Melville, Herman (1819-1891)

Benito Cereno [from The Piazza Tales]

New York

Dix, Edwards, & Co.

1855, 1856

"'Ah, my dear Don Amasa,' Don Benito once said, 'at those very times when you thought me so morose and ungrateful--nay when, as you now admit, you half thought me plotting your murder--at those very times my heart was frozen; I could not look at you, thinking of what, both on board this ship and your own, hung, from other hands, over my kind benefactor.'"

"Ah, my dear Don Amasa," Don Benito once said, "at those very times when you thought me so morose and ungrateful--nay when, as you now admit, you half thought me plotting your murder--at those very times my heart was frozen; I could not look at you, thinking of what, both on board this ship and your own, hung, from other hands, over my kind benefactor. And as God lives, Don Amasa, I know not whether desire for my own safety alone could have nerved me to that leap into your boat, had it not been for the thought that, did you, unenlightened, return to your ship, you, my best friend, with all who might be with you, stolen upon, that night, in your hammocks, would never in this world have wakened again. Do but think how you walked this deck, how you sat in this cabin, every inch of ground mined into honey-combs under you. Had I dropped the least hint, made the least advance toward an understanding between us, death, explosive death--yours as mine--would have ended the scene."
(p. 255)

Liquid::Freezing and Melting::Frozen

Reading

Herman Melville. "Benito Cereno" from Tales, Poems, and Other Writings. Ed. John Bryant. New York: Modern Library, 2002. <Project Gutenburg edition><ESP online edition>

04/21/2010