ck he saw a headsman, and in the white a man at
the block. But this was one of those antic conceits, appearing and
vanishing in a breath, from which, perhaps, the best regulated mind is
not always free.

Meantime the agitation of the Spaniard had a little loosened the bunting
from around him, so that one broad fold swept curtain-like over, the
chair-arm to the floor, revealing, amid a profusion of armorial bars and
ground-colors--black, blue, and yellow--a closed castle in a blood red
field diagonal with a lion rampant in a white.

"The castle and the lion," exclaimed Captain Delano--"why, Don Benito,
this is the flag of Spain you use here. It's well it's only I, and not
the King, that sees this," he added, with a smile, "but"--turning
towards the black--"it's all one, I suppose, so the colors be gay;"
which playful remark did not fail somewhat to tickle the negro.

"Now, master," he said, readjusting the flag, and pressing the head
gently further back into the crotch of the chair; "now, master," and the
steel glanced nigh the throat.

Again Don Benito faintly shuddered.

"You must not shake so, master. See, Don Amasa, master always shakes
when I shave him. And yet master knows I never yet have drawn blood,
though it's true, if master will shake so, I may some of these times.
Now master," he continued. "And now, Don Amasa, please go on with your
talk about the gale, and all that; master can hear, and, between times,
master can answer."

"Ah yes, these gales," said Captain Delano; "but the more I think of
your voyage, Don Benito, the more I wonder, not at the gales, terrible
as they must have been, but at the disastrous interval following them.
For here, by your account, have you been these two months and more
getting from Cape Horn to St. Maria, a distance which I myself, with a
good wind, have sailed in a few days. True, you had calms, and long
ones, but to be becalmed for two months, that is, at least, unusual.
Why, Don Benito, had almost any other gentleman told me such a story, I
should have been half disposed to a little incredulity."

Here an involuntary expression came over the Spaniard, similar to that
just before on the deck, and whether it was the start he gave, or a
sudden gawky roll of the hull in the calm, or a momentary unsteadiness
of the servant's hand, however it was, just then the razor drew blood,
spots of which stained the creamy lather under the throat: immediately
the black barber drew back