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2 -- ABOARD SAN DOMINICK
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 a 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.
While Captain Delano was thus made the mark of all eager
tongues, his one eager glance took in all the faces, with every
other object about him.
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.
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 drooling away like so many
grey-headed bag-pipers playing a funeral march.
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.
But the 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.
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.
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.
But losing no time in mere compliments, Captain Delano returning
to the gangway, had his baskets 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 whaleboat 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.
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
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.
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 the 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.
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.
But the good conduct of Babo, hardly more than the ill-behaviour
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 toward 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.
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 toward all but
his 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.
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.
Thus, the Spaniard, regarded in his reserve, seemed as the
involuntary victim of mental disorder. But, in fact, his reserve
might, in some degree, have proceeded from design. If so, then in
Don Benito 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.
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 demeanour, 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 more 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 toward himself.
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 entrusted 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.
Benito Cereno
by Herman Melville
Herman Melville Page in Great Books Index
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