ealer's side, as well
as its returning trip lengthened by the continual recession of the goal.

The advancing speck was observed by the blacks. Their shouts attracted
the attention of Don Benito, who, with a return of courtesy, approaching
Captain Delano, expressed satisfaction at the coming of some supplies,
slight and temporary as they must necessarily prove.

Captain Delano responded; but while doing so, his attention was drawn to
something passing on the deck below: among the crowd climbing the
landward bulwarks, anxiously watching the coming boat, two blacks, to
all appearances accidentally incommoded by one of the sailors, violently
pushed him aside, which the sailor someway resenting, they dashed him to
the deck, despite the earnest cries of the oakum-pickers.

"Don Benito," said Captain Delano quickly, "do you see what is going on
there? Look!"

But, seized by his cough, the Spaniard staggered, with both hands to his
face, on the point of falling. Captain Delano would have supported him,
but the servant was more alert, who, with one hand sustaining his
master, with the other applied the cordial. Don Benito restored, the
black withdrew his support, slipping aside a little, but dutifully
remaining within call of a whisper. Such discretion was here evinced as
quite wiped away, in the visitor's eyes, any blemish of impropriety
which might have attached to the attendant, from the indecorous
conferences before mentioned; showing, too, that if the servant were to
blame, it might be more the master's fault than his own, since, when
left to himself, he could conduct thus well.

His glance called away from the spectacle of disorder to the more
pleasing one before him, Captain Delano could not avoid again
congratulating his host upon possessing such a servant, who, though
perhaps a little too forward now and then, must upon the whole be
invaluable to one in the invalid's situation.

"Tell me, Don Benito," he added, with a smile--"I should like to have
your man here, myself--what will you take for him? Would fifty doubloons
be any object?"

"Master wouldn't part with Babo for a thousand doubloons," murmured the
black, overhearing the offer, and taking it in earnest, and, with the
strange vanity of a faithful slave, appreciated by his master, scorning
to hear so paltry a valuation put upon him by a stranger. But Don
Benito, apparently hardly yet completely restored, and again
interrupted by his cough, made but some b