-crowned sombrero, of
fine grass; a slender sword, silver mounted, hung from a knot in his
sash--the last being an almost invariable adjunct, more for utility than
ornament, of a South American gentleman's dress to this hour. Excepting
when his occasional nervous contortions brought about disarray, there
was a certain precision in his attire curiously at variance with the
unsightly disorder around; especially in the belittered Ghetto, forward
of the main-mast, wholly occupied by the blacks.

The servant wore nothing but wide trowsers, apparently, from their
coarseness and patches, made out of some old topsail; they were clean,
and confined at the waist by a bit of unstranded rope, which, with his
composed, deprecatory air at times, made him look something like a
begging friar of St. Francis.

However unsuitable for the time and place, at least in the
blunt-thinking American's eyes, and however strangely surviving in the
midst of all his afflictions, the toilette of Don Benito might not, in
fashion at least, have gone beyond the style of the day among South
Americans of his class. Though on the present voyage sailing from Buenos
Ayres, he had avowed himself a native and resident of Chili, whose
inhabitants had not so generally adopted the plain coat and once
plebeian pantaloons; but, with a becoming modification, adhered to their
provincial costume, picturesque as any in the world. Still, relatively
to the pale history of the voyage, and his own pale face, there seemed
something so incongruous in the Spaniard's apparel, as almost to suggest
the image of an invalid courtier tottering about London streets in the
time of the plague.

The portion of the narrative which, perhaps, most excited interest, as
well as some surprise, considering the latitudes in question, was the
long calms spoken of, and more particularly the ship's so long drifting
about. Without communicating the opinion, of course, the American could
not but impute at least part of the detentions both to clumsy seamanship
and faulty navigation. Eying Don Benito's small, yellow hands, he
easily inferred that the young captain had not got into command at the
hawse-hole, but the cabin-window; and if so, why wonder at incompetence,
in youth, sickness, and gentility united?

But drowning criticism in compassion, after a fresh repetition of his
sympathies, Captain Delano, having heard out his story, not only
engaged, as in the first place, to see Don Benito and h