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

BECOMING AMERICA
REVOLUTIONARY AND EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD LITERATURE
himself to the monastery on Mount Agonia without; and signed with his honor,
and crossed himself, and, for the time, departed as he came, in his litter, with the
monk Infelez, to the Hospital de Sacerdotes.
BENITO CERENO.
DOCTOR ROZAS.
If the Deposition have served as the key to t into the lock of the complications
which precede it, then, as a vault whose door has been ung back, the San
Dominick’s hull lies open to-day.
Hitherto the nature of this narrative, besides rendering the intricacies in the
beginning unavoidable, has more or less required that many things, instead of
being set down in the order of occurrence, should be retrospectively, or irregularly
given; this last is the case with the following passages, which will conclude the
account:
During the long, mild voyage to Lima, there was, as before hinted, a period
during which the suerer a little recovered his health, or, at least in some degree,
his tranquillity. Ere the decided relapse which came, the two captains had many
cordial conversations—their fraternal unreserve in singular contrast with former
withdrawments.
Again and again it was repeated, how hard it had been to enact the part forced
on the Spaniard by Babo.
“Ah, my dear friend,” Don Benito once said, “at those very times when you
thought me so morose and ungrateful, nay, when, as you now admit, you half
thought me plotting your murder, at those very times my heart was frozen; I could
not look at you, thinking of what, both on board this ship and your own, hung,
from other hands, over my kind benefactor. And as God lives, Don Amasa, I know
not whether desire for my own safety alone could have nerved me to that leap into
your boat, had it not been for the thought that, did you, unenlightened, return to
your ship, you, my best friend, with all who might be with you, stolen upon, that
night, in your hammocks, would never in this world have wakened again. Do but
think how you walked this deck, how you sat in this cabin, every inch of ground
mined into honey-combs under you. Had I dropped the least hint, made the least
advance towards an understanding between us, death, explosive death—yours as
mine—would have ended the scene.”
“True, true,” cried Captain Delano, starting, “you have saved my life, Don
Benito, more than I yours; saved it, too, against my knowledge and will.”
“Nay, my friend,” rejoined the Spaniard, courteous even to the point of religion,
“God charmed your life, but you saved mine. To think of some things you did—
those smilings and chattings, rash pointings and gesturings. For less than these,
they slew my mate, Raneds; but you had the Prince of Heaven’s safe-conduct
through all ambuscades.”
“Yes, all is owing to Providence, I know: but the temper of my mind that
morning was more than commonly pleasant, while the sight of so much suering,
more apparent than real, added to my good-nature, compassion, and charity,
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