Bartleby the Scrivener: A Tale of Wall Street

BENITO CERENO 109
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
aged sailor
an along it, when he observed a new face ; .
seated cross-legged near the main hatchway. 'ffis^sEn
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.
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.
At last, puzzled to comprehend the meaning of such
a knot, Captain Delano addressed the knotter :—
'
What are you knotting there, my man ? '
'
The knot,' was the brief reply, without looking up.
'
So it seems but what is it for ? ; '
*
For someone else to undo,' muttered back the old
man, plying his fingers harder than ever, the knot being
now nearly completed.
While Captain Delano stood watching him, suddenly
the old man threw the knot toward 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^^cTTcoiKlensation of rapidity that the long,
slow words in Spanish, which had preceded and