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

BECOMING AMERICA
REVOLUTIONARY AND EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD LITERATURE
dagger presented at Captain Delano’s heart, the black seemed of purpose to have
leaped there as to his mark. But the weapon was wrenched away, and the assailant
dashed down into the bottom of the boat, which now, with disentangled oars,
began to speed through the sea.
At this juncture, the left hand of Captain Delano, on one side, again clutched
the half-reclined Don Benito, heedless that he was in a speechless faint, while his
right-foot, on the other side, ground the prostrate negro; and his right arm pressed
for added speed on the after oar, his eye bent forward, encouraging his men to their
utmost.
But here, the ocer of the boat, who had at last succeeded in beating o the
towing sailors, and was now, with face turned aft, assisting the bowsman at his
oar, suddenly called to Captain Delano, to see what the black was about; while a
Portuguese oarsman shouted to him to give heed to what the Spaniard was saying.
Glancing down at his feet, Captain Delano saw the freed hand of the servant
aiming with a second dagger—a small one, before concealed in his wool—with this
he was snakishly writhing up from the boat’s bottom, at the heart of his master,
his countenance lividly vindictive, expressing the centred purpose of his soul;
while the Spaniard, half-choked, was vainly shrinking away, with husky words,
incoherent to all but the Portuguese.
That moment, across the long-benighted mind of Captain Delano, a ash of
revelation swept, illuminating, in unanticipated clearness, his host’s whole mysterious
demeanor, with every enigmatic event of the day, as well as the entire past voyage of
the San Dominick. He smote Babo’s hand down, but his own heart smote him harder.
With innite pity he withdrew his hold from Don Benito. Not Captain Delano, but
Don Benito, the black, in leaping into the boat, had intended to stab.
Both the black’s hands were held, as, glancing up towards the San Dominick,
Captain Delano, now with scales dropped from his eyes, saw the negroes, not in
misrule, not in tumult, not as if frantically concerned for Don Benito, but with
mask torn away, ourishing hatchets and knives, in ferocious piratical revolt. Like
delirious black dervishes, the six Ashantees danced on the poop. Prevented by
their foes from springing into the water, the Spanish boys were hurrying up to the
topmost spars, while such of the few Spanish sailors, not already in the sea, less
alert, were descried, helplessly mixed in, on deck, with the blacks.
Meantime Captain Delano hailed his own vessel, ordering the ports up, and the
guns run out. But by this time the cable of the San Dominick had been cut; and the
fag-end, in lashing out, whipped away the canvas shroud about the beak, suddenly
revealing, as the bleached hull swung round towards the open ocean, death for the
gure-head, in a human skeleton; chalky comment on the chalked words below,
“Follow your leader.”
At the sight, Don Benito, covering his face, wailed out: “‘Tis he, Aranda! my
murdered, unburied friend!”
Upon reaching the sealer, calling for ropes, Captain Delano bound the negro,
who made no resistance, and had him hoisted to the deck. He would then have
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