Previous Chapter .
Table of Contents
14 -- CONCLUSION
If the deposition of Benito Cereno has served as the key to fit
into the lock of the complications which preceded it, then, as a vault
whose door has been flung back, the San Dominick's hull lies open
to-day.
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:
During the long, mild voyage to Lima, there was, as before hinted,
a period during which Don Benito 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.
Again and again, it was repeated, how hard it had been to enact
the part forced on the Spaniard by Babo.
"Ah, my dear Don Amasa," 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 toward an understanding between us, death, explosive
death -- yours as mine -- would have ended the scene."
"True, true," cried Captain Delano, starting, "you saved my
life, Don Benito, more than I yours; saved it, too, against my
knowledge and will."
"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."
"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
with the blacks might have ended unhappily enough. Besides that, 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."
"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 villain, 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 men 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."
"I think I understand you; 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."
"Because they have no memory," he dejectedly replied; "because
they are not human."
"But these mild trades that now fan your cheek, Don Benito, do
they not come with a human-like healing to you? Warm friends,
steadfast friends are the trades."
"With their steadfastness they but waft me to my tomb, Senor," was
the foreboding response.
"You are saved, Don Benito," cried Captain Delano, more and more
astonished and pained; "you are saved; what has cast such a shadow
upon you?"
"The Negro."
There was silence, while the moody man sat, slowly and
unconsciously gathering his mantle about him, as if it were a pall.
There was no more conversation that day.
But if the Spaniard's melancholy sometimes ended in muteness
upon topics like the above, there were others upon which he never
spoke at all; on which, indeed, all his old reserves were piled.
Pass over the worst and, only to elucidate, let an item or two of
these be cited. The dress so precise and costly, worn by him on the
day whose events have been narrated, had not willingly been put on.
And that silver-mounted sword, apparent symbol of despotic command,
was not, indeed, a sword, but the ghost of one. The scabbard,
artificially stiffened, was empty.
As for the black -- whose brain, not body, had schemed and led the
revolt, with the plot -- his slight frame, inadequate to that which it
held, had at once yielded to the superior muscular strength of his
captor, in the boat. Seeing all was over, he uttered no sound, and
could not be forced to. His aspect seemed to say: since I cannot do
deeds, I will not speak words. Put in irons in the hold, with the
rest, he was carried to Lima. During the passage Don Benito did not
visit him. Nor then, nor at any time after, would he look at him.
Before the tribunal he refused. When pressed by the judges he fainted.
On the testimony of the sailors alone rested the legal identity of
Babo. And yet the Spaniard would, upon occasion, verbally refer to the
Negro, as has been shown; but look on him he would not, or could not.
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 toward St. Bartholomew's church, in whose vaults slept then, as
now, the recovered bones of Aranda; and across the Rimac bridge looked
toward 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.
--THE END--
Benito Cereno
by Herman Melville
Herman Melville Page in Great Books Index
AUTHORS/HOME . TITLES . BOOK LINKS
URL: http://books.mirror.org/melville/benitocereno/s014.html