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

BECOMING AMERICA
REVOLUTIONARY AND EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD LITERATURE
never believed it before. Ha! glancing towards the boat; there’s Rover; good dog; a
white bone in her mouth. A pretty big bone though, seems to me.—What? Yes, she
has fallen afoul of the bubbling tide-rip there. It sets her the other way, too, for the
time. Patience.
It was now about noon, though, from the grayness of everything, it seemed to
be getting towards dusk.
The calm was conrmed. In the far distance, away from the inuence of land,
the leaden ocean seemed laid out and leaded up, it’s course nished, soul gone,
defunct. But the current from landward, where the ship was, increased; silently
sweeping her further and further towards the tranced waters beyond.
Still, from his knowledge of those latitudes, cherishing hopes of a breeze, and
a fair and fresh one, at any moment, Captain Delano, despite present prospects,
buoyantly counted upon bringing the San Dominick safely to anchor ere night.
The distance swept over was nothing; since, with a good wind, ten minutes’ sailing
would retrace more than sixty minutes, drifting. Meantime, one moment turning
to mark “Rover” ghting the tide-rip, and the next to see Don Benito approaching,
he continued walking the poop.
Gradually he felt a vexation arising from the delay of his boat; this soon merged
into uneasiness; and at last—his eye falling continually, as from a stage-box into
the pit, upon the strange crowd before and below him, and, by-and-by, recognizing
there the face—now composed to indierence—of the Spanish sailor who had
seemed to beckon from the main-chains—something of his old trepidations
returned.
Ah, thought he—gravely enough—this is like the ague: because it went o, it
follows not that it won’t come back.
Though ashamed of the relapse, he could not altogether subdue it; and so,
exerting his good-nature to the utmost, insensibly he came to a compromise.
Yes, this is a strange craft; a strange history, too, and strange folks on board.
But—nothing more.
By way of keeping his mind out of mischief till the boat should arrive, he tried
to occupy it with turning over and over, in a purely speculative sort of way, some
lesser peculiarities of the captain and crew. Among others, four curious points
recurred:
First, the aair of the Spanish lad assailed with a knife by the slave boy; an
act winked at by Don Benito. Second, the tyranny in Don Benito’s treatment of
Atufal, the black; as if a child should lead a bull of the Nile by the ring in his nose.
Third, the trampling of the sailor by the two negroes; a piece of insolence passed
over without so much as a reprimand. Fourth, the cringing submission to their
master, of all the ship’s underlings, mostly blacks; as if by the least inadvertence
they feared to draw down his despotic displeasure.
Coupling these points, they seemed somewhat contradictory. But what then,
thought Captain Delano, glancing towards his now nearing boat—what then? Why,
Don Benito is a very capricious commander. But he is not the rst of the sort I have
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