's servant, who, with a pleasing expression, responsive to his own
present feelings, informed him that his master had recovered from the
effects of his coughing fit, and had just ordered him to go present his
compliments to his good guest, Don Amasa, and say that he (Don Benito)
would soon have the happiness to rejoin him.

There now, do you mark that? again thought Captain Delano, walking the
poop. What a donkey I was. This kind gentleman who here sends me his
kind compliments, he, but ten minutes ago, dark-lantern in had, was
dodging round some old grind-stone in the hold, sharpening a hatchet for
me, I thought. Well, well; these long calms have a morbid effect on the
mind, I've often heard, though I never believed it before. Ha! glancing
towards the boat; there's Rover; good dog; a white bone in her mouth. A
pretty big bone though, seems to me.--What? Yes, she has fallen afoul
of the bubbling tide-rip there. It sets her the other way, too, for the
time. Patience.

It was now about noon, though, from the grayness of everything, it
seemed to be getting towards dusk.

The calm was confirmed. In the far distance, away from the influence of
land, the leaden ocean seemed laid out and leaded up, it's course
finished, soul gone, defunct. But the current from landward, where the
ship was, increased; silently sweeping her further and further towards
the tranced waters beyond.

Still, from his knowledge of those latitudes, cherishing hopes of a
breeze, and a fair and fresh one, at any moment, Captain Delano, despite
present prospects, buoyantly counted upon bringing the San Dominick
safely to anchor ere night. The distance swept over was nothing; since,
with a good wind, ten minutes' sailing would retrace more than sixty
minutes, drifting. Meantime, one moment turning to mark "Rover" fighting
the tide-rip, and the next to see Don Benito approaching, he continued
walking the poop.

Gradually he felt a vexation arising from the delay of his boat; this
soon merged into uneasiness; and at last--his eye falling continually,
as from a stage-box into the pit, upon the strange crowd before and
below him, and, by-and-by, recognizing there the face--now composed to
indifference--of the Spanish sailor who had seemed to beckon from the
main-chains--something of his old trepidations returned.

Ah, thought he--gravely enough--this is like the ague: because it went
off, it follows not that it won't come back.

Though ashamed of the re