Becoming America - An Exploration of American Literature from Precolonial to Post-Revolution, 2018a

BECOMING AMERICA
REVOLUTIONARY AND EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD LITERATURE
“Ah, master,” sighed the black, bowing his face, “don’t speak of me; Babo is
nothing; what Babo has done was but duty.”
“Faithful fellow!” cried Captain Delano. “Don Benito, I envy you such a friend;
slave I cannot call him.”
As master and man stood before him, the black upholding the white, Captain
Delano could not but bethink him of the beauty of that relationship which could
present such a spectacle of delity on the one hand and condence on the other. The
scene was heightened by, the contrast in dress, denoting their relative positions.
The Spaniard wore a loose Chili jacket of dark velvet; white small-clothes and
stockings, with silver buckles at the knee and instep; a high-crowned sombrero,
of ne grass; a slender sword, silver mounted, hung from a knot in his sash—
the last being an almost invariable adjunct, more for utility than ornament, of a
South American gentleman’s dress to this hour. Excepting when his occasional
nervous contortions brought about disarray, there was a certain precision in his
attire curiously at variance with the unsightly disorder around; especially in the
belittered Ghetto, forward of the main-mast, wholly occupied by the blacks.
The servant wore nothing but wide trowsers, apparently, from their coarseness
and patches, made out of some old topsail; they were clean, and conned at the
waist by a bit of unstranded rope, which, with his composed, deprecatory air at
times, made him look something like a begging friar of St. Francis.
However unsuitable for the time and place, at least in the blunt-thinking
American’s eyes, and however strangely surviving in the midst of all his aictions,
the toilette of Don Benito might not, in fashion at least, have gone beyond the style
of the day among South Americans of his class. Though on the present voyage
sailing from Buenos Ayres, he had avowed himself a native and resident of Chili,
whose inhabitants had not so generally adopted the plain coat and once plebeian
pantaloons; but, with a becoming modication, adhered to their provincial
costume, picturesque as any in the world. Still, relatively to the pale history of
the voyage, and his own pale face, there seemed something so incongruous in the
Spaniard’s apparel, as almost to suggest the image of an invalid courtier tottering
about London streets in the time of the plague.
The portion of the narrative which, perhaps, most excited interest, as well as
some surprise, considering the latitudes in question, was the long calms spoken of,
and more particularly the ship’s so long drifting about. Without communicating
the opinion, of course, the American could not but impute at least part of the
detentions both to clumsy seamanship and faulty navigation. Eying Don Benito’s
small, yellow hands, he easily inferred that the young captain had not got into
command at the hawse-hole, but the cabin-window; and if so, why wonder at
incompetence, in youth, sickness, and gentility united?
But drowning criticism in compassion, after a fresh repetition of his
sympathies, Captain Delano, having heard out his story, not only engaged, as
in the rst place, to see Don Benito and his people supplied in their immediate
bodily needs, but, also, now farther promised to assist him in procuring a large
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