{"id":"01KG8AKVZ6X5ABG1CBX8ET5C4T","cid":"bafkreie5x2hcwaukv6cboeiui7wk27j5bodaaw4tjaziyhymvvm5afml6a","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":3483,"extracted_at":"2026-01-30T20:48:15.023Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 7","source_file":"01KG89J1F4D8P9BBX9AMGZ7TX7","start_line":3416,"text":"Despairing of getting into unembarrassed talk with such a centaur,\r\nCaptain Delano, after glancing round for a more promising countenance,\r\nbut seeing none, spoke pleasantly to the blacks to make way for him;\r\nand so, amid various grins and grimaces, returned to the poop, feeling\r\na little strange at first, he could hardly tell why, but upon the whole\r\nwith regained confidence in Benito Cereno.\r\n\r\nHow plainly, thought he, did that old whiskerando yonder betray a\r\nconsciousness of ill desert. No doubt, when he saw me coming, he\r\ndreaded lest I, apprised by his Captain of the crew’s general\r\nmisbehavior, came with sharp words for him, and so down with his head.\r\nAnd yet—and yet, now that I think of it, that very old fellow, if I err\r\nnot, was one of those who seemed so earnestly eying me here awhile\r\nsince. Ah, these currents spin one’s head round almost as much as they\r\ndo the ship. Ha, there now’s a pleasant sort of sunny sight; quite\r\nsociable, too.\r\n\r\nHis attention had been drawn to a slumbering negress, partly disclosed\r\nthrough the lacework of some rigging, lying, with youthful limbs\r\ncarelessly disposed, under the lee of the bulwarks, like a doe in the\r\nshade of a woodland rock. Sprawling at her lapped breasts, was her\r\nwide-awake fawn, stark naked, its black little body half lifted from\r\nthe deck, crosswise with its dam’s; its hands, like two paws,\r\nclambering upon her; its mouth and nose ineffectually rooting to get at\r\nthe mark; and meantime giving a vexatious half-grunt, blending with the\r\ncomposed snore of the negress.\r\n\r\nThe uncommon vigor of the child at length roused the mother. She\r\nstarted up, at a distance facing Captain Delano. But as if not at all\r\nconcerned at the attitude in which she had been caught, delightedly she\r\ncaught the child up, with maternal transports, covering it with kisses.\r\n\r\nThere’s naked nature, now; pure tenderness and love, thought Captain\r\nDelano, well pleased.\r\n\r\nThis incident prompted him to remark the other negresses more\r\nparticularly than before. He was gratified with their manners: like\r\nmost uncivilized women, they seemed at once tender of heart and tough\r\nof constitution; equally ready to die for their infants or fight for\r\nthem. Unsophisticated as leopardesses; loving as doves. Ah! thought\r\nCaptain Delano, these, perhaps, are some of the very women whom Ledyard\r\nsaw in Africa, and gave such a noble account of.\r\n\r\nThese natural sights somehow insensibly deepened his confidence and\r\nease. At last he looked to see how his boat was getting on; but it was\r\nstill pretty remote. He turned to see if Don Benito had returned; but\r\nhe had not.\r\n\r\nTo change the scene, as well as to please himself with a leisurely\r\nobservation of the coming boat, stepping over into the mizzen-chains,\r\nhe clambered his way into the starboard quarter-gallery—one of those\r\nabandoned Venetian-looking water-balconies previously\r\nmentioned—retreats cut off from the deck. As his foot pressed the\r\nhalf-damp, half-dry sea-mosses matting the place, and a chance phantom\r\ncats-paw—an islet of breeze, unheralded, unfollowed—as this ghostly\r\ncats-paw came fanning his cheek; as his glance fell upon the row of\r\nsmall, round dead-lights—all closed like coppered eyes of the\r\ncoffined—and the state-cabin door, once connecting with the gallery,\r\neven as the dead-lights had once looked out upon it, but now calked\r\nfast like a sarcophagus lid; and to a purple-black tarred-over, panel,\r\nthreshold, and post; and he bethought him of the time, when that\r\nstate-cabin and this state-balcony had heard the voices of the Spanish\r\nking’s officers, and the forms of the Lima viceroy’s daughters had\r\nperhaps leaned where he stood—as these and other images flitted through\r\nhis mind, as the cats-paw through the calm, gradually he felt rising a\r\ndreamy inquietude, like that of one who alone on the prairie feels\r\nunrest from the repose of the noon.\r\n\r","title":"Chunk 7"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KG8AK2X9P0E5X4X6Z77F9M13","peer_type":"intro","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KG89J1F4D8P9BBX9AMGZ7TX7","peer_type":"file","predicate":"extractedFrom"},{"peer":"01KG89HMDZKNY753EZE1CJ8HZW","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KG8AKVZ99A850V652R5SFJJ7","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"prev"},{"peer":"01KG8AKVZ9EV3WAMG04MZ795KT","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"next"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-30T20:48:18.406Z","ts":"2026-01-30T20:48:25.085Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}