his steel, and, remaining in his professional
attitude, back to Captain Delano, and face to Don Benito, held up the
trickling razor, saying, with a sort of half humorous sorrow, "See,
master--you shook so--here's Babo's first blood."

No sword drawn before James the First of England, no assassination in
that timid King's presence, could have produced a more terrified aspect
than was now presented by Don Benito.

Poor fellow, thought Captain Delano, so nervous he can't even bear the
sight of barber's blood; and this unstrung, sick man, is it credible
that I should have imagined he meant to spill all my blood, who can't
endure the sight of one little drop of his own? Surely, Amasa Delano,
you have been beside yourself this day. Tell it not when you get home,
sappy Amasa. Well, well, he looks like a murderer, doesn't he? More like
as if himself were to be done for. Well, well, this day's experience
shall be a good lesson.

Meantime, while these things were running through the honest seaman's
mind, the servant had taken the napkin from his arm, and to Don Benito
had said--"But answer Don Amasa, please, master, while I wipe this ugly
stuff off the razor, and strop it again."

As he said the words, his face was turned half round, so as to be alike
visible to the Spaniard and the American, and seemed, by its
expression, to hint, that he was desirous, by getting his master to go
on with the conversation, considerately to withdraw his attention from
the recent annoying accident. As if glad to snatch the offered relief,
Don Benito resumed, rehearsing to Captain Delano, that not only were the
calms of unusual duration, but the ship had fallen in with obstinate
currents; and other things he added, some of which were but repetitions
of former statements, to explain how it came to pass that the passage
from Cape Horn to St. Maria had been so exceedingly long; now and then,
mingling with his words, incidental praises, less qualified than before,
to the blacks, for their general good conduct. These particulars were
not given consecutively, the servant, at convenient times, using his
razor, and so, between the intervals of shaving, the story and panegyric
went on with more than usual huskiness.

To Captain Delano's imagination, now again not wholly at rest, there was
something so hollow in the Spaniard's manner, with apparently some
reciprocal hollowness in the servant's dusky comment of silence, that
the idea flashed across him,