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

BECOMING AMERICA
REVOLUTIONARY AND EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD LITERATURE
thoughts which he barely durst confess to himself. Above all, he began to feel a
ghostly dread of Don Benito. And yet, when he roused himself, dilated his chest, felt
himself strong on his legs, and coolly considered it—what did all these phantoms
amount to?
Had the Spaniard any sinister scheme, it must have reference not so much to
him (Captain Delano) as to his ship (the Bachelor’s Delight). Hence the present
drifting away of the one ship from the other, instead of favoring any such possible
scheme, was, for the time, at least, opposed to it. Clearly any suspicion, combining
such contradictions, must need be delusive. Beside, was it not absurd to think of
a vessel in distress—a vessel by sickness almost dismanned of her crew—a vessel
whose inmates were parched for water—was it not a thousand times absurd that
such a craft should, at present, be of a piratical character; or her commander,
either for himself or those under him, cherish any desire but for speedy relief and
refreshment? But then, might not general distress, and thirst in particular, be
aected? And might not that same undiminished Spanish crew, alleged to have
perished o to a remnant, be at that very moment lurking in the hold? On heartbroken
pretense of entreating a cup of cold water, ends in human form had got
into lonely dwellings, nor retired until a dark deed had been done. And among the
Malay pirates, it was no unusual thing to lure ships after them into their treacherous
harbors, or entice boarders from a declared enemy at sea, by the spectacle of thinly
manned or vacant decks, beneath which prowled a hundred spears with yellow
arms ready to upthrust them through the mats. Not that Captain Delano had
entirely credited such things. He had heard of them—and now, as stories, they
recurred. The present destination of the ship was the anchorage. There she would
be near his own vessel. Upon gaining that vicinity, might not the San Dominick,
like a slumbering volcano, suddenly let loose energies now hid?
He recalled the Spaniard’s manner while telling his story. There was a gloomy
hesitancy and subterfuge about it. It was just the manner of one making up his
tale for evil purposes, as he goes. But if that story was not true, what was the
truth? That the ship had unlawfully come into the Spaniard’s possession? But in
many of its details, especially in reference to the more calamitous parts, such as
the fatalities among the seamen, the consequent prolonged beating about, the
past suerings from obstinate calms, and still continued suering from thirst; in
all these points, as well as others, Don Benito’s story had corroborated not only
the wailing ejaculations of the indiscriminate multitude, white and black, but
likewise—what seemed impossible to be counterfeit—by the very expression and
play of every human feature, which Captain Delano saw. If Don Benito’s story was,
throughout, an invention, then every soul on board, down to the youngest negress,
was his carefully drilled recruit in the plot: an incredible inference. And yet, if there
was ground for mistrusting his veracity, that inference was a legitimate one.
But those questions of the Spaniard. There, indeed, one might pause. Did
they not seem put with much the same object with which the burglar or assassin,
by day-time, reconnoitres the walls of a house? But, with ill purposes, to solicit
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