Bartleby the Scrivener: A Tale of Wall Street

BENITO CERENO 157
time satisfied and quieted. * * * But the next day, the
more surely to guard against the sailors' escape, the
negro Babo commanded all the boats to be destroyed
but the long-boat, which was unseaworthy, and another,
a cutter
*******
in good condition, which knowing it would yet
be wanted for towing the water-casks, he had it lowered
down into the hold.
[Various particulars of the prolonged and perplexed
navigation ensuing here follow, with incidents of a calamitous
calm, from which '
Imt :\
portion one passage is extracted, to
—That on the fifth day of the calm, all on board
suffering much from the heat, and want of water, and
five having died in fits, and mad, the negroes became
irritable, and for a chance gesture, which they deemed
suspicious — though it was harmless—made by the mate,
Raneds, to the deponent in the act of handing a quadrant,
they killed him but that ;
for this they afterward were
sorry, the mate being the only remaining navigator on
board, except the *******
deponent.
—That omitting other events, which daily happened,
and which can only serve uselessly to recall past mis-
fortunes and conflicts, aftei^ seventy-three days' navigation,
reckoned from the time they sailed from Nasca,
during which they navigated under a scanty allowance
of water, and were afflicted with the calms before-
at last arrived at the island of Santa *
mentioned, they
Maria, on the seventeenth of the month of August, at
about six o'clock in the afternoon, at which hour they
cast anchor very near the American ship, Bachelor's
Delight, which lay in the same bay, commanded by the
generous Captain Amasa Delano ; but at six o'clock in