan not more convenient for the San Dominick than for Don
Benito; for, relieved from all anxiety, keeping wholly to his cabin, the sick
man, under the good nursing of his servant, would, probably, by the end of the
passage, be in a measure restored to health, and with that he should also be
restored to authority.</p>
<p>Such were the American’s thoughts. They were tranquilizing. There was a
difference between the idea of Don Benito’s darkly pre-ordaining Captain
Delano’s fate, and Captain Delano’s lightly arranging Don
Benito’s. Nevertheless, it was not without something of relief that the
good seaman presently perceived his whale-boat in the distance. Its absence had
been prolonged by unexpected detention at the sealer’s side, as well as
its returning trip lengthened by the continual recession of the goal.</p>
<p>The advancing speck was observed by the blacks. Their shouts attracted the
attention of Don Benito, who, with a return of courtesy, approaching Captain
Delano, expressed satisfaction at the coming of some supplies, slight and
temporary as they must necessarily prove.</p>
<p>Captain Delano responded; but while doing so, his attention was drawn to
something passing on the deck below: among the crowd climbing the landward
bulwarks, anxiously watching the coming boat, two blacks, to all appearances
accidentally incommoded by one of the sailors, violently pushed him aside,
which the sailor someway resenting, they dashed him to the deck, despite the
earnest cries of the oakum-pickers.</p>
<p>“Don Benito,” said Captain Delano quickly, “do you see what
is going on there? Look!”</p>
<p>But, seized by his cough, the Spaniard staggered, with both hands to his face,
on the point of falling. Captain Delano would have supported him, but the
servant was more alert, who, with one hand sustaining his master, with the
other applied the cordial. Don Benito restored, the black withdrew his support,
slipping aside a little, but dutifully remaining within call of a whisper. Such
discretion was here evinced as quite wiped away, in the visitor’s eyes,
any blemish of impropriety which might have attached to the attendant, from the
indecorous conferences before mentioned; showing, too, that if the servant were
to blame, it might be more the master’s fault than his own, since, when
left to himself, he could conduct thus well.</p>
<p>His glance called away from the spectacle of disorder to the more pleasing one
before him, Captain Delano could not avoid again congratulating his host upon
possessing such a servant, who, though perhaps a little too forward now and
then, must upon the whole be invaluable to one in the invalid’s
situation.</p>
<p>“Tell me, Don Benito,” he added, with a smile—“I should
like to have your man here, myself—what will you take for him? Would
fifty doubloons be any object?”</p>
<p>“Master wouldn’t part with Babo for a thousand doubloons,”
murmured the black, overhearing the offer, and taking it in earnest, and, with
the strange vanity of a faithful slave, appreciated by his master, scorning to
hear so paltry a valuation put upon him by a stranger. But Don Benito,
apparently hardly yet completely restored, and again interrupted by his cough,
made but some broken reply.</p>
<p>Soon his physical distress became so great, affecting his mind, too,
apparently, that, as if to screen the sad spectacle, the servant gently
conducted his master below.</p>
<p>Left to himself, the American, to while away the time till his boat should
arrive, would have pleasantly accosted some one of the few Spanish seamen he
saw; but recalling something that Don Benito had said touching their ill
conduct, he refrained; as a shipmaster indisposed to countenance cowardice or
unfaithfulness in seamen.</p>
<p>While, with these thoughts, standing with eye directed forward towards that
handful of sailors, suddenly he thought that one or two of them returned the
glance and with a sort of meaning. He rubbed his eyes, and looked again; but
again seemed to see the same thing. Under a new form, but more obscure than any
previous one, the old suspicions recurred, but, in the absence of Don Benito,
with less of panic than before. Despite the bad account given of the sailors,
Captain Delano resolved forthwith to accost one of them. Descending the poop,
he made his way through the blacks, his movement drawing a queer cry from the
oakum-pickers, prompted by whom, the negroes, twitching each other aside,
divided before him; but, as if curious to see what was the object of this
deliberate visit to their Ghetto, closing in behind, in tolerable order,
followed the white stranger up. His progress thus proclaimed as by mounted
kings-at-arms, and escorted as by a Caffre guard of honor, Captain Delano,
assuming a good-humored, off-handed air, continued to advance; now and then
saying a blithe word to the negroes, and his eye curiously surveying the white
faces, here and there sparsely mixed in with the blacks, like stray white pawns
venturously involved in the ranks of the chess-men opposed.</p>
<p>While thinking which of them to select for his purpose, he chanced to observe a
sailor seated on the deck engaged in tarring the strap of a large block, a
circle of blacks squatted round him inquisitively eying the process.</p>
<p>The mean employment of the man was in contrast with something superior in his
figure. His hand, black with continually thrusting it into the tar-pot held for
him by a negro, seemed not naturally allied to his face, a face which would
have been a very fine one but for its haggardness. Whether this haggardness had
aught to do with criminality, could not be determined; since, as intense heat
and cold, though unlike, produce like sensations, so innocence and guilt, when,
through casual association with mental pain, stamping any visible impress, use
one seal—a hacked one.</p>
<p>Not again that this reflection occurred to Captain Delano at the time,
charitable man as he was. Rather another idea. Because observing so singular a
haggardness combined with a dark eye, averted as in trouble and shame, and then
again recalling Don Benito’s confessed ill opinion of his crew,
insensibly he was operated upon by certain general notions which, while
disconnecting pain and abashment from virtue, invariably link them with vice.</p>
<p>If, indeed, there be any wickedness on board this ship, thought Captain Delano,
be sure that man there has fouled his hand in it, even as now he fouls it in
the pitch. I don’t like to accost him. I will speak to this other, this
old Jack here on the windlass.</p>
<p>He advanced to an old Barcelona tar, in ragged red breeches and dirty
night-cap, cheeks trenched and bronzed, whiskers dense as thorn hedges. Seated
between two sleepy-looking Africans, this mariner, like his younger shipmate,
was employed upon some rigging—splicing a cable—the sleepy-looking
blacks performing the inferior function of holding the outer parts of the ropes
for him.</p>
<p>Upon Captain Delano’s approach, the man at once hung his head below its
previous level; the one necessary for business. It appeared as if he desired to
be thought absorbed, with more than common fidelity, in his task. Being
addressed, he glanced up, but with what seemed a furtive, diffident air, which
sat strangely enough on his weather-beaten visage, much as if a grizzly bear,
instead of growling and biting, should simper and cast sheep’s eyes. He
was asked several questions concerning the voyage—questions purposely
referring to several particulars in Don Benito’s narrative, not
previously corroborated by those impulsive cries greeting the visitor on first
coming on board. The questions were briefly answered, confirming all that
remained to be confirmed of the story. The negroes about the windlass joined in
with the old sailor; but, as they became talkative, he by degrees became mute,
and at length quite glum, seemed morosely unwilling to answer more questions,
and yet, all the while, this ursine air was somehow mixed with his sheepish
one.</p>
<p>Despairing of getting into unembarrassed talk with such a centaur, Captain
Delano, after glancing round for a more promising countenance, but seeing none,
spoke pleasantly to the blacks to make way for him; and so, amid various grins
and grimaces, returned to the poop, feeling a little strange at first, he could
hardly tell why, but upon the whole with regained confidence in Benito Cereno.</p>
<p>How plainly, thought he, did that old whiskerando yonder betray a consciousness
of ill desert. No doubt, when he saw me coming, he dreaded lest I, apprised by
his Captain of the crew’s general misbehavior, came with sharp words for
him, and so down with his head. And yet—and yet, now that I think of it,
that very old fellow, if I err not, was one of those who seemed so earnestly
eying me here awhile since. Ah, these currents spin one’s head round
almost as much as they do the ship. Ha, there now’s a pleasant sort of
sunny sight; quite sociable, too.</p>
<p>His attention had been drawn to a slumbering negress, partly disclosed through
the lacework of some rigging, lying, with youthful limbs carelessly disposed,
under the lee of the bulwarks, like a doe in the shade of a woodland rock.
Sprawling at her lapped breasts, was her wide-awake fawn, stark naked, its
black little body half lifted from the deck, crosswise with its dam’s;
its hands, like two paws, clambering upon her; its mouth and nose ineffectually
rooting to get at the mark; and meantime giving a vexatious half-grunt,
blending with the composed snore of the negress.</p>
<p>The uncommon vigor of the child at length roused the mother. She started up, at
a distance facing Captain Delano. But as if not at all concerned at the
attitude in which she had been caught, delightedly she caught the child up,
with maternal transports, covering it with kisses.</p>
<p>There’s naked nature, now; pure tenderness and love, thought Captain
Delano, well pleased.</p>
<p>This incident prompted him to remark the other negresses more particularly than
before. He was gratified with their manners: like most uncivilized women, they
seemed at once tender of heart and tough of constitution; equally ready to die
for their infants or fight for them. Unsophisticated as leopardesses; loving as
doves. Ah! thought Captain Delano, these, perhaps, are some of the very women
whom Ledyard saw in Africa, and gave such a noble account of.</p>
<p>These natural sights somehow insensibly deepened his confidence and ease. At
last he looked to see how his boat was getting on; but it was still pretty
remote. He turned to see if Don Benito had returned; but he had not.</p>
<p>To change the scene, as well as to please himself with a leisurely observation
of the coming boat, stepping over into the mizzen-chains, he clambered his way
into the starboard quarter-gallery—one of those abandoned
Venetian-looking water-balconies previously mentioned—retreats cut off
from the deck. As his foot pressed the half-damp, half-dry sea-mosses matting
the place, and a chance phantom cats-paw—an islet of breeze, unheralded,
unfollowed—as this ghostly cats-paw came fanning his cheek; as his glance
fell upon the row of small, round dead-lights—all closed like coppered
eyes of the coffined—and the state-cabin door, once connecting with the
gallery, even as the dead-lights had once looked out upon it, but now calked
fast like a sarcophagus lid; and to a purple-black tarred-over, panel,
threshold, and post; and he bethought him of the time, when that state-cabin
and this state-balcony had heard the voices of the Spanish king’s
officers, and the forms of the Lima viceroy’s daughters had perhaps
leaned where he stood—as these and other images flitted through his mind,
as the cats-paw through the calm, gradually he felt rising a dreamy inquietude,
like that of one who alone on the prairie feels unrest from the repose of the
noon.</p>
<p>He leaned against the carved balustrade, again looking off toward his boat; but
found his eye falling upon the ribbon grass, trailing along the ship’s
water-line, straight as a border of green box; and parterres of sea-weed, broad
ovals and crescents, floating nigh and far, with what seemed long formal alleys
between, crossing the terraces of swells, and sweeping round as if leading to
the grottoes below. And overhanging all was the balustrade by his arm, which,
partly stained with pitch and partly embossed with moss, seemed the charred
ruin of some summer-house in a grand garden long running to waste.</p>
<p>Trying to break one charm, he was but becharmed anew. Though upon the wide sea,
he seemed in some far inland country; prisoner in some deserted château, left
to stare at empty grounds, and peer out at vague roads, where never wagon or
wayfarer passed.</p>
<p>But these enchantments were a little disenchanted as his eye fell on the
corroded main-chains. Of an ancient style, massy and rusty in link, shackle and
bolt, they seemed even more fit for the ship’s present business than the
one for which she had been built.</p>
<p>Presently he thought something moved nigh the chains. He rubbed his eyes, and
looked hard. Groves of rigging were about the chains; and there, peering from
behind a great stay, like an Indian from behind a hemlock, a Spanish sailor, a
marlingspike in his hand, was seen, who made what seemed an imperfect gesture
towards the balcony, but immediately as if alarmed by some advancing step along
the deck within, vanished into the recesses of the hempen forest, like a
poacher.</p>
<p>What meant this? Something the man had sought to communicate, unbeknown to any
one, even to his captain. Did the secret involve aught unfavorable to his
captain? Were those previous misgivings of Captain Delano’s about to be
verified? Or, in his haunted mood at the moment, had some random, unintentional
motion of the man, while busy with the stay, as if repairing it, been mistaken
for a significant beckoning?</p>
<p>Not unbewildered, again he gazed off for his boat. But it was temporarily
hidden by a rocky spur of the isle. As with some eagerness he bent forward,
watching for the first shooting view of its beak, the balustrade gave way
before him like charcoal. Had he not clutched an outreaching rope he would have
fallen into the sea. The crash, though feeble, and the fall, though hollow, of
the rotten fragments, must have been overheard. He glanced up. With sober
curiosity peering down upon him was one of the old oakum-pickers, slipped from
his perch to an outside boom; while below the old negro, and, invisible to him,
reconnoitering from a port-hole like a fox from the mouth of its den, crouched
the Spanish sailor again. From something suddenly suggested by the man’s
air, the mad idea now darted into Captain Delano’s mind, that Don
Benito’s plea of indisposition, in withdrawing below, was but a pretense:
that he was engaged there maturing his plot, of which the sailor, by some means
gaining an inkling, had a mind to warn the stranger against; incited, it may
be, by gratitude for a kind word on first boarding the ship. Was it from
foreseeing some possible interference like this, that Don Benito had,
beforehand, given such a bad character of his sailors, while praising the
negroes; though, indeed, the former seemed as docile as the latter the
contrary? The whites, too, by nature, were the shrewder race. A man with some
evil design, would he not be likely to speak well of that stupidity which was
blind to his depravity, and malign that intelligence from which it might not be
hidden? Not unlikely, perhaps. But if the whites had dark secrets concerning
Don Benito, could then Don Benito be any way in complicity with the blacks? But
they were too stupid. Besides, who ever heard of a white so far a renegade as
to apostatize from his very species almost, by leaguing in against it with
negroes? These difficulties recalled former ones. Lost in their mazes, Captain
Delano, who had now regained the deck, was uneasily advancing along it, when he
observed a new face; an aged sailor seated cross-legged near the main hatchway.
His skin was shrunk up with wrinkles like a pelican’s empty pouch; his
hair frosted; his countenance grave and composed. His hands were full of ropes,
which he was working into a large knot. Some blacks were about him obligingly
dipping the strands for him, here and there, as the exigencies of the operation
demanded.</p>
<p>Captain Delano crossed over to him, and stood in silence surveying the knot;
his mind, by a not uncongenial transition, passing from its own entanglements
to those of the hemp. For intricacy, such a knot he had never seen in an
American ship, nor indeed any other. The old man looked like an Egyptian
priest, making Gordian knots for the temple of Ammon. The knot seemed a
combination of double-bowline-knot, treble-crown-knot, back-handed-well-knot,
knot-in-and-out-knot, and jamming-knot.</p>
<p>At last, puzzled to comprehend the meaning of such a knot, Captain Delano
addressed the knotter:—</p>
<p>“What are you knotting there, my man?”</p>
<p>“The knot,” was the brief reply, without looking up.</p>
<p>“So it seems; but what is it for?”</p>
<p>“For some one else to undo,” muttered back the old man, plying his
fingers harder than ever, the knot being now nearly completed.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>It was now about noon, though, from the grayness of everything, it seemed to be
getting towards dusk.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Ah, thought he—gravely enough—this is like the ague: because it
went off, it follows not that it won’t come back.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Yes, this is a strange craft; a strange history, too, and strange folks on
board. But—nothing more.</p>
<p>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:</p>
<p>First, the affair of the Spanish lad assailed with a knife by the slave boy; an
act winked at by Don Benito. Second, the tyranny in Don Benito’s
treatment of Atufal, the black; as if a child should lead a bull of the Nile by
the ring in his nose. Third, the trampling of the sailor by the two negroes; a
piece of insolence passed over without so much as a reprimand. Fourth, the
cringing submission to their master, of all the ship’s underlings, mostly
blacks; as if by the least inadvertence they feared to draw down his despotic
displeasure.</p>
<p>Coupling these points, they seemed somewhat contradictory. But what then,
thought Captain Delano, glancing towards his now nearing boat—what then?
Why, Don Benito is a very capricious commander. But he is not the first of the
sort I have seen; though it’s true he rather exceeds any other. But as a
nation—continued he in his reveries—these Spaniards are all an odd
set; the very word Spaniard has a curious, conspirator, Guy-Fawkish twang to
it. And yet, I dare say, Spaniards in the main are as good folks as any in
Duxbury, Massachusetts. Ah good! At last “Rover” has come.</p>
<p>As, with its welcome freight, the boat touched the side, the oakum-pickers,
with venerable gestures, sought to restrain the blacks, who, at the sight of
three gurried water-casks in its bottom, and a pile of wilted pumpkins in its
bow, hung over the bulwarks in disorderly raptures.</p>
<p>Don Benito, with his servant, now appeared; his coming, perhaps, hastened by
hearing the noise. Of him Captain Delano sought permission to serve out the
water, so that all might share alike, and none injure themselves by unfair
excess. But sensible, and, on Don Benito’s account, kind as this offer
was, it was received with what seemed impatience; as if aware that he lacked
energy as a commander, Don Benito, with the true jealousy of weakness, resented
as an affront any interference. So, at least, Captain Delano inferred.</p>
<p>In another moment the casks were being hoisted in, when some of the eager
negroes accidentally jostled Captain Delano, where he stood by the gangway; so,
that, unmindful of Don Benito, yielding to the impulse of the moment, with
good-natured authority he bade the blacks stand back; to enforce his words
making use of a half-mirthful, half-menacing gesture. Instantly the blacks
paused, just where they were, each negro and negress suspended in his or her
posture, exactly as the word had found them—for a few seconds continuing
so—while, as between the responsive posts of a telegraph, an unknown
syllable ran from man to man among the perched oakum-pickers. While the
visitor’s attention was fixed by this scene, suddenly the
hatchet-polishers half rose, and a rapid cry came from Don Benito.</p>
<p>Thinking that at the signal of the Spaniard he was about to be massacred,
Captain Delano would have sprung for his boat, but paused, as the
oakum-pickers, dropping down into the crowd with earnest exclamations, forced
every white and every negro back, at the same moment, with gestures friendly
and familiar, almost jocose, bidding him, in substance, not be a fool.
Simultaneously the hatchet-polishers resumed their seats, quietly as so many
tailors, and at once, as if nothing had happened, the work of hoisting in the
casks was resumed, whites and blacks singing at the tackle.</p>
<p>Captain Delano glanced towards Don Benito. As he saw his meagre form in the act
of recovering itself from reclining in the servant’s arms, into which the
agitated invalid had fallen, he could not but marvel at the panic by which
himself had been surprised, on the darting supposition that such a commander,
who, upon a legitimate occasion, so trivial, too, as it now appeared, could
lose all self-command, was, with energetic iniquity, going to bring about his
murder.</p>
<p>The casks being on deck, Captain Delano was handed a number of jars and cups by
one of the steward’s aids, who, in the name of his captain, entreated him
to do as he had proposed—dole out the water. He complied, with republican
impartiality as to this republican element, which always seeks one level,
serving the oldest white no better than the youngest black; excepting, indeed,
poor Don Benito, whose condition, if not rank, demanded an extra allowance. To
him, in the first place, Captain Delano presented a fair pitcher of the fluid;
but, thirsting as he was for it, the Spaniard quaffed not a drop until after
several grave bows and salutes. A reciprocation of courtesies which the
sight-loving Africans hailed with clapping of hands.</p>
<p>Two of the less wilted pumpkins being reserved for the cabin table, the residue
were minced up on the spot for the general regalement. But the soft bread,
sugar, and bottled cider, Captain Delano would have given the whites alone, and
in chief Don Benito; but the latter objected; which disinterestedness not a
little pleased the American; and so mouthfuls all around were given alike to
whites and blacks; excepting one bottle of cider, which Babo insisted upon
setting aside for his master.</p>
<p>Here it may be observed that as, on the first visit of the boat, the American
had not permitted his men to board the ship, neither did he now; being
unwilling to add to the confusion of the decks.</p>
<p>Not uninfluenced by the peculiar good-humor at present prevailing, and for the
time oblivious of any but benevolent thoughts, Captain Delano, who, from recent
indications, counted upon a breeze within an hour or two at furthest,
dispatched the boat back to the sealer, with orders for all the hands that
could be spared immediately to set about rafting casks to the watering-place
and filling them. Likewise he bade word be carried to his chief officer, that
if, against present expectation, the ship was not brought to anchor by sunset,
he need be under no concern; for as there was to be a full moon that night, he
(Captain Delano) would remain on board ready to play the pilot, come the wind
soon or late.</p>
<p>As the two Captains stood together, observing the departing boat—the
servant, as it happened, having just spied a spot on his master’s velvet
sleeve, and silently engaged rubbing it out—the American expressed his
regrets that the San Dominick had no boats; none, at least, but the unseaworthy
old hulk of the long-boat, which, warped as a camel’s skeleton in the
desert, and almost as bleached, lay pot-wise inverted amidships, one side a
little tipped, furnishing a subterraneous sort of den for family groups of the
blacks, mostly women and small children; who, squatting on old mats below, or
perched above in the dark dome, on the elevated seats, were descried, some
distance within, like a social circle of bats, sheltering in some friendly
cave; at intervals, ebon flights of naked boys and girls, three or four years
old, darting in and out of the den’s mouth.</p>
<p>“Had you three or four boats now, Don Benito,” said Captain Delano,
“I think that, by tugging at the oars, your negroes here might help along
matters some. Did you sail from port without boats, Don Benito?”</p>
<p>“They were stove in the gales, Señor.”</p>
<p>“That was bad. Many men, too, you lost then. Boats and men. Those must
have been hard gales, Don Benito.”</p>
<p>“Past all speech,” cringed the Spaniard.</p>
<p>“Tell me, Don Benito,” continued his companion with increased
interest, “tell me, were these gales immediately off the pitch of Cape
Horn?”</p>
<p>“Cape Horn?—who spoke of Cape Horn?”</p>
<p>“Yourself did, when giving me an account of your voyage,” answered
Captain Delano, with almost equal astonishment at this eating of his own words,
even as he ever seemed eating his own heart, on the part of the Spaniard.
“You yourself, Don Benito, spoke of Cape Horn,” he emphatically
repeated.</p>
<p>The Spaniard turned, in a sort of stooping posture, pausing an instant, as one
about to make a plunging exchange of elements, as from air to water.</p>
<p>At this moment a messenger-boy, a white, hurried by, in the regular performance
of his function carrying the last expired half hour forward to the forecastle,
from the cabin time-piece, to have it struck at the ship’s large bell.</p>
<p>“Master,” said the servant, discontinuing his work on the coat
sleeve, and addressing the rapt Spaniard with a sort of timid apprehensiveness,
as one charged with a duty, the discharge of which, it was foreseen, would
prove irksome to the very person who had imposed it, and for whose benefit it
was intended, “master told me never mind where he was, or how engaged,
always to remind him to a minute, when shaving-time comes. Miguel has gone to
strike the half-hour afternoon. It is <i>now</i>, master. Will master go into
the cuddy?”</p>
<p>“Ah—yes,” answered the Spaniard, starting, as from dreams
into realities; then turning upon Captain Delano, he said that ere long he
would resume the conversation.</p>
<p>“Then if master means to talk more to Don Amasa,” said the servant,
“why not let Don Amasa sit by master in the cuddy, and master can talk,
and Don Amasa can listen, while Babo here lathers and strops.”</p>
<p>“Yes,” said Captain Delano, not unpleased with this sociable plan,
“yes, Don Benito, unless you had rather not, I will go with you.”</p>
<p>“Be it so, Señor.”</p>
<p>As the three passed aft, the American could not but think it another strange
instance of his host’s capriciousness, this being shaved with such
uncommon punctuality in the middle of the day. But he deemed it more than
likely that the servant’s anxious fidelity had something to do with the
matter; inasmuch as the timely interruption served to rally his master from the
mood which had evidently been coming upon him.</p>
<p>The place called the cuddy was a light deck-cabin formed by the poop, a sort of
attic to the large cabin below. Part of it had formerly been the quarters of
the officers; but since their death all the partitioning had been thrown down,
and the whole interior converted into one spacious and airy marine hall; for
absence of fine furniture and picturesque disarray of odd appurtenances,
somewhat answering to the wide, cluttered hall of some eccentric
bachelor-squire in the country, who hangs his shooting-jacket and tobacco-pouch
on deer antlers, and keeps his fishing-rod, tongs, and walking-stick in the
same corner.</p>
<p>The similitude was heightened, if not originally suggested, by glimpses of the
surrounding sea; since, in one aspect, the country and the ocean seem
cousins-german.</p>
<p>The floor of the cuddy was matted. Overhead, four or five old muskets were
stuck into horizontal holes along the beams. On one side was a claw-footed old
table lashed to the deck; a thumbed missal on it, and over it a small, meagre
crucifix attached to the bulk-head. Under the table lay a dented cutlass or
two, with a hacked harpoon, among some melancholy old rigging, like a heap of
poor friars’ girdles. There were also two long, sharp-ribbed settees of
Malacca cane, black with age, and uncomfortable to look at as
inquisitors’ racks, with a large, misshapen arm-chair, which, furnished
with a rude barber’s crotch at the back, working with a screw, seemed
some grotesque engine of torment. A flag locker was in one corner, open,
exposing various colored bunting, some rolled up, others half unrolled, still
others tumbled. Opposite was a cumbrous washstand, of black mahogany, all of
one block, with a pedestal, like a font, and over it a railed shelf, containing
combs, brushes, and other implements of the toilet. A torn hammock of stained
grass swung near; the sheets tossed, and the pillow wrinkled up like a brow, as
if who ever slept here slept but illy, with alternate visitations of sad
thoughts and bad dreams.</p>
<p>The further extremity of the cuddy, overhanging the ship’s stern, was
pierced with three openings, windows or port-holes, according as men or cannon
might peer, socially or unsocially, out of them. At present neither men nor
cannon were seen, though huge ring-bolts and other rusty iron fixtures of the
wood-work hinted of twenty-four-pounders.</p>
<p>Glancing towards the hammock as he entered, Captain Delano said, “You
sleep here, Don Benito?”</p>
<p>“Yes, Señor, since we got into mild weather.”</p>
<p>“This seems a sort of dormitory, sitting-room, sail-loft, chapel, armory,
and private closet all together, Don Benito,” added Captain Delano,
looking round.</p>
<p>“Yes, Señor; events have not been favorable to much order in my
arrangements.”</p>
<p>Here the servant, napkin on arm, made a motion as if waiting his master’s
good pleasure. Don Benito signified his readiness, when, seating him in the
Malacca arm-chair, and for the guest’s convenience drawing opposite one
of the settees, the servant commenced operations by throwing back his
master’s collar and loosening his cravat.</p>
<p>There is something in the negro which, in a peculiar way, fits him for
avocations about one’s person. Most negroes are natural valets and
hair-dressers; taking to the comb and brush congenially as to the castinets,
and flourishing them apparently with almost equal satisfaction. There is, too,
a smooth tact about them in this employment, with a marvelous, noiseless,
gliding briskness, not ungraceful in its way, singularly pleasing to behold,
and still more so to be the manipulated subject of. And above all is the great
gift of good-humor. Not the mere grin or laugh is here meant. Those were
unsuitable. But a certain easy cheerfulness, harmonious in every glance and
gesture; as though God had set the whole negro to some pleasant tune.</p>
<p>When to this is added the docility arising from the unaspiring contentment of a
limited mind and that susceptibility of blind attachment sometimes inhering in
indisputable inferiors, one readily perceives why those hypochondriacs, Johnson
and Byron—it may be, something like the hypochondriac Benito
Cereno—took to their hearts, almost to the exclusion of the entire white
race, their serving men, the negroes, Barber and Fletcher. But if there be that
in the negro which exempts him from the inflicted sourness of the morbid or
cynical mind, how, in his most prepossessing aspects, must he appear to a
benevolent one? When at ease with respect to exterior things, Captain
Delano’s nature was not only benign, but familiarly and humorously so. At
home, he had often taken rare satisfaction in sitting in his door, watching
some free man of color at his work or play. If on a voyage he chanced to have a
black sailor, invariably he was on chatty and half-gamesome terms with him. In
fact, like most men of a good, blithe heart, Captain Delano took to negroes,
not philanthropically, but genially, just as other men to Newfoundland dogs.</p>
<p>Hitherto, the circumstances in which he found the San Dominick had repressed
the tendency. But in the cuddy, relieved from his former uneasiness, and, for
various reasons, more sociably inclined than at any previous period of the day,
and seeing the colored servant, napkin on arm, so debonair about his master, in
a business so familiar as that of shaving, too, all his old weakness for
negroes returned.</p>
<p>Among other things, he was amused with an odd instance of the African love of
bright colors and fine shows, in the black’s informally taking from the
flag-locker a great piece of bunting of all hues, and lavishly tucking it under
his master’s chin for an apron.</p>
<p>The mode of shaving among the Spaniards is a little different from what it is
with other nations. They have a basin, specifically called a barber’s
basin, which on one side is scooped out, so as accurately to receive the chin,
against which it is closely held in lathering; which is done, not with a brush,
but with soap dipped in the water of the basin and rubbed on the face.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“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.</p>
<p>“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.</p>
<p>Again Don Benito faintly shuddered.</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>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.”</p>
<p>No sword drawn before James the First of England, no assassination in that
timid King’s presence, could have produced a more terrified aspect than
was now presented by Don Benito.</p>
<p>Poor fellow, thought Captain Delano, so nervous he can’t even bear the
sight of barber’s blood; and this unstrung, sick man, is it credible that
I should have imagined he meant to spill all my blood, who can’t endure
the sight of one little drop of his own? Surely, Amasa Delano, you have been
beside yourself this day. Tell it not when you get home, sappy Amasa. Well,
well, he looks like a murderer, doesn’t he? More like as if himself were
to be done for. Well, well, this day’s experience shall be a good lesson.</p>
<p>Meantime, while these things were running through the honest seaman’s
mind, the servant had taken the napkin from his arm, and to Don Benito had
said—“But answer Don Amasa, please, master, while I wipe this ugly
stuff off the razor, and strop it again.”</p>
<p>As he said the words, his face was turned half round, so as to be alike visible
to the Spaniard and the American, and seemed, by its expression, to hint, that
he was desirous, by getting his master to go on with the conversation,
considerately to withdraw his attention from the recent annoying accident. As
if glad to snatch the offered relief, Don Benito resumed, rehearsing to Captain
Delano, that not only were the calms of unusual duration, but the ship had
fallen in with obstinate currents; and other things he added, some of which
were but repetitions of former statements, to explain how it came to pass that
the passage from Cape Horn to St. Maria had been so exceedingly long; now and
then, mingling with his words, incidental praises, less qualified than before,
to the blacks, for their general good conduct. These particulars were not given
consecutively, the servant, at convenient times, using his razor, and so,
between the intervals of shaving, the story and panegyric went on with more
than usual huskiness.</p>
<p>To Captain Delano’s imagination, now again not wholly at rest, there was
something so hollow in the Spaniard’s manner, with apparently some
reciprocal hollowness in the servant’s dusky comment of silence, that the
idea flashed across him, that possibly master and man, for some unknown
purpose, were acting out, both in word and deed, nay, to the very tremor of Don
Benito’s limbs, some juggling play before him. Neither did the suspicion
of collusion lack apparent support, from the fact of those whispered
conferences before mentioned. But then, what could be the object of enacting
this play of the barber before him? At last, regarding the notion as a whimsy,
insensibly suggested, perhaps, by the theatrical aspect of Don Benito in his
harlequin ensign, Captain Delano speedily banished it.</p>
<p>The shaving over, the servant bestirred himself with a small bottle of scented
waters, pouring a few drops on the head, and then diligently rubbing; the
vehemence of the exercise causing the muscles of his face to twitch rather
strangely.</p>
<p>His next operation was with comb, scissors, and brush; going round and round,
smoothing a curl here, clipping an unruly whisker-hair there, giving a graceful
sweep to the temple-lock, with other impromptu touches evincing the hand of a
master; while, like any resigned gentleman in barber’s hands, Don Benito
bore all, much less uneasily, at least than he had done the razoring; indeed,
he sat so pale and rigid now, that the negro seemed a Nubian sculptor finishing
off a white statue-head.</p>
<p>All being over at last, the standard of Spain removed, tumbled up, and tossed
back into the flag-locker, the negro’s warm breath blowing away any stray
hair, which might have lodged down his master’s neck; collar and cravat
readjusted; a speck of lint whisked off the velvet lapel; all this being done;
backing off a little space, and pausing with an expression of subdued
self-complacency, the servant for a moment surveyed his master, as, in toilet
at least, the creature of his own tasteful hands.</p>
<p>Captain Delano playfully complimented him upon his achievement; at the same
time congratulating Don Benito.</p>
<p>But neither sweet waters, nor shampooing, nor fidelity, nor sociality,
delighted the Spaniard. Seeing him relapsing into forbidding gloom, and still
remaining seated, Captain Delano, thinking that his presence was undesired just
then, withdrew, on pretense of seeing whether, as he had prophesied, any signs
of a breeze were visible.</p>
<p>Walking forward to the main-mast, he stood awhile thinking over the scene, and
not without some undefined misgivings, when he heard a noise near the cuddy,
and turning, saw the negro, his hand to his cheek. Advancing, Captain Delano
perceived that the cheek was bleeding. He was about to ask the cause, when the
negro’s wailing soliloquy enlightened him.</p>
<p>“Ah, when will master get better from his sickness; only the sour heart
that sour sickness breeds made him serve Babo so; cutting Babo with the razor,
because, only by accident, Babo had given master one little scratch; and for
the first time in so many a day, too. Ah, ah, ah,” holding his hand to
his face.</p>
<p>Is it possible, thought Captain Delano; was it to wreak in private his Spanish
spite against this poor friend of his, that Don Benito, by his sullen manner,
impelled me to withdraw? Ah this slavery breeds ugly passions in
man.—Poor fellow!</p>
<p>He was about to speak in sympathy to the negro, but with a timid reluctance he
now re-entered the cuddy.</p>
<p>Presently master and man came forth; Don Benito leaning on his servant as if
nothing had happened.</p>
<p>But a sort of love-quarrel, after all, thought Captain Delano.</p>
<p>He accosted Don Benito, and they slowly walked together. They had gone but a
few paces, when the steward—a tall, rajah-looking mulatto, orientally set
off with a pagoda turban formed by three or four Madras handkerchiefs wound
about his head, tier on tier—approaching with a saalam, announced lunch
in the cabin.</p>
<p>On their way thither, the two captains were preceded by the mulatto, who,
turning round as he advanced, with continual smiles and bows, ushered them on,
a display of elegance which quite completed the insignificance of the small
bare-headed Babo, who, as if not unconscious of inferiority, eyed askance the
graceful steward. But in part, Captain Delano imputed his jealous watchfulness
to that peculiar feeling which the full-blooded African entertains for the
adulterated one. As for the steward, his manner, if not bespeaking much dignity
of self-respect, yet evidenced his extreme desire to please; which is doubly
meritorious, as at once Christian and Chesterfieldian.</p>
<p>Captain Delano observed with interest that while the complexion of the mulatto
was hybrid, his physiognomy was European—classically so.</p>
<p>“Don Benito,” whispered he, “I am glad to see this
usher-of-the-golden-rod of yours; the sight refutes an ugly remark once made to
me by a Barbadoes planter; that when a mulatto has a regular European face,
look out for him; he is a devil. But see, your steward here has features more
regular than King George’s of England; and yet there he nods, and bows,
and smiles; a king, indeed—the king of kind hearts and polite fellows.
What a pleasant voice he has, too?”</p>
<p>“He has, Señor.”</p>
<p>“But tell me, has he not, so far as you have known him, always proved a
good, worthy fellow?” said Captain Delano, pausing, while with a final
genuflexion the steward disappeared into the cabin; “come, for the reason
just mentioned, I am curious to know.”</p>
<p>“Francesco is a good man,” a sort of sluggishly responded Don
Benito, like a phlegmatic appreciator, who would neither find fault nor
flatter.</p>
<p>“Ah, I thought so. For it were strange, indeed, and not very creditable
to us white-skins, if a little of our blood mixed with the African’s,
should, far from improving the latter’s quality, have the sad effect of
pouring vitriolic acid into black broth; improving the hue, perhaps, but not
the wholesomeness.”</p>
<p>“Doubtless, doubtless, Señor, but”—glancing at
Babo—“not to speak of negroes, your planter’s remark I have
heard applied to the Spanish and Indian intermixtures in our provinces. But I
know nothing about the matter,” he listlessly added.</p>
<p>And here they entered the cabin.</p>
<p>The lunch was a frugal one. Some of Captain Delano’s fresh fish and
pumpkins, biscuit and salt beef, the reserved bottle of cider, and the San
Dominick’s last bottle of Canary.</p>
<p>As they entered, Francesco, with two or three colored aids, was hovering over
the table giving the last adjustments. Upon perceiving their master they
withdrew, Francesco making a smiling congé, and the Spaniard, without
condescending to notice it, fastidiously remarking to his companion that he
relished not superfluous attendance.</p>
<p>Without companions, host and guest sat down, like a childless married couple,
at opposite ends of the table, Don Benito waving Captain Delano to his place,
and, weak as he was, insisting upon that gentleman being seated before himself.</p>
<p>The negro placed a rug under Don Benito’s feet, and a cushion behind his
back, and then stood behind, not his master’s chair, but Captain
Delano’s. At first, this a little surprised the latter. But it was soon
evident that, in taking his position, the black was still true to his master;
since by facing him he could the more readily anticipate his slightest want.</p>
<p>“This is an uncommonly intelligent fellow of yours, Don Benito,”
whispered Captain Delano across the table.</p>
<p>“You say true, Señor.”</p>
<p>During the repast, the guest again reverted to parts of Don Benito’s
story, begging further particulars here and there. He inquired how it was that
the scurvy and fever should have committed such wholesale havoc upon the
whites, while destroying less than half of the blacks. As if this question
reproduced the whole scene of plague before the Spaniard’s eyes,
miserably reminding him of his solitude in a cabin where before he had had so
many friends and officers round him, his hand shook, his face became hueless,
broken words escaped; but directly the sane memory of the past seemed replaced
by insane terrors of the present. With starting eyes he stared before him at
vacancy. For nothing was to be seen but the hand of his servant pushing the
Canary over towards him. At length a few sips served partially to restore him.
He made random reference to the different constitution of races, enabling one
to offer more resistance to certain maladies than another. The thought was new
to his companion.</p>
<p>Presently Captain Delano, intending to say something to his host concerning the
pecuniary part of the business he had undertaken for him,
especially—since he was strictly accountable to his owners—with
reference to the new suit of sails, and other things of that sort; and
naturally preferring to conduct such affairs in private, was desirous that the
servant should withdraw; imagining that Don Benito for a few minutes could
dispense with his attendance. He, however, waited awhile; thinking that, as the
conversation proceeded, Don Benito, without being prompted, would perceive the
propriety of the step.</p>
<p>But it was otherwise. At last catching his host’s eye, Captain Delano,
with a slight backward gesture of his thumb, whispered, “Don Benito,
pardon me, but there is an interference with the full expression of what I have
to say to you.”</p>
<p>Upon this the Spaniard changed countenance; which was imputed to his resenting
the hint, as in some way a reflection upon his servant. After a moment’s
pause, he assured his guest that the black’s remaining with them could be
of no disservice; because since losing his officers he had made Babo (whose
original office, it now appeared, had been captain of the slaves) not only his
constant attendant and companion, but in all things his confidant.</p>
<p>After this, nothing more could be said; though, indeed, Captain Delano could
hardly avoid some little tinge of irritation upon being left ungratified in so
inconsiderable a wish, by one, too, for whom he intended such solid services.
But it is only his querulousness, thought he; and so filling his glass he
proceeded to business.</p>
<p>The price of the sails and other matters was fixed upon. But while this was
being done, the American observed that, though his original offer of assistance
had been hailed with hectic animation, yet now when it was reduced to a
business transaction, indifference and apathy were betrayed. Don Benito, in
fact, appeared to submit to hearing the details more out of regard to common
propriety, than from any impression that weighty benefit to himself and his
voyage was involved.</p>
<p>Soon, his manner became still more reserved. The effort was vain to seek to
draw him into social talk. Gnawed by his splenetic mood, he sat twitching his
beard, while to little purpose the hand of his servant, mute as that on the
wall, slowly pushed over the Canary.</p>
<p>Lunch being over, they sat down on the cushioned transom; the servant placing a
pillow behind his master. The long continuance of the calm had now affected the
atmosphere. Don Benito sighed heavily, as if for breath.</p>
<p>“Why not adjourn to the cuddy,” said Captain Delano; “there
is more air there.” But the host sat silent and motionless.</p>
<p>Meantime his servant knelt before him, with a large fan of feathers. And
Francesco coming in on tiptoes, handed the negro a little cup of aromatic
waters, with which at intervals he chafed his master’s brow; smoothing
the hair along the temples as a nurse does a child’s. He spoke no word.
He only rested his eye on his master’s, as if, amid all Don
Benito’s distress, a little to refresh his spirit by the silent sight of
fidelity.</p>
<p>Presently the ship’s bell sounded two o’clock; and through the
cabin windows a slight rippling of the sea was discerned; and from the desired
direction.</p>
<p>“There,” exclaimed Captain Delano, “I told you so, Don
Benito, look!”</p>
<p>He had risen to his feet, speaking in a very animated tone, with a view the
more to rouse his companion. But though the crimson curtain of the stern-window
near him that moment fluttered against his pale cheek, Don Benito seemed to
have even less welcome for the breeze than the calm.</p>
<p>Poor fellow, thought Captain Delano, bitter experience has taught him that one
ripple does not make a wind, any more than one swallow a summer. But he is
mistaken for once. I will get his ship in for him, and prove it.</p>
<p>Briefly alluding to his weak condition, he urged his host to remain quietly
where he was, since he (Captain Delano) would with pleasure take upon himself
the responsibility of making the best use of the wind.</p>
<p>Upon gaining the deck, Captain Delano started at the unexpected figure of
Atufal, monumentally fixed at the threshold, like one of those sculptured
porters of black marble guarding the porches of Egyptian tombs.</p>
<p>But this time the start was, perhaps, purely physical. Atufal’s presence,
singularly attesting docility even in sullenness, was contrasted with that of
the hatchet-polishers, who in patience evinced their industry; while both
spectacles showed, that lax as Don Benito’s general authority might be,
still, whenever he chose to exert it, no man so savage or colossal but must,
more or less, bow.</p>
<p>Snatching a trumpet which hung from the bulwarks, with a free step Captain
Delano advanced to the forward edge of the poop, issuing his orders in his best
Spanish. The few sailors and many negroes, all equally pleased, obediently set
about heading the ship towards the harbor.</p>
<p>While giving some directions about setting a lower stu’n’-sail,
suddenly Captain Delano heard a voice faithfully repeating his orders. Turning,
he saw Babo, now for the time acting, under the pilot, his original part of
captain of the slaves. This assistance proved valuable. Tattered sails and
warped yards were soon brought into some trim. And no brace or halyard was
pulled but to the blithe songs of the inspirited negroes.</p>
<p>Good fellows, thought Captain Delano, a little training would make fine sailors
of them. Why see, the very women pull and sing too. These must be some of those
Ashantee negresses that make such capital soldiers, I’ve heard. But
who’s at the helm. I must have a good hand there.</p>
<p>He went to see.</p>
<p>The San Dominick steered with a cumbrous tiller, with large horizontal pullies
attached. At each pully-end stood a subordinate black, and between them, at the
tiller-head, the responsible post, a Spanish seaman, whose countenance evinced
his due share in the general hopefulness and confidence at the coming of the
breeze.</p>
<p>He proved the same man who had behaved with so shame-faced an air on the
windlass.</p>
<p>“Ah,—it is you, my man,” exclaimed Captain
Delano—“well, no more sheep’s-eyes now;—look straight
forward and keep the ship so. Good hand, I trust? And want to get into the
harbor, don’t you?”</p>
<p>The man assented with an inward chuckle, grasping the tiller-head firmly. Upon
this, unperceived by the American, the two blacks eyed the sailor intently.</p>
<p>Finding all right at the helm, the pilot went forward to the forecastle, to see
how matters stood there.</p>
<p>The ship now had way enough to breast the current. With the approach of
evening, the breeze would be sure to freshen.</p>
<p>Having done all that was needed for the present, Captain Delano, giving his
last orders to the sailors, turned aft to report affairs to Don Benito in the
cabin; perhaps additionally incited to rejoin him by the hope of snatching a
moment’s private chat while the servant was engaged upon deck.</p>
<p>From opposite sides, there were, beneath the poop, two approaches to the cabin;
one further forward than the other, and consequently communicating with a
longer passage. Marking the servant still above, Captain Delano, taking the
nighest entrance—the one last named, and at whose porch Atufal still
stood—hurried on his way, till, arrived at the cabin threshold, he paused
an instant, a little to recover from his eagerness. Then, with the words of his
intended business upon his lips, he entered. As he advanced toward the seated
Spaniard, he heard another footstep, keeping time with his. From the opposite
door, a salver in hand, the servant was likewise advancing.</p>
<p>“Confound the faithful fellow,” thought Captain Delano; “what
a vexatious coincidence.”</p>
<p>Possibly, the vexation might have been something different, were it not for the
brisk confidence inspired by the breeze. But even as it was, he felt a slight
twinge, from a sudden indefinite association in his mind of Babo with Atufal.</p>
<p>“Don Benito,” said he, “I give you joy; the breeze will hold,
and will increase. By the way, your tall man and time-piece, Atufal, stands
without. By your order, of course?”</p>
<p>Don Benito recoiled, as if at some bland satirical touch, delivered with such
adroit garnish of apparent good breeding as to present no handle for retort.</p>
<p>He is like one flayed alive, thought Captain Delano; where may one touch him
without causing a shrink?</p>
<p>The servant moved before his master, adjusting a cushion; recalled to civility,
the Spaniard stiffly replied: “you are right. The slave appears where you
saw him, according to my command; which is, that if at the given hour I am
below, he must take his stand and abide my coming.”</p>
<p>“Ah now, pardon me, but that is treating the poor fellow like an ex-king
indeed. Ah, Don Benito,” smiling, “for all the license you permit
in some things, I fear lest, at bottom, you are a bitter hard master.”</p>
<p>Again Don Benito shrank; and this time, as the good sailor thought, from a
genuine twinge of his conscience.</p>
<p>Again conversation became constrained. In vain Captain Delano called attention
to the now perceptible motion of the keel gently cleaving the sea; with
lack-lustre eye, Don Benito returned words few and reserved.</p>
<p>By-and-by, the wind having steadily risen, and still blowing right into the
harbor bore the San Dominick swiftly on. Sounding a point of land, the sealer
at distance came into open view.</p>
<p>Meantime Captain Delano had again repaired to the deck, remaining there some
time. Having at last altered the ship’s course, so as to give the reef a
wide berth, he returned for a few moments below.</p>
<p>I will cheer up my poor friend, this time, thought he.</p>
<p>“Better and better,” Don Benito, he cried as he blithely
re-entered: “there will soon be an end to your cares, at least for
awhile. For when, after a long, sad voyage, you know, the anchor drops into the
haven, all its vast weight seems lifted from the captain’s heart. We are
getting on famously, Don Benito. My ship is in sight. Look through this
side-light here; there she is; all a-taunt-o! The Bachelor’s Delight, my
good friend. Ah, how this wind braces one up. Come, you must take a cup of
coffee with me this evening. My old steward will give you as fine a cup as ever
any sultan tasted. What say you, Don Benito, will you?”</p>
<p>At first, the Spaniard glanced feverishly up, casting a longing look towards
the sealer, while with mute concern his servant gazed into his face. Suddenly
the old ague of coldness returned, and dropping back to his cushions he was
silent.</p>
<p>“You do not answer. Come, all day you have been my host; would you have
hospitality all on one side?”</p>
<p>“I cannot go,” was the response.</p>
<p>“What? it will not fatigue you. The ships will lie together as near as
they can, without swinging foul. It will be little more than stepping from deck
to deck; which is but as from room to room. Come, come, you must not refuse
me.”</p>
<p>“I cannot go,” decisively and repulsively repeated Don Benito.</p>
<p>Renouncing all but the last appearance of courtesy, with a sort of cadaverous
sullenness, and biting his thin nails to the quick, he glanced, almost glared,
at his guest, as if impatient that a stranger’s presence should interfere
with the full indulgence of his morbid hour. Meantime the sound of the parted
waters came more and more gurglingly and merrily in at the windows; as
reproaching him for his dark spleen; as telling him that, sulk as he might, and
go mad with it, nature cared not a jot; since, whose fault was it, pray?</p>
<p>But the foul mood was now at its depth, as the fair wind at its height.</p>
<p>There was something in the man so far beyond any mere unsociality or sourness
previously evinced, that even the forbearing good-nature of his guest could no
longer endure it. Wholly at a loss to account for such demeanor, and deeming
sickness with eccentricity, however extreme, no adequate excuse, well
satisfied, too, that nothing in his own 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.</p>
<p>The ship was now within less than two miles of the sealer. The whale-boat was
seen darting over the interval.</p>
<p>To be brief, the two vessels, thanks to the pilot’s skill, ere long
neighborly style lay anchored together.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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?</p>
<p>The Spaniard behind—his creature before: to rush from darkness to light
was the involuntary choice.</p>
<p>The next moment, with clenched jaw and hand, he passed Atufal, and stood
unharmed in the light. As he saw his trim ship lying peacefully at anchor, and
almost within ordinary call; as he saw his household boat, with familiar faces
in it, patiently rising and falling, on the short waves by the San
Dominick’s side; and then, glancing about the decks where he stood, saw
the oakum-pickers still gravely plying their fingers; and heard the low,
buzzing whistle and industrious hum of the hatchet-polishers, still bestirring
themselves over their endless occupation; and more than all, as he saw the
benign aspect of nature, taking her innocent repose in the evening; the
screened sun in the quiet camp of the west shining out like the mild light from
Abraham’s tent; as charmed eye and ear took in all these, with the
chained figure of the black, clenched jaw and hand relaxed. Once again he
smiled at the phantoms which had mocked him, and felt something like a tinge of
remorse, that, by harboring them even for a moment, he should, by implication,
have betrayed an atheist doubt of the ever-watchful Providence above.</p>
<p>There was a few minutes’ delay, while, in obedience to his orders, the
boat was being hooked along to the gangway. During this interval, a sort of
saddened satisfaction stole over Captain Delano, at thinking of the kindly
offices he had that day discharged for a stranger. Ah, thought he, after good
actions one’s conscience is never ungrateful, however much so the
benefited party may be.</p>
<p>Presently, his foot, in the first act of descent into the boat, pressed the
first round of the side-ladder, his face presented inward upon the deck. In the
same moment, he heard his name courteously sounded; and, to his pleased
surprise, saw Don Benito advancing—an unwonted energy in his air, as if,
at the last moment, intent upon making amends for his recent discourtesy. With
instinctive good feeling, Captain Delano, withdrawing his foot, turned and
reciprocally advanced. As he did so, the Spaniard’s nervous eagerness
increased, but his vital energy failed; so that, the better to support him, the
servant, placing his master’s hand on his naked shoulder, and gently
holding it there, formed himself into a sort of crutch.</p>
<p>When the two captains met, the Spaniard again fervently took the hand of the
American, at the same time casting an earnest glance into his eyes, but, as
before, too much overcome to speak.</p>
<p>I have done him wrong, self-reproachfully thought Captain Delano; his apparent
coldness has deceived me: in no instance has he meant to offend.</p>
<p>Meantime, as if fearful that the continuance of the scene might too much
unstring his master, the servant seemed anxious to terminate it. And so, still
presenting himself as a crutch, and walking between the two captains, he
advanced with them towards the gangway; while still, as if full of kindly
contrition, Don Benito would not let go the hand of Captain Delano, but
retained it in his, across the black’s body.</p>
<p>Soon they were standing by the side, looking over into the boat, whose crew
turned up their curious eyes. Waiting a moment for the Spaniard to relinquish
his hold, the now embarrassed Captain Delano lifted his foot, to overstep the
threshold of the open gangway; but still Don Benito would not let go his hand.
And yet, with an agitated tone, he said, “I can go no further; here I
must bid you adieu. Adieu, my dear, dear Don Amasa. Go—go!”
suddenly tearing his hand loose, “go, and God guard you better than me,
my best friend.”</p>
<p>Not unaffected, Captain Delano would now have lingered; but catching the meekly
admonitory eye of the servant, with a hasty farewell he descended into his
boat, followed by the continual adieus of Don Benito, standing rooted in the
gangway.</p>
<p>Seating himself in the stern, Captain Delano, making a last salute, ordered the
boat shoved off. The crew had their oars on end. The bowsmen pushed the boat a
sufficient distance for the oars to be lengthwise dropped. The instant that was
done, Don Benito sprang over the bulwarks, falling at the feet of Captain
Delano; at the same time calling towards his ship, but in tones so frenzied,
that none in the boat could understand him. But, as if not equally obtuse,
three sailors, from three different and distant parts of the ship, splashed
into the sea, swimming after their captain, as if intent upon his rescue.</p>
<p>The dismayed officer of the boat eagerly asked what this meant. To which,
Captain Delano, turning a disdainful smile upon the unaccountable Spaniard,
answered that, for his part, he neither knew nor cared; but it seemed as if Don
Benito had taken it into his head to produce the impression among his people
that the boat wanted to kidnap him. “Or else—give way for your
lives,” he wildly added, starting at a clattering hubbub in the ship,
above which rang the tocsin of the hatchet-polishers; and seizing Don Benito by
the throat he added, “this plotting pirate means murder!” Here, in
apparent verification of the words, the servant, a dagger in his hand, was seen
on the rail overhead, poised, in the act of leaping, as if with desperate
fidelity to befriend his master to the last; while, seemingly to aid the black,
the three white sailors were trying to clamber into the hampered bow. Meantime,
the whole host of negroes, as if inflamed at the sight of their jeopardized
captain, impended in one sooty avalanche over the bulwarks.</p>
<p>All this, with what preceded, and what followed, occurred with such involutions
of rapidity, that past, present, and future seemed one.</p>
<p>Seeing the negro coming, Captain Delano had flung the Spaniard aside, almost in
the very act of clutching him, and, by the unconscious recoil, shifting his
place, with arms thrown up, so promptly grappled the servant in his descent,
that with dagger presented at Captain Delano’s heart, the black seemed of
purpose to have leaped there as to his mark. But the weapon was wrenched away,
and the assailant dashed down into the bottom of the boat, which now, with
disentangled oars, began to speed through the sea.</p>
<p>At this juncture, the left hand of Captain Delano, on one side, again clutched
the half-reclined Don Benito, heedless that he was in a speechless faint, while
his right-foot, on the other side, ground the prostrate negro; and his right
arm pressed for added speed on the after oar, his eye bent forward, encouraging
his men to their utmost.</p>
<p>But here, the officer of the boat, who had at last succeeded in beating off the
towing sailors, and was now, with face turned aft, assisting the bowsman at his
oar, suddenly called to Captain Delano, to see what the black was about; while
a Portuguese oarsman shouted to him to give heed to what the Spaniard was
saying.</p>
<p>Glancing down at his feet, Captain Delano saw the freed hand of the servant
aiming with a second dagger—a small one, before concealed in his
wool—with this he was snakishly writhing up from the boat’s bottom,
at the heart of his master, his countenance lividly vindictive, expressing the
centred purpose of his soul; while the Spaniard, half-choked, was vainly
shrinking away, with husky words, incoherent to all but the Portuguese.</p>
<p>That moment, across the long-benighted mind of Captain Delano, a flash of
revelation swept, illuminating, in unanticipated clearness, his host’s
whole mysterious demeanor, with every enigmatic event of the day, as well as
the entire past voyage of the San Dominick. He smote Babo’s hand down,
but his own heart smote him harder. With infinite pity he withdrew his hold
from Don Benito. Not Captain Delano, but Don Benito, the black, in leaping into
the boat, had intended to stab.</p>
<p>Both the black’s hands were held, as, glancing up towards the San
Dominick, Captain Delano, now with scales dropped from his eyes, saw the
negroes, not in misrule, not in tumult, not as if frantically concerned for Don
Benito, but with mask torn away, flourishing hatchets and knives, in ferocious
piratical revolt. Like delirious black dervishes, the six Ashantees danced on
the poop. Prevented by their foes from springing into the water, the Spanish
boys were hurrying up to the topmost spars, while such of the few Spanish
sailors, not already in the sea, less alert, were descried, helplessly mixed
in, on deck, with the blacks.</p>
<p>Meantime Captain Delano hailed his own vessel, ordering the ports up, and the
guns run out. But by this time the cable of the San Dominick had been cut; and
the fag-end, in lashing out, whipped away the canvas shroud about the beak,
suddenly revealing, as the bleached hull swung round towards the open ocean,
death for the figure-head, in a human skeleton; chalky comment on the chalked
words below, “<i>Follow your leader</i>.”</p>
<p>At the sight, Don Benito, covering his face, wailed out: “’Tis he,
Aranda! my murdered, unburied friend!”</p>
<p>Upon reaching the sealer, calling for ropes, Captain Delano bound the negro,
who made no resistance, and had him hoisted to the deck. He would then have
assisted the now almost helpless Don Benito up the side; but Don Benito, wan as
he was, refused to move, or be moved, until the negro should have been first
put below out of view. When, presently assured that it was done, he no more
shrank from the ascent.</p>
<p>The boat was immediately dispatched back to pick up the three swimming sailors.
Meantime, the guns were in readiness, though, owing to the San Dominick having
glided somewhat astern of the sealer, only the aftermost one could be brought
to bear. With this, they fired six times; thinking to cripple the fugitive ship
by bringing down her spars. But only a few inconsiderable ropes were shot away.
Soon the ship was beyond the gun’s range, steering broad out of the bay;
the blacks thickly clustering round the bowsprit, one moment with taunting
cries towards the whites, the next with upthrown gestures hailing the now dusky
moors of ocean—cawing crows escaped from the hand of the fowler.</p>
<p>The first impulse was to slip the cables and give chase. But, upon second
thoughts, to pursue with whale-boat and yawl seemed more promising.</p>
<p>Upon inquiring of Don Benito what firearms they had on board the San Dominick,
Captain Delano was answered that they had none that could be used; because, in
the earlier stages of the mutiny, a cabin-passenger, since dead, had secretly
put out of order the locks of what few muskets there were. But with all his
remaining strength, Don Benito entreated the American not to give chase, either
with ship or boat; for the negroes had already proved themselves such
desperadoes, that, in case of a present assault, nothing but a total massacre
of the whites could be looked for. But, regarding this warning as coming from
one whose spirit had been crushed by misery the American did not give up his
design.</p>
<p>The boats were got ready and armed. Captain Delano ordered his men into them.
He was going himself when Don Benito grasped his arm.</p>
<p>“What! have you saved my life, Señor, and are you now going to throw away
your own?”</p>
<p>The officers also, for reasons connected with their interests and those of the
voyage, and a duty owing to the owners, strongly objected against their
commander’s going. Weighing their remonstrances a moment, Captain Delano
felt bound to remain; appointing his chief mate—an athletic and resolute
man, who had been a privateer’s-man—to head the party. The more to
encourage the sailors, they were told, that the Spanish captain considered his
ship good as lost; that she and her cargo, including some gold and silver, were
worth more than a thousand doubloons. Take her, and no small part should be
theirs. The sailors replied with a shout.</p>
<p>The fugitives had now almost gained an offing. It was nearly night; but the
moon was rising. After hard, prolonged pulling, the boats came up on the
ship’s quarters, at a suitable distance laying upon their oars to
discharge their muskets. Having no bullets to return, the negroes sent their
yells. But, upon the second volley, Indian-like, they hurtled their hatchets.
One took off a sailor’s fingers. Another struck the whale-boat’s
bow, cutting off the rope there, and remaining stuck in the gunwale like a
woodman’s axe. Snatching it, quivering from its lodgment, the mate hurled
it back. The returned gauntlet now stuck in the ship’s broken
quarter-gallery, and so remained.</p>
<p>The negroes giving too hot a reception, the whites kept a more respectful
distance. Hovering now just out of reach of the hurtling hatchets, they, with a
view to the close encounter which must soon come, sought to decoy the blacks
into entirely disarming themselves of their most murderous weapons in a
hand-to-hand fight, by foolishly flinging them, as missiles, short of the mark,
into the sea. But, ere long, perceiving the stratagem, the negroes desisted,
though not before many of them had to replace their lost hatchets with
handspikes; an exchange which, as counted upon, proved, in the end, favorable
to the assailants.</p>
<p>Meantime, with a strong wind, the ship still clove the water; the boats
alternately falling behind, and pulling up, to discharge fresh volleys.</p>
<p>The fire was mostly directed towards the stern, since there, chiefly, the
negroes, at present, were clustering. But to kill or maim the negroes was not
the object. To take them, with the ship, was the object. To do it, the ship
must be boarded; which could not be done by boats while she was sailing so
fast.</p>
<p>A thought now struck the mate. Observing the Spanish boys still aloft, high as
they could get, he called to them to descend to the yards, and cut adrift the
sails. It was done. About this time, owing to causes hereafter to be shown, two
Spaniards, in the dress of sailors, and conspicuously showing themselves, were
killed; not by volleys, but by deliberate marksman’s shots; while, as it
afterwards appeared, by one of the general discharges, Atufal, the black, and
the Spaniard at the helm likewise were killed. What now, with the loss of the
sails, and loss of leaders, the ship became unmanageable to the negroes.</p>
<p>With creaking masts, she came heavily round to the wind; the prow slowly
swinging into view of the boats, its skeleton gleaming in the horizontal
moonlight, and casting a gigantic ribbed shadow upon the water. One extended
arm of the ghost seemed beckoning the whites to avenge it.</p>
<p>“Follow your leader!” cried the mate; and, one on each bow, the
boats boarded. Sealing-spears and cutlasses crossed hatchets and hand-spikes.
Huddled upon the long-boat amidships, the negresses raised a wailing chant,
whose chorus was the clash of the steel.</p>
<p>For a time, the attack wavered; the negroes wedging themselves to beat it back;
the half-repelled sailors, as yet unable to gain a footing, fighting as
troopers in the saddle, one leg sideways flung over the bulwarks, and one
without, plying their cutlasses like carters’ whips. But in vain. They
were almost overborne, when, rallying themselves into a squad as one man, with
a huzza, they sprang inboard, where, entangled, they involuntarily separated
again. For a few breaths’ space, there was a vague, muffled, inner sound,
as of submerged sword-fish rushing hither and thither through shoals of
black-fish. Soon, in a reunited band, and joined by the Spanish seamen, the
whites came to the surface, irresistibly driving the negroes toward the stern.
But a barricade of casks and sacks, from side to side, had been thrown up by
the main-mast. Here the negroes faced about, and though scorning peace or
truce, yet fain would have had respite. But, without pause, overleaping the
barrier, the unflagging sailors again closed. Exhausted, the blacks now fought
in despair. Their red tongues lolled, wolf-like, from their black mouths. But
the pale sailors’ teeth were set; not a word was spoken; and, in five
minutes more, the ship was won.</p>
<p>Nearly a score of the negroes were killed. Exclusive of those by the balls,
many were mangled; their wounds—mostly inflicted by the long-edged
sealing-spears, resembling those shaven ones of the English at Preston Pans,
made by the poled scythes of the Highlanders. On the other side, none were
killed, though several were wounded; some severely, including the mate. The
surviving negroes were temporarily secured, and the ship, towed back into the
harbor at midnight, once more lay anchored.</p>
<p>Omitting the incidents and arrangements ensuing, suffice it that, after two
days spent in refitting, the ships sailed in company for Conception, in Chili,
and thence for Lima, in Peru; where, before the vice-regal courts, the whole
affair, from the beginning, underwent investigation.</p>
<p>Though, midway on the passage, the ill-fated Spaniard, relaxed from constraint,
showed some signs of regaining health with free-will; yet, agreeably to his own
foreboding, shortly before arriving at Lima, he relapsed, finally becoming so
reduced as to be carried ashore in arms. Hearing of his story and plight, one
of the many religious institutions of the City of Kings opened an hospitable
refuge to him, where both physician and priest were his nurses, and a member of
the order volunteered to be his one special guardian and consoler, by night and
by day.</p>
<p>The following extracts, translated from one of the official Spanish documents,
will, it is hoped, shed light on the preceding narrative, as well as, in the
first place, reveal the true port of departure and true history of the San
Dominick’s voyage, down to the time of her touching at the island of St.
Maria.</p>
<p>But, ere the extracts come, it may be well to preface them with a remark.</p>
<p>The document selected, from among many others, for partial translation,
contains the deposition of Benito Cereno; the first taken in the case. Some
disclosures therein were, at the time, held dubious for both learned and
natural reasons. The tribunal inclined to the opinion that the deponent, not
undisturbed in his mind by recent events, raved of some things which could
never have happened. But subsequent depositions of the surviving sailors,
bearing out the revelations of their captain in several of the strangest
particulars, gave credence to the rest. So that the tribunal, in its final
decision, rested its capital sentences upon statements which, had they lacked
confirmation, it would have deemed it but duty to reject.</p>
<hr />
<p>I, D<small>ON</small> J<small>OSE DE</small> A<small>BOS AND</small>
P<small>ADILLA</small>, His Majesty’s Notary for the Royal Revenue, and
Register of this Province, and Notary Public of the Holy Crusade of this
Bishopric, etc.</p>
<p>Do certify and declare, as much as is requisite in law, that, in the criminal
cause commenced the twenty-fourth of the month of September, in the year
seventeen hundred and ninety-nine, against the negroes of the ship San
Dominick, the following declaration before me was made:</p>
<p class="center">
<i>Declaration of the first witness</i>, D<small>ON</small>
B<small>ENITO</small> C<small>ERENO</small>.</p>
<p>The same day, and month, and year, His Honor, Doctor Juan Martinez de Rozas,
Councilor of the Royal Audience of this Kingdom, and learned in the law of this
Intendency, ordered the captain of the ship San Dominick, Don Benito Cereno, to
appear; which he did, in his litter, attended by the monk Infelez; of whom he
received the oath, which he took by God, our Lord, and a sign of the Cross;
under which he promised to tell the truth of whatever he should know and should
be asked;—and being interrogated agreeably to the tenor of the act
commencing the process, he said, that on the twentieth of May last, he set sail
with his ship from the port of Valparaiso, bound to that of Callao; loaded with
the produce of the country beside thirty cases of hardware and one hundred and
sixty blacks, of both sexes, mostly belonging to Don Alexandro Aranda,
gentleman, of the city of Mendoza; that the crew of the ship consisted of
thirty-six men, beside the persons who went as passengers; that the negroes
were in part as follows:</p>
<p class="letter">
[<i>Here, in the original, follows a list of some fifty names, descriptions,
and ages, compiled from certain recovered documents of Aranda’s, and also
from recollections of the deponent, from which portions only are
extracted.</i>]</p>
<p>—One, from about eighteen to nineteen years, named José, and this was the
man that waited upon his master, Don Alexandro, and who speaks well the
Spanish, having served him four or five years; * * * a mulatto, named
Francesco, the cabin steward, of a good person and voice, having sung in the
Valparaiso churches, native of the province of Buenos Ayres, aged about
thirty-five years. * * * A smart negro, named Dago, who had been for many years
a grave-digger among the Spaniards, aged forty-six years. * * * Four old
negroes, born in Africa, from sixty to seventy, but sound, calkers by trade,
whose names are as follows:—the first was named Muri, and he was killed
(as was also his son named Diamelo); the second, Nacta; the third, Yola,
likewise killed; the fourth, Ghofan; and six full-grown negroes, aged from
thirty to forty-five, all raw, and born among the Ashantees—Matiluqui,
Yan, Leche, Mapenda, Yambaio, Akim; four of whom were killed; * * * a powerful
negro named Atufal, who being supposed to have been a chief in Africa, his
owner set great store by him. * * * And a small negro of Senegal, but some
years among the Spaniards, aged about thirty, which negro’s name was
Babo; * * * that he does not remember the names of the others, but that still
expecting the residue of Don Alexandra’s papers will be found, will then
take due account of them all, and remit to the court; * * * and thirty-nine
women and children of all ages.</p>
<p class="letter">
[<i>The catalogue over, the deposition goes on</i>]</p>
<p>* * * That all the negroes slept upon deck, as is customary in this navigation,
and none wore fetters, because the owner, his friend Aranda, told him that they
were all tractable; * * * that on the seventh day after leaving port, at three
o’clock in the morning, all the Spaniards being asleep except the two
officers on the watch, who were the boatswain, Juan Robles, and the carpenter,
Juan Bautista Gayete, and the helmsman and his boy, the negroes revolted
suddenly, wounded dangerously the boatswain and the carpenter, and successively
killed eighteen men of those who were sleeping upon deck, some with hand-spikes
and hatchets, and others by throwing them alive overboard, after tying them;
that of the Spaniards upon deck, they left about seven, as he thinks, alive and
tied, to manoeuvre the ship, and three or four more, who hid themselves,
remained also alive. Although in the act of revolt the negroes made themselves
masters of the hatchway, six or seven wounded went through it to the cockpit,
without any hindrance on their part; that during the act of revolt, the mate
and another person, whose name he does not recollect, attempted to come up
through the hatchway, but being quickly wounded, were obliged to return to the
cabin; that the deponent resolved at break of day to come up the companion-way,
where the negro Babo was, being the ringleader, and Atufal, who assisted him,
and having spoken to them, exhorted them to cease committing such atrocities,
asking them, at the same time, what they wanted and intended to do, offering,
himself, to obey their commands; that notwithstanding this, they threw, in his
presence, three men, alive and tied, overboard; that they told the deponent to
come up, and that they would not kill him; which having done, the negro Babo
asked him whether there were in those seas any negro countries where they might
be carried, and he answered them, No; that the negro Babo afterwards told him
to carry them to Senegal, or to the neighboring islands of St. Nicholas; and he
answered, that this was impossible, on account of the great distance, the
necessity involved of rounding Cape Horn, the bad condition of the vessel, the
want of provisions, sails, and water; but that the negro Babo replied to him he
must carry them in any way; that they would do and conform themselves to
everything the deponent should require as to eating and drinking; that after a
long conference, being absolutely compelled to please them, for they threatened
to kill all the whites if they were not, at all events, carried to Senegal, he
told them that what was most wanting for the voyage was water; that they would
go near the coast to take it, and thence they would proceed on their course;
that the negro Babo agreed to it; and the deponent steered towards the
intermediate ports, hoping to meet some Spanish, or foreign vessel that would
save them; that within ten or eleven days they saw the land, and continued
their course by it in the vicinity of Nasca; that the deponent observed that
the negroes were now restless and mutinous, because he did not effect the
taking in of water, the negro Babo having required, with threats, that it
should be done, without fail, the following day; he told him he saw plainly
that the coast was steep, and the rivers designated in the maps were not to be
found, with other reasons suitable to the circumstances; that the best way
would be to go to the island of Santa Maria, where they might water easily, it
being a solitary island, as the foreigners did; that the deponent did not go to
Pisco, that was near, nor make any other port of the coast, because the negro
Babo had intimated to him several times, that he would kill all the whites the
very moment he should perceive any city, town, or settlement of any kind on the
shores to which they should be carried: that having determined to go to the
island of Santa Maria, as the deponent had planned, for the purpose of trying
whether, on the passage or near the island itself, they could find any vessel
that should favor them, or whether he could escape from it in a boat to the
neighboring coast of Arruco, to adopt the necessary means he immediately
changed his course, steering for the island; that the negroes Babo and Atufal
held daily conferences, in which they discussed what was necessary for their
design of returning to Senegal, whether they were to kill all the Spaniards,
and particularly the deponent; that eight days after parting from the coast of
Nasca, the deponent being on the watch a little after day-break, and soon after
the negroes had their meeting, the negro Babo came to the place where the
deponent was, and told him that he had determined to kill his master, Don
Alexandro Aranda, both because he and his companions could not otherwise be
sure of their liberty, and that to keep the seamen in subjection, he wanted to
prepare a warning of what road they should be made to take did they or any of
them oppose him; and that, by means of the death of Don Alexandro, that warning
would best be given; but, that what this last meant, the deponent did not at
the time comprehend, nor could not, further than that the death of Don
Alexandro was intended; and moreover the negro Babo proposed to the deponent to
call the mate Raneds, who was sleeping in the cabin, before the thing was done,
for fear, as the deponent understood it, that the mate, who was a good
navigator, should be killed with Don Alexandro and the rest; that the deponent,
who was the friend, from youth, of Don Alexandro, prayed and conjured, but all
was useless; for the negro Babo answered him that the thing could not be
prevented, and that all the Spaniards risked their death if they should attempt
to frustrate his will in this matter, or any other; that, in this conflict, the
deponent called the mate, Raneds, who was forced to go apart, and immediately
the negro Babo commanded the Ashantee Martinqui and the Ashantee Lecbe to go
and commit the murder; that those two went down with hatchets to the berth of
Don Alexandro; that, yet half alive and mangled, they dragged him on deck; that
they were going to throw him overboard in that state, but the negro Babo
stopped them, bidding the murder be completed on the deck before him, which was
done, when, by his orders, the body was carried below, forward; that nothing
more was seen of it by the deponent for three days; * * * that Don Alonzo
Sidonia, an old man, long resident at Valparaiso, and lately appointed to a
civil office in Peru, whither he had taken passage, was at the time sleeping in
the berth opposite Don Alexandro’s; that awakening at his cries,
surprised by them, and at the sight of the negroes with their bloody hatchets
in their hands, he threw himself into the sea through a window which was near
him, and was drowned, without it being in the power of the deponent to assist
or take him up; * * * that a short time after killing Aranda, they brought upon
deck his german-cousin, of middle-age, Don Francisco Masa, of Mendoza, and the
young Don Joaquin, Marques de Aramboalaza, then lately from Spain, with his
Spanish servant Ponce, and the three young clerks of Aranda, José Mozairi
Lorenzo Bargas, and Hermenegildo Gandix, all of Cadiz; that Don Joaquin and
Hermenegildo Gandix, the negro Babo, for purposes hereafter to appear,
preserved alive; but Don Francisco Masa, José Mozairi, and Lorenzo Bargas, with
Ponce the servant, beside the boatswain, Juan Robles, the boatswain’s
mates, Manuel Viscaya and Roderigo Hurta, and four of the sailors, the negro
Babo ordered to be thrown alive into the sea, although they made no resistance,
nor begged for anything else but mercy; that the boatswain, Juan Robles, who
knew how to swim, kept the longest above water, making acts of contrition, and,
in the last words he uttered, charged this deponent to cause mass to be said
for his soul to our Lady of Succor: * * * that, during the three days which
followed, the deponent, uncertain what fate had befallen the remains of Don
Alexandro, frequently asked the negro Babo where they were, and, if still on
board, whether they were to be preserved for interment ashore, entreating him
so to order it; that the negro Babo answered nothing till the fourth day, when
at sunrise, the deponent coming on deck, the negro Babo showed him a skeleton,
which had been substituted for the ship’s proper figure-head—the
image of Christopher Colon, the discoverer of the New World; that the negro
Babo asked him whose skeleton that was, and whether, from its whiteness, he
should not think it a white’s; that, upon discovering his face, the negro
Babo, coming close, said words to this effect: “Keep faith with the
blacks from here to Senegal, or you shall in spirit, as now in body, follow
your leader,” pointing to the prow; * * * that the same morning the negro
Babo took by succession each Spaniard forward, and asked him whose skeleton
that was, and whether, from its whiteness, he should not think it a
white’s; that each Spaniard covered his face; that then to each the negro
Babo repeated the words in the first place said to the deponent; * * * that
they (the Spaniards), being then assembled aft, the negro Babo harangued them,
saying that he had now done all; that the deponent (as navigator for the
negroes) might pursue his course, warning him and all of them that they should,
soul and body, go the way of Don Alexandro, if he saw them (the Spaniards)
speak, or plot anything against them (the negroes)—a threat which was
repeated every day; that, before the events last mentioned, they had tied the
cook to throw him overboard, for it is not known what thing they heard him
speak, but finally the negro Babo spared his life, at the request of the
deponent; that a few days after, the deponent, endeavoring not to omit any
means to preserve the lives of the remaining whites, spoke to the negroes peace
and tranquillity, and agreed to draw up a paper, signed by the deponent and the
sailors who could write, as also by the negro Babo, for himself and all the
blacks, in which the deponent obliged himself to carry them to Senegal, and
they not to kill any more, and he formally to make over to them the ship, with
the cargo, with which they were for that time satisfied and quieted. * * But
the next day, the more surely to guard against the sailors’ escape, the
negro Babo commanded all the boats to be destroyed but the long-boat, which was
unseaworthy, and another, a cutter in good condition, which knowing it would
yet be wanted for towing the water casks, he had it lowered down into the hold.</p>
<hr />
<p class="letter">
[<i>Various particulars of the prolonged and perplexed navigation ensuing here
follow, with incidents of a calamitous calm, from which portion one passage is
extracted, to wit</i>:]</p>
<p>—That on the fifth day of the calm, all on board suffering much from the
heat, and want of water, and five having died in fits, and mad, the negroes
became irritable, and for a chance gesture, which they deemed
suspicious—though it was harmless—made by the mate, Raneds, to the
deponent in the act of handing a quadrant, they killed him; but that for this
they afterwards were sorry, the mate being the only remaining navigator on
board, except the deponent.</p>
<hr />
<p>—That omitting other events, which daily happened, and which can only
serve uselessly to recall past misfortunes and conflicts, after seventy-three
days’ navigation, reckoned from the time they sailed from Nasca, during
which they navigated under a scanty allowance of water, and were afflicted with
the calms before mentioned, they at last arrived at the island of Santa Maria,
on the seventeenth of the month of August, at about six o’clock in the
afternoon, at which hour they cast anchor very near the American ship,
Bachelor’s Delight, which lay in the same bay, commanded by the generous
Captain Amasa Delano; but at six o’clock in the morning, they had already
descried the port, and the negroes became uneasy, as soon as at distance they
saw the ship, not having expected to see one there; that the negro Babo
pacified them, assuring them that no fear need be had; that straightway he
ordered the figure on the bow to be covered with canvas, as for repairs and had
the decks a little set in order; that for a time the negro Babo and the negro
Atufal conferred; that the negro Atufal was for sailing away, but the negro
Babo would not, and, by himself, cast about what to do; that at last he came to
the deponent, proposing to him to say and do all that the deponent declares to
have said and done to the American captain; * * * * * * * that the negro Babo
warned him that if he varied in the least, or uttered any word, or gave any
look that should give the least intimation of the past events or present state,
he would instantly kill him, with all his companions, showing a dagger, which
he carried hid, saying something which, as he understood it, meant that that
dagger would be alert as his eye; that the negro Babo then announced the plan
to all his companions, which pleased them; that he then, the better to disguise
the truth, devised many expedients, in some of them uniting deceit and defense;
that of this sort was the device of the six Ashantees before named, who were
his bravoes; that them he stationed on the break of the poop, as if to clean
certain hatchets (in cases, which were part of the cargo), but in reality to
use them, and distribute them at need, and at a given word he told them; that,
among other devices, was the device of presenting Atufal, his right hand man,
as chained, though in a moment the chains could be dropped; that in every
particular he informed the deponent what part he was expected to enact in every
device, and what story he was to tell on every occasion, always threatening him
with instant death if he varied in the least: that, conscious that many of the
negroes would be turbulent, the negro Babo appointed the four aged negroes, who
were calkers, to keep what domestic order they could on the decks; that again
and again he harangued the Spaniards and his companions, informing them of his
intent, and of his devices, and of the invented story that this deponent was to
tell; charging them lest any of them varied from that story; that these
arrangements were made and matured during the interval of two or three hours,
between their first sighting the ship and the arrival on board of Captain Amasa
Delano; that this happened about half-past seven o’clock in the morning,
Captain Amasa Delano coming in his boat, and all gladly receiving him; that the
deponent, as well as he could force himself, acting then the part of principal
owner, and a free captain of the ship, told Captain Amasa Delano, when called
upon, that he came from Buenos Ayres, bound to Lima, with three hundred
negroes; that off Cape Horn, and in a subsequent fever, many negroes had died;
that also, by similar casualties, all the sea officers and the greatest part of
the crew had died.</p>
<hr />
<p class="letter">
[<i>And so the deposition goes on, circumstantially recounting the fictitious
story dictated to the deponent by Babo, and through the deponent imposed upon
Captain Delano; and also recounting the friendly offers of Captain Delano, with
other things, but all of which is here omitted. After the fictitious story,
etc. the deposition proceeds</i>:]</p>
<hr />
<p>—that the generous Captain Amasa Delano remained on board all the day,
till he left the ship anchored at six o’clock in the evening, deponent
speaking to him always of his pretended misfortunes, under the fore-mentioned
principles, without having had it in his power to tell a single word, or give
him the least hint, that he might know the truth and state of things; because
the negro Babo, performing the office of an officious servant with all the
appearance of submission of the humble slave, did not leave the deponent one
moment; that this was in order to observe the deponent’s actions and
words, for the negro Babo understands well the Spanish; and besides, there were
thereabout some others who were constantly on the watch, and likewise
understood the Spanish; * * * that upon one occasion, while deponent was
standing on the deck conversing with Amasa Delano, by a secret sign the negro
Babo drew him (the deponent) aside, the act appearing as if originating with
the deponent; that then, he being drawn aside, the negro Babo proposed to him
to gain from Amasa Delano full particulars about his ship, and crew, and arms;
that the deponent asked “For what?” that the negro Babo answered he
might conceive; that, grieved at the prospect of what might overtake the
generous Captain Amasa Delano, the deponent at first refused to ask the desired
questions, and used every argument to induce the negro Babo to give up this new
design; that the negro Babo showed the point of his dagger; that, after the
information had been obtained the negro Babo again drew him aside, telling him
that that very night he (the deponent) would be captain of two ships, instead
of one, for that, great part of the American’s ship’s crew being to
be absent fishing, the six Ashantees, without any one else, would easily take
it; that at this time he said other things to the same purpose; that no
entreaties availed; that, before Amasa Delano’s coming on board, no hint
had been given touching the capture of the American ship: that to prevent this
project the deponent was powerless; * * *—that in some things his memory
is confused, he cannot distinctly recall every event; * * *—that as soon
as they had cast anchor at six of the clock in the evening, as has before been
stated, the American Captain took leave, to return to his vessel; that upon a
sudden impulse, which the deponent believes to have come from God and his
angels, he, after the farewell had been said, followed the generous Captain
Amasa Delano as far as the gunwale, where he stayed, under pretense of taking
leave, until Amasa Delano should have been seated in his boat; that on shoving
off, the deponent sprang from the gunwale into the boat, and fell into it, he
knows not how, God guarding him; that—</p>
<hr />
<p class="letter">
[<i>Here, in the original, follows the account of what further happened at the
escape, and how the San Dominick was retaken, and of the passage to the coast;
including in the recital many expressions of “eternal gratitude” to
the “generous Captain Amasa Delano.” The deposition then proceeds
with recapitulatory remarks, and a partial renumeration of the negroes, making
record of their individual part in the past events, with a view to furnishing,
according to command of the court, the data whereon to found the criminal
sentences to be pronounced. From this portion is the following</i>;]</p>
<p>—That he believes that all the negroes, though not in the first place
knowing to the design of revolt, when it was accomplished, approved it. * * *
That the negro, José, eighteen years old, and in the personal service of Don
Alexandro, was the one who communicated the information to the negro Babo,
about the state of things in the cabin, before the revolt; that this is known,
because, in the preceding midnight, he use to come from his berth, which was
under his master’s, in the cabin, to the deck where the ringleader and
his associates were, and had secret conversations with the negro Babo, in which
he was several times seen by the mate; that, one night, the mate drove him away
twice; * * that this same negro José was the one who, without being commanded
to do so by the negro Babo, as Lecbe and Martinqui were, stabbed his master,
Don Alexandro, after he had been dragged half-lifeless to the deck; * * that
the mulatto steward, Francesco, was of the first band of revolters, that he
was, in all things, the creature and tool of the negro Babo; that, to make his
court, he, just before a repast in the cabin, proposed, to the negro Babo,
poisoning a dish for the generous Captain Amasa Delano; this is known and
believed, because the negroes have said it; but that the negro Babo, having
another design, forbade Francesco; * * that the Ashantee Lecbe was one of the
worst of them; for that, on the day the ship was retaken, he assisted in the
defense of her, with a hatchet in each hand, with one of which he wounded, in
the breast, the chief mate of Amasa Delano, in the first act of boarding; this
all knew; that, in sight of the deponent, Lecbe struck, with a hatchet, Don
Francisco Masa, when, by the negro Babo’s orders, he was carrying him to
throw him overboard, alive, beside participating in the murder, before
mentioned, of Don Alexandro Aranda, and others of the cabin-passengers; that,
owing to the fury with which the Ashantees fought in the engagement with the
boats, but this Lecbe and Yan survived; that Yan was bad as Lecbe; that Yan was
the man who, by Babo’s command, willingly prepared the skeleton of Don
Alexandro, in a way the negroes afterwards told the deponent, but which he, so
long as reason is left him, can never divulge; that Yan and Lecbe were the two
who, in a calm by night, riveted the skeleton to the bow; this also the negroes
told him; that the negro Babo was he who traced the inscription below it; that
the negro Babo was the plotter from first to last; he ordered every murder, and
was the helm and keel of the revolt; that Atufal was his lieutenant in all; but
Atufal, with his own hand, committed no murder; nor did the negro Babo; * *
that Atufal was shot, being killed in the fight with the boats, ere boarding; *
* that the negresses, of age, were knowing to the revolt, and testified
themselves satisfied at the death of their master, Don Alexandro; that, had the
negroes not restrained them, they would have tortured to death, instead of
simply killing, the Spaniards slain by command of the negro Babo; that the
negresses used their utmost influence to have the deponent made away with;
that, in the various acts of murder, they sang songs and danced—not
gaily, but solemnly; and before the engagement with the boats, as well as
during the action, they sang melancholy songs to the negroes, and that this
melancholy tone was more inflaming than a different one would have been, and
was so intended; that all this is believed, because the negroes have said
it.—that of the thirty-six men of the crew, exclusive of the passengers
(all of whom are now dead), which the deponent had knowledge of, six only
remained alive, with four cabin-boys and ship-boys, not included with the crew;
* *—that the negroes broke an arm of one of the cabin-boys and gave him
strokes with hatchets.</p>
<p class="letter">
[<i>Then follow various random disclosures referring to various periods of
time. The following are extracted</i>;]</p>
<p>—That during the presence of Captain Amasa Delano on board, some attempts
were made by the sailors, and one by Hermenegildo Gandix, to convey hints to
him of the true state of affairs; but that these attempts were ineffectual,
owing to fear of incurring death, and, futhermore, owing to the devices which
offered contradictions to the true state of affairs, as well as owing to the
generosity and piety of Amasa Delano incapable of sounding such wickedness; * *
* that Luys Galgo, a sailor about sixty years of age, and formerly of the
king’s navy, was one of those who sought to convey tokens to Captain
Amasa Delano; but his intent, though undiscovered, being suspected, he was, on
a pretense, made to retire out of sight, and at last into the hold, and there
was made away with. This the negroes have since said; * * * that one of the
ship-boys feeling, from Captain Amasa Delano’s presence, some hopes of
release, and not having enough prudence, dropped some chance-word respecting
his expectations, which being overheard and understood by a slave-boy with whom
he was eating at the time, the latter struck him on the head with a knife,
inflicting a bad wound, but of which the boy is now healing; that likewise, not
long before the ship was brought to anchor, one of the seamen, steering at the
time, endangered himself by letting the blacks remark some expression in his
countenance, arising from a cause similar to the above; but this sailor, by his
heedful after conduct, escaped; * * * that these statements are made to show
the court that from the beginning to the end of the revolt, it was impossible
for the deponent and his men to act otherwise than they did; * * *—that
the third clerk, Hermenegildo Gandix, who before had been forced to live among
the seamen, wearing a seaman’s habit, and in all respects appearing to be
one for the time; he, Gandix, was killed by a musket ball fired through mistake
from the boats before boarding; having in his fright run up the mizzen-rigging,
calling to the boats—“don’t board,” lest upon their
boarding the negroes should kill him; that this inducing the Americans to
believe he some way favored the cause of the negroes, they fired two balls at
him, so that he fell wounded from the rigging, and was drowned in the sea; * *
*—that the young Don Joaquin, Marques de Aramboalaza, like Hermenegildo
Gandix, the third clerk, was degraded to the office and appearance of a common
seaman; that upon one occasion when Don Joaquin shrank, the negro Babo
commanded the Ashantee Lecbe to take tar and heat it, and pour it upon Don
Joaquin’s hands; * * *—that Don Joaquin was killed owing to another
mistake of the Americans, but one impossible to be avoided, as upon the
approach of the boats, Don Joaquin, with a hatchet tied edge out and upright to
his hand, was made by the negroes to appear on the bulwarks; whereupon, seen
with arms in his hands and in a questionable attitude, he was shot for a
renegade seaman; * * *—that on the person of Don Joaquin was found
secreted a jewel, which, by papers that were discovered, proved to have been
meant for the shrine of our Lady of Mercy in Lima; a votive offering,
beforehand prepared and guarded, to attest his gratitude, when he should have
landed in Peru, his last destination, for the safe conclusion of his entire
voyage from Spain; * * *—that the jewel, with the other effects of the
late Don Joaquin, is in the custody of the brethren of the Hospital de
Sacerdotes, awaiting the disposition of the honorable court; * * *—that,
owing to the condition of the deponent, as well as the haste in which the boats
departed for the attack, the Americans were not forewarned that there were,
among the apparent crew, a passenger and one of the clerks disguised by the
negro Babo; * * *—that, beside the negroes killed in the action, some
were killed after the capture and re-anchoring at night, when shackled to the
ring-bolts on deck; that these deaths were committed by the sailors, ere they
could be prevented. That so soon as informed of it, Captain Amasa Delano used
all his authority, and, in particular with his own hand, struck down Martinez
Gola, who, having found a razor in the pocket of an old jacket of his, which
one of the shackled negroes had on, was aiming it at the negro’s throat;
that the noble Captain Amasa Delano also wrenched from the hand of Bartholomew
Barlo a dagger, secreted at the time of the massacre of the whites, with which
he was in the act of stabbing a shackled negro, who, the same day, with another
negro, had thrown him down and jumped upon him; * * *—that, for all the
events, befalling through so long a time, during which the ship was in the
hands of the negro Babo, he cannot here give account; but that, what he has
said is the most substantial of what occurs to him at present, and is the truth
under the oath which he has taken; which declaration he affirmed and ratified,
after hearing it read to him.</p>
<p>He said that he is twenty-nine years of age, and broken in body and mind; that
when finally dismissed by the court, he shall not return home to Chili, but
betake himself to the monastery on Mount Agonia without; and signed with his
honor, and crossed himself, and, for the time, departed as he came, in his
litter, with the monk Infelez, to the Hospital de Sacerdotes.</p>
<p class="right">
BENITO CERENO.</p>
<p class="letter">
DOCTOR ROZAS.</p>
<p>If the Deposition have served as the key to fit into the lock of the
complications which precede it, then, as a vault whose door has been flung
back, the San Dominick’s hull lies open to-day.</p>
<p>Hitherto the nature of this narrative, besides rendering the intricacies in the
beginning unavoidable, has more or less required that many things, instead of
being set down in the order of occurrence, should be retrospectively, or
irregularly given; this last is the case with the following passages, which
will conclude the account:</p>
<p>During the long, mild voyage to Lima, there was, as before hinted, a period
during which the sufferer a little recovered his health, or, at least in some
degree, his tranquillity. Ere the decided relapse which came, the two captains
had many cordial conversations—their fraternal unreserve in singular
contrast with former withdrawments.</p>
<p>Again and again it was repeated, how hard it had been to enact the part forced
on the Spaniard by Babo.</p>
<p>“Ah, my dear friend,” Don Benito once said, “at those very
times when you thought me so morose and ungrateful, nay, when, as you now
admit, you half thought me plotting your murder, at those very times my heart
was frozen; I could not look at you, thinking of what, both on board this ship
and your own, hung, from other hands, over my kind benefactor. And as God
lives, Don Amasa, I know not whether desire for my own safety alone could have
nerved me to that leap into your boat, had it not been for the thought that,
did you, unenlightened, return to your ship, you, my best friend, with all who
might be with you, stolen upon, that night, in your hammocks, would never in
this world have wakened again. Do but think how you walked this deck, how you
sat in this cabin, every inch of ground mined into honey-combs under you. Had I
dropped the least hint, made the least advance towards an understanding between
us, death, explosive death—yours as mine—would have ended the
scene.”</p>
<p>“True, true,” cried Captain Delano, starting, “you have saved
my life, Don Benito, more than I yours; saved it, too, against my knowledge and
will.”</p>
<p>“Nay, my friend,” rejoined the Spaniard, courteous even to the
point of religion, “God charmed your life, but you saved mine. To think
of some things you did—those smilings and chattings, rash pointings and
gesturings. For less than these, they slew my mate, Raneds; but you had the
Prince of Heaven’s safe-conduct through all ambuscades.”</p>
<p>“Yes, all is owing to Providence, I know: but the temper of my mind that
morning was more than commonly pleasant, while the sight of so much suffering,
more apparent than real, added to my good-nature, compassion, and charity,
happily interweaving the three. Had it been otherwise, doubtless, as you hint,
some of my interferences might have ended unhappily enough. Besides, those
feelings I spoke of enabled me to get the better of momentary distrust, at
times when acuteness might have cost me my life, without saving
another’s. Only at the end did my suspicions get the better of me, and
you know how wide of the mark they then proved.”</p>
<p>“Wide, indeed,” said Don Benito, sadly; “you were with me all
day; stood with me, sat with me, talked with me, looked at me, ate with me,
drank with me; and yet, your last act was to clutch for a monster, not only an
innocent man, but the most pitiable of all men. To such degree may malign
machinations and deceptions impose. So far may even the best man err, in
judging the conduct of one with the recesses of whose condition he is not
acquainted. But you were forced to it; and you were in time undeceived. Would
that, in both respects, it was so ever, and with all men.”</p>
<p>“You generalize, Don Benito; and mournfully enough. But the past is
passed; why moralize upon it? Forget it. See, yon bright sun has forgotten it
all, and the blue sea, and the blue sky; these have turned over new
leaves.”</p>
<p>“Because they have no memory,” he dejectedly replied;
“because they are not human.”</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>“With their steadfastness they but waft me to my tomb, Señor,” was
the foreboding response.</p>
<p>“You are saved,” cried Captain Delano, more and more astonished and
pained; “you are saved: what has cast such a shadow upon you?”</p>
<p>“The negro.”</p>
<p>There was silence, while the moody man sat, slowly and unconsciously gathering
his mantle about him, as if it were a pall.</p>
<p>There was no more conversation that day.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<h2><SPAN name="chap04"></SPAN>THE LIGHTNING-ROD MAN.</h2>
<p>What grand irregular thunder, thought I, standing on my hearth-stone among the
Acroceraunian hills, as the scattered bolts boomed overhead, and crashed down
among the valleys, every bolt followed by zigzag irradiations, and swift slants
of sharp rain, which audibly rang, like a charge of spear-points, on my low
shingled roof. I suppose, though, that the mountains hereabouts break and churn
up the thunder, so that it is far more glorious here than on the plain.
Hark!—someone at the door. Who is this that chooses a time of thunder for
making calls? And why don’t he, man-fashion, use the knocker, instead of
making that doleful undertaker’s clatter with his fist against the hollow
panel? But let him in. Ah, here he comes. “Good day, sir:” an
entire stranger. “Pray be seated.” What is that strange-looking
walking-stick he carries: “A fine thunder-storm, sir.”</p>
<p>“Fine?—Awful!”</p>
<p>“You are wet. Stand here on the hearth before the fire.”</p>
<p>“Not for worlds!”</p>
<p>The stranger still stood in the exact middle of the cottage, where he had first
planted himself. His singularity impelled a closer scrutiny. A lean, gloomy
figure. Hair dark and lank, mattedly streaked over his brow. His sunken
pitfalls of eyes were ringed by indigo halos, and played with an innocuous sort
of lightning: the gleam without the bolt. The whole man was dripping. He stood
in a puddle on the bare oak floor: his strange walking-stick vertically resting
at his side.</p>
<p>It was a polished copper rod, four feet long, lengthwise attached to a neat
wooden staff, by insertion into two balls of greenish glass, ringed with copper
bands. The metal rod terminated at the top tripodwise, in three keen tines,
brightly gilt. He held the thing by the wooden part alone.</p>
<p>“Sir,” said I, bowing politely, “have I the honor of a visit
from that illustrious god, Jupiter Tonans? So stood he in the Greek statue of
old, grasping the lightning-bolt. If you be he, or his viceroy, I have to thank
you for this noble storm you have brewed among our mountains. Listen: That was
a glorious peal. Ah, to a lover of the majestic, it is a good thing to have the
Thunderer himself in one’s cottage. The thunder grows finer for that. But
pray be seated. This old rush-bottomed arm-chair, I grant, is a poor substitute
for your evergreen throne on Olympus; but, condescend to be seated.”</p>
<p>While I thus pleasantly spoke, the stranger eyed me, half in wonder, and half
in a strange sort of horror; but did not move a foot.</p>
<p>“Do, sir, be seated; you need to be dried ere going forth again.”</p>
<p>I planted the chair invitingly on the broad hearth, where a little fire had
been kindled that afternoon to dissipate the dampness, not the cold; for it was
early in the month of September.</p>
<p>But without heeding my solicitation, and still standing in the middle of the
floor, the stranger gazed at me portentously and spoke.</p>
<p>“Sir,” said he, “excuse me; but instead of my accepting your
invitation to be seated on the hearth there, I solemnly warn <i>you</i>, that
you had best accept <i>mine</i>, and stand with me in the middle of the room.
Good heavens!” he cried, starting—“there is another of those
awful crashes. I warn you, sir, quit the hearth.”</p>
<p>“Mr. Jupiter Tonans,” said I, quietly rolling my body on the stone,
“I stand very well here.”</p>
<p>“Are you so horridly ignorant, then,” he cried, “as not to
know, that by far the most dangerous part of a house, during such a terrific
tempest as this, is the fire-place?”</p>
<p>“Nay, I did not know that,” involuntarily stepping upon the first
board next to the stone.</p>
<p>The stranger now assumed such an unpleasant air of successful admonition,
that—quite involuntarily again—I stepped back upon the hearth, and
threw myself into the erectest, proudest posture I could command. But I said
nothing.</p>
<p>“For Heaven’s sake,” he cried, with a strange mixture of
alarm and intimidation—“for Heaven’s sake, get off the
hearth! Know you not, that the heated air and soot are conductors;—to say
nothing of those immense iron fire-dogs? Quit the spot—I conjure—I
command you.”</p>
<p>“Mr. Jupiter Tonans, I am not accustomed to be commanded in my own
house.”</p>
<p>“Call me not by that pagan name. You are profane in this time of
terror.”</p>
<p>“Sir, will you be so good as to tell me your business? If you seek
shelter from the storm, you are welcome, so long as you be civil; but if you
come on business, open it forthwith. Who are you?”</p>
<p>“I am a dealer in lightning-rods,” said the stranger, softening his
tone; “my special business is—Merciful heaven! what a
crash!—Have you ever been struck—your premises, I mean? No?
It’s best to be provided;”—significantly rattling his
metallic staff on the floor;—“by nature, there are no castles in
thunder-storms; yet, say but the word, and of this cottage I can make a
Gibraltar by a few waves of this wand. Hark, what Himalayas of
concussions!”</p>
<p>“You interrupted yourself; your special business you were about to speak
of.”</p>
<p>“My special business is to travel the country for orders for
lightning-rods. This is my specimen-rod;” tapping his staff; “I
have the best of references”—fumbling in his pockets. “In
Criggan last month, I put up three-and-twenty rods on only five
buildings.”</p>
<p>“Let me see. Was it not at Criggan last week, about midnight on Saturday,
that the steeple, the big elm, and the assembly-room cupola were struck? Any of
your rods there?”</p>
<p>“Not on the tree and cupola, but the steeple.”</p>
<p>“Of what use is your rod, then?”</p>
<p>“Of life-and-death use. But my workman was heedless. In fitting the rod
at top to the steeple, he allowed a part of the metal to graze the tin
sheeting. Hence the accident. Not my fault, but his. Hark!”</p>
<p>“Never mind. That clap burst quite loud enough to be heard without
finger-pointing. Did you hear of the event at Montreal last year? A servant
girl struck at her bed-side with a rosary in her hand; the beads being metal.
Does your beat extend into the Canadas?”</p>
<p>“No. And I hear that there, iron rods only are in use. They should have
<i>mine</i>, which are copper. Iron is easily fused. Then they draw out the rod
so slender, that it has not body enough to conduct the full electric current.
The metal melts; the building is destroyed. My copper rods never act so. Those
Canadians are fools. Some of them knob the rod at the top, which risks a deadly
explosion, instead of imperceptibly carrying down the current into the earth,
as this sort of rod does. <i>Mine</i> is the only true rod. Look at it. Only
one dollar a foot.”</p>
<p>“This abuse of your own calling in another might make one distrustful
with respect to yourself.”</p>
<p>“Hark! The thunder becomes less muttering. It is nearing us, and nearing
the earth, too. Hark! One crammed crash! All the vibrations made one by
nearness. Another flash. Hold!”</p>
<p>“What do you?” I said, seeing him now, instantaneously
relinquishing his staff, lean intently forward towards the window, with his
right fore and middle fingers on his left wrist. But ere the words had well
escaped me, another exclamation escaped him.</p>
<p>“Crash! only three pulses—less than a third of a mile
off—yonder, somewhere in that wood. I passed three stricken oaks there,
ripped out new and glittering. The oak draws lightning more than other timber,
having iron in solution in its sap. Your floor here seems oak.</p>
<p>“Heart-of-oak. From the peculiar time of your call upon me, I suppose you
purposely select stormy weather for your journeys. When the thunder is roaring,
you deem it an hour peculiarly favorable for producing impressions favorable to
your trade.”</p>
<p>“Hark!—Awful!”</p>
<p>“For one who would arm others with fear you seem unbeseemingly timorous
yourself. Common men choose fair weather for their travels: you choose
thunder-storms; and yet—”</p>
<p>“That I travel in thunder-storms, I grant; but not without particular
precautions, such as only a lightning-rod man may know. Hark! Quick—look
at my specimen rod. Only one dollar a foot.”</p>
<p>“A very fine rod, I dare say. But what are these particular precautions
of yours? Yet first let me close yonder shutters; the slanting rain is beating
through the sash. I will bar up.”</p>
<p>“Are you mad? Know you not that yon iron bar is a swift conductor?
Desist.”</p>
<p>“I will simply close the shutters, then, and call my boy to bring me a
wooden bar. Pray, touch the bell-pull there.</p>
<p>“Are you frantic? That bell-wire might blast you. Never touch bell-wire
in a thunder-storm, nor ring a bell of any sort.”</p>
<p>“Nor those in belfries? Pray, will you tell me where and how one may be
safe in a time like this? Is there any part of my house I may touch with hopes
of my life?”</p>
<p>“There is; but not where you now stand. Come away from the wall. The
current will sometimes run down a wall, and—a man being a better
conductor than a wall—it would leave the wall and run into him. Swoop!
<i>That</i> must have fallen very nigh. That must have been globular
lightning.”</p>
<p>“Very probably. Tell me at once, which is, in your opinion, the safest
part of this house?</p>
<p>“This room, and this one spot in it where I stand. Come hither.”</p>
<p>“The reasons first.”</p>
<p>“Hark!—after the flash the gust—the sashes shiver—the
house, the house!—Come hither to me!”</p>
<p>“The reasons, if you please.”</p>
<p>“Come hither to me!”</p>
<p>“Thank you again, I think I will try my old stand—the hearth. And
now, Mr. Lightning-rod-man, in the pauses of the thunder, be so good as to tell
me your reasons for esteeming this one room of the house the safest, and your
own one stand-point there the safest spot in it.”</p>
<p>There was now a little cessation of the storm for a while. The Lightning-rod
man seemed relieved, and replied:—</p>
<p>“Your house is a one-storied house, with an attic and a cellar; this room
is between. Hence its comparative safety. Because lightning sometimes passes
from the clouds to the earth, and sometimes from the earth to the clouds. Do
you comprehend?—and I choose the middle of the room, because if the
lightning should strike the house at all, it would come down the chimney or
walls; so, obviously, the further you are from them, the better. Come hither to
me, now.”</p>
<p>“Presently. Something you just said, instead of alarming me, has
strangely inspired confidence.”</p>
<p>“What have I said?”</p>
<p>“You said that sometimes lightning flashes from the earth to the
clouds.”</p>
<p>“Aye, the returning-stroke, as it is called; when the earth, being
overcharged with the fluid, flashes its surplus upward.”</p>
<p>“The returning-stroke; that is, from earth to sky. Better and better. But
come here on the hearth and dry yourself.”</p>
<p>“I am better here, and better wet.”</p>
<p>“How?”</p>
<p>“It is the safest thing you can do—Hark, again!—to get
yourself thoroughly drenched in a thunder-storm. Wet clothes are better
conductors than the body; and so, if the lightning strike, it might pass down
the wet clothes without touching the body. The storm deepens again. Have you a
rug in the house? Rugs are non-conductors. Get one, that I may stand on it
here, and you, too. The skies blacken—it is dusk at noon. Hark!—the
rug, the rug!”</p>
<p>I gave him one; while the hooded mountains seemed closing and tumbling into the
cottage.</p>
<p>“And now, since our being dumb will not help us,” said I, resuming
my place, “let me hear your precautions in traveling during
thunder-storms.”</p>
<p>“Wait till this one is passed.”</p>
<p>“Nay, proceed with the precautions. You stand in the safest possible
place according to your own account. Go on.”</p>
<p>“Briefly, then. I avoid pine-trees, high houses, lonely barns, upland
pastures, running water, flocks of cattle and sheep, a crowd of men. If I
travel on foot—as to-day—I do not walk fast; if in my buggy, I
touch not its back or sides; if on horseback, I dismount and lead the horse.
But of all things, I avoid tall men.”</p>
<p>“Do I dream? Man avoid man? and in danger-time, too.”</p>
<p>“Tall men in a thunder-storm I avoid. Are you so grossly ignorant as not
to know, that the height of a six-footer is sufficient to discharge an electric
cloud upon him? Are not lonely Kentuckians, ploughing, smit in the unfinished
furrow? Nay, if the six-footer stand by running water, the cloud will sometimes
<i>select</i> him as its conductor to that running water. Hark! Sure, yon black
pinnacle is split. Yes, a man is a good conductor. The lightning goes through
and through a man, but only peels a tree. But sir, you have kept me so long
answering your questions, that I have not yet come to business. Will you order
one of my rods? Look at this specimen one? See: it is of the best of copper.
Copper’s the best conductor. Your house is low; but being upon the
mountains, that lowness does not one whit depress it. You mountaineers are most
exposed. In mountainous countries the lightning-rod man should have most
business. Look at the specimen, sir. One rod will answer for a house so small
as this. Look over these recommendations. Only one rod, sir; cost, only twenty
dollars. Hark! There go all the granite Taconics and Hoosics dashed together
like pebbles. By the sound, that must have struck something. An elevation of
five feet above the house, will protect twenty feet radius all about the rod.
Only twenty dollars, sir—a dollar a foot.
Hark!—Dreadful!—Will you order? Will you buy? Shall I put down your
name? Think of being a heap of charred offal, like a haltered horse burnt in
his stall; and all in one flash!”</p>
<p>“You pretended envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary to and
from Jupiter Tonans,” laughed I; “you mere man who come here to put
you and your pipestem between clay and sky, do you think that because you can
strike a bit of green light from the Leyden jar, that you can thoroughly avert
the supernal bolt? Your rod rusts, or breaks, and where are you? Who has
empowered you, you Tetzel, to peddle round your indulgences from divine
ordinations? The hairs of our heads are numbered, and the days of our lives. In
thunder as in sunshine, I stand at ease in the hands of my God. False
negotiator, away! See, the scroll of the storm is rolled back; the house is
unharmed; and in the blue heavens I read in the rainbow, that the Deity will
not, of purpose, make war on man’s earth.”</p>
<p>“Impious wretch!” foamed the stranger, blackening in the face as
the rainbow beamed, “I will publish your infidel notions.”</p>
<p>The scowl grew blacker on his face; the indigo-circles enlarged round his eyes
as the storm-rings round the midnight moon. He sprang upon me; his tri-forked
thing at my heart.</p>
<p>I seized it; I snapped it; I dashed it; I trod it; and dragging the dark
lightning-king out of my door, flung his elbowed, copper sceptre after him.</p>
<p>But spite of my treatment, and spite of my dissuasive talk of him to my
neighbors, the Lightning-rod man still dwells in the land; still travels in
storm-time, and drives a brave trade with the fears of man.</p>
<h2><SPAN name="chap05"></SPAN>THE ENCANTADAS; OR, ENCHANTED ISLES</h2>
<hr />
<h3>SKETCH FIRST.<br/> THE ISLES AT LARGE.</h3>
<p class="poem">
—“That may not be, said then the ferryman,<br/>
Least we unweeting hap to be fordonne;<br/>
For those same islands seeming now and than,<br/>
Are not firme land, nor any certein wonne,<br/>
But stragling plots which to and fro do ronne<br/>
In the wide waters; therefore are they hight<br/>
The Wandering Islands; therefore do them shonne;<br/>
For they have oft drawne many a wandring wight<br/>
Into most deadly daunger and distressed plight;<br/>
For whosoever once hath fastened<br/>
His foot thereon may never it secure<br/>
But wandreth evermore uncertein and unsure.”</p>
<hr />
<p class="poem">
“Darke, dolefull, dreary, like a greedy grave,<br/>
That still for carrion carcasses doth crave;<br/>
On top whereof ay dwelt the ghastly owl,<br/>
Shrieking his balefull note, which ever drave<br/>
Far from that haunt all other cheerful fowl,<br/>
And all about it wandring ghosts did wayle and howl.”</p>
<p>Take five-and-twenty heaps of cinders dumped here and there in an outside city
lot; imagine some of them magnified into mountains, and the vacant lot the sea;
and you will have a fit idea of the general aspect of the Encantadas, or
Enchanted Isles. A group rather of extinct volcanoes than of isles; looking
much as the world at large might, after a penal conflagration.</p>
<p>It is to be doubted whether any spot of earth can, in desolateness, furnish a
parallel to this group. Abandoned cemeteries of long ago, old cities by
piecemeal tumbling to their ruin, these are melancholy enough; but, like all
else which has but once been associated with humanity, they still awaken in us
some thoughts of sympathy, however sad. Hence, even the Dead Sea, along with
whatever other emotions it may at times inspire, does not fail to touch in the
pilgrim some of his less unpleasurable feelings.</p>
<p>And as for solitariness; the great forests of the north, the expanses of
unnavigated waters, the Greenland ice-fields, are the profoundest of solitudes
to a human observer; still the magic of their changeable tides and seasons
mitigates their terror; because, though unvisited by men, those forests are
visited by the May; the remotest seas reflect familiar stars even as Lake Erie
does; and in the clear air of a fine Polar day, the irradiated, azure ice shows
beautifully as malachite.</p>
<p>But the special curse, as one may call it, of the Encantadas, that which exalts
them in desolation above Idumea and the Pole, is, that to them change never
comes; neither the change of seasons nor of sorrows. Cut by the Equator, they
know not autumn, and they know not spring; while already reduced to the lees of
fire, ruin itself can work little more upon them. The showers refresh the
deserts; but in these isles, rain never falls. Like split Syrian gourds left
withering in the sun, they are cracked by an everlasting drought beneath a
torrid sky. “Have mercy upon me,” the wailing spirit of the
Encantadas seems to cry, “and send Lazarus that he may dip the tip of his
finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am tormented in this flame.”</p>
<p>Another feature in these isles is their emphatic uninhabitableness. It is
deemed a fit type of all-forsaken overthrow, that the jackal should den in the
wastes of weedy Babylon; but the Encantadas refuse to harbor even the outcasts
of the beasts. Man and wolf alike disown them. Little but reptile life is here
found: tortoises, lizards, immense spiders, snakes, and that strangest anomaly
of outlandish nature, the <i>aguano</i>. No voice, no low, no howl is heard;
the chief sound of life here is a hiss.</p>
<p>On most of the isles where vegetation is found at all, it is more ungrateful
than the blankness of Aracama. Tangled thickets of wiry bushes, without fruit
and without a name, springing up among deep fissures of calcined rock, and
treacherously masking them; or a parched growth of distorted cactus trees.</p>
<p>In many places the coast is rock-bound, or, more properly, clinker-bound;
tumbled masses of blackish or greenish stuff like the dross of an iron-furnace,
forming dark clefts and caves here and there, into which a ceaseless sea pours
a fury of foam; overhanging them with a swirl of gray, haggard mist, amidst
which sail screaming flights of unearthly birds heightening the dismal din.
However calm the sea without, there is no rest for these swells and those
rocks; they lash and are lashed, even when the outer ocean is most at peace
with, itself. On the oppressive, clouded days, such as are peculiar to this
part of the watery Equator, the dark, vitrified masses, many of which raise
themselves among white whirlpools and breakers in detached and perilous places
off the shore, present a most Plutonian sight. In no world but a fallen one
could such lands exist.</p>
<p>Those parts of the strand free from the marks of fire, stretch away in wide
level beaches of multitudinous dead shells, with here and there decayed bits of
sugar-cane, bamboos, and cocoanuts, washed upon this other and darker world
from the charming palm isles to the westward and southward; all the way from
Paradise to Tartarus; while mixed with the relics of distant beauty you will
sometimes see fragments of charred wood and mouldering ribs of wrecks. Neither
will any one be surprised at meeting these last, after observing the
conflicting currents which eddy throughout nearly all the wide channels of the
entire group. The capriciousness of the tides of air sympathizes with those of
the sea. Nowhere is the wind so light, baffling, and every way unreliable, and
so given to perplexing calms, as at the Encantadas. Nigh a month has been spent
by a ship going from one isle to another, though but ninety miles between; for
owing to the force of the current, the boats employed to tow barely suffice to
keep the craft from sweeping upon the cliffs, but do nothing towards
accelerating her voyage. Sometimes it is impossible for a vessel from afar to
fetch up with the group itself, unless large allowances for prospective lee-way
have been made ere its coming in sight. And yet, at other times, there is a
mysterious indraft, which irresistibly draws a passing vessel among the isles,
though not bound to them.</p>
<p>True, at one period, as to some extent at the present day, large fleets of
whalemen cruised for spermaceti upon what some seamen call the Enchanted
Ground. But this, as in due place will be described, was off the great outer
isle of Albemarle, away from the intricacies of the smaller isles, where there
is plenty of sea-room; and hence, to that vicinity, the above remarks do not
altogether apply; though even there the current runs at times with singular
force, shifting, too, with as singular a caprice.</p>
<p>Indeed, there are seasons when currents quite unaccountable prevail for a great
distance round about the total group, and are so strong and irregular as to
change a vessel’s course against the helm, though sailing at the rate of
four or five miles the hour. The difference in the reckonings of navigators,
produced by these causes, along with the light and variable winds, long
nourished a persuasion, that there existed two distinct clusters of isles in
the parallel of the Encantadas, about a hundred leagues apart. Such was the
idea of their earlier visitors, the Buccaneers; and as late as 1750, the charts
of that part of the Pacific accorded with the strange delusion. And this
apparent fleetingness and unreality of the locality of the isles was most
probably one reason for the Spaniards calling them the Encantada, or Enchanted
Group.</p>
<p>But not uninfluenced by their character, as they now confessedly exist, the
modern voyager will be inclined to fancy that the bestowal of this name might
have in part originated in that air of spell-bound desertness which so
significantly invests the isles. Nothing can better suggest the aspect of once
living things malignly crumbled from ruddiness into ashes. Apples of Sodom,
after touching, seem these isles.</p>
<p>However wavering their place may seem by reason of the currents, they
themselves, at least to one upon the shore, appear invariably the same: fixed,
cast, glued into the very body of cadaverous death.</p>
<p>Nor would the appellation, enchanted, seem misapplied in still another sense.
For concerning the peculiar reptile inhabitant of these wilds—whose
presence gives the group its second Spanish name, Gallipagos—concerning
the tortoises found here, most mariners have long cherished a superstition, not
more frightful than grotesque. They earnestly believe that all wicked
sea-officers, more especially commodores and captains, are at death (and, in
some cases, before death) transformed into tortoises; thenceforth dwelling upon
these hot aridities, sole solitary lords of Asphaltum.</p>
<p>Doubtless, so quaintly dolorous a thought was originally inspired by the
woe-begone landscape itself; but more particularly, perhaps, by the tortoises.
For, apart from their strictly physical features, there is something strangely
self-condemned in the appearance of these creatures. Lasting sorrow and penal
hopelessness are in no animal form so suppliantly expressed as in theirs; while
the thought of their wonderful longevity does not fail to enhance the
impression.</p>
<p>Nor even at the risk of meriting the charge of absurdly believing in
enchantments, can I restrain the admission that sometimes, even now, when
leaving the crowded city to wander out July and August among the Adirondack
Mountains, far from the influences of towns and proportionally nigh to the
mysterious ones of nature; when at such times I sit me down in the mossy head
of some deep-wooded gorge, surrounded by prostrate trunks of blasted pines and
recall, as in a dream, my other and far-distant rovings in the baked heart of
the charmed isles; and remember the sudden glimpses of dusky shells, and long
languid necks protruded from the leafless thickets; and again have beheld the
vitreous inland rocks worn down and grooved into deep ruts by ages and ages of
the slow draggings of tortoises in quest of pools of scanty water; I can hardly
resist the feeling that in my time I have indeed slept upon evilly enchanted
ground.</p>
<p>Nay, such is the vividness of my memory, or the magic of my fancy, that I know
not whether I am not the occasional victim of optical delusion concerning the
Gallipagos. For, often in scenes of social merriment, and especially at revels
held by candle-light in old-fashioned mansions, so that shadows are thrown into
the further recesses of an angular and spacious room, making them put on a look
of haunted undergrowth of lonely woods, I have drawn the attention of my
comrades by my fixed gaze and sudden change of air, as I have seemed to see,
slowly emerging from those imagined solitudes, and heavily crawling along the
floor, the ghost of a gigantic tortoise, with “Memento * * * * *”
burning in live letters upon his back.</p>
<h3>SKETCH SECOND.<br/> TWO SIDES TO A TORTOISE.</h3>
<p class="poem">
“Most ugly shapes and horrible aspects,<br/>
Such as Dame Nature selfe mote feare to see,<br/>
Or shame, that ever should so fowle defects<br/>
From her most cunning hand escaped bee;<br/>
All dreadfull pourtraicts of deformitee.<br/>
No wonder if these do a man appall;<br/>
For all that here at home we dreadfull hold<br/>
Be but as bugs to fearen babes withall<br/>
Compared to the creatures in these isles’ entrall</p>
<hr />
<p class="poem">
“Fear naught, then said the palmer, well avized,<br/>
For these same monsters are not there indeed,<br/>
But are into these fearful shapes disguized.</p>
<hr />
<p class="poem">
“And lifting up his vertuous staffe on high,<br/>
Then all that dreadful armie fast gan flye<br/>
Into great Zethy’s bosom, where they hidden lye.”</p>
<p>In view of the description given, may one be gay upon the Encantadas? Yes: that
is, find one the gayety, and he will be gay. And, indeed, sackcloth and ashes
as they are, the isles are not perhaps unmitigated gloom. For while no
spectator can deny their claims to a most solemn and superstitious
consideration, no more than my firmest resolutions can decline to behold the
spectre-tortoise when emerging from its shadowy recess; yet even the tortoise,
dark and melancholy as it is upon the back, still possesses a bright side; its
calipee or breast-plate being sometimes of a faint yellowish or golden tinge.
Moreover, every one knows that tortoises as well as turtle are of such a make,
that if you but put them on their backs you thereby expose their bright sides
without the possibility of their recovering themselves, and turning into view
the other. But after you have done this, and because you have done this, you
should not swear that the tortoise has no dark side. Enjoy the bright, keep it
turned up perpetually if you can, but be honest, and don’t deny the
black. Neither should he, who cannot turn the tortoise from its natural
position so as to hide the darker and expose his livelier aspect, like a great
October pumpkin in the sun, for that cause declare the creature to be one total
inky blot. The tortoise is both black and bright. But let us to particulars.</p>
<p>Some months before my first stepping ashore upon the group, my ship was
cruising in its close vicinity. One noon we found ourselves off the South Head
of Albemarle, and not very far from the land. Partly by way of freak, and
partly by way of spying out so strange a country, a boat’s crew was sent
ashore, with orders to see all they could, and besides, bring back whatever
tortoises they could conveniently transport.</p>
<p>It was after sunset, when the adventurers returned. I looked down over the
ship’s high side as if looking down over the curb of a well, and dimly
saw the damp boat, deep in the sea with some unwonted weight. Ropes were dropt
over, and presently three huge antediluvian-looking tortoises, after much
straining, were landed on deck. They seemed hardly of the seed of earth. We had
been broad upon the waters for five long months, a period amply sufficient to
make all things of the land wear a fabulous hue to the dreamy mind. Had three
Spanish custom-house officers boarded us then, it is not unlikely that I should
have curiously stared at them, felt of them, and stroked them much as savages
serve civilized guests. But instead of three custom-house officers, behold
these really wondrous tortoises—none of your schoolboy
mud-turtles—but black as widower’s weeds, heavy as chests of plate,
with vast shells medallioned and orbed like shields, and dented and blistered
like shields that have breasted a battle, shaggy, too, here and there, with
dark green moss, and slimy with the spray of the sea. These mystic creatures,
suddenly translated by night from unutterable solitudes to our peopled deck,
affected me in a manner not easy to unfold. They seemed newly crawled forth
from beneath the foundations of the world. Yea, they seemed the identical
tortoises whereon the Hindoo plants this total sphere. With a lantern I
inspected them more closely. Such worshipful venerableness of aspect! Such
furry greenness mantling the rude peelings and healing the fissures of their
shattered shells. I no more saw three tortoises. They expanded—became
transfigured. I seemed to see three Roman Coliseums in magnificent decay.</p>
<p>Ye oldest inhabitants of this, or any other isle, said I, pray, give me the
freedom of your three-walled towns.</p>
<p>The great feeling inspired by these creatures was that of age:—dateless,
indefinite endurance. And in fact that any other creature can live and breathe
as long as the tortoise of the Encantadas, I will not readily believe. Not to
hint of their known capacity of sustaining life, while going without food for
an entire year, consider that impregnable armor of their living mail. What
other bodily being possesses such a citadel wherein to resist the assaults of
Time?</p>
<p>As, lantern in hand, I scraped among the moss and beheld the ancient scars of
bruises received in many a sullen fall among the marly mountains of the
isle—scars strangely widened, swollen, half obliterate, and yet distorted
like those sometimes found in the bark of very hoary trees, I seemed an
antiquary of a geologist, studying the bird-tracks and ciphers upon the exhumed
slates trod by incredible creatures whose very ghosts are now defunct.</p>
<p>As I lay in my hammock that night, overhead I heard the slow weary draggings of
the three ponderous strangers along the encumbered deck. Their stupidity or
their resolution was so great, that they never went aside for any impediment.
One ceased his movements altogether just before the mid-watch. At sunrise I
found him butted like a battering-ram against the immovable foot of the
foremast, and still striving, tooth and nail, to force the impossible passage.
That these tortoises are the victims of a penal, or malignant, or perhaps a
downright diabolical enchanter, seems in nothing more likely than in that
strange infatuation of hopeless toil which so often possesses them. I have
known them in their journeyings ram themselves heroically against rocks, and
long abide there, nudging, wriggling, wedging, in order to displace them, and
so hold on their inflexible path. Their crowning curse is their drudging
impulse to straightforwardness in a belittered world.</p>
<p>Meeting with no such hinderance as their companion did, the other tortoises
merely fell foul of small stumbling-blocks—buckets, blocks, and coils of
rigging—and at times in the act of crawling over them would slip with an
astounding rattle to the deck. Listening to these draggings and concussions, I
thought me of the haunt from which they came; an isle full of metallic ravines
and gulches, sunk bottomlessly into the hearts of splintered mountains, and
covered for many miles with inextricable thickets. I then pictured these three
straight-forward monsters, century after century, writhing through the shades,
grim as blacksmiths; crawling so slowly and ponderously, that not only did
toad-stools and all fungus things grow beneath their feet, but a sooty moss
sprouted upon their backs. With them I lost myself in volcanic mazes; brushed
away endless boughs of rotting thickets; till finally in a dream I found myself
sitting crosslegged upon the foremost, a Brahmin similarly mounted upon either
side, forming a tripod of foreheads which upheld the universal cope.</p>
<p>Such was the wild nightmare begot by my first impression of the Encantadas
tortoise. But next evening, strange to say, I sat down with my shipmates, and
made a merry repast from tortoise steaks, and tortoise stews; and supper over,
out knife, and helped convert the three mighty concave shells into three
fanciful soup-tureens, and polished the three flat yellowish calipees into
three gorgeous salvers.</p>
<h3>SKETCH THIRD.<br/> ROCK RODONDO.</h3>
<p class="poem">
“For they this tight the Rock of vile Reproach,<br/>
A dangerous and dreadful place,<br/>
To which nor fish nor fowl did once approach,<br/>
But yelling meaws with sea-gulls hoars and bace<br/>
And cormoyrants with birds of ravenous race,<br/>
Which still sit waiting on that dreadful clift.”</p>
<hr />
<p class="poem">
“With that the rolling sea resounding soft<br/>
In his big base them fitly answered,<br/>
And on the Rock, the waves breaking aloft,<br/>
A solemn ineane unto them measured.”</p>
<hr />
<p class="poem">
“Then he the boteman bad row easily,<br/>
And let him heare some part of that rare melody.”</p>
<hr />
<p class="poem">
“Suddeinly an innumerable flight<br/>
Of harmefull fowles about them fluttering cride,<br/>
And with their wicked wings them oft did smight<br/>
And sore annoyed, groping in that griesly night.”</p>
<hr />
<p class="poem">
“Even all the nation of unfortunate<br/>
And fatal birds about them flocked were.”</p>
<p>To go up into a high stone tower is not only a very fine thing in itself, but
the very best mode of gaining a comprehensive view of the region round about.
It is all the better if this tower stand solitary and alone, like that
mysterious Newport one, or else be sole survivor of some perished castle.</p>
<p>Now, with reference to the Enchanted Isles, we are fortunately supplied with
just such a noble point of observation in a remarkable rock, from its peculiar
figure called of old by the Spaniards, Rock Rodondo, or Round Rock. Some two
hundred and fifty feet high, rising straight from the sea ten miles from land,
with the whole mountainous group to the south and east. Rock Rodondo occupies,
on a large scale, very much the position which the famous Campanile or detached
Bell Tower of St. Mark does with respect to the tangled group of hoary edifices
around it.</p>
<p>Ere ascending, however, to gaze abroad upon the Encantadas, this sea-tower
itself claims attention. It is visible at the distance of thirty miles; and,
fully participating in that enchantment which pervades the group, when first
seen afar invariably is mistaken for a sail. Four leagues away, of a golden,
hazy noon, it seems some Spanish Admiral’s ship, stacked up with
glittering canvas. Sail ho! Sail ho! Sail ho! from all three masts. But coming
nigh, the enchanted frigate is transformed apace into a craggy keep.</p>
<p>My first visit to the spot was made in the gray of the morning. With a view of
fishing, we had lowered three boats and pulling some two miles from our vessel,
found ourselves just before dawn of day close under the moon-shadow of Rodondo.
Its aspect was heightened, and yet softened, by the strange double twilight of
the hour. The great full moon burnt in the low west like a half-spent beacon,
casting a soft mellow tinge upon the sea like that cast by a waning fire of
embers upon a midnight hearth; while along the entire east the invisible sun
sent pallid intimations of his coming. The wind was light; the waves languid;
the stars twinkled with a faint effulgence; all nature seemed supine with the
long night watch, and half-suspended in jaded expectation of the sun. This was
the critical hour to catch Rodondo in his perfect mood. The twilight was just
enough to reveal every striking point, without tearing away the dim investiture
of wonder.</p>
<p>From a broken stair-like base, washed, as the steps of a water-palace, by the
waves, the tower rose in entablatures of strata to a shaven summit. These
uniform layers, which compose the mass, form its most peculiar feature. For at
their lines of junction they project flatly into encircling shelves, from top
to bottom, rising one above another in graduated series. And as the eaves of
any old barn or abbey are alive with swallows, so were all these rocky ledges
with unnumbered sea-fowl. Eaves upon eaves, and nests upon nests. Here and
there were long birdlime streaks of a ghostly white staining the tower from sea
to air, readily accounting for its sail-like look afar. All would have been
bewitchingly quiescent, were it not for the demoniac din created by the birds.
Not only were the eaves rustling with them, but they flew densely overhead,
spreading themselves into a winged and continually shifting canopy. The tower
is the resort of aquatic birds for hundreds of leagues around. To the north, to
the east, to the west, stretches nothing but eternal ocean; so that the
man-of-war hawk coming from the coasts of North America, Polynesia, or Peru,
makes his first land at Rodondo. And yet though Rodondo be terra-firma, no
land-bird ever lighted on it. Fancy a red-robin or a canary there! What a
falling into the hands of the Philistines, when the poor warbler should be
surrounded by such locust-flights of strong bandit birds, with long bills cruel
as daggers.</p>
<p>I know not where one can better study the Natural History of strange sea-fowl
than at Rodondo. It is the aviary of Ocean. Birds light here which never
touched mast or tree; hermit-birds, which ever fly alone; cloud-birds, familiar
with unpierced zones of air.</p>
<p>Let us first glance low down to the lowermost shelf of all, which is the
widest, too, and but a little space from high-water mark. What outlandish
beings are these? Erect as men, but hardly as symmetrical, they stand all round
the rock like sculptured caryatides, supporting the next range of eaves above.
Their bodies are grotesquely misshapen; their bills short; their feet seemingly
legless; while the members at their sides are neither fin, wing, nor arm. And
truly neither fish, flesh, nor fowl is the penguin; as an edible, pertaining
neither to Carnival nor Lent; without exception the most ambiguous and least
lovely creature yet discovered by man. Though dabbling in all three elements,
and indeed possessing some rudimental claims to all, the penguin is at home in
none. On land it stumps; afloat it sculls; in the air it flops. As if ashamed
of her failure, Nature keeps this ungainly child hidden away at the ends of the
earth, in the Straits of Magellan, and on the abased sea-story of Rodondo.</p>
<p>But look, what are yon wobegone regiments drawn up on the next shelf above?
what rank and file of large strange fowl? what sea Friars of Orders Gray?
Pelicans. Their elongated bills, and heavy leathern pouches suspended thereto,
give them the most lugubrious expression. A pensive race, they stand for hours
together without motion. Their dull, ashy plumage imparts an aspect as if they
had been powdered over with cinders. A penitential bird, indeed, fitly haunting
the shores of the clinkered Encantadas, whereon tormented Job himself might
have well sat down and scraped himself with potsherds.</p>
<p>Higher up now we mark the gony, or gray albatross, anomalously so called, an
unsightly unpoetic bird, unlike its storied kinsman, which is the snow-white
ghost of the haunted Capes of Hope and Horn.</p>
<p>As we still ascend from shelf to shelf, we find the tenants of the tower
serially disposed in order of their magnitude:—gannets, black and
speckled haglets, jays, sea-hens, sperm-whale-birds, gulls of all
varieties:—thrones, princedoms, powers, dominating one above another in
senatorial array; while, sprinkled over all, like an ever-repeated fly in a
great piece of broidery, the stormy petrel or Mother Cary’s chicken
sounds his continual challenge and alarm. That this mysterious hummingbird of
ocean—which, had it but brilliancy of hue, might, from its evanescent
liveliness, be almost called its butterfly, yet whose chirrup under the stern
is ominous to mariners as to the peasant the death-tick sounding from behind
the chimney jamb—should have its special haunt at the Encantadas,
contributes, in the seaman’s mind, not a little to their dreary spell.</p>
<p>As day advances the dissonant din augments. With ear-splitting cries the wild
birds celebrate their matins. Each moment, flights push from the tower, and
join the aerial choir hovering overhead, while their places below are supplied
by darting myriads. But down through all this discord of commotion, I hear
clear, silver, bugle-like notes unbrokenly falling, like oblique lines of
swift-slanting rain in a cascading shower. I gaze far up, and behold a
snow-white angelic thing, with one long, lance-like feather thrust out behind.
It is the bright, inspiriting chanticleer of ocean, the beauteous bird, from
its bestirring whistle of musical invocation, fitly styled the
“Boatswain’s Mate.”</p>
<p>The winged, life-clouding Rodondo had its full counterpart in the finny hosts
which peopled the waters at its base. Below the water-line, the rock seemed one
honey-comb of grottoes, affording labyrinthine lurking-places for swarms of
fairy fish. All were strange; many exceedingly beautiful; and would have well
graced the costliest glass globes in which gold-fish are kept for a show.
Nothing was more striking than the complete novelty of many individuals of this
multitude. Here hues were seen as yet unpainted, and figures which are
unengraved.</p>
<p>To show the multitude, avidity, and nameless fearlessness and tameness of these
fish, let me say, that often, marking through clear spaces of
water—temporarily made so by the concentric dartings of the fish above
the surface—certain larger and less unwary wights, which swam slow and
deep; our anglers would cautiously essay to drop their lines down to these
last. But in vain; there was no passing the uppermost zone. No sooner did the
hook touch the sea, than a hundred infatuates contended for the honor of
capture. Poor fish of Rodondo! in your victimized confidence, you are of the
number of those who inconsiderately trust, while they do not understand, human
nature.</p>
<p>But the dawn is now fairly day. Band after band, the sea-fowl sail away to
forage the deep for their food. The tower is left solitary save the fish-caves
at its base. Its birdlime gleams in the golden rays like the whitewash of a
tall light-house, or the lofty sails of a cruiser. This moment, doubtless,
while we know it to be a dead desert rock other voyagers are taking oaths it is
a glad populous ship.</p>
<p>But ropes now, and let us ascend. Yet soft, this is not so easy.</p>
<h3>SKETCH FOURTH.<br/> A PISGAH VIEW FROM THE ROCK.</h3>
<p class="poem">
—“That done, he leads him to the highest mount,<br/>
From whence, far off he unto him did show:”—</p>
<p>If you seek to ascend Rock Rodondo, take the following prescription. Go three
voyages round the world as a main-royal-man of the tallest frigate that floats;
then serve a year or two apprenticeship to the guides who conduct strangers up
the Peak of Teneriffe; and as many more respectively to a rope-dancer, an
Indian juggler, and a chamois. This done, come and be rewarded by the view from
our tower. How we get there, we alone know. If we sought to tell others, what
the wiser were they? Suffice it, that here at the summit you and I stand. Does
any balloonist, does the outlooking man in the moon, take a broader view of
space? Much thus, one fancies, looks the universe from Milton’s celestial
battlements. A boundless watery Kentucky. Here Daniel Boone would have dwelt
content.</p>
<p>Never heed for the present yonder Burnt District of the Enchanted Isles. Look
edgeways, as it were, past them, to the south. You see nothing; but permit me
to point out the direction, if not the place, of certain interesting objects in
the vast sea, which, kissing this tower’s base, we behold unscrolling
itself towards the Antarctic Pole.</p>
<p>We stand now ten miles from the Equator. Yonder, to the East, some six hundred
miles, lies the continent; this Rock being just about on the parallel of Quito.</p>
<p>Observe another thing here. We are at one of three uninhabited clusters, which,
at pretty nearly uniform distances from the main, sentinel, at long intervals
from each other, the entire coast of South America. In a peculiar manner, also,
they terminate the South American character of country. Of the unnumbered
Polynesian chains to the westward, not one partakes of the qualities of the
Encantadas or Gallipagos, the isles of St. Felix and St. Ambrose, the isles
Juan-Fernandez and Massafuero. Of the first, it needs not here to speak. The
second lie a little above the Southern Tropic; lofty, inhospitable, and
uninhabitable rocks, one of which, presenting two round hummocks connected by a
low reef, exactly resembles a huge double-headed shot. The last lie in the
latitude of 33°; high, wild and cloven. Juan Fernandez is sufficiently famous
without further description. Massafuero is a Spanish name, expressive of the
fact, that the isle so called lies <i>more without</i>, that is, further off
the main than its neighbor Juan. This isle Massafuero has a very imposing
aspect at a distance of eight or ten miles. Approached in one direction, in
cloudy weather, its great overhanging height and rugged contour, and more
especially a peculiar slope of its broad summits, give it much the air of a
vast iceberg drifting in tremendous poise. Its sides are split with dark
cavernous recesses, as an old cathedral with its gloomy lateral chapels.
Drawing nigh one of these gorges from sea, after a long voyage, and beholding
some tatterdemalion outlaw, staff in hand, descending its steep rocks toward
you, conveys a very queer emotion to a lover of the picturesque.</p>
<p>On fishing parties from ships, at various times, I have chanced to visit each
of these groups. The impression they give to the stranger pulling close up in
his boat under their grim cliffs is, that surely he must be their first
discoverer, such, for the most part, is the unimpaired ... silence and
solitude. And here, by the way, the mode in which these isles were really first
lighted upon by Europeans is not unworthy of mention, especially as what is
about to be said, likewise applies to the original discovery of our Encantadas.</p>
<p>Prior to the year 1563, the voyages made by Spanish ships from Peru to Chili,
were full of difficulty. Along this coast, the winds from the South most
generally prevail; and it had been an invariable custom to keep close in with
the land, from a superstitious conceit on the part of the Spaniards, that were
they to lose sight of it, the eternal trade-wind would waft them into unending
waters, from whence would be no return. Here, involved among tortuous capes and
headlands, shoals and reefs, beating, too, against a continual head wind, often
light, and sometimes for days and weeks sunk into utter calm, the provincial
vessels, in many cases, suffered the extremest hardships, in passages, which at
the present day seem to have been incredibly protracted. There is on record in
some collections of nautical disasters, an account of one of these ships,
which, starting on a voyage whose duration was estimated at ten days, spent
four months at sea, and indeed never again entered harbor, for in the end she
was cast away. Singular to tell, this craft never encountered a gale, but was
the vexed sport of malicious calms and currents. Thrice, out of provisions, she
put back to an intermediate port, and started afresh, but only yet again to
return. Frequent fogs enveloped her; so that no observation could be had of her
place, and once, when all hands were joyously anticipating sight of their
destination, lo! the vapors lifted and disclosed the mountains from which they
had taken their first departure. In the like deceptive vapors she at last
struck upon a reef, whence ensued a long series of calamities too sad to
detail.</p>
<p>It was the famous pilot, Juan Fernandez, immortalized by the island named after
him, who put an end to these coasting tribulations, by boldly venturing the
experiment—as De Gama did before him with respect to Europe—of
standing broad out from land. Here he found the winds favorable for getting to
the South, and by running westward till beyond the influences of the trades, he
regained the coast without difficulty; making the passage which, though in a
high degree circuitous, proved far more expeditious than the nominally direct
one. Now it was upon these new tracks, and about the year 1670, or thereabouts,
that the Enchanted Isles, and the rest of the sentinel groups, as they may be
called, were discovered. Though I know of no account as to whether any of them
were found inhabited or no, it may be reasonably concluded that they have been
immemorial solitudes. But let us return to Redondo.</p>
<p>Southwest from our tower lies all Polynesia, hundreds of leagues away; but
straight west, on the precise line of his parallel, no land rises till your
keel is beached upon the Kingsmills, a nice little sail of, say 5000 miles.</p>
<p>Having thus by such distant references—with Rodondo the only possible
ones—settled our relative place on the sea, let us consider objects not
quite so remote. Behold the grim and charred Enchanted Isles. This nearest
crater-shaped headland is part of Albemarle, the largest of the group, being
some sixty miles or more long, and fifteen broad. Did you ever lay eye on the
real genuine Equator? Have you ever, in the largest sense, toed the Line? Well,
that identical crater-shaped headland there, all yellow lava, is cut by the
Equator exactly as a knife cuts straight through the centre of a pumpkin pie.
If you could only see so far, just to one side of that same headland, across
yon low dikey ground, you would catch sight of the isle of Narborough, the
loftiest land of the cluster; no soil whatever; one seamed clinker from top to
bottom; abounding in black caves like smithies; its metallic shore ringing
under foot like plates of iron; its central volcanoes standing grouped like a
gigantic chimney-stack.</p>
<p>Narborough and Albemarle are neighbors after a quite curious fashion. A
familiar diagram will illustrate this strange neighborhood:</p>
<div class="fig"> <ANTIMG src="images/image01.png" width-obs="52" height-obs="43" alt="[Illustration]" /> </div>
<p>Cut a channel at the above letter joint, and the middle transverse limb is
Narborough, and all the rest is Albemarle. Volcanic Narborough lies in the
black jaws of Albemarle like a wolf’s red tongue in his open month.</p>
<p>If now you desire the population of Albemarle, I will give you, in round
numbers, the statistics, according to the most reliable estimates made upon the
spot:</p>
<table summary="" style="margin-left: 3em; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em;">
<tr>
<td>Men, </td><td>none.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Ant-eaters,</td><td>unknown.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Man-haters,</td><td>unknown.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Lizards,</td><td>500,000.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Snakes,</td><td>500,000.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Spiders,</td><td>10,000,000.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Salamanders,</td><td>unknown.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Devils,</td><td>do.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Making a clean total of</td><td>11,000,000,</td>
</tr>
</table>
<p>exclusive of an incomputable host of fiends, ant-eaters, man-haters, and
salamanders.</p>
<p>Albemarle opens his mouth towards the setting sun. His distended jaws form a
great bay, which Narborough, his tongue, divides into halves, one whereof is
called Weather Bay, the other Lee Bay; while the volcanic promontories,
terminating his coasts, are styled South Head and North Head. I note this,
because these bays are famous in the annals of the Sperm Whale Fishery. The
whales come here at certain seasons to calve. When ships first cruised
hereabouts, I am told, they used to blockade the entrance of Lee Bay, when
their boats going round by Weather Bay, passed through Narborough channel, and
so had the Leviathans very neatly in a pen.</p>
<p>The day after we took fish at the base of this Round Tower, we had a fine wind,
and shooting round the north headland, suddenly descried a fleet of full thirty
sail, all beating to windward like a squadron in line. A brave sight as ever
man saw. A most harmonious concord of rushing keels. Their thirty kelsons
hummed like thirty harp-strings, and looked as straight whilst they left their
parallel traces on the sea. But there proved too many hunters for the game. The
fleet broke up, and went their separate ways out of sight, leaving my own ship
and two trim gentlemen of London. These last, finding no luck either, likewise
vanished; and Lee Bay, with all its appurtenances, and without a rival,
devolved to us.</p>
<p>The way of cruising here is this. You keep hovering about the entrance of the
bay, in one beat and out the next. But at times—not always, as in other
parts of the group—a racehorse of a current sweeps right across its
mouth. So, with all sails set, you carefully ply your tacks. How often,
standing at the foremast head at sunrise, with our patient prow pointed in
between these isles, did I gaze upon that land, not of cakes, but of clinkers,
not of streams of sparkling water, but arrested torrents of tormented lava.</p>
<p>As the ship runs in from the open sea, Narborough presents its side in one dark
craggy mass, soaring up some five or six thousand feet, at which point it hoods
itself in heavy clouds, whose lowest level fold is as clearly defined against
the rocks as the snow-line against the Andes. There is dire mischief going on
in that upper dark. There toil the demons of fire, who, at intervals, irradiate
the nights with a strange spectral illumination for miles and miles around, but
unaccompanied by any further demonstration; or else, suddenly announce
themselves by terrific concussions, and the full drama of a volcanic eruption.
The blacker that cloud by day, the more may you look for light by night. Often
whalemen have found themselves cruising nigh that burning mountain when all
aglow with a ball-room blaze. Or, rather, glass-works, you may call this same
vitreous isle of Narborough, with its tall chimney-stacks.</p>
<p>Where we still stand, here on Rodondo, we cannot see all the other isles, but
it is a good place from which to point out where they lie. Yonder, though, to
the E.N.E., I mark a distant dusky ridge. It is Abington Isle, one of the most
northerly of the group; so solitary, remote, and blank, it looks like
No-Man’s Land seen off our northern shore. I doubt whether two human
beings ever touched upon that spot. So far as yon Abington Isle is concerned,
Adam and his billions of posterity remain uncreated.</p>
<p>Ranging south of Abington, and quite out of sight behind the long spine of
Albemarle, lies James’s Isle, so called by the early Buccaneers after the
luckless Stuart, Duke of York. Observe here, by the way, that, excepting the
isles particularized in comparatively recent times, and which mostly received
the names of famous Admirals, the Encantadas were first christened by the
Spaniards; but these Spanish names were generally effaced on English charts by
the subsequent christenings of the Buccaneers, who, in the middle of the
seventeenth century, called them after English noblemen and kings. Of these
loyal freebooters and the things which associate their name with the
Encantadas, we shall hear anon. Nay, for one little item, immediately; for
between James’s Isle and Albemarle, lies a fantastic islet, strangely
known as “Cowley’s Enchanted Isle.” But, as all the group is
deemed enchanted, the reason must be given for the spell within a spell
involved by this particular designation. The name was bestowed by that
excellent Buccaneer himself, on his first visit here. Speaking in his published
voyages of this spot, he says—“My fancy led me to call it
Cowley’s Enchanted Isle, for, we having had a sight of it upon several
points of the compass, it appeared always in so many different forms; sometimes
like a ruined fortification; upon another point like a great city,” etc.
No wonder though, that among the Encantadas all sorts of ocular deceptions and
mirages should be met.</p>
<p>That Cowley linked his name with this self-transforming and bemocking isle,
suggests the possibility that it conveyed to him some meditative image of
himself. At least, as is not impossible, if he were any relative of the
mildly-thoughtful and self-upbraiding poet Cowley, who lived about his time,
the conceit might seem unwarranted; for that sort of thing evinced in the
naming of this isle runs in the blood, and may be seen in pirates as in poets.</p>
<p>Still south of James’s Isle lie Jervis Isle, Duncan Isle,
Grossman’s Isle, Brattle Isle, Wood’s Isle, Chatham Isle, and
various lesser isles, for the most part an archipelago of aridities, without
inhabitant, history, or hope of either in all time to come. But not far from
these are rather notable isles—Barrington, Charles’s, Norfolk, and
Hood’s. Succeeding chapters will reveal some ground for their notability.</p>
<h3>SKETCH FIFTH.<br/> THE FRIGATE, AND SHIP FLYAWAY.</h3>
<p class="poem">
“Looking far forth into the ocean wide,<br/>
A goodly ship with banners bravely dight,<br/>
And flag in her top-gallant I espide,<br/>
Through the main sea making her merry flight.”</p>
<p>Ere quitting Rodondo, it must not be omitted that here, in 1813, the U.S.
frigate Essex, Captain David Porter, came near leaving her bones. Lying
becalmed one morning with a strong current setting her rapidly towards the
rock, a strange sail was descried, which—not out of keeping with alleged
enchantments of the neighborhood—seemed to be staggering under a violent
wind, while the frigate lay lifeless as if spell-bound. But a light air
springing up, all sail was made by the frigate in chase of the enemy, as
supposed—he being deemed an English whale-ship—but the rapidity of
the current was so great, that soon all sight was lost of him; and, at
meridian, the Essex, spite of her drags, was driven so close under the
foam-lashed cliffs of Rodondo that, for a time, all hands gave her up. A smart
breeze, however, at last helped her off, though the escape was so critical as
to seem almost miraculous.</p>
<p>Thus saved from destruction herself, she now made use of that salvation to
destroy the other vessel, if possible. Renewing the chase in the direction in
which the stranger had disappeared, sight was caught of him the following
morning. Upon being descried he hoisted American colors and stood away from the
Essex. A calm ensued; when, still confident that the stranger was an
Englishman, Porter dispatched a cutter, not to board the enemy, but drive back
his boats engaged in towing him. The cutter succeeded. Cutters were
subsequently sent to capture him; the stranger now showing English colors in
place of American. But, when the frigate’s boats were within a short
distance of their hoped-for prize, another sudden breeze sprang up; the
stranger, under all sail, bore off to the westward, and, ere night, was hull
down ahead of the Essex, which, all this time, lay perfectly becalmed.</p>
<p>This enigmatic craft—American in the morning, and English in the
evening—her sails full of wind in a calm—was never again beheld. An
enchanted ship no doubt. So, at least, the sailors swore.</p>
<p>This cruise of the Essex in the Pacific during the war of 1812, is, perhaps,
the strangest and most stirring to be found in the history of the American
navy. She captured the furthest wandering vessels; visited the remotest seas
and isles; long hovered in the charmed vicinity of the enchanted group; and,
finally, valiantly gave up the ghost fighting two English frigates in the
harbor of Valparaiso. Mention is made of her here for the same reason that the
Buccaneers will likewise receive record; because, like them, by long cruising
among the isles, tortoise-hunting upon their shores, and generally exploring
them; for these and other reasons, the Essex is peculiarly associated with the
Encantadas.</p>
<p>Here be it said that you have but three, eye-witness authorities worth
mentioning touching the Enchanted Isles:—Cowley, the Buccaneer (1684);
Colnet the whaling-ground explorer (1798); Porter, the post captain (1813).
Other than these you have but barren, bootless allusions from some few passing
voyagers or compilers.</p>
<h3>SKETCH SIXTH.<br/> BARRINGTON ISLE AND THE BUCCANEERS.</h3>
<p class="poem">
“Let us all servile base subjection scorn,<br/>
And as we be sons of the earth so wide,<br/>
Let us our father’s heritage divide,<br/>
And challenge to ourselves our portions dew<br/>
Of all the patrimony, which a few<br/>
hold on hugger-mugger in their hand.”</p>
<hr />
<p class="poem">
“Lords of the world, and so will wander free,<br/>
Whereso us listeth, uncontroll’d of any.”</p>
<hr />
<p class="poem">
“How bravely now we live, how jocund, how near the<br/>
first inheritance, without fear, how free from little troubles!”</p>
<p>Near two centuries ago Barrington Isle was the resort of that famous wing of
the West Indian Buccaneers, which, upon their repulse from the Cuban waters,
crossing the Isthmus of Darien, ravaged the Pacific side of the Spanish
colonies, and, with the regularity and timing of a modern mail, waylaid the
royal treasure-ships plying between Manilla and Acapulco. After the toils of
piratic war, here they came to say their prayers, enjoy their free-and-easies,
count their crackers from the cask, their doubloons from the keg, and measure
their silks of Asia with long Toledos for their yard-sticks.</p>
<p>As a secure retreat, an undiscoverable hiding-place, no spot in those days
could have been better fitted. In the centre of a vast and silent sea, but very
little traversed—surrounded by islands, whose inhospitable aspect might
well drive away the chance navigator—and yet within a few days’
sail of the opulent countries which they made their prey—the unmolested
Buccaneers found here that tranquillity which they fiercely denied to every
civilized harbor in that part of the world. Here, after stress of weather, or a
temporary drubbing at the hands of their vindictive foes, or in swift flight
with golden booty, those old marauders came, and lay snugly out of all
harm’s reach. But not only was the place a harbor of safety, and a bower
of ease, but for utility in other things it was most admirable.</p>
<p>Barrington Isle is, in many respects, singularly adapted to careening,
refitting, refreshing, and other seamen’s purposes. Not only has it good
water, and good anchorage, well sheltered from all winds by the high land of
Albemarle, but it is the least unproductive isle of the group. Tortoises good
for food, trees good for fuel, and long grass good for bedding, abound here,
and there are pretty natural walks, and several landscapes to be seen. Indeed,
though in its locality belonging to the Enchanted group, Barrington Isle is so
unlike most of its neighbors, that it would hardly seem of kin to them.</p>
<p>“I once landed on its western side,” says a sentimental voyager
long ago, “where it faces the black buttress of Albemarle. I walked
beneath groves of trees—not very lofty, and not palm trees, or orange
trees, or peach trees, to be sure—but, for all that, after long
sea-faring, very beautiful to walk under, even though they supplied no fruit.
And here, in calm spaces at the heads of glades, and on the shaded tops of
slopes commanding the most quiet scenery—what do you think I saw? Seats
which might have served Brahmins and presidents of peace societies. Fine old
ruins of what had once been symmetric lounges of stone and turf, they bore
every mark both of artificialness and age, and were, undoubtedly, made by the
Buccaneers. One had been a long sofa, with back and arms, just such a sofa as
the poet Gray might have loved to throw himself upon, his Crebillon in hand.</p>
<p>“Though they sometimes tarried here for months at a time, and used the
spot for a storing-place for spare spars, sails, and casks; yet it is highly
improbable that the Buccaneers ever erected dwelling-houses upon the isle. They
never were here except their ships remained, and they would most likely have
slept on board. I mention this, because I cannot avoid the thought, that it is
hard to impute the construction of these romantic seats to any other motive
than one of pure peacefulness and kindly fellowship with nature. That the
Buccaneers perpetrated the greatest outrages is very true—that some of
them were mere cutthroats is not to be denied; but we know that here and there
among their host was a Dampier, a Wafer, and a Cowley, and likewise other men,
whose worst reproach was their desperate fortunes—whom persecution, or
adversity, or secret and unavengeable wrongs, had driven from Christian society
to seek the melancholy solitude or the guilty adventures of the sea. At any
rate, long as those ruins of seats on Barrington remain, the most singular
monuments are furnished to the fact, that all of the Buccaneers were not
unmitigated monsters.</p>
<p>“But during my ramble on the isle I was not long in discovering other
tokens, of things quite in accordance with those wild traits, popularly, and no
doubt truly enough, imputed to the freebooters at large. Had I picked up old
sails and rusty hoops I would only have thought of the ship’s carpenter
and cooper. But I found old cutlasses and daggers reduced to mere threads of
rust, which, doubtless, had stuck between Spanish ribs ere now. These were
signs of the murderer and robber; the reveler likewise had left his trace.
Mixed with shells, fragments of broken jars were lying here and there, high up
upon the beach. They were precisely like the jars now used upon the Spanish
coast for the wine and Pisco spirits of that country.</p>
<p>“With a rusty dagger-fragment in one hand, and a bit of a wine-jar in
another, I sat me down on the ruinous green sofa I have spoken of, and
bethought me long and deeply of these same Buccaneers. Could it be possible,
that they robbed and murdered one day, reveled the next, and rested themselves
by turning meditative philosophers, rural poets, and seat-builders on the
third? Not very improbable, after all. For consider the vacillations of a man.
Still, strange as it may seem, I must also abide by the more charitable
thought; namely, that among these adventurers were some gentlemanly,
companionable souls, capable of genuine tranquillity and virtue.”</p>
<h3>SKETCH SEVENTH.<br/> CHARLES’S ISLE AND THE DOG-KING.</h3>
<p class="poem">
—So with outragious cry,<br/>
A thousand villeins round about him swarmed<br/>
Out of the rocks and caves adjoining nye;<br/>
Vile caitive wretches, ragged, rude, deformed;<br/>
All threatning death, all in straunge manner armed;<br/>
Some with unweldy clubs, some with long speares.<br/>
Some rusty knives, some staves in fier warmd.</p>
<hr />
<p class="poem">
We will not be of any occupation,<br/>
Let such vile vassals, born to base vocation,<br/>
Drudge in the world, and for their living droyle,<br/>
Which have no wit to live withouten toyle.</p>
<p>Southwest of Barrington lies Charles’s Isle. And hereby hangs a history
which I gathered long ago from a shipmate learned in all the lore of outlandish
life.</p>
<p>During the successful revolt of the Spanish provinces from Old Spain, there
fought on behalf of Peru a certain Creole adventurer from Cuba, who, by his
bravery and good fortune, at length advanced himself to high rank in the
patriot army. The war being ended, Peru found itself like many valorous
gentlemen, free and independent enough, but with few shot in the locker. In
other words, Peru had not wherewithal to pay off its troops. But the
Creole—I forget his name—volunteered to take his pay in lands. So
they told him he might have his pick of the Enchanted Isles, which were then,
as they still remain, the nominal appanage of Peru. The soldier straightway
embarks thither, explores the group, returns to Callao, and says he will take a
deed of Charles’s Isle. Moreover, this deed must stipulate that
thenceforth Charles’s Isle is not only the sole property of the Creole,
but is forever free of Peru, even as Peru of Spain. To be short, this
adventurer procures himself to be made in effect Supreme Lord of the Island,
one of the princes of the powers of the earth.<SPAN href="#fn1"
name="fnref1"><sup>[1]</sup></SPAN></p>
<p class="footnote">
<SPAN name="fn1"></SPAN> <SPAN href="#fnref1">[1]</SPAN>
The American Spaniards have long been in the habit of making presents of
islands to deserving individuals. The pilot Juan Fernandez procured a deed of
the isle named after him, and for some years resided there before Selkirk came.
It is supposed, however, that he eventually contracted the blues upon his
princely property, for after a time he returned to the main, and as report
goes, became a very garrulous barber in the city of Lima.</p>
<p>He now sends forth a proclamation inviting subjects to his as yet unpopulated
kingdom. Some eighty souls, men and women, respond; and being provided by their
leader with necessaries, and tools of various sorts, together with a few cattle
and goats, take ship for the promised land; the last arrival on board, prior to
sailing, being the Creole himself, accompanied, strange to say, by a
disciplined cavalry company of large grim dogs. These, it was observed on the
passage, refusing to consort with the emigrants, remained aristocratically
grouped around their master on the elevated quarter-deck, casting disdainful
glances forward upon the inferior rabble there; much as, from the ramparts, the
soldiers of a garrison, thrown into a conquered town, eye the inglorious
citizen-mob over which they are set to watch.</p>
<p>Now Charles’s Isle not only resembles Barrington Isle in being much more
inhabitable than other parts of the group, but it is double the size of
Barrington, say forty or fifty miles in circuit.</p>
<p>Safely debarked at last, the company, under direction of their lord and patron,
forthwith proceeded to build their capital city. They make considerable advance
in the way of walls of clinkers, and lava floors, nicely sanded with cinders.
On the least barren hills they pasture their cattle, while the goats,
adventurers by nature, explore the far inland solitudes for a scanty livelihood
of lofty herbage. Meantime, abundance of fish and tortoises supply their other
wants.</p>
<p>The disorders incident to settling all primitive regions, in the present case
were heightened by the peculiarly untoward character of many of the pilgrims.
His Majesty was forced at last to proclaim martial law, and actually hunted and
shot with his own hand several of his rebellious subjects, who, with most
questionable intentions, had clandestinely encamped in the interior, whence
they stole by night, to prowl barefooted on tiptoe round the precincts of the
lava-palace. It is to be remarked, however, that prior to such stern
proceedings, the more reliable men had been judiciously picked out for an
infantry body-guard, subordinate to the cavalry body-guard of dogs. But the
state of politics in this unhappy nation may be somewhat imagined, from the
circumstance that all who were not of the body-guard were downright plotters
and malignant traitors. At length the death penalty was tacitly abolished,
owing to the timely thought, that were strict sportsman’s justice to be
dispensed among such subjects, ere long the Nimrod King would have little or no
remaining game to shoot. The human part of the life-guard was now disbanded,
and set to work cultivating the soil, and raising potatoes; the regular army
now solely consisting of the dog-regiment. These, as I have heard, were of a
singularly ferocious character, though by severe training rendered docile to
their master. Armed to the teeth, the Creole now goes in state, surrounded by
his canine janizaries, whose terrific bayings prove quite as serviceable as
bayonets in keeping down the surgings of revolt.</p>
<p>But the census of the isle, sadly lessened by the dispensation of justice, and
not materially recruited by matrimony, began to fill his mind with sad
mistrust. Some way the population must be increased. Now, from its possessing a
little water, and its comparative pleasantness of aspect, Charles’s Isle
at this period was occasionally visited by foreign whalers. These His Majesty
had always levied upon for port charges, thereby contributing to his revenue.
But now he had additional designs. By insidious arts he, from time to time,
cajoles certain sailors to desert their ships, and enlist beneath his banner.
Soon as missed, their captains crave permission to go and hunt them up.
Whereupon His Majesty first hides them very carefully away, and then freely
permits the search. In consequence, the delinquents are never found, and the
ships retire without them.</p>
<p>Thus, by a two-edged policy of this crafty monarch, foreign nations were
crippled in the number of their subjects, and his own were greatly multiplied.
He particularly petted these renegado strangers. But alas for the deep-laid
schemes of ambitious princes, and alas for the vanity of glory. As the
foreign-born Pretorians, unwisely introduced into the Roman state, and still
more unwisely made favorites of the Emperors, at last insulted and overturned
the throne, even so these lawless mariners, with all the rest of the body-guard
and all the populace, broke out into a terrible mutiny, and defied their
master. He marched against them with all his dogs. A deadly battle ensued upon
the beach. It raged for three hours, the dogs fighting with determined valor,
and the sailors reckless of everything but victory. Three men and thirteen dogs
were left dead upon the field, many on both sides were wounded, and the king
was forced to fly with the remainder of his canine regiment. The enemy pursued,
stoning the dogs with their master into the wilderness of the interior.
Discontinuing the pursuit, the victors returned to the village on the shore,
stove the spirit casks, and proclaimed a Republic. The dead men were interred
with the honors of war, and the dead dogs ignominiously thrown into the sea. At
last, forced by stress of suffering, the fugitive Creole came down from the
hills and offered to treat for peace. But the rebels refused it on any other
terms than his unconditional banishment. Accordingly, the next ship that
arrived carried away the ex-king to Peru.</p>
<p>The history of the king of Charles’s Island furnishes another
illustration of the difficulty of colonizing barren islands with unprincipled
pilgrims.</p>
<p>Doubtless for a long time the exiled monarch, pensively ruralizing in Peru,
which afforded him a safe asylum in his calamity, watched every arrival from
the Encantadas, to hear news of the failure of the Republic, the consequent
penitence of the rebels, and his own recall to royalty. Doubtless he deemed the
Republic but a miserable experiment which would soon explode. But no, the
insurgents had confederated themselves into a democracy neither Grecian, Roman,
nor American. Nay, it was no democracy at all, but a permanent
<i>Riotocracy</i>, which gloried in having no law but lawlessness. Great
inducements being offered to deserters, their ranks were swelled by accessions
of scamps from every ship which touched their shores. Charles’s Island
was proclaimed the asylum of the oppressed of all navies. Each runaway tar was
hailed as a martyr in the cause of freedom, and became immediately installed a
ragged citizen of this universal nation. In vain the captains of absconding
seamen strove to regain them. Their new compatriots were ready to give any
number of ornamental eyes in their behalf. They had few cannon, but their fists
were not to be trifled with. So at last it came to pass that no vessels
acquainted with the character of that country durst touch there, however sorely
in want of refreshment. It became Anathema—a sea Alsatia—the
unassailed lurking-place of all sorts of desperadoes, who in the name of
liberty did just what they pleased. They continually fluctuated in their
numbers. Sailors, deserting ships at other islands, or in boats at sea anywhere
in that vicinity, steered for Charles’s Isle, as to their sure home of
refuge; while, sated with the life of the isle, numbers from time to time
crossed the water to the neighboring ones, and there presenting themselves to
strange captains as shipwrecked seamen, often succeeded in getting on board
vessels bound to the Spanish coast, and having a compassionate purse made up
for them on landing there.</p>
<p>One warm night during my first visit to the group, our ship was floating along
in languid stillness, when some one on the forecastle shouted “Light
ho!” We looked and saw a beacon burning on some obscure land off the
beam. Our third mate was not intimate with this part of the world. Going to the
captain he said, “Sir, shall I put off in a boat? These must be
shipwrecked men.”</p>
<p>The captain laughed rather grimly, as, shaking his fist towards the beacon, he
rapped out an oath, and said—“No, no, you precious rascals, you
don’t juggle one of my boats ashore this blessed night. You do well, you
thieves—you do benevolently to hoist a light yonder as on a dangerous
shoal. It tempts no wise man to pull off and see what’s the matter, but
bids him steer small and keep off shore—that is Charles’s Island;
brace up, Mr. Mate, and keep the light astern.”</p>
<h3>SKETCH EIGHTH.<br/> NORFOLK ISLE AND THE CHOLA WIDOW.</h3>
<p class="poem">
“At last they in an island did espy<br/>
A seemly woman sitting by the shore,<br/>
That with great sorrow and sad agony<br/>
Seemed some great misfortune to deplore;<br/>
And loud to them for succor called evermore.”<br/>
<br/>
“Black his eye as the midnight sky.<br/>
White his neck as the driven snow,<br/>
Red his cheek as the morning light;—<br/>
Cold he lies in the ground below.<br/>
My love is dead,<br/>
Gone to his death-bed, ys<br/>
All under the cactus tree.”<br/>
<br/>
“Each lonely scene shall thee restore,<br/>
For thee the tear be duly shed;<br/>
Belov’d till life can charm no more,<br/>
And mourned till Pity’s self be dead.”</p>
<p>Far to the northeast of Charles’s Isle, sequestered from the rest, lies
Norfolk Isle; and, however insignificant to most voyagers, to me, through
sympathy, that lone island has become a spot made sacred by the strangest
trials of humanity.</p>
<p>It was my first visit to the Encantadas. Two days had been spent ashore in
hunting tortoises. There was not time to capture many; so on the third
afternoon we loosed our sails. We were just in the act of getting under way,
the uprooted anchor yet suspended and invisibly swaying beneath the wave, as
the good ship gradually turned her heel to leave the isle behind, when the
seaman who heaved with me at the windlass paused suddenly, and directed my
attention to something moving on the land, not along the beach, but somewhat
back, fluttering from a height.</p>
<p>In view of the sequel of this little story, be it here narrated how it came to
pass, that an object which partly from its being so small was quite lost to
every other man on board, still caught the eye of my handspike companion. The
rest of the crew, myself included, merely stood up to our spikes in heaving,
whereas, unwontedly exhilarated, at every turn of the ponderous windlass, my
belted comrade leaped atop of it, with might and main giving a downward,
thewey, perpendicular heave, his raised eye bent in cheery animation upon the
slowly receding shore. Being high lifted above all others was the reason he
perceived the object, otherwise unperceivable; and this elevation of his eye
was owing to the elevation of his spirits; and this again—for truth must
out—to a dram of Peruvian pisco, in guerdon for some kindness done,
secretly administered to him that morning by our mulatto steward. Now,
certainly, pisco does a deal of mischief in the world; yet seeing that, in the
present case, it was the means, though indirect, of rescuing a human being from
the most dreadful fate, must we not also needs admit that sometimes pisco does
a deal of good?</p>
<p>Glancing across the water in the direction pointed out, I saw some white thing
hanging from an inland rock, perhaps half a mile from the sea.</p>
<p>“It is a bird; a white-winged bird; perhaps a—no; it is—it is
a handkerchief!”</p>
<p>“Ay, a handkerchief!” echoed my comrade, and with a louder shout
apprised the captain.</p>
<p>Quickly now—like the running out and training of a great gun—the
long cabin spy-glass was thrust through the mizzen rigging from the high
platform of the poop; whereupon a human figure was plainly seen upon the inland
rock, eagerly waving towards us what seemed to be the handkerchief.</p>
<p>Our captain was a prompt, good fellow. Dropping the glass, he lustily ran
forward, ordering the anchor to be dropped again; hands to stand by a boat, and
lower away.</p>
<p>In a half-hour’s time the swift boat returned. It went with six and came
with seven; and the seventh was a woman.</p>
<p>It is not artistic heartlessness, but I wish I could but draw in crayons; for
this woman was a most touching sight; and crayons, tracing softly melancholy
lines, would best depict the mournful image of the dark-damasked Chola widow.</p>
<p>Her story was soon told, and though given in her own strange language was as
quickly understood; for our captain, from long trading on the Chilian coast,
was well versed in the Spanish. A Cholo, or half-breed Indian woman of Payta in
Peru, three years gone by, with her young new-wedded husband Felipe, of pure
Castilian blood, and her one only Indian brother, Truxill, Hunilla had taken
passage on the main in a French whaler, commanded by a joyous man; which
vessel, bound to the cruising grounds beyond the Enchanted Isles, proposed
passing close by their vicinity. The object of the little party was to procure
tortoise oil, a fluid which for its great purity and delicacy is held in high
estimation wherever known; and it is well known all along this part of the
Pacific coast. With a chest of clothes, tools, cooking utensils, a rude
apparatus for trying out the oil, some casks of biscuit, and other things, not
omitting two favorite dogs, of which faithful animal all the Cholos are very
fond, Hunilla and her companions were safely landed at their chosen place; the
Frenchman, according to the contract made ere sailing, engaged to take them off
upon returning from a four months’ cruise in the westward seas; which
interval the three adventurers deemed quite sufficient for their purposes.</p>
<p>On the isle’s lone beach they paid him in silver for their passage out,
the stranger having declined to carry them at all except upon that condition;
though willing to take every means to insure the due fulfillment of his
promise. Felipe had striven hard to have this payment put off to the period of
the ship’s return. But in vain. Still they thought they had, in another
way, ample pledge of the good faith of the Frenchman. It was arranged that the
expenses of the passage home should not be payable in silver, but in tortoises;
one hundred tortoises ready captured to the returning captain’s hand.
These the Cholos meant to secure after their own work was done, against the
probable time of the Frenchman’s coming back; and no doubt in prospect
already felt, that in those hundred tortoises—now somewhere ranging the
isle’s interior—they possessed one hundred hostages. Enough: the
vessel sailed; the gazing three on shore answered the loud glee of the singing
crew; and ere evening, the French craft was hull down in the distant sea, its
masts three faintest lines which quickly faded from Hunilla’s eye.</p>
<p>The stranger had given a blithesome promise, and anchored it with oaths; but
oaths and anchors equally will drag; naught else abides on fickle earth but
unkept promises of joy. Contrary winds from out unstable skies, or contrary
moods of his more varying mind, or shipwreck and sudden death in solitary
waves; whatever was the cause, the blithe stranger never was seen again.</p>
<p>Yet, however dire a calamity was here in store, misgivings of it ere due time
never disturbed the Cholos’ busy mind, now all intent upon the toilsome
matter which had brought them hither. Nay, by swift doom coming like the thief
at night, ere seven weeks went by, two of the little party were removed from
all anxieties of land or sea. No more they sought to gaze with feverish fear,
or still more feverish hope, beyond the present’s horizon line; but into
the furthest future their own silent spirits sailed. By persevering labor
beneath that burning sun, Felipe and Truxill had brought down to their hut many
scores of tortoises, and tried out the oil, when, elated with their good
success, and to reward themselves for such hard work, they, too hastily, made a
catamaran, or Indian raft, much used on the Spanish main, and merrily started
on a fishing trip, just without a long reef with many jagged gaps, running
parallel with the shore, about half a mile from it. By some bad tide or hap, or
natural negligence of joyfulness (for though they could not be heard, yet by
their gestures they seemed singing at the time) forced in deep water against
that iron bar, the ill-made catamaran was overset, and came all to pieces; when
dashed by broad-chested swells between their broken logs and the sharp teeth of
the reef, both adventurers perished before Hunilla’s eyes.</p>
<p>Before Hunilla’s eyes they sank. The real woe of this event passed before
her sight as some sham tragedy on the stage. She was seated on a rude bower
among the withered thickets, crowning a lofty cliff, a little back from the
beach. The thickets were so disposed, that in looking upon the sea at large she
peered out from among the branches as from the lattice of a high balcony. But
upon the day we speak of here, the better to watch the adventure of those two
hearts she loved, Hunilla had withdrawn the branches to one side, and held them
so. They formed an oval frame, through which the bluely boundless sea rolled
like a painted one. And there, the invisible painter painted to her view the
wave-tossed and disjointed raft, its once level logs slantingly upheaved, as
raking masts, and the four struggling arms indistinguishable among them; and
then all subsided into smooth-flowing creamy waters, slowly drifting the
splintered wreck; while first and last, no sound of any sort was heard. Death
in a silent picture; a dream of the eye; such vanishing shapes as the mirage
shows.</p>
<p>So instant was the scene, so trance-like its mild pictorial effect, so distant
from her blasted bower and her common sense of things, that Hunilla gazed and
gazed, nor raised a finger or a wail. But as good to sit thus dumb, in stupor
staring on that dumb show, for all that otherwise might be done. With half a
mile of sea between, how could her two enchanted arms aid those four fated
ones? The distance long, the time one sand. After the lightning is beheld, what
fool shall stay the thunder-bolt? Felipe’s body was washed ashore, but
Truxill’s never came; only his gay, braided hat of golden
straw—that same sunflower thing he waved to her, pushing from the
strand—and now, to the last gallant, it still saluted her. But
Felipe’s body floated to the marge, with one arm encirclingly
outstretched. Lock-jawed in grim death, the lover-husband softly clasped his
bride, true to her even in death’s dream. Ah, heaven, when man thus keeps
his faith, wilt thou be faithless who created the faithful one? But they cannot
break faith who never plighted it.</p>
<p>It needs not to be said what nameless misery now wrapped the lonely widow. In
telling her own story she passed this almost entirely over, simply recounting
the event. Construe the comment of her features as you might, from her mere
words little would you have weened that Hunilla was herself the heroine of her
tale. But not thus did she defraud us of our tears. All hearts bled that grief
could be so brave.</p>
<p>She but showed us her soul’s lid, and the strange ciphers thereon
engraved; all within, with pride’s timidity, was withheld. Yet was there
one exception. Holding out her small olive hand before her captain, she said in
mild and slowest Spanish, “Señor, I buried him;” then paused,
struggled as against the writhed coilings of a snake, and cringing suddenly,
leaped up, repeating in impassioned pain, “I buried him, my life, my
soul!”</p>
<p>Doubtless, it was by half-unconscious, automatic motions of her hands, that
this heavy-hearted one performed the final office for Felipe, and planted a
rude cross of withered sticks—no green ones might be had—at the
head of that lonely grave, where rested now in lasting un-complaint and quiet
haven he whom untranquil seas had overthrown.</p>
<p>But some dull sense of another body that should be interred, of another cross
that should hallow another grave—unmade as yet—some dull anxiety
and pain touching her undiscovered brother, now haunted the oppressed Hunilla.
Her hands fresh from the burial earth, she slowly went back to the beach, with
unshaped purposes wandering there, her spell-bound eye bent upon the incessant
waves. But they bore nothing to her but a dirge, which maddened her to think
that murderers should mourn. As time went by, and these things came less
dreamingly to her mind, the strong persuasions of her Romish faith, which sets
peculiar store by consecrated urns, prompted her to resume in waking earnest
that pious search which had but been begun as in somnambulism. Day after day,
week after week, she trod the cindery beach, till at length a double motive
edged every eager glance. With equal longing she now looked for the living and
the dead; the brother and the captain; alike vanished, never to return. Little
accurate note of time had Hunilla taken under such emotions as were hers, and
little, outside herself, served for calendar or dial. As to poor Crusoe in the
self-same sea, no saint’s bell pealed forth the lapse of week or month;
each day went by unchallenged; no chanticleer announced those sultry dawns, no
lowing herds those poisonous nights. All wonted and steadily recurring sounds,
human, or humanized by sweet fellowship with man, but one stirred that torrid
trance—the cry of dogs; save which naught but the rolling sea invaded it,
an all-pervading monotone; and to the widow that was the least loved voice she
could have heard.</p>
<p>No wonder, that as her thoughts now wandered to the unreturning ship, and were
beaten back again, the hope against hope so struggled in her soul, that at
length she desperately said, “Not yet, not yet; my foolish heart runs on
too fast.” So she forced patience for some further weeks. But to those
whom earth’s sure indraft draws, patience or impatience is still the
same.</p>
<p>Hunilla now sought to settle precisely in her mind, to an hour, how long it was
since the ship had sailed; and then, with the same precision, how long a space
remained to pass. But this proved impossible. What present day or month it was
she could not say. Time was her labyrinth, in which Hunilla was entirely lost.</p>
<p>And now follows—</p>
<p>Against my own purposes a pause descends upon me here. One knows not whether
nature doth not impose some secrecy upon him who has been privy to certain
things. At least, it is to be doubted whether it be good to blazon such. If
some books are deemed most baneful and their sale forbid, how, then, with
deadlier facts, not dreams of doting men? Those whom books will hurt will not
be proof against events. Events, not books, should be forbid. But in all things
man sows upon the wind, which bloweth just there whither it listeth; for ill or
good, man cannot know. Often ill comes from the good, as good from ill.</p>
<p>When Hunilla—</p>
<p>Dire sight it is to see some silken beast long dally with a golden lizard ere
she devour. More terrible, to see how feline Fate will sometimes dally with a
human soul, and by a nameless magic make it repulse a sane despair with a hope
which is but mad. Unwittingly I imp this cat-like thing, sporting with the
heart of him who reads; for if he feel not he reads in vain.</p>
<p>—“The ship sails this day, to-day,” at last said Hunilla to
herself; “this gives me certain time to stand on; without certainty I go
mad. In loose ignorance I have hoped and hoped; now in firm knowledge I will
but wait. Now I live and no longer perish in bewilderings. Holy Virgin, aid me!
Thou wilt waft back the ship. Oh, past length of weary weeks—all to be
dragged over—to buy the certainty of to-day, I freely give ye, though I
tear ye from me!”</p>
<p>As mariners, tost in tempest on some desolate ledge, patch them a boat out of
the remnants of their vessel’s wreck, and launch it in the self-same
waves, see here Hunilla, this lone shipwrecked soul, out of treachery invoking
trust. Humanity, thou strong thing, I worship thee, not in the laureled victor,
but in this vanquished one.</p>
<p>Truly Hunilla leaned upon a reed, a real one; no metaphor; a real Eastern reed.
A piece of hollow cane, drifted from unknown isles, and found upon the beach,
its once jagged ends rubbed smoothly even as by sand-paper; its golden glazing
gone. Long ground between the sea and land, upper and nether stone, the
unvarnished substance was filed bare, and wore another polish now, one with
itself, the polish of its agony. Circular lines at intervals cut all round this
surface, divided it into six panels of unequal length. In the first were scored
the days, each tenth one marked by a longer and deeper notch; the second was
scored for the number of sea-fowl eggs for sustenance, picked out from the
rocky nests; the third, how many fish had been caught from the shore; the
fourth, how many small tortoises found inland; the fifth, how many days of sun;
the sixth, of clouds; which last, of the two, was the greater one. Long night
of busy numbering, misery’s mathematics, to weary her too-wakeful soul to
sleep; yet sleep for that was none.</p>
<p>The panel of the days was deeply worn—the long tenth notches half
effaced, as alphabets of the blind. Ten thousand times the longing widow had
traced her finger over the bamboo—dull flute, which played, on, gave no
sound—as if counting birds flown by in air would hasten tortoises
creeping through the woods.</p>
<p>After the one hundred and eightieth day no further mark was seen; that last one
was the faintest, as the first the deepest.</p>
<p>“There were more days,” said our Captain; “many, many more;
why did you not go on and notch them, too, Hunilla?”</p>
<p>“Señor, ask me not.”</p>
<p>“And meantime, did no other vessel pass the isle?”</p>
<p>“Nay, Señor;—but—”</p>
<p>“You do not speak; but <i>what</i>, Hunilla?”</p>
<p>“Ask me not, Señor.”</p>
<p>“You saw ships pass, far away; you waved to them; they passed
on;—was that it, Hunilla?”</p>
<p>“Señor, be it as you say.”</p>
<p>Braced against her woe, Hunilla would not, durst not trust the weakness of her
tongue. Then when our Captain asked whether any whale-boats had—</p>
<p>But no, I will not file this thing complete for scoffing souls to quote, and
call it firm proof upon their side. The half shall here remain untold. Those
two unnamed events which befell Hunilla on this isle, let them abide between
her and her God. In nature, as in law, it may be libelous to speak some truths.</p>
<p>Still, how it was that, although our vessel had lain three days anchored nigh
the isle, its one human tenant should not have discovered us till just upon the
point of sailing, never to revisit so lone and far a spot, this needs
explaining ere the sequel come.</p>
<p>The place where the French captain had landed the little party was on the
further and opposite end of the isle. There, too, it was that they had
afterwards built their hut. Nor did the widow in her solitude desert the spot
where her loved ones had dwelt with her, and where the dearest of the twain now
slept his last long sleep, and all her plaints awaked him not, and he of
husbands the most faithful during life.</p>
<p>Now, high, broken land rises between the opposite extremities of the isle. A
ship anchored at one side is invisible from the other. Neither is the isle so
small, but a considerable company might wander for days through the wilderness
of one side, and never be seen, or their halloos heard, by any stranger holding
aloof on the other. Hence Hunilla, who naturally associated the possible coming
of ships with her own part of the isle, might to the end have remained quite
ignorant of the presence of our vessel, were it not for a mysterious
presentiment, borne to her, so our mariners averred, by this isle’s
enchanted air. Nor did the widow’s answer undo the thought.</p>
<p>“How did you come to cross the isle this morning, then, Hunilla?”
said our Captain.</p>
<p>“Señor, something came flitting by me. It touched my cheek, my heart,
Señor.”</p>
<p>“What do you say, Hunilla?”</p>
<p>“I have said, Señor, something came through the air.”</p>
<p>It was a narrow chance. For when in crossing the isle Hunilla gained the high
land in the centre, she must then for the first have perceived our masts, and
also marked that their sails were being loosed, perhaps even heard the echoing
chorus of the windlass song. The strange ship was about to sail, and she
behind. With all haste she now descends the height on the hither side, but soon
loses sight of the ship among the sunken jungles at the mountain’s base.
She struggles on through the withered branches, which seek at every step to bar
her path, till she comes to the isolated rock, still some way from the water.
This she climbs, to reassure herself. The ship is still in plainest sight. But
now, worn out with over tension, Hunilla all but faints; she fears to step down
from her giddy perch; she is fain to pause, there where she is, and as a last
resort catches the turban from her head, unfurls and waves it over the jungles
towards us.</p>
<p>During the telling of her story the mariners formed a voiceless circle round
Hunilla and the Captain; and when at length the word was given to man the
fastest boat, and pull round to the isle’s thither side, to bring away
Hunilla’s chest and the tortoise-oil, such alacrity of both cheery and
sad obedience seldom before was seen. Little ado was made. Already the anchor
had been recommitted to the bottom, and the ship swung calmly to it.</p>
<p>But Hunilla insisted upon accompanying the boat as indispensable pilot to her
hidden hut. So being refreshed with the best the steward could supply, she
started with us. Nor did ever any wife of the most famous admiral, in her
husband’s barge, receive more silent reverence of respect than poor
Hunilla from this boat’s crew.</p>
<p>Rounding many a vitreous cape and bluff, in two hours’ time we shot
inside the fatal reef; wound into a secret cove, looked up along a green
many-gabled lava wall, and saw the island’s solitary dwelling.</p>
<p>It hung upon an impending cliff, sheltered on two sides by tangled thickets,
and half-screened from view in front by juttings of the rude stairway, which
climbed the precipice from the sea. Built of canes, it was thatched with long,
mildewed grass. It seemed an abandoned hay-rick, whose haymakers were now no
more. The roof inclined but one way; the eaves coming to within two feet of the
ground. And here was a simple apparatus to collect the dews, or rather
doubly-distilled and finest winnowed rains, which, in mercy or in mockery, the
night-skies sometimes drop upon these blighted Encantadas. All along beneath
the eaves, a spotted sheet, quite weather-stained, was spread, pinned to short,
upright stakes, set in the shallow sand. A small clinker, thrown into the
cloth, weighed its middle down, thereby straining all moisture into a calabash
placed below. This vessel supplied each drop of water ever drunk upon the isle
by the Cholos. Hunilla told us the calabash, would sometimes, but not often, be
half filled overnight. It held six quarts, perhaps. “But,” said
she, “we were used to thirst. At sandy Payta, where I live, no shower
from heaven ever fell; all the water there is brought on mules from the inland
vales.”</p>
<p>Tied among the thickets were some twenty moaning tortoises, supplying
Hunilla’s lonely larder; while hundreds of vast tableted black bucklers,
like displaced, shattered tomb-stones of dark slate, were also scattered round.
These were the skeleton backs of those great tortoises from which Felipe and
Truxill had made their precious oil. Several large calabashes and two goodly
kegs were filled with it. In a pot near by were the caked crusts of a quantity
which had been permitted to evaporate. “They meant to have strained it
off next day,” said Hunilla, as she turned aside.</p>
<p>I forgot to mention the most singular sight of all, though the first that
greeted us after landing.</p>
<p>Some ten small, soft-haired, ringleted dogs, of a beautiful breed, peculiar to
Peru, set up a concert of glad welcomings when we gained the beach, which was
responded to by Hunilla. Some of these dogs had, since her widowhood, been born
upon the isle, the progeny of the two brought from Payta. Owing to the jagged
steeps and pitfalls, tortuous thickets, sunken clefts and perilous intricacies
of all sorts in the interior, Hunilla, admonished by the loss of one favorite
among them, never allowed these delicate creatures to follow her in her
occasional birds’-nests climbs and other wanderings; so that, through
long habituation, they offered not to follow, when that morning she crossed the
land, and her own soul was then too full of other things to heed their
lingering behind. Yet, all along she had so clung to them, that, besides what
moisture they lapped up at early daybreak from the small scoop-holes among the
adjacent rocks, she had shared the dew of her calabash among them; never laying
by any considerable store against those prolonged and utter droughts which, in
some disastrous seasons, warp these isles.</p>
<p>Having pointed out, at our desire, what few things she would like transported
to the ship—her chest, the oil, not omitting the live tortoises which she
intended for a grateful present to our Captain—we immediately set to
work, carrying them to the boat down the long, sloping stair of deeply-shadowed
rock. While my comrades were thus employed, I looked and Hunilla had
disappeared.</p>
<p>It was not curiosity alone, but, it seems to me, something different mingled
with it, which prompted me to drop my tortoise, and once more gaze slowly
around. I remembered the husband buried by Hunilla’s hands. A narrow
pathway led into a dense part of the thickets. Following it through many mazes,
I came out upon a small, round, open space, deeply chambered there.</p>
<p>The mound rose in the middle; a bare heap of finest sand, like that unverdured
heap found at the bottom of an hour-glass run out. At its head stood the cross
of withered sticks; the dry, peeled bark still fraying from it; its transverse
limb tied up with rope, and forlornly adroop in the silent air.</p>
<p>Hunilla was partly prostrate upon the grave; her dark head bowed, and lost in
her long, loosened Indian hair; her hands extended to the cross-foot, with a
little brass crucifix clasped between; a crucifix worn featureless, like an
ancient graven knocker long plied in vain. She did not see me, and I made no
noise, but slid aside, and left the spot.</p>
<p>A few moments ere all was ready for our going, she reappeared among us. I
looked into her eyes, but saw no tear. There was something which seemed
strangely haughty in her air, and yet it was the air of woe. A Spanish and an
Indian grief, which would not visibly lament. Pride’s height in vain
abased to proneness on the rack; nature’s pride subduing nature’s
torture.</p>
<p>Like pages the small and silken dogs surrounded her, as she slowly descended
towards the beach. She caught the two most eager creatures in her
arms:—“Mia Teeta! Mia Tomoteeta!” and fondling them, inquired
how many could we take on board.</p>
<p>The mate commanded the boat’s crew; not a hard-hearted man, but his way
of life had been such that in most things, even in the smallest, simple utility
was his leading motive.</p>
<p>“We cannot take them all, Hunilla; our supplies are short; the winds are
unreliable; we may be a good many days going to Tombez. So take those you have,
Hunilla; but no more.”</p>
<p>She was in the boat; the oarsmen, too, were seated; all save one, who stood
ready to push off and then spring himself. With the sagacity of their race, the
dogs now seemed aware that they were in the very instant of being deserted upon
a barren strand. The gunwales of the boat were high; its prow—presented
inland—was lifted; so owing to the water, which they seemed instinctively
to shun, the dogs could not well leap into the little craft. But their busy
paws hard scraped the prow, as it had been some farmer’s door shutting
them out from shelter in a winter storm. A clamorous agony of alarm. They did
not howl, or whine; they all but spoke.</p>
<p>“Push off! Give way!” cried the mate. The boat gave one heavy drag
and lurch, and next moment shot swiftly from the beach, turned on her heel, and
sped. The dogs ran howling along the water’s marge; now pausing to gaze
at the flying boat, then motioning as if to leap in chase, but mysteriously
withheld themselves; and again ran howling along the beach. Had they been human
beings, hardly would they have more vividly inspired the sense of desolation.
The oars were plied as confederate feathers of two wings. No one spoke. I
looked back upon the beach, and then upon Hunilla, but her face was set in a
stern dusky calm. The dogs crouching in her lap vainly licked her rigid hands.
She never looked behind her: but sat motionless, till we turned a promontory of
the coast and lost all sights and sounds astern. She seemed as one who, having
experienced the sharpest of mortal pangs, was henceforth content to have all
lesser heartstrings riven, one by one. To Hunilla, pain seemed so necessary,
that pain in other beings, though by love and sympathy made her own, was
unrepiningly to be borne. A heart of yearning in a frame of steel. A heart of
earthly yearning, frozen by the frost which falleth from the sky.</p>
<p>The sequel is soon told. After a long passage, vexed by calms and baffling
winds, we made the little port of Tombez in Peru, there to recruit the ship.
Payta was not very distant. Our captain sold the tortoise oil to a Tombez
merchant; and adding to the silver a contribution from all hands, gave it to
our silent passenger, who knew not what the mariners had done.</p>
<p>The last seen of lone Hunilla she was passing into Payta town, riding upon a
small gray ass; and before her on the ass’s shoulders, she eyed the
jointed workings of the beast’s armorial cross.</p>
<h3>SKETCH NINTH.<br/> HOOD’S ISLE AND THE HERMIT OBERLUS.</h3>
<p class="poem">
“That darkesome glen they enter, where they find<br/>
That cursed man low sitting on the ground,<br/>
Musing full sadly in his sullein mind;<br/>
His griesly lockes long gronen and unbound,<br/>
Disordered hong about his shoulders round,<br/>
And hid his face, through which his hollow eyne<br/>
Lookt deadly dull, and stared as astound;<br/>
His raw-bone cheekes, through penurie and pine,<br/>
Were shronke into the jawes, as he did never dine.<br/>
His garments nought but many ragged clouts,<br/>
With thornes together pind and patched reads,<br/>
The which his naked sides he wrapt abouts.”</p>
<p>Southeast of Crossman’s Isle lies Hood’s Isle, or McCain’s
Beclouded Isle; and upon its south side is a vitreous cove with a wide strand
of dark pounded black lava, called Black Beach, or Oberlus’s Landing. It
might fitly have been styled Charon’s.</p>
<p>It received its name from a wild white creature who spent many years here; in
the person of a European bringing into this savage region qualities more
diabolical than are to be found among any of the surrounding cannibals.</p>
<p>About half a century ago, Oberlus deserted at the above-named island, then, as
now, a solitude. He built himself a den of lava and clinkers, about a mile from
the Landing, subsequently called after him, in a vale, or expanded gulch,
containing here and there among the rocks about two acres of soil capable of
rude cultivation; the only place on the isle not too blasted for that purpose.
Here he succeeded in raising a sort of degenerate potatoes and pumpkins, which
from time to time he exchanged with needy whalemen passing, for spirits or
dollars.</p>
<p>His appearance, from all accounts, was that of the victim of some malignant
sorceress; he seemed to have drunk of Circe’s cup; beast-like; rags
insufficient to hide his nakedness; his befreckled skin blistered by continual
exposure to the sun; nose flat; countenance contorted, heavy, earthy; hair and
beard unshorn, profuse, and of fiery red. He struck strangers much as if he
were a volcanic creature thrown up by the same convulsion which exploded into
sight the isle. All bepatched and coiled asleep in his lonely lava den among
the mountains, he looked, they say, as a heaped drift of withered leaves, torn
from autumn trees, and so left in some hidden nook by the whirling halt for an
instant of a fierce night-wind, which then ruthlessly sweeps on, somewhere else
to repeat the capricious act. It is also reported to have been the strangest
sight, this same Oberlus, of a sultry, cloudy morning, hidden under his
shocking old black tarpaulin hat, hoeing potatoes among the lava. So warped and
crooked was his strange nature, that the very handle of his hoe seemed
gradually to have shrunk and twisted in his grasp, being a wretched bent stick,
elbowed more like a savage’s war-sickle than a civilized hoe-handle. It
was his mysterious custom upon a first encounter with a stranger ever to
present his back; possibly, because that was his better side, since it revealed
the least. If the encounter chanced in his garden, as it sometimes
did—the new-landed strangers going from the sea-side straight through the
gorge, to hunt up the queer green-grocer reported doing business
here—Oberlus for a time hoed on, unmindful of all greeting, jovial or
bland; as the curious stranger would turn to face him, the recluse, hoe in
hand, as diligently would avert himself; bowed over, and sullenly revolving
round his murphy hill. Thus far for hoeing. When planting, his whole aspect and
all his gestures were so malevolently and uselessly sinister and secret, that
he seemed rather in act of dropping poison into wells than potatoes into soil.
But among his lesser and more harmless marvels was an idea he ever had, that
his visitors came equally as well led by longings to behold the mighty hermit
Oberlus in his royal state of solitude, as simply, to obtain potatoes, or find
whatever company might be upon a barren isle. It seems incredible that such a
being should possess such vanity; a misanthrope be conceited; but he really had
his notion; and upon the strength of it, often gave himself amusing airs to
captains. But after all, this is somewhat of a piece with the well-known
eccentricity of some convicts, proud of that very hatefulness which makes them
notorious. At other times, another unaccountable whim would seize him, and he
would long dodge advancing strangers round the clinkered corners of his hut;
sometimes like a stealthy bear, he would slink through the withered thickets up
the mountains, and refuse to see the human face.</p>
<p>Except his occasional visitors from the sea, for a long period, the only
companions of Oberlus were the crawling tortoises; and he seemed more than
degraded to their level, having no desires for a time beyond theirs, unless it
were for the stupor brought on by drunkenness. But sufficiently debased as he
appeared, there yet lurked in him, only awaiting occasion for discovery, a
still further proneness. Indeed, the sole superiority of Oberlus over the
tortoises was his possession of a larger capacity of degradation; and along
with that, something like an intelligent will to it. Moreover, what is about to
be revealed, perhaps will show, that selfish ambition, or the love of rule for
its own sake, far from being the peculiar infirmity of noble minds, is shared
by beings which have no mind at all. No creatures are so selfishly tyrannical
as some brutes; as any one who has observed the tenants of the pasture must
occasionally have observed.</p>
<p>“This island’s mine by Sycorax my mother,” said Oberlus to
himself, glaring round upon his haggard solitude. By some means, barter or
theft—for in those days ships at intervals still kept touching at his
Landing—he obtained an old musket, with a few charges of powder and ball.
Possessed of arms, he was stimulated to enterprise, as a tiger that first feels
the coming of its claws. The long habit of sole dominion over every object
round him, his almost unbroken solitude, his never encountering humanity except
on terms of misanthropic independence, or mercantile craftiness, and even such
encounters being comparatively but rare; all this must have gradually nourished
in him a vast idea of his own importance, together with a pure animal sort of
scorn for all the rest of the universe.</p>
<p>The unfortunate Creole, who enjoyed his brief term of royalty at
Charles’s Isle was perhaps in some degree influenced by not unworthy
motives; such as prompt other adventurous spirits to lead colonists into
distant regions and assume political preeminence over them. His summary
execution of many of his Peruvians is quite pardonable, considering the
desperate characters he had to deal with; while his offering canine battle to
the banded rebels seems under the circumstances altogether just. But for this
King Oberlus and what shortly follows, no shade of palliation can be given. He
acted out of mere delight in tyranny and cruelty, by virtue of a quality in him
inherited from Sycorax his mother. Armed now with that shocking blunderbuss,
strong in the thought of being master of that horrid isle, he panted for a
chance to prove his potency upon the first specimen of humanity which should
fall unbefriended into his hands.</p>
<p>Nor was he long without it. One day he spied a boat upon the beach, with one
man, a negro, standing by it. Some distance off was a ship, and Oberlus
immediately knew how matters stood. The vessel had put in for wood, and the
boat’s crew had gone into the thickets for it. From a convenient spot he
kept watch of the boat, till presently a straggling company appeared loaded
with billets. Throwing these on the beach, they again went into the thickets,
while the negro proceeded to load the boat.</p>
<p>Oberlus now makes all haste and accosts the negro, who, aghast at seeing any
living being inhabiting such a solitude, and especially so horrific a one,
immediately falls into a panic, not at all lessened by the ursine suavity of
Oberlus, who begs the favor of assisting him in his labors. The negro stands
with several billets on his shoulder, in act of shouldering others; and
Oberlus, with a short cord concealed in his bosom, kindly proceeds to lift
those other billets to their place. In so doing, he persists in keeping behind
the negro, who, rightly suspicious of this, in vain dodges about to gain the
front of Oberlus; but Oberlus dodges also; till at last, weary of this bootless
attempt at treachery, or fearful of being surprised by the remainder of the
party, Oberlus runs off a little space to a bush, and fetching his blunderbuss,
savagely commands the negro to desist work and follow him. He refuses.
Whereupon, presenting his piece, Oberlus snaps at him. Luckily the blunderbuss
misses fire; but by this time, frightened out of his wits, the negro, upon a
second intrepid summons, drops his billets, surrenders at discretion, and
follows on. By a narrow defile familiar to him, Oberlus speedily removes out of
sight of the water.</p>
<p>On their way up the mountains, he exultingly informs the negro, that henceforth
he is to work for him, and be his slave, and that his treatment would entirely
depend on his future conduct. But Oberlus, deceived by the first impulsive
cowardice of the black, in an evil moment slackens his vigilance. Passing
through a narrow way, and perceiving his leader quite off his guard, the negro,
a powerful fellow, suddenly grasps him in his arms, throws him down, wrests his
musketoon from him, ties his hands with the monster’s own cord, shoulders
him, and returns with him down to the boat. When the rest of the party arrive,
Oberlus is carried on board the ship. This proved an Englishman, and a
smuggler; a sort of craft not apt to be over-charitable. Oberlus is severely
whipped, then handcuffed, taken ashore, and compelled to make known his
habitation and produce his property. His potatoes, pumpkins, and tortoises,
with a pile of dollars he had hoarded from his mercantile operations were
secured on the spot. But while the too vindictive smugglers were busy
destroying his hut and garden, Oberlus makes his escape into the mountains, and
conceals himself there in impenetrable recesses, only known to himself, till
the ship sails, when he ventures back, and by means of an old file which he
sticks into a tree, contrives to free himself from his handcuffs.</p>
<p>Brooding among the ruins of his hut, and the desolate clinkers and extinct
volcanoes of this outcast isle, the insulted misanthrope now meditates a signal
revenge upon humanity, but conceals his purposes. Vessels still touch the
Landing at times; and by-and-by Oberlus is enabled to supply them with some
vegetables.</p>
<p>Warned by his former failure in kidnapping strangers, he now pursues a quite
different plan. When seamen come ashore, he makes up to them like a
free-and-easy comrade, invites them to his hut, and with whatever affability
his red-haired grimness may assume, entreats them to drink his liquor and be
merry. But his guests need little pressing; and so, soon as rendered
insensible, are tied hand and foot, and pitched among the clinkers, are there
concealed till the ship departs, when, finding themselves entirely dependent
upon Oberlus, alarmed at his changed demeanor, his savage threats, and above
all, that shocking blunderbuss, they willingly enlist under him, becoming his
humble slaves, and Oberlus the most incredible of tyrants. So much so, that two
or three perish beneath his initiating process. He sets the
remainder—four of them—to breaking the caked soil; transporting
upon their backs loads of loamy earth, scooped up in moist clefts among the
mountains; keeps them on the roughest fare; presents his piece at the slightest
hint of insurrection; and in all respects converts them into reptiles at his
feet—plebeian garter-snakes to this Lord Anaconda.</p>
<p>At last, Oberlus contrives to stock his arsenal with four rusty cutlasses, and
an added supply of powder and ball intended for his blunderbuss. Remitting in
good part the labor of his slaves, he now approves himself a man, or rather
devil, of great abilities in the way of cajoling or coercing others into
acquiescence with his own ulterior designs, however at first abhorrent to them.
But indeed, prepared for almost any eventual evil by their previous lawless
life, as a sort of ranging Cow-Boys of the sea, which had dissolved within them
the whole moral man, so that they were ready to concrete in the first offered
mould of baseness now; rotted down from manhood by their hopeless misery on the
isle; wonted to cringe in all things to their lord, himself the worst of
slaves; these wretches were now become wholly corrupted to his hands. He used
them as creatures of an inferior race; in short, he gaffles his four animals,
and makes murderers of them; out of cowards fitly manufacturing bravos.</p>
<p>Now, sword or dagger, human arms are but artificial claws and fangs, tied on
like false spurs to the fighting cock. So, we repeat, Oberlus, czar of the
isle, gaffles his four subjects; that is, with intent of glory, puts four rusty
cutlasses into their hands. Like any other autocrat, he had a noble army now.</p>
<p>It might be thought a servile war would hereupon ensue. Arms in the hands of
trodden slaves? how indiscreet of Emperor Oberlus! Nay, they had but
cutlasses—sad old scythes enough—he a blunderbuss, which by its
blind scatterings of all sorts of boulders, clinkers, and other scoria would
annihilate all four mutineers, like four pigeons at one shot. Besides, at first
he did not sleep in his accustomed hut; every lurid sunset, for a time, he
might have been seen wending his way among the riven mountains, there to
secrete himself till dawn in some sulphurous pitfall, undiscoverable to his
gang; but finding this at last too troublesome, he now each evening tied his
slaves hand and foot, hid the cutlasses, and thrusting them into his barracks,
shut to the door, and lying down before it, beneath a rude shed lately added,
slept out the night, blunderbuss in hand.</p>
<p>It is supposed that not content with daily parading over a cindery solitude at
the head of his fine army, Oberlus now meditated the most active mischief; his
probable object being to surprise some passing ship touching at his dominions,
massacre the crew, and run away with her to parts unknown. While these plans
were simmering in his head, two ships touch in company at the isle, on the
opposite side to his; when his designs undergo a sudden change.</p>
<p>The ships are in want of vegetables, which Oberlus promises in great abundance,
provided they send their boats round to his landing, so that the crews may
bring the vegetables from his garden; informing the two captains, at the same
time, that his rascals—slaves and soldiers—had become so abominably
lazy and good-for-nothing of late, that he could not make them work by ordinary
inducements, and did not have the heart to be severe with them.</p>
<p>The arrangement was agreed to, and the boats were sent and hauled upon the
beach. The crews went to the lava hut; but to their surprise nobody was there.
After waiting till their patience was exhausted, they returned to the shore,
when lo, some stranger—not the Good Samaritan either—seems to have
very recently passed that way. Three of the boats were broken in a thousand
pieces, and the fourth was missing. By hard toil over the mountains and through
the clinkers, some of the strangers succeeded in returning to that side of the
isle where the ships lay, when fresh boats are sent to the relief of the rest
of the hapless party.</p>
<p>However amazed at the treachery of Oberlus, the two captains, afraid of new and
still more mysterious atrocities—and indeed, half imputing such strange
events to the enchantments associated with these isles—perceive no
security but in instant flight; leaving Oberlus and his army in quiet
possession of the stolen boat.</p>
<p>On the eve of sailing they put a letter in a keg, giving the Pacific Ocean
intelligence of the affair, and moored the keg in the bay. Some time
subsequent, the keg was opened by another captain chancing to anchor there, but
not until after he had dispatched a boat round to Oberlus’s Landing. As
may be readily surmised, he felt no little inquietude till the boat’s
return: when another letter was handed him, giving Oberlus’s version of
the affair. This precious document had been found pinned half-mildewed to the
clinker wall of the sulphurous and deserted hut. It ran as follows: showing
that Oberlus was at least an accomplished writer, and no mere boor; and what is
more, was capable of the most tristful eloquence.</p>
<p>“Sir: I am the most unfortunate ill-treated gentleman that lives. I am a
patriot, exiled from my country by the cruel hand of tyranny.</p>
<p>“Banished to these Enchanted Isles, I have again and again besought
captains of ships to sell me a boat, but always have been refused, though I
offered the handsomest prices in Mexican dollars. At length an opportunity
presented of possessing myself of one, and I did not let it slip.</p>
<p>“I have been long endeavoring, by hard labor and much solitary suffering,
to accumulate something to make myself comfortable in a virtuous though unhappy
old age; but at various times have been robbed and beaten by men professing to
be Christians.</p>
<p>“To-day I sail from the Enchanted group in the good boat Charity bound to
the Feejee Isles.</p>
<p class="right">
“F<small>ATHERLESS</small> O<small>BERLUS</small>.</p>
<p>“<i>P.S.</i>—Behind the clinkers, nigh the oven, you will find the
old fowl. Do not kill it; be patient; I leave it setting; if it shall have any
chicks, I hereby bequeath them to you, whoever you may be. But don’t
count your chicks before they are hatched.”</p>
<p>The fowl proved a starveling rooster, reduced to a sitting posture by sheer
debility.</p>
<p>Oberlus declares that he was bound to the Feejee Isles; but this was only to
throw pursuers on a false scent. For, after a long time, he arrived, alone in
his open boat, at Guayaquil. As his miscreants were never again beheld on
Hood’s Isle, it is supposed, either that they perished for want of water
on the passage to Guayaquil, or, what is quite as probable, were thrown
overboard by Oberlus, when he found the water growing scarce.</p>
<p>From Guayaquil Oberlus proceeded to Payta; and there, with that nameless
witchery peculiar to some of the ugliest animals, wound himself into the
affections of a tawny damsel; prevailing upon her to accompany him back to his
Enchanted Isle; which doubtless he painted as a Paradise of flowers, not a
Tartarus of clinkers.</p>
<p>But unfortunately for the colonization of Hood’s Isle with a choice
variety of animated nature, the extraordinary and devilish aspect of Oberlus
made him to be regarded in Payta as a highly suspicious character. So that
being found concealed one night, with matches in his pocket, under the hull of
a small vessel just ready to be launched, he was seized and thrown into jail.</p>
<p>The jails in most South American towns are generally of the least wholesome
sort. Built of huge cakes of sun-burnt brick, and containing but one room,
without windows or yard, and but one door heavily grated with wooden bars, they
present both within and without the grimmest aspect. As public edifices they
conspicuously stand upon the hot and dusty Plaza, offering to view, through the
gratings, their villainous and hopeless inmates, burrowing in all sorts of
tragic squalor. And here, for a long time, Oberlus was seen; the central figure
of a mongrel and assassin band; a creature whom it is religion to detest, since
it is philanthropy to hate a misanthrope.</p>
<p class="footnote">
<i>Note</i>.—They who may be disposed to question the possibility of the
character above depicted, are referred to the 2d vol. of Porter’s Voyage
into the Pacific, where they will recognize many sentences, for
expedition’s sake derived verbatim from thence, and incorporated here;
the main difference—save a few passing reflections—between the two
accounts being, that the present writer has added to Porter’s facts
accessory ones picked up in the Pacific from reliable sources; and where facts
conflict, has naturally preferred his own authorities to Porter’s. As,
for instance, <i>his</i> authorities place Oberlus on Hood’s Isle:
Porter’s, on Charles’s Isle. The letter found in the hut is also
somewhat different; for while at the Encantadas he was informed that, not only
did it evince a certain clerkliness, but was full of the strangest satiric
effrontery which does not adequately appear in Porter’s version. I
accordingly altered it to suit the general character of its author.</p>
<h3>SKETCH TENTH.<br/> RUNAWAYS, CASTAWAYS, SOLITARIES, GRAVE-STONES, ETC.</h3>
<p class="poem">
“And all about old stocks and stubs of trees,<br/>
Whereon nor fruit nor leaf was ever seen,<br/>
Did hang upon ragged knotty knees,<br/>
On which had many wretches hanged been.”</p>
<p>Some relics of the hut of Oberlus partially remain to this day at the head of
the clinkered valley. Nor does the stranger, wandering among other of the
Enchanted Isles, fail to stumble upon still other solitary abodes, long
abandoned to the tortoise and the lizard. Probably few parts of earth have, in
modern times, sheltered so many solitaries. The reason is, that these isles are
situated in a distant sea, and the vessels which occasionally visit them are
mostly all whalers, or ships bound on dreary and protracted voyages, exempting
them in a good degree from both the oversight and the memory of human law. Such
is the character of some commanders and some seamen, that under these untoward
circumstances, it is quite impossible but that scenes of unpleasantness and
discord should occur between them. A sullen hatred of the tyrannic ship will
seize the sailor, and he gladly exchanges it for isles, which, though blighted
as by a continual sirocco and burning breeze, still offer him, in their
labyrinthine interior, a retreat beyond the possibility of capture. To flee the
ship in any Peruvian or Chilian port, even the smallest and most rustical, is
not unattended with great risk of apprehension, not to speak of jaguars. A
reward of five pesos sends fifty dastardly Spaniards into the wood, who, with
long knives, scour them day and night in eager hopes of securing their prey.
Neither is it, in general, much easier to escape pursuit at the isles of
Polynesia. Those of them which have felt a civilizing influence present the
same difficulty to the runaway with the Peruvian ports, the advanced natives
being quite as mercenary and keen of knife and scent as the retrograde
Spaniards; while, owing to the bad odor in which all Europeans lie, in the
minds of aboriginal savages who have chanced to hear aught of them, to desert
the ship among primitive Polynesians, is, in most cases, a hope not unforlorn.
Hence the Enchanted Isles become the voluntary tarrying places of all sorts of
refugees; some of whom too sadly experience the fact, that flight from tyranny
does not of itself insure a safe asylum, far less a happy home.</p>
<p>Moreover, it has not seldom happened that hermits have been made upon the isles
by the accidents incident to tortoise-hunting. The interior of most of them is
tangled and difficult of passage beyond description; the air is sultry and
stifling; an intolerable thirst is provoked, for which no running stream offers
its kind relief. In a few hours, under an equatorial sun, reduced by these
causes to entire exhaustion, woe betide the straggler at the Enchanted Isles!
Their extent is such as to forbid an adequate search, unless weeks are devoted
to it. The impatient ship waits a day or two; when, the missing man remaining
undiscovered, up goes a stake on the beach, with a letter of regret, and a keg
of crackers and another of water tied to it, and away sails the craft.</p>
<p>Nor have there been wanting instances where the inhumanity of some captains has
led them to wreak a secure revenge upon seamen who have given their caprice or
pride some singular offense. Thrust ashore upon the scorching marl, such
mariners are abandoned to perish outright, unless by solitary labors they
succeed in discovering some precious dribblets of moisture oozing from a rock
or stagnant in a mountain pool.</p>
<p>I was well acquainted with a man, who, lost upon the Isle of Narborough, was
brought to such extremes by thirst, that at last he only saved his life by
taking that of another being. A large hair-seal came upon the beach. He rushed
upon it, stabbed it in the neck, and then throwing himself upon the panting
body quaffed at the living wound; the palpitations of the creature’s
dying heart injected life into the drinker.</p>
<p>Another seaman, thrust ashore in a boat upon an isle at which no ship ever
touched, owing to its peculiar sterility and the shoals about it, and from
which all other parts of the group were hidden—this man, feeling that it
was sure death to remain there, and that nothing worse than death menaced him
in quitting it, killed seals, and inflating their skins, made a float, upon
which he transported himself to Charles’s Island, and joined the republic
there.</p>
<p>But men, not endowed with courage equal to such desperate attempts, find their
only resource in forthwith seeking some watering-place, however precarious or
scanty; building a hut; catching tortoises and birds; and in all respects
preparing for a hermit life, till tide or time, or a passing ship arrives to
float them off.</p>
<p>At the foot of precipices on many of the isles, small rude basins in the rocks
are found, partly filled with rotted rubbish or vegetable decay, or overgrown
with thickets, and sometimes a little moist; which, upon examination, reveal
plain tokens of artificial instruments employed in hollowing them out, by some
poor castaway or still more miserable runaway. These basins are made in places
where it was supposed some scanty drops of dew might exude into them from the
upper crevices.</p>
<p>The relics of hermitages and stone basins are not the only signs of vanishing
humanity to be found upon the isles. And, curious to say, that spot which of
all others in settled communities is most animated, at the Enchanted Isles
presents the most dreary of aspects. And though it may seem very strange to
talk of post-offices in this barren region, yet post-offices are occasionally
to be found there. They consist of a stake and a bottle. The letters being not
only sealed, but corked. They are generally deposited by captains of
Nantucketers for the benefit of passing fishermen, and contain statements as to
what luck they had in whaling or tortoise-hunting. Frequently, however, long
months and months, whole years glide by and no applicant appears. The stake
rots and falls, presenting no very exhilarating object.</p>
<p>If now it be added that grave-stones, or rather grave-boards, are also
discovered upon some of the isles, the picture will be complete.</p>
<p>Upon the beach of James’s Isle, for many years, was to be seen a rude
finger-post, pointing inland. And, perhaps, taking it for some signal of
possible hospitality in this otherwise desolate spot—some good hermit
living there with his maple dish—the stranger would follow on in the path
thus indicated, till at last he would come out in a noiseless nook, and find
his only welcome, a dead man—his sole greeting the inscription over a
grave. Here, in 1813, fell, in a daybreak duel, a lieutenant of the U.S.
frigate Essex, aged twenty-one: attaining his majority in death.</p>
<p>It is but fit that, like those old monastic institutions of Europe, whose
inmates go not out of their own walls to be inurned, but are entombed there
where they die, the Encantadas, too, should bury their own dead, even as the
great general monastery of earth does hers.</p>
<p>It is known that burial in the ocean is a pure necessity of sea-faring life,
and that it is only done when land is far astern, and not clearly visible from
the bow. Hence, to vessels cruising in the vicinity of the Enchanted Isles,
they afford a convenient Potter’s Field. The interment over, some
good-natured forecastle poet and artist seizes his paint-brush, and inscribes a
doggerel epitaph. When, after a long lapse of time, other good-natured seamen
chance to come upon the spot, they usually make a table of the mound, and quaff
a friendly can to the poor soul’s repose.</p>
<p>As a specimen of these epitaphs, take the following, found in a bleak gorge of
Chatham Isle:—</p>
<p class="poem">
“Oh, Brother Jack, as you pass by,<br/>
As you are now, so once was I.<br/>
Just so game, and just so gay,<br/>
But now, alack, they’ve stopped my pay.<br/>
No more I peep out of my blinkers,<br/>
Here I be—tucked in with clinkers!”</p>
<h2><SPAN name="chap06"></SPAN>THE BELL-TOWER.</h2>
<p>In the south of Europe, nigh a once frescoed capital, now with dank mould
cankering its bloom, central in a plain, stands what, at distance, seems the
black mossed stump of some immeasurable pine, fallen, in forgotten days, with
Anak and the Titan.</p>
<p>As all along where the pine tree falls, its dissolution leaves a mossy
mound—last-flung shadow of the perished trunk; never lengthening, never
lessening; unsubject to the fleet falsities of the sun; shade immutable, and
true gauge which cometh by prostration—so westward from what seems the
stump, one steadfast spear of lichened ruin veins the plain.</p>
<p>From that tree-top, what birded chimes of silver throats had rung. A stone
pine; a metallic aviary in its crown: the Bell-Tower, built by the great
mechanician, the unblest foundling, Bannadonna.</p>
<p>Like Babel’s, its base was laid in a high hour of renovated earth,
following the second deluge, when the waters of the Dark Ages had dried up, and
once more the green appeared. No wonder that, after so long and deep
submersion, the jubilant expectation of the race should, as with Noah’s
sons, soar into Shinar aspiration.</p>
<p>In firm resolve, no man in Europe at that period went beyond Bannadonna.
Enriched through commerce with the Levant, the state in which he lived voted to
have the noblest Bell-Tower in Italy. His repute assigned him to be architect.</p>
<p>Stone by stone, month by month, the tower rose. Higher, higher; snail-like in
pace, but torch or rocket in its pride.</p>
<p>After the masons would depart, the builder, standing alone upon its
ever-ascending summit, at close of every day, saw that he overtopped still
higher walls and trees. He would tarry till a late hour there, wrapped in
schemes of other and still loftier piles. Those who of saints’ days
thronged the spot—hanging to the rude poles of scaffolding, like sailors
on yards, or bees on boughs, unmindful of lime and dust, and falling chips of
stone—their homage not the less inspirited him to self-esteem.</p>
<p>At length the holiday of the Tower came. To the sound of viols, the
climax-stone slowly rose in air, and, amid the firing of ordnance, was laid by
Bannadonna’s hands upon the final course. Then mounting it, he stood
erect, alone, with folded arms, gazing upon the white summits of blue inland
Alps, and whiter crests of bluer Alps off-shore—sights invisible from the
plain. Invisible, too, from thence was that eye he turned below, when, like the
cannon booms, came up to him the people’s combustions of applause.</p>
<p>That which stirred them so was, seeing with what serenity the builder stood
three hundred feet in air, upon an unrailed perch. This none but he durst do.
But his periodic standing upon the pile, in each stage of its growth—such
discipline had its last result.</p>
<p>Little remained now but the bells. These, in all respects, must correspond with
their receptacle.</p>
<p>The minor ones were prosperously cast. A highly enriched one followed, of a
singular make, intended for suspension in a manner before unknown. The purpose
of this bell, its rotary motion, and connection with the clock-work, also
executed at the time, will, in the sequel, receive mention.</p>
<p>In the one erection, bell-tower and clock-tower were united, though, before
that period, such structures had commonly been built distinct; as the Campanile
and Torre del ’Orologio of St. Mark to this day attest.</p>
<p>But it was upon the great state-bell that the founder lavished his more daring
skill. In vain did some of the less elated magistrates here caution him; saying
that though truly the tower was Titanic, yet limit should be set to the
dependent weight of its swaying masses. But undeterred, he prepared his mammoth
mould, dented with mythological devices; kindled his fires of balsamic firs;
melted his tin and copper, and, throwing in much plate, contributed by the
public spirit of the nobles, let loose the tide.</p>
<p>The unleashed metals bayed like hounds. The workmen shrunk. Through their
fright, fatal harm to the bell was dreaded. Fearless as Shadrach, Bannadonna,
rushing through the glow, smote the chief culprit with his ponderous ladle.
From the smitten part, a splinter was dashed into the seething mass, and at
once was melted in.</p>
<p>Next day a portion of the work was heedfully uncovered. All seemed right. Upon
the third morning, with equal satisfaction, it was bared still lower. At
length, like some old Theban king, the whole cooled casting was disinterred.
All was fair except in one strange spot. But as he suffered no one to attend
him in these inspections, he concealed the blemish by some preparation which
none knew better to devise.</p>
<p>The casting of such a mass was deemed no small triumph for the caster; one,
too, in which the state might not scorn to share. The homicide was overlooked.
By the charitable that deed was but imputed to sudden transports of esthetic
passion, not to any flagitious quality. A kick from an Arabian charger; not
sign of vice, but blood.</p>
<p>His felony remitted by the judge, absolution given him by the priest, what more
could even a sickly conscience have desired.</p>
<p>Honoring the tower and its builder with another holiday, the republic witnessed
the hoisting of the bells and clock-work amid shows and pomps superior to the
former.</p>
<p>Some months of more than usual solitude on Bannadonna’s part ensued. It
was not unknown that he was engaged upon something for the belfry, intended to
complete it, and surpass all that had gone before. Most people imagined that
the design would involve a casting like the bells. But those who thought they
had some further insight, would shake their heads, with hints, that not for
nothing did the mechanician keep so secret. Meantime, his seclusion failed not
to invest his work with more or less of that sort of mystery pertaining to the
forbidden.</p>
<p>Ere long he had a heavy object hoisted to the belfry, wrapped in a dark sack or
cloak—a procedure sometimes had in the case of an elaborate piece of
sculpture, or statue, which, being intended to grace the front of a new
edifice, the architect does not desire exposed to critical eyes, till set up,
finished, in its appointed place. Such was the impression now. But, as the
object rose, a statuary present observed, or thought he did, that it was not
entirely rigid, but was, in a manner, pliant. At last, when the hidden thing
had attained its final height, and, obscurely seen from below, seemed almost of
itself to step into the belfry, as if with little assistance from the crane, a
shrewd old blacksmith present ventured the suspicion that it was but a living
man. This surmise was thought a foolish one, while the general interest failed
not to augment.</p>
<p>Not without demur from Bannadonna, the chief-magistrate of the town, with an
associate—both elderly men—followed what seemed the image up the
tower. But, arrived at the belfry, they had little recompense. Plausibly
entrenching himself behind the conceded mysteries of his art, the mechanician
withheld present explanation. The magistrates glanced toward the cloaked
object, which, to their surprise, seemed now to have changed its attitude, or
else had before been more perplexingly concealed by the violent muffling action
of the wind without. It seemed now seated upon some sort of frame, or chair,
contained within the domino. They observed that nigh the top, in a sort of
square, the web of the cloth, either from accident or design, had its warp
partly withdrawn, and the cross threads plucked out here and there, so as to
form a sort of woven grating. Whether it were the low wind or no, stealing
through the stone lattice-work, or only their own perturbed imaginations, is
uncertain, but they thought they discerned a slight sort of fitful, spring-like
motion, in the domino. Nothing, however incidental or insignificant, escaped
their uneasy eyes. Among other things, they pried out, in a corner, an earthen
cup, partly corroded and partly encrusted, and one whispered to the other, that
this cup was just such a one as might, in mockery, be offered to the lips of
some brazen statue, or, perhaps, still worse.</p>
<p>But, being questioned, the mechanician said, that the cup was simply used in
his founder’s business, and described the purpose; in short, a cup to
test the condition of metals in fusion. He added, that it had got into the
belfry by the merest chance.</p>
<p>Again, and again, they gazed at the domino, as at some suspicious incognito at
a Venetian mask. All sorts of vague apprehensions stirred them. They even
dreaded lest, when they should descend, the mechanician, though without a flesh
and blood companion, for all that, would not be left alone.</p>
<p>Affecting some merriment at their disquietude, he begged to relieve them, by
extending a coarse sheet of workman’s canvas between them and the object.</p>
<p>Meantime he sought to interest them in his other work; nor, now that the domino
was out of sight, did they long remain insensible to the artistic wonders lying
round them; wonders hitherto beheld but in their unfinished state; because,
since hoisting the bells, none but the caster had entered within the belfry. It
was one trait of his, that, even in details, he would not let another do what
he could, without too great loss of time, accomplish for himself. So, for
several preceding weeks, whatever hours were unemployed in his secret design,
had been devoted to elaborating the figures on the bells.</p>
<p>The clock-bell, in particular, now drew attention. Under a patient chisel, the
latent beauty of its enrichments, before obscured by the cloudings incident to
casting, that beauty in its shyest grace, was now revealed. Round and round the
bell, twelve figures of gay girls, garlanded, hand-in-hand, danced in a choral
ring—the embodied hours.</p>
<p>“Bannadonna,” said the chief, “this bell excels all else. No
added touch could here improve. Hark!” hearing a sound, “was that
the wind?”</p>
<p>“The wind, Excellenza,” was the light response. “But the
figures, they are not yet without their faults. They need some touches yet.
When those are given, and the—block yonder,” pointing towards the
canvas screen, “when Haman there, as I merrily call him,—him?
<i>it</i>, I mean—when Haman is fixed on this, his lofty tree, then,
gentlemen, will I be most happy to receive you here again.”</p>
<p>The equivocal reference to the object caused some return of restlessness.
However, on their part, the visitors forbore further allusion to it, unwilling,
perhaps, to let the foundling see how easily it lay within his plebeian art to
stir the placid dignity of nobles.</p>
<p>“Well, Bannadonna,” said the chief, “how long ere you are
ready to set the clock going, so that the hour shall be sounded? Our interest
in you, not less than in the work itself, makes us anxious to be assured of
your success. The people, too,—why, they are shouting now. Say the exact
hour when you will be ready.”</p>
<p>“To-morrow, Excellenza, if you listen for it,—or should you not,
all the same—strange music will be heard. The stroke of one shall be the
first from yonder bell,” pointing to the bell adorned with girls and
garlands, “that stroke shall fall there, where the hand of Una clasps
Dua’s. The stroke of one shall sever that loved clasp. To-morrow, then,
at one o’clock, as struck here, precisely here,” advancing and
placing his finger upon the clasp, “the poor mechanic will be most happy
once more to give you liege audience, in this his littered shop. Farewell till
then, illustrious magnificoes, and hark ye for your vassal’s
stroke.”</p>
<p>His still, Vulcanic face hiding its burning brightness like a forge, he moved
with ostentatious deference towards the scuttle, as if so far to escort their
exit. But the junior magistrate, a kind-hearted man, troubled at what seemed to
him a certain sardonical disdain, lurking beneath the foundling’s humble
mien, and in Christian sympathy more distressed at it on his account than on
his own, dimly surmising what might be the final fate of such a cynic
solitaire, nor perhaps uninfluenced by the general strangeness of surrounding
things, this good magistrate had glanced sadly, sideways from the speaker, and
thereupon his foreboding eye had started at the expression of the unchanging
face of the Hour Una.</p>
<p>“How is this, Bannadonna?” he lowly asked, “Una looks unlike
her sisters.”</p>
<p>“In Christ’s name, Bannadonna,” impulsively broke in the
chief, his attention, for the first attracted to the figure, by his
associate’s remark, “Una’s face looks just like that of
Deborah, the prophetess, as painted by the Florentine, Del Fonca.”</p>
<p>“Surely, Bannadonna,” lowly resumed the milder magistrate,
“you meant the twelve should wear the same jocundly abandoned air. But
see, the smile of Una seems but a fatal one. ’Tis different.”</p>
<p>While his mild associate was speaking, the chief glanced, inquiringly, from him
to the caster, as if anxious to mark how the discrepancy would be accounted
for. As the chief stood, his advanced foot was on the scuttle’s curb.</p>
<p>Bannadonna spoke:</p>
<p>“Excellenza, now that, following your keener eye, I glance upon the face
of Una, I do, indeed perceive some little variance. But look all round the
bell, and you will find no two faces entirely correspond. Because there is a
law in art—but the cold wind is rising more; these lattices are but a
poor defense. Suffer me, magnificoes, to conduct you, at least, partly on your
way. Those in whose well-being there is a public stake, should be heedfully
attended.”</p>
<p>“Touching the look of Una, you were saying, Bannadonna, that there was a
certain law in art,” observed the chief, as the three now descended the
stone shaft, “pray, tell me, then—.”</p>
<p>“Pardon; another time, Excellenza;—the tower is damp.”</p>
<p>“Nay, I must rest, and hear it now. Here,—here is a wide landing,
and through this leeward slit, no wind, but ample light. Tell us of your law;
and at large.”</p>
<p>“Since, Excellenza, you insist, know that there is a law in art, which
bars the possibility of duplicates. Some years ago, you may remember, I graved
a small seal for your republic, bearing, for its chief device, the head of your
own ancestor, its illustrious founder. It becoming necessary, for the
customs’ use, to have innumerable impressions for bales and boxes, I
graved an entire plate, containing one hundred of the seals. Now, though,
indeed, my object was to have those hundred heads identical, and though, I dare
say, people think them; so, yet, upon closely scanning an uncut impression from
the plate, no two of those five-score faces, side by side, will be found alike.
Gravity is the air of all; but, diversified in all. In some, benevolent; in
some, ambiguous; in two or three, to a close scrutiny, all but incipiently
malign, the variation of less than a hair’s breadth in the linear
shadings round the mouth sufficing to all this. Now, Excellenza, transmute that
general gravity into joyousness, and subject it to twelve of those variations I
have described, and tell me, will you not have my hours here, and Una one of
them? But I like—.”</p>
<p>“Hark! is that—a footfall above?”</p>
<p>“Mortar, Excellenza; sometimes it drops to the belfry-floor from the arch
where the stonework was left undressed. I must have it seen to. As I was about
to say: for one, I like this law forbidding duplicates. It evokes fine
personalities. Yes, Excellenza, that strange, and—to you—uncertain
smile, and those fore-looking eyes of Una, suit Bannadonna very well.”</p>
<p>“Hark!—sure we left no soul above?”</p>
<p>“No soul, Excellenza; rest assured, no <i>soul</i>—Again the
mortar.”</p>
<p>“It fell not while we were there.”</p>
<p>“Ah, in your presence, it better knew its place, Excellenza,”
blandly bowed Bannadonna.</p>
<p>“But, Una,” said the milder magistrate, “she seemed intently
gazing on you; one would have almost sworn that she picked you out from among
us three.”</p>
<p>“If she did, possibly, it might have been her finer apprehension,
Excellenza.”</p>
<p>“How, Bannadonna? I do not understand you.”</p>
<p>“No consequence, no consequence, Excellenza—but the shifted wind is
blowing through the slit. Suffer me to escort you on; and then, pardon, but the
toiler must to his tools.”</p>
<p>“It may be foolish, Signor,” said the milder magistrate, as, from
the third landing, the two now went down unescorted, “but, somehow, our
great mechanician moves me strangely. Why, just now, when he so superciliously
replied, his walk seemed Sisera’s, God’s vain foe, in Del
Fonca’s painting. And that young, sculptured Deborah, too. Ay, and
that—.”</p>
<p>“Tush, tush, Signor!” returned the chief. “A passing whim.
Deborah?—Where’s Jael, pray?”</p>
<p>“Ah,” said the other, as they now stepped upon the sod, “Ah,
Signor, I see you leave your fears behind you with the chill and gloom; but
mine, even in this sunny air, remain. Hark!”</p>
<p>It was a sound from just within the tower door, whence they had emerged.
Turning, they saw it closed.</p>
<p>“He has slipped down and barred us out,” smiled the chief;
“but it is his custom.”</p>
<p>Proclamation was now made, that the next day, at one hour after meridian, the
clock would strike, and—thanks to the mechanician’s powerful
art—with unusual accompaniments. But what those should be, none as yet
could say. The announcement was received with cheers.</p>
<p>By the looser sort, who encamped about the tower all night, lights were seen
gleaming through the topmost blind-work, only disappearing with the morning
sun. Strange sounds, too, were heard, or were thought to be, by those whom
anxious watching might not have left mentally undisturbed—sounds, not
only of some ringing implement, but also—so they
said—half-suppressed screams and plainings, such as might have issued
from some ghostly engine, overplied.</p>
<p>Slowly the day drew on; part of the concourse chasing the weary time with songs
and games, till, at last, the great blurred sun rolled, like a football,
against the plain.</p>
<p>At noon, the nobility and principal citizens came from the town in cavalcade, a
guard of soldiers, also, with music, the more to honor the occasion.</p>
<p>Only one hour more. Impatience grew. Watches were held in hands of feverish
men, who stood, now scrutinizing their small dial-plates, and then, with neck
thrown back, gazing toward the belfry, as if the eye might foretell that which
could only be made sensible to the ear; for, as yet, there was no dial to the
tower-clock.</p>
<p>The hour hands of a thousand watches now verged within a hair’s breadth
of the figure 1. A silence, as of the expectation of some Shiloh, pervaded the
swarming plain. Suddenly a dull, mangled sound—naught ringing in it;
scarcely audible, indeed, to the outer circles of the people—that dull
sound dropped heavily from the belfry. At the same moment, each man stared at
his neighbor blankly. All watches were upheld. All hour-hands were at—had
passed—the figure 1. No bell-stroke from the tower. The multitude became
tumultuous.</p>
<p>Waiting a few moments, the chief magistrate, commanding silence, hailed the
belfry, to know what thing unforeseen had happened there.</p>
<p>No response.</p>
<p>He hailed again and yet again.</p>
<p>All continued hushed.</p>
<p>By his order, the soldiers burst in the tower-door; when, stationing guards to
defend it from the now surging mob, the chief, accompanied by his former
associate, climbed the winding stairs. Half-way up, they stopped to listen. No
sound. Mounting faster, they reached the belfry; but, at the threshold, started
at the spectacle disclosed. A spaniel, which, unbeknown to them, had followed
them thus far, stood shivering as before some unknown monster in a brake: or,
rather, as if it snuffed footsteps leading to some other world.</p>
<p>Bannadonna lay, prostrate and bleeding, at the base of the bell which was
adorned with girls and garlands. He lay at the feet of the hour Una; his head
coinciding, in a vertical line, with her left hand, clasped by the hour Dua.
With downcast face impending over him, like Jael over nailed Sisera in the
tent, was the domino; now no more becloaked.</p>
<p>It had limbs, and seemed clad in a scaly mail, lustrous as a
dragon-beetle’s. It was manacled, and its clubbed arms were uplifted, as
if, with its manacles, once more to smite its already smitten victim. One
advanced foot of it was inserted beneath the dead body, as if in the act of
spurning it.</p>
<p>Uncertainty falls on what now followed.</p>
<p>It were but natural to suppose that the magistrates would, at first, shrink
from immediate personal contact with what they saw. At the least, for a time,
they would stand in involuntary doubt; it may be, in more or less of horrified
alarm. Certain it is, that an arquebuss was called for from below. And some
add, that its report, followed by a fierce whiz, as of the sudden snapping of a
main-spring, with a steely din, as if a stack of sword-blades should be dashed
upon a pavement, these blended sounds came ringing to the plain, attracting
every eye far upward to the belfry, whence, through the lattice-work, thin
wreaths of smoke were curling.</p>
<p>Some averred that it was the spaniel, gone mad by fear, which was shot. This,
others denied. True it was, the spaniel never more was seen; and, probably, for
some unknown reason, it shared the burial now to be related of the domino. For,
whatever the preceding circumstances may have been, the first instinctive panic
over, or else all ground of reasonable fear removed, the two magistrates, by
themselves, quickly rehooded the figure in the dropped cloak wherein it had
been hoisted. The same night, it was secretly lowered to the ground, smuggled
to the beach, pulled far out to sea, and sunk. Nor to any after urgency, even
in free convivial hours, would the twain ever disclose the full secrets of the
belfry.</p>
<p>From the mystery unavoidably investing it, the popular solution of the
foundling’s fate involved more or less of supernatural agency. But some
few less unscientific minds pretended to find little difficulty in otherwise
accounting for it. In the chain of circumstantial inferences drawn, there may,
or may not, have been some absent or defective links. But, as the explanation
in question is the only one which tradition has explicitly preserved, in dearth
of better, it will here be given. But, in the first place, it is requisite to
present the supposition entertained as to the entire motive and mode, with
their origin, of the secret design of Bannadonna; the minds above-mentioned
assuming to penetrate as well into his soul as into the event. The disclosure
will indirectly involve reference to peculiar matters, none of, the clearest,
beyond the immediate subject.</p>
<p>At that period, no large bell was made to sound otherwise than as at present,
by agitation of a tongue within, by means of ropes, or percussion from without,
either from cumbrous machinery, or stalwart watchmen, armed with heavy hammers,
stationed in the belfry, or in sentry-boxes on the open roof, according as the
bell was sheltered or exposed.</p>
<p>It was from observing these exposed bells, with their watchmen, that the
foundling, as was opined, derived the first suggestion of his scheme. Perched
on a great mast or spire, the human figure, viewed from below, undergoes such a
reduction in its apparent size, as to obliterate its intelligent features. It
evinces no personality. Instead of bespeaking volition, its gestures rather
resemble the automatic ones of the arms of a telegraph.</p>
<p>Musing, therefore, upon the purely Punchinello aspect of the human figure thus
beheld, it had indirectly occurred to Bannadonna to devise some metallic agent,
which should strike the hour with its mechanic hand, with even greater
precision than the vital one. And, moreover, as the vital watchman on the roof,
sallying from his retreat at the given periods, walked to the bell with
uplifted mace, to smite it, Bannadonna had resolved that his invention should
likewise possess the power of locomotion, and, along with that, the appearance,
at least, of intelligence and will.</p>
<p>If the conjectures of those who claimed acquaintance with the intent of
Bannadonna be thus far correct, no unenterprising spirit could have been his.
But they stopped not here; intimating that though, indeed, his design had, in
the first place, been prompted by the sight of the watchman, and confined to
the devising of a subtle substitute for him: yet, as is not seldom the case
with projectors, by insensible gradations, proceeding from comparatively pigmy
aims to Titanic ones, the original scheme had, in its anticipated
eventualities, at last, attained to an unheard of degree of daring.</p>
<p>He still bent his efforts upon the locomotive figure for the belfry, but only
as a partial type of an ulterior creature, a sort of elephantine Helot, adapted
to further, in a degree scarcely to be imagined, the universal conveniences and
glories of humanity; supplying nothing less than a supplement to the Six
Days’ Work; stocking the earth with a new serf, more useful than the ox,
swifter than the dolphin, stronger than the lion, more cunning than the ape,
for industry an ant, more fiery than serpents, and yet, in patience, another
ass. All excellences of all God-made creatures, which served man, were here to
receive advancement, and then to be combined in one. Talus was to have been the
all-accomplished Helot’s name. Talus, iron slave to Bannadonna, and,
through him, to man.</p>
<p>Here, it might well be thought that, were these last conjectures as to the
foundling’s secrets not erroneous, then must he have been hopelessly
infected with the craziest chimeras of his age; far outgoing Albert Magus and
Cornelius Agrippa. But the contrary was averred. However marvelous his design,
however apparently transcending not alone the bounds of human invention, but
those of divine creation, yet the proposed means to be employed were alleged to
have been confined within the sober forms of sober reason. It was affirmed
that, to a degree of more than skeptic scorn, Bannadonna had been without
sympathy for any of the vain-glorious irrationalities of his time. For example,
he had not concluded, with the visionaries among the metaphysicians, that
between the finer mechanic forces and the ruder animal vitality some germ of
correspondence might prove discoverable. As little did his scheme partake of
the enthusiasm of some natural philosophers, who hoped, by physiological and
chemical inductions, to arrive at a knowledge of the source of life, and so
qualify themselves to manufacture and improve upon it. Much less had he aught
in common with the tribe of alchemists, who sought, by a species of
incantations, to evoke some surprising vitality from the laboratory. Neither
had he imagined, with certain sanguine theosophists, that, by faithful
adoration of the Highest, unheard-of powers would be vouchsafed to man. A
practical materialist, what Bannadonna had aimed at was to have been reached,
not by logic, not by crucible, not by conjuration, not by altars; but by plain
vice-bench and hammer. In short, to solve nature, to steal into her, to
intrigue beyond her, to procure some one else to bind her to his
hand;—these, one and all, had not been his objects; but, asking no favors
from any element or any being, of himself, to rival her, outstrip her, and rule
her. He stooped to conquer. With him, common sense was theurgy; machinery,
miracle; Prometheus, the heroic name for machinist; man, the true God.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, in his initial step, so far as the experimental automaton for the
belfry was concerned, he allowed fancy some little play; or, perhaps, what
seemed his fancifulness was but his utilitarian ambition collaterally extended.
In figure, the creature for the belfry should not be likened after the human
pattern, nor any animal one, nor after the ideals, however wild, of ancient
fable, but equally in aspect as in organism be an original production; the more
terrible to behold, the better.</p>
<p>Such, then, were the suppositions as to the present scheme, and the reserved
intent. How, at the very threshold, so unlooked for a catastrophe overturned
all, or rather, what was the conjecture here, is now to be set forth.</p>
<p>It was thought that on the day preceding the fatality, his visitors having left
him, Bannadonna had unpacked the belfry image, adjusted it, and placed it in
the retreat provided—a sort of sentry-box in one corner of the belfry; in
short, throughout the night, and for some part of the ensuing morning, he had
been engaged in arranging everything connected with the domino; the issuing
from the sentry-box each sixty minutes; sliding along a grooved way, like a
railway; advancing to the clock-bell, with uplifted manacles; striking it at
one of the twelve junctions of the four-and-twenty hands; then wheeling,
circling the bell, and retiring to its post, there to bide for another sixty
minutes, when the same process was to be repeated; the bell, by a cunning
mechanism, meantime turning on its vertical axis, so as to present, to the
descending mace, the clasped hands of the next two figures, when it would
strike two, three, and so on, to the end. The musical metal in this time-bell
being so managed in the fusion, by some art, perishing with its originator,
that each of the clasps of the four-and-twenty hands should give forth its own
peculiar resonance when parted.</p>
<p>But on the magic metal, the magic and metallic stranger never struck but that
one stroke, drove but that one nail, served but that one clasp, by which
Bannadonna clung to his ambitious life. For, after winding up the creature in
the sentry-box, so that, for the present, skipping the intervening hours, it
should not emerge till the hour of one, but should then infallibly emerge, and,
after deftly oiling the grooves whereon it was to slide, it was surmised that
the mechanician must then have hurried to the bell, to give his final touches
to its sculpture. True artist, he here became absorbed; and absorption still
further intensified, it may be, by his striving to abate that strange look of
Una; which, though, before others, he had treated with such unconcern, might
not, in secret, have been without its thorn.</p>
<p>And so, for the interval, he was oblivious of his creature; which, not
oblivious of him, and true to its creation, and true to its heedful winding up,
left its post precisely at the given moment; along its well-oiled route, slid
noiselessly towards its mark; and, aiming at the hand of Una, to ring one
clangorous note, dully smote the intervening brain of Bannadonna, turned
backwards to it; the manacled arms then instantly up-springing to their
hovering poise. The falling body clogged the thing’s return; so there it
stood, still impending over Bannadonna, as if whispering some post-mortem
terror. The chisel lay dropped from the hand, but beside the hand; the
oil-flask spilled across the iron track.</p>
<p>In his unhappy end, not unmindful of the rare genius of the mechanician, the
republic decreed him a stately funeral. It was resolved that the great
bell—the one whose casting had been jeopardized through the timidity of
the ill-starred workman—should be rung upon the entrance of the bier into
the cathedral. The most robust man of the country round was assigned the office
of bell-ringer.</p>
<p>But as the pall-bearers entered the cathedral porch, naught but a broken and
disastrous sound, like that of some lone Alpine land-slide, fell from the tower
upon their ears. And then, all was hushed.</p>
<p>Glancing backwards, they saw the groined belfry crashed sideways in. It
afterwards appeared that the powerful peasant, who had the bell-rope in charge,
wishing to test at once the full glory of the bell, had swayed down upon the
rope with one concentrate jerk. The mass of quaking metal, too ponderous for
its frame, and strangely feeble somewhere at its top, loosed from its
fastening, tore sideways down, and tumbling in one sheer fall, three hundred
feet to the soft sward below, buried itself inverted and half out of sight.</p>
<p>Upon its disinterment, the main fracture was found to have started from a small
spot in the ear; which, being scraped, revealed a defect, deceptively minute in
the casting; which defect must subsequently have been pasted over with some
unknown compound.</p>
<p>The remolten metal soon reassumed its place in the tower’s repaired
superstructure. For one year the metallic choir of birds sang musically in its
belfry-bough-work of sculptured blinds and traceries. But on the first
anniversary of the tower’s completion—at early dawn, before the
concourse had surrounded it—an earthquake came; one loud crash was heard.
The stone-pine, with all its bower of songsters, lay overthrown upon the plain.</p>
<p>So the blind slave obeyed its blinder lord; but, in obedience, slew him. So the
creator was killed by the creature. So the bell was too heavy for the tower. So
the bell’s main weakness was where man’s blood had flawed it. And
so pride went before the fall.</p>
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