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

BECOMING AMERICA
REVOLUTIONARY AND EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD LITERATURE
determined to go to the island of Santa Maria, as the deponent had planned, for the
purpose of trying whether, on the passage or near the island itself, they could nd
any vessel that should favor them, or whether he could escape from it in a boat to
the neighboring coast of Arruco, to adopt the necessary means he immediately
changed his course, steering for the island; that the negroes Babo and Atufal held
daily conferences, in which they discussed what was necessary for their design of
returning to Senegal, whether they were to kill all the Spaniards, and particularly
the deponent; that eight days after parting from the coast of Nasca, the deponent
being on the watch a little after day-break, and soon after the negroes had their
meeting, the negro Babo came to the place where the deponent was, and told him
that he had determined to kill his master, Don Alexandro Aranda, both because he
and his companions could not otherwise be sure of their liberty, and that to keep the
seamen in subjection, he wanted to prepare a warning of what road they should be
made to take did they or any of them oppose him; and that, by means of the death
of Don Alexandro, that warning would best be given; but, that what this last meant,
the deponent did not at the time comprehend, nor could not, further than that the
death of Don Alexandro was intended; and moreover the negro Babo proposed to
the deponent to call the mate Raneds, who was sleeping in the cabin, before the
thing was done, for fear, as the deponent understood it, that the mate, who was a
good navigator, should be killed with Don Alexandro and the rest; that the deponent,
who was the friend, from youth, of Don Alexandro, prayed and conjured, but all was
useless; for the negro Babo answered him that the thing could not be prevented,
and that all the Spaniards risked their death if they should attempt to frustrate his
will in this matter, or any other; that, in this conict, the deponent called the mate,
Raneds, who was forced to go apart, and immediately the negro Babo commanded
the Ashantee Martinqui and the Ashantee Lecbe to go and commit the murder; that
those two went down with hatchets to the berth of Don Alexandro; that, yet half
alive and mangled, they dragged him on deck; that they were going to throw him
overboard in that state, but the negro Babo stopped them, bidding the murder be
completed on the deck before him, which was done, when, by his orders, the body
was carried below, forward; that nothing more was seen of it by the deponent for
three days; * * * that Don Alonzo Sidonia, an old man, long resident at Valparaiso,
and lately appointed to a civil oce in Peru, whither he had taken passage, was at
the time sleeping in the berth opposite Don Alexandro’s; that awakening at his cries,
surprised by them, and at the sight of the negroes with their bloody hatchets in their
hands, he threw himself into the sea through a window which was near him, and
was drowned, without it being in the power of the deponent to assist or take him up;
* * * that a short time after killing Aranda, they brought upon deck his germancousin,
of middle-age, Don Francisco Masa, of Mendoza, and the young Don
Joaquin, Marques de Aramboalaza, then lately from Spain, with his Spanish servant
Ponce, and the three young clerks of Aranda, José Mozairi Lorenzo Bargas, and
Hermenegildo Gandix, all of Cadiz; that Don Joaquin and Hermenegildo Gandix,
the negro Babo, for purposes hereafter to appear, preserved alive; but Don Francisco
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