uge ring-bolts and other rusty
iron fixtures of the wood-work hinted of twenty-four-pounders.

Glancing towards the hammock as he entered, Captain Delano said, "You
sleep here, Don Benito?"

"Yes, Senor, since we got into mild weather."

"This seems a sort of dormitory, sitting-room, sail-loft, chapel,
armory, and private closet all together, Don Benito," added Captain
Delano, looking round.

"Yes, Senor; events have not been favorable to much order in my
arrangements."

Here the servant, napkin on arm, made a motion as if waiting his
master's good pleasure. Don Benito signified his readiness, when,
seating him in the Malacca arm-chair, and for the guest's convenience
drawing opposite one of the settees, the servant commenced operations by
throwing back his master's collar and loosening his cravat.

There is something in the negro which, in a peculiar way, fits him for
avocations about one's person. Most negroes are natural valets and
hair-dressers; taking to the comb and brush congenially as to the
castinets, and flourishing them apparently with almost equal
satisfaction. There is, too, a smooth tact about them in this
employment, with a marvelous, noiseless, gliding briskness, not
ungraceful in its way, singularly pleasing to behold, and still more so
to be the manipulated subject of. And above all is the great gift of
good-humor. Not the mere grin or laugh is here meant. Those were
unsuitable. But a certain easy cheerfulness, harmonious in every glance
and gesture; as though God had set the whole negro to some pleasant
tune.

When to this is added the docility arising from the unaspiring
contentment of a limited mind and that susceptibility of blind
attachment sometimes inhering in indisputable inferiors, one readily
perceives why those hypochondriacs, Johnson and Byron--it may be,
something like the hypochondriac Benito Cereno--took to their hearts,
almost to the exclusion of the entire white race, their serving men, the
negroes, Barber and Fletcher. But if there be that in the negro which
exempts him from the inflicted sourness of the morbid or cynical mind,
how, in his most prepossessing aspects, must he appear to a benevolent
one? When at ease with respect to exterior things, Captain Delano's
nature was not only benign, but familiarly and humorously so. At home,
he had often taken rare satisfaction in sitting in his door, watching
some free man of color at his work or play. If on a voyage he chanced to