Bartleby the Scrivener: A Tale of Wall Street

ecause it went off,
back.
BENITO CERENO 113
it follows not that it won't come
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.
Yes, this is a strange craft a ; strange history, too, and
strange folks on board. But—
nothing more.
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
others, four curious points recurred :—
crew. Among
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.
Coupling these points, they
seemed somewhat contra-
dictory. But what then, thought Captain Delano,
glancing toward 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, con-
spirator, 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
come.
! At last Rover has
As, with its welcome freight, the boat touched the
H