s feature in the ship's general
affliction. Still, Captain Delano was not a little concerned at what he
could not help taking for the time to be Don Benito's unfriendly
indifference towards himself. The Spaniard's manner, too, conveyed a
sort of sour and gloomy disdain, which he seemed at no pains to
disguise. But this the American in charity ascribed to the harassing
effects of sickness, since, in former instances, he had noted that there
are peculiar natures on whom prolonged physical suffering seems to
cancel every social instinct of kindness; as if, forced to black bread
themselves, they deemed it but equity that each person coming nigh them
should, indirectly, by some slight or affront, be made to partake of
their fare.

But ere long Captain Delano bethought him that, indulgent as he was at
the first, in judging the Spaniard, he might not, after all, have
exercised charity enough. At bottom it was Don Benito's reserve which
displeased him; but the same reserve was shown towards all but his
faithful personal attendant. Even the formal reports which, according to
sea-usage, were, at stated times, made to him by some petty underling,
either a white, mulatto or black, he hardly had patience enough to
listen to, without betraying contemptuous aversion. His manner upon such
occasions was, in its degree, not unlike that which might be supposed
to have been his imperial countryman's, Charles V., just previous to the
anchoritish retirement of that monarch from the throne.

This splenetic disrelish of his place was evinced in almost every
function pertaining to it. Proud as he was moody, he condescended to no
personal mandate. Whatever special orders were necessary, their delivery
was delegated to his body-servant, who in turn transferred them to their
ultimate destination, through runners, alert Spanish boys or slave boys,
like pages or pilot-fish within easy call continually hovering round Don
Benito. So that to have beheld this undemonstrative invalid gliding
about, apathetic and mute, no landsman could have dreamed that in him
was lodged a dictatorship beyond which, while at sea, there was no
earthly appeal.

Thus, the Spaniard, regarded in his reserve, seemed the involuntary
victim of mental disorder. But, in fact, his reserve might, in some
degree, have proceeded from design. If so, then here was evinced the
unhealthy climax of that icy though conscientious policy, more or less
adopted by all commanders of large shi