Bartleby the Scrivener: A Tale of Wall Street

164 THE PIAZZA TALES
of the true state of affairs ; but that these attempts
were ineffectual, owing to fear of incurring death, and,
furthermore, owing to the devices which offered contradictions
to the true state of affairs, as well as owing
I to the generosity and piety of Amasa Delano incapable
of sounding such wickedness ;
* * * that Luys Galgo, a
sailor about sixty years of age, and formerly of the
king's navy, was one of those who sought to convey
tokens to Captain Amasa Delano ;
but his intent, though
undiscovered, being suspected, he was, on a pretence,
made to retire out of sight, and at last into the hold,
and there was made away with. This the negroes have
since said * * * that one of the ;
ship-boys feeling, from
Captain Amasa Delano's presence, some hopes of release,
and not having enough prudence, dropped some chance
word
heard
respecting his expectations, which being over-
and understood by a slave-boy with whom he
was eating at the time, the latter struck him on the
head with a knife, inflicting a bad wound, but of which
the boy is now healing ; that likewise, not long before
the ship was brought to anchor, one of the seamen,
steering at the time, endangered himself by letting the
blacks remark some expression in his countenance,
arising from a cause similar to the above ; but this
sailor, by his heedful after conduct, escaped ;
* * * that
« these statements are made to show the court that from
beginning to the end of the revolt, it was impossible
for the deponent and his men to act otherwise than
they did * * * — that ;
the third clerk, Hermenegildo
Ithe
Gandix, who before had been forced to live among the
seamen, wearing a seaman's habit, and in all respects
appearing to be one for the time, he, Gandix, was killed
mistake from the boats
by a musket-ball fired through
before boarding ; having in his fright run up
rigging, calling to the boats— '
the mizen-
don't board,' lest upon