Bartleby the Scrivener: A Tale of Wall Street

BENITO CERENO 153
deponent steered toward 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 favour them, or whether he could
escape from it in a boat to the neighbouring
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 with the coast of Nasca, the deponent
being on the watch a little after daybreak, and soon
after the negroes had their meeting, the negro Babo
came to the place where the deponent was, and told