roken reply.

Soon his physical distress became so great, affecting his mind, too,
apparently, that, as if to screen the sad spectacle, the servant gently
conducted his master below.

Left to himself, the American, to while away the time till his boat
should arrive, would have pleasantly accosted some one of the few
Spanish seamen he saw; but recalling something that Don Benito had said
touching their ill conduct, he refrained; as a shipmaster indisposed to
countenance cowardice or unfaithfulness in seamen.

While, with these thoughts, standing with eye directed forward towards
that handful of sailors, suddenly he thought that one or two of them
returned the glance and with a sort of meaning. He rubbed his eyes, and
looked again; but again seemed to see the same thing. Under a new form,
but more obscure than any previous one, the old suspicions recurred,
but, in the absence of Don Benito, with less of panic than before.
Despite the bad account given of the sailors, Captain Delano resolved
forthwith to accost one of them. Descending the poop, he made his way
through the blacks, his movement drawing a queer cry from the
oakum-pickers, prompted by whom, the negroes, twitching each other
aside, divided before him; but, as if curious to see what was the object
of this deliberate visit to their Ghetto, closing in behind, in
tolerable order, followed the white stranger up. His progress thus
proclaimed as by mounted kings-at-arms, and escorted as by a Caffre
guard of honor, Captain Delano, assuming a good-humored, off-handed air,
continued to advance; now and then saying a blithe word to the negroes,
and his eye curiously surveying the white faces, here and there sparsely
mixed in with the blacks, like stray white pawns venturously involved in
the ranks of the chess-men opposed.

While thinking which of them to select for his purpose, he chanced to
observe a sailor seated on the deck engaged in tarring the strap of a
large block, a circle of blacks squatted round him inquisitively eying
the process.

The mean employment of the man was in contrast with something superior
in his figure. His hand, black with continually thrusting it into the
tar-pot held for him by a negro, seemed not naturally allied to his
face, a face which would have been a very fine one but for its
haggardness. Whether this haggardness had aught to do with criminality,
could not be determined; since, as intense heat and cold, though unlike,
produce like