sappeared.

An elderly negro, in a clout like an infant's, and with a pepper and
salt head, and a kind of attorney air, now approached Captain Delano. In
tolerable Spanish, and with a good-natured, knowing wink, he informed
him that the old knotter was simple-witted, but harmless; often playing
his odd tricks. The negro concluded by begging the knot, for of course
the stranger would not care to be troubled with it. Unconsciously, it
was handed to him. With a sort of conge, the negro received it, and,
turning his back, ferreted into it like a detective custom-house officer
after smuggled laces. Soon, with some African word, equivalent to pshaw,
he tossed the knot overboard.

All this is very queer now, thought Captain Delano, with a qualmish sort
of emotion; but, as one feeling incipient sea-sickness, he strove, by
ignoring the symptoms, to get rid of the malady. Once more he looked off
for his boat. To his delight, it was now again in view, leaving the
rocky spur astern.

The sensation here experienced, after at first relieving his uneasiness,
with unforeseen efficacy soon began to remove it. The less distant sight
of that well-known boat--showing it, not as before, half blended with
the haze, but with outline defined, so that its individuality, like a
man's, was manifest; that boat, Rover by name, which, though now in
strange seas, had often pressed the beach of Captain Delano's home, and,
brought to its threshold for repairs, had familiarly lain there, as a
Newfoundland dog; the sight of that household, boat evoked a thousand
trustful associations, which, contrasted with previous suspicions,
filled him not only with lightsome confidence, but somehow with half
humorous self-reproaches at his former lack of it.

"What, I, Amasa Delano--Jack of the Beach, as they called me when a
lad--I, Amasa; the same that, duck-satchel in hand, used to paddle along
the water-side to the school-house made from the old hulk--I, little
Jack of the Beach, that used to go berrying with cousin Nat and the
rest; I to be murdered here at the ends of the earth, on board a haunted
pirate-ship by a horrible Spaniard? Too nonsensical to think of! Who
would murder Amasa Delano? His conscience is clean. There is some one
above. Fie, fie, Jack of the Beach! you are a child indeed; a child of
the second childhood, old boy; you are beginning to dote and drule, I'm
afraid."

Light of heart and foot, he stepped aft, and there was met by Don
Benito