Meantime Captain Delano had again repaired to the deck, remaining there some time.  Having at last altered the ship’s course, so as to give the reef a wide berth, he returned for a few moments below.

I will cheer up my poor friend, this time, thought he.

“Better and better,” Don Benito, he cried as he blithely re-entered:  “there will soon be an end to your cares, at least for awhile.  For when, after a long, sad voyage, you know, the anchor drops into the haven, all its vast weight seems lifted from the captain’s heart.  We are getting on famously, Don Benito.  My ship is in sight.  Look through this side-light here; there she is; all a-taunt-o!  The Bachelor’s Delight, my good friend.  Ah, how this wind braces one up.  Come, you must take a cup of coffee with me this evening.  My old steward will give you as fine a cup as ever any sultan tasted.  What say you, Don Benito, will you?”

At first, the Spaniard glanced feverishly up, casting a longing look towards the sealer, while with mute concern his servant gazed into his face.  Suddenly the old ague of coldness returned, and dropping back to his cushions he was silent.

“You do not answer.  Come, all day you have been my host; would you have hospitality all on one side?”

“I cannot go,” was the response.

“What? it will not fatigue you.  The ships will lie together as near as they can, without swinging foul.  It will be little more than stepping from deck to deck; which is but as from room to room.  Come, come, you must not refuse me.”

“I cannot go,” decisively and repulsively repeated Don Benito.

Renouncing all but the last appearance of courtesy, with a sort of cadaverous sullenness, and biting his thin nails to the quick, he glanced, almost glared, at his guest, as if impatient that a stranger’s presence should interfere with the full indulgence of his morbid hour.  Meantime the sound of the parted waters came more and more gurglingly and merrily in at the windows; as reproaching him for his dark spleen; as telling him that, sulk as he might, and go mad with it, nature cared not a jot; since, whose fault was it, pray?

But the foul mood was now at its depth, as the fair wind at its height.

There was something in the man so far beyond any mere unsociality or sourness previously evinced, that even the forbearing good-nature of his guest could no longer endure it.  Wholly at a loss to account for such demeanor, and deeming sickness with eccentricity, however extreme, no adequate excuse, well satisfied, too, that nothing in his own conduct could justify it, Captain Delano’s pride began to be roused.  Himself became reserved.  But all seemed one to the Spaniard.  Quitting him, therefore, Captain Delano once more went to the deck.

The ship was now within less than two miles of the sealer.  The whale-boat was seen darting over the interval.

To be brief, the two vessels, thanks to the pilot’s skill, ere long neighborly style lay anchored together.