Before returning to his own vessel, Captain Delano had intended communicating to Don Benito the smaller details of the proposed services to be rendered.  But, as it was, unwilling anew to subject himself to rebuffs, he resolved, now that he had seen the San Dominick safely moored, immediately to quit her, without further allusion to hospitality or business.  Indefinitely postponing his ulterior plans, he would regulate his future actions according to future circumstances.  His boat was ready to receive him; but his host still tarried below.  Well, thought Captain Delano, if he has little breeding, the more need to show mine.  He descended to the cabin to bid a ceremonious, and, it may be, tacitly rebukeful adieu.  But to his great satisfaction, Don Benito, as if he began to feel the weight of that treatment with which his slighted guest had, not indecorously, retaliated upon him, now supported by his servant, rose to his feet, and grasping Captain Delano’s hand, stood tremulous; too much agitated to speak.  But the good augury hence drawn was suddenly dashed, by his resuming all his previous reserve, with augmented gloom, as, with half-averted eyes, he silently reseated himself on his cushions.  With a corresponding return of his own chilled feelings, Captain Delano bowed and withdrew.

He was hardly midway in the narrow corridor, dim as a tunnel, leading from the cabin to the stairs, when a sound, as of the tolling for execution in some jail-yard, fell on his ears.  It was the echo of the ship’s flawed bell, striking the hour, drearily reverberated in this subterranean vault.  Instantly, by a fatality not to be withstood, his mind, responsive to the portent, swarmed with superstitious suspicions.  He paused.  In images far swifter than these sentences, the minutest details of all his former distrusts swept through him.

Hitherto, credulous good-nature had been too ready to furnish excuses for reasonable fears.  Why was the Spaniard, so superfluously punctilious at times, now heedless of common propriety in not accompanying to the side his departing guest?  Did indisposition forbid?  Indisposition had not forbidden more irksome exertion that day.  His last equivocal demeanor recurred.  He had risen to his feet, grasped his guest’s hand, motioned toward his hat; then, in an instant, all was eclipsed in sinister muteness and gloom.  Did this imply one brief, repentant relenting at the final moment, from some iniquitous plot, followed by remorseless return to it?  His last glance seemed to express a calamitous, yet acquiescent farewell to Captain Delano forever.  Why decline the invitation to visit the sealer that evening?  Or was the Spaniard less hardened than the Jew, who refrained not from supping at the board of him whom the same night he meant to betray?  What imported all those day-long enigmas and contradictions, except they were intended to mystify, preliminary to some stealthy blow?  Atufal, the pretended rebel, but punctual shadow, that moment lurked by the threshold without.  He seemed a sentry, and more.  Who, by his own confession, had stationed him there?  Was the negro now lying in wait?