{"id":"01KG8AKVZ9C92SBAW5YWH4523G","cid":"bafkreiam66d53sd37o3zwrfhdqzamzo4xznx4h65or2frvvb3orbr2fgp4","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":3576,"extracted_at":"2026-01-30T20:48:15.023Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 9","source_file":"01KG89J1F4D8P9BBX9AMGZ7TX7","start_line":3512,"text":"What meant this? Something the man had sought to communicate, unbeknown\r\nto any one, even to his captain. Did the secret involve aught\r\nunfavorable to his captain? Were those previous misgivings of Captain\r\nDelano’s about to be verified? Or, in his haunted mood at the moment,\r\nhad some random, unintentional motion of the man, while busy with the\r\nstay, as if repairing it, been mistaken for a significant beckoning?\r\n\r\nNot unbewildered, again he gazed off for his boat. But it was\r\ntemporarily hidden by a rocky spur of the isle. As with some eagerness\r\nhe bent forward, watching for the first shooting view of its beak, the\r\nbalustrade gave way before him like charcoal. Had he not clutched an\r\noutreaching rope he would have fallen into the sea. The crash, though\r\nfeeble, and the fall, though hollow, of the rotten fragments, must have\r\nbeen overheard. He glanced up. With sober curiosity peering down upon\r\nhim was one of the old oakum-pickers, slipped from his perch to an\r\noutside boom; while below the old negro, and, invisible to him,\r\nreconnoitering from a port-hole like a fox from the mouth of its den,\r\ncrouched the Spanish sailor again. From something suddenly suggested by\r\nthe man’s air, the mad idea now darted into Captain Delano’s mind, that\r\nDon Benito’s plea of indisposition, in withdrawing below, was but a\r\npretense: that he was engaged there maturing his plot, of which the\r\nsailor, by some means gaining an inkling, had a mind to warn the\r\nstranger against; incited, it may be, by gratitude for a kind word on\r\nfirst boarding the ship. Was it from foreseeing some possible\r\ninterference like this, that Don Benito had, beforehand, given such a\r\nbad character of his sailors, while praising the negroes; though,\r\nindeed, the former seemed as docile as the latter the contrary? The\r\nwhites, too, by nature, were the shrewder race. A man with some evil\r\ndesign, would he not be likely to speak well of that stupidity which\r\nwas blind to his depravity, and malign that intelligence from which it\r\nmight not be hidden? Not unlikely, perhaps. But if the whites had dark\r\nsecrets concerning Don Benito, could then Don Benito be any way in\r\ncomplicity with the blacks? But they were too stupid. Besides, who ever\r\nheard of a white so far a renegade as to apostatize from his very\r\nspecies almost, by leaguing in against it with negroes? These\r\ndifficulties recalled former ones. Lost in their mazes, Captain Delano,\r\nwho had now regained the deck, was uneasily advancing along it, when he\r\nobserved a new face; an aged sailor seated cross-legged near the main\r\nhatchway. His skin was shrunk up with wrinkles like a pelican’s empty\r\npouch; his hair frosted; his countenance grave and composed. His hands\r\nwere full of ropes, which he was working into a large knot. Some blacks\r\nwere about him obligingly dipping the strands for him, here and there,\r\nas the exigencies of the operation demanded.\r\n\r\nCaptain Delano crossed over to him, and stood in silence surveying the\r\nknot; his mind, by a not uncongenial transition, passing from its own\r\nentanglements to those of the hemp. For intricacy, such a knot he had\r\nnever seen in an American ship, nor indeed any other. The old man\r\nlooked like an Egyptian priest, making Gordian knots for the temple of\r\nAmmon. The knot seemed a combination of double-bowline-knot,\r\ntreble-crown-knot, back-handed-well-knot, knot-in-and-out-knot, and\r\njamming-knot.\r\n\r\nAt last, puzzled to comprehend the meaning of such a knot, Captain\r\nDelano addressed the knotter:—\r\n\r\n“What are you knotting there, my man?”\r\n\r\n“The knot,” was the brief reply, without looking up.\r\n\r\n“So it seems; but what is it for?”\r\n\r\n“For some one else to undo,” muttered back the old man, plying his\r\nfingers harder than ever, the knot being now nearly completed.\r\n\r","title":"Chunk 9"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KG8AK2X9P0E5X4X6Z77F9M13","peer_type":"intro","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KG89J1F4D8P9BBX9AMGZ7TX7","peer_type":"file","predicate":"extractedFrom"},{"peer":"01KG89HMDZKNY753EZE1CJ8HZW","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KG8AKVZ9EV3WAMG04MZ795KT","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"prev"},{"peer":"01KG8AKVZGXQKYT8VPATT8FNJX","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"next"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-30T20:48:18.409Z","ts":"2026-01-30T20:48:25.326Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}