iard to
relinquish his hold, the now embarrassed Captain Delano lifted his foot,
to overstep the threshold of the open gangway; but still Don Benito
would not let go his hand. And yet, with an agitated tone, he said, "I
can go no further; here I must bid you adieu. Adieu, my dear, dear Don
Amasa. Go--go!" suddenly tearing his hand loose, "go, and God guard you
better than me, my best friend."

Not unaffected, Captain Delano would now have lingered; but catching the
meekly admonitory eye of the servant, with a hasty farewell he descended
into his boat, followed by the continual adieus of Don Benito, standing
rooted in the gangway.

Seating himself in the stern, Captain Delano, making a last salute,
ordered the boat shoved off. The crew had their oars on end. The bowsmen
pushed the boat a sufficient distance for the oars to be lengthwise
dropped. The instant that was done, Don Benito sprang over the bulwarks,
falling at the feet of Captain Delano; at the same time calling towards
his ship, but in tones so frenzied, that none in the boat could
understand him. But, as if not equally obtuse, three sailors, from
three different and distant parts of the ship, splashed into the sea,
swimming after their captain, as if intent upon his rescue.

The dismayed officer of the boat eagerly asked what this meant. To
which, Captain Delano, turning a disdainful smile upon the unaccountable
Spaniard, answered that, for his part, he neither knew nor cared; but it
seemed as if Don Benito had taken it into his head to produce the
impression among his people that the boat wanted to kidnap him. "Or
else--give way for your lives," he wildly added, starting at a
clattering hubbub in the ship, above which rang the tocsin of the
hatchet-polishers; and seizing Don Benito by the throat he added, "this
plotting pirate means murder!" Here, in apparent verification of the
words, the servant, a dagger in his hand, was seen on the rail overhead,
poised, in the act of leaping, as if with desperate fidelity to befriend
his master to the last; while, seemingly to aid the black, the three
white sailors were trying to clamber into the hampered bow. Meantime,
the whole host of negroes, as if inflamed at the sight of their
jeopardized captain, impended in one sooty avalanche over the bulwarks.

All this, with what preceded, and what followed, occurred with such
involutions of rapidity, that past, present, and future seemed one.

Seeing the negro coming, Ca