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

BECOMING AMERICA
REVOLUTIONARY AND EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD LITERATURE
muttering, and, followed by his subordinate negroes, removed to the forward part
of the ship, where in the crowd he disappeared.
An elderly negro, in a clout like an infant’s, and with a pepper and salt head,
and a kind of attorney air, now approached Captain Delano. In tolerable Spanish,
and with a good-natured, knowing wink, he informed him that the old knotter was
simple-witted, but harmless; often playing his odd tricks. The negro concluded by
begging the knot, for of course the stranger would not care to be troubled with it.
Unconsciously, it was handed to him. With a sort of congé, the negro received it,
and, turning his back, ferreted into it like a detective custom-house ocer after
smuggled laces. Soon, with some African word, equivalent to pshaw, he tossed the
knot overboard.
All this is very queer now, thought Captain Delano, with a qualmish sort of
emotion; but, as one feeling incipient sea-sickness, he strove, by ignoring the
symptoms, to get rid of the malady. Once more he looked o for his boat. To his
delight, it was now again in view, leaving the rocky spur astern.
The sensation here experienced, after at rst relieving his uneasiness, with
unforeseen ecacy soon began to remove it. The less distant sight of that wellknown
boat—showing it, not as before, half blended with the haze, but with outline
dened, so that its individuality, like a man’s, was manifest; that boat, Rover by
name, which, though now in strange seas, had often pressed the beach of Captain
Delano’s home, and, brought to its threshold for repairs, had familiarly lain there,
as a Newfoundland dog; the sight of that household, boat evoked a thousand
trustful associations, which, contrasted with previous suspicions, lled him not
only with lightsome condence, but somehow with half humorous self-reproaches
at his former lack of it.
“What, I, Amasa Delano—Jack of the Beach, as they called me when a lad—I,
Amasa; the same that, duck-satchel in hand, used to paddle along the water-side
to the school-house made from the old hulk—I, little Jack of the Beach, that used
to go berrying with cousin Nat and the rest; I to be murdered here at the ends of
the earth, on board a haunted pirate-ship by a horrible Spaniard? Too nonsensical
to think of! Who would murder Amasa Delano? His conscience is clean. There is
some one above. Fie, e, Jack of the Beach! you are a child indeed; a child of the
second childhood, old boy; you are beginning to dote and drule, I’m afraid.”
Light of heart and foot, he stepped aft, and there was met by Don Benito’s
servant, who, with a pleasing expression, responsive to his own present feelings,
informed him that his master had recovered from the eects of his coughing t,
and had just ordered him to go present his compliments to his good guest, Don
Amasa, and say that he (Don Benito) would soon have the happiness to rejoin him.
There now, do you mark that? again thought Captain Delano, walking the
poop. What a donkey I was. This kind gentleman who here sends me his kind
compliments, he, but ten minutes ago, dark-lantern in had, was dodging round
some old grind-stone in the hold, sharpening a hatchet for me, I thought. Well,
well; these long calms have a morbid eect on the mind, I’ve often heard, though I
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