ecruit in the plot: an incredible inference. And yet, if there was
ground for mistrusting his veracity, that inference was a legitimate
one.

But those questions of the Spaniard. There, indeed, one might pause. Did
they not seem put with much the same object with which the burglar or
assassin, by day-time, reconnoitres the walls of a house? But, with ill
purposes, to solicit such information openly of the chief person
endangered, and so, in effect, setting him on his guard; how unlikely a
procedure was that? Absurd, then, to suppose that those questions had
been prompted by evil designs. Thus, the same conduct, which, in this
instance, had raised the alarm, served to dispel it. In short, scarce
any suspicion or uneasiness, however apparently reasonable at the time,
which was not now, with equal apparent reason, dismissed.

At last he began to laugh at his former forebodings; and laugh at the
strange ship for, in its aspect, someway siding with them, as it were;
and laugh, too, at the odd-looking blacks, particularly those old
scissors-grinders, the Ashantees; and those bed-ridden old knitting
women, the oakum-pickers; and almost at the dark Spaniard himself, the
central hobgoblin of all.

For the rest, whatever in a serious way seemed enigmatical, was now
good-naturedly explained away by the thought that, for the most part,
the poor invalid scarcely knew what he was about; either sulking in
black vapors, or putting idle questions without sense or object.
Evidently for the present, the man was not fit to be intrusted with the
ship. On some benevolent plea withdrawing the command from him, Captain
Delano would yet have to send her to Conception, in charge of his
second mate, a worthy person and good navigator--a plan not more
convenient for the San Dominick than for Don Benito; for, relieved from
all anxiety, keeping wholly to his cabin, the sick man, under the good
nursing of his servant, would, probably, by the end of the passage, be
in a measure restored to health, and with that he should also be
restored to authority.

Such were the American's thoughts. They were tranquilizing. There was a
difference between the idea of Don Benito's darkly pre-ordaining Captain
Delano's fate, and Captain Delano's lightly arranging Don Benito's.
Nevertheless, it was not without something of relief that the good
seaman presently perceived his whale-boat in the distance. Its absence
had been prolonged by unexpected detention at the s