Short Fiction by Herman Melville

Author:Herman Melville
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Tags: Manners and customs -- Fiction, Short stories
Publisher: Standard Ebooks
Published: 2020-03-09T23:09:23+00:00

Benito Cereno

In the year 1799, Cap­tain Amasa De­lano, of Duxbury, in Mas­sachusetts, com­mand­ing a large sealer and gen­eral trader, lay at an­chor with a valu­able cargo, in the har­bor of St. Maria—a small, desert, un­in­hab­ited is­land to­ward the south­ern ex­trem­ity of the long coast of Chili. There he had touched for wa­ter.

On the sec­ond day, not long af­ter dawn, while ly­ing in his berth, his mate came be­low, in­form­ing him that a strange sail was com­ing into the bay. Ships were then not so plenty in those wa­ters as now. He rose, dressed, and went on deck.

The morn­ing was one pe­cu­liar to that coast. Every­thing was mute and calm; ev­ery­thing gray. The sea, though un­du­lated into long roods of swells, seemed fixed, and was sleeked at the sur­face like waved lead that has cooled and set in the smelter’s mould. The sky seemed a gray surtout. Flights of trou­bled gray fowl, kith and kin with flights of trou­bled gray va­pors among which they were mixed, skimmed low and fit­fully over the wa­ters, as swal­lows over mead­ows be­fore storms. Shad­ows present, fore­shad­ow­ing deeper shad­ows to come.

To Cap­tain De­lano’s sur­prise, the stranger, viewed through the glass, showed no col­ors; though to do so upon en­ter­ing a haven, how­ever un­in­hab­ited in its shores, where but a sin­gle other ship might be ly­ing, was the cus­tom among peace­ful sea­men of all na­tions. Con­sid­er­ing the law­less­ness and lone­li­ness of the spot, and the sort of sto­ries, at that day, as­so­ci­ated with those seas, Cap­tain De­lano’s sur­prise might have deep­ened into some un­easi­ness had he not been a per­son of a sin­gu­larly undis­trust­ful good-na­ture, not li­able, ex­cept on ex­tra­or­di­nary and re­peated in­cen­tives, and hardly then, to in­dulge in per­sonal alarms, any way in­volv­ing the im­pu­ta­tion of ma­lign evil in man. Whether, in view of what hu­man­ity is ca­pa­ble, such a trait im­plies, along with a benev­o­lent heart, more than or­di­nary quick­ness and ac­cu­racy of in­tel­lec­tual per­cep­tion, may be left to the wise to de­ter­mine.

But what­ever mis­giv­ings might have ob­truded on first see­ing the stranger, would al­most, in any sea­man’s mind, have been dis­si­pated by ob­serv­ing that, the ship, in nav­i­gat­ing into the har­bor, was draw­ing too near the land; a sunken reef mak­ing out off her bow. This seemed to prove her a stranger, in­deed, not only to the sealer, but the is­land; con­se­quently, she could be no wonted free­booter on that ocean. With no small in­ter­est, Cap­tain De­lano con­tin­ued to watch her—a pro­ceed­ing not much fa­cil­i­tated by the va­pors partly mantling the hull, through which the far matin light from her cabin streamed equiv­o­cally enough; much like the sun—by this time hemi­sphered on the rim of the hori­zon, and, ap­par­ently, in com­pany with the strange ship en­ter­ing the har­bor—which, wim­pled by the same low, creep­ing clouds, showed not un­like a Lima in­triguante’s one sin­is­ter eye peer­ing across the Plaza from the In­dian loop­hole of her dusk saya-y-manta.

It might have been but a de­cep­tion of the va­pors, but, the longer the stranger was watched the more sin­gu­lar ap­peared her ma­noeu­vres.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.