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

BECOMING AMERICA
REVOLUTIONARY AND EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD LITERATURE
he? More like as if himself were to be done for. Well, well, this day’s experience
shall be a good lesson.
Meantime, while these things were running through the honest seaman’s mind,
the servant had taken the napkin from his arm, and to Don Benito had said—”But
answer Don Amasa, please, master, while I wipe this ugly stu o the razor, and
strop it again.”
As he said the words, his face was turned half round, so as to be alike visible
to the Spaniard and the American, and seemed, by its expression, to hint, that he
was desirous, by getting his master to go on with the conversation, considerately
to withdraw his attention from the recent annoying accident. As if glad to snatch
the oered relief, Don Benito resumed, rehearsing to Captain Delano, that not
only were the calms of unusual duration, but the ship had fallen in with obstinate
currents; and other things he added, some of which were but repetitions of former
statements, to explain how it came to pass that the passage from Cape Horn to
St. Maria had been so exceedingly long; now and then, mingling with his words,
incidental praises, less qualied than before, to the blacks, for their general good
conduct. These particulars were not given consecutively, the servant, at convenient
times, using his razor, and so, between the intervals of shaving, the story and
panegyric went on with more than usual huskiness.
To Captain Delano’s imagination, now again not wholly at rest, there was
something so hollow in the Spaniard’s manner, with apparently some reciprocal
hollowness in the servant’s dusky comment of silence, that the idea ashed across
him, that possibly master and man, for some unknown purpose, were acting out,
both in word and deed, nay, to the very tremor of Don Benito’s limbs, some juggling
play before him. Neither did the suspicion of collusion lack apparent support, from
the fact of those whispered conferences before mentioned. But then, what could
be the object of enacting this play of the barber before him? At last, regarding the
notion as a whimsy, insensibly suggested, perhaps, by the theatrical aspect of Don
Benito in his harlequin ensign, Captain Delano speedily banished it.
The shaving over, the servant bestirred himself with a small bottle of scented
waters, pouring a few drops on the head, and then diligently rubbing; the vehemence
of the exercise causing the muscles of his face to twitch rather strangely.
His next operation was with comb, scissors, and brush; going round and round,
smoothing a curl here, clipping an unruly whisker-hair there, giving a graceful
sweep to the temple-lock, with other impromptu touches evincing the hand of a
master; while, like any resigned gentleman in barber’s hands, Don Benito bore
all, much less uneasily, at least than he had done the razoring; indeed, he sat so
pale and rigid now, that the negro seemed a Nubian sculptor nishing o a white
statue-head.
All being over at last, the standard of Spain removed, tumbled up, and tossed
back into the ag-locker, the negro’s warm breath blowing away any stray hair, which
might have lodged down his master’s neck; collar and cravat readjusted; a speck of
lint whisked o the velvet lapel; all this being done; backing o a little space, and
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