The quarter-deck rose into an ample elevated poop, upon the forward
verge of which, lifted, like the oakum-pickers, some eight feet above
the general throng, sat along in a row, separated by regular spaces, the
cross-legged figures of six other blacks; each with a rusty hatchet in
his hand, which, with a bit of brick and a rag, he was engaged like a
scullion in scouring; while between each two was a small stack of
hatchets, their rusted edges turned forward awaiting a like operation.
Though occasionally the four oakum-pickers would briefly address some
person or persons in the crowd below, yet the six hatchet-polishers
neither spoke to others, nor breathed a whisper among themselves, but
sat intent upon their task, except at intervals, when, with the peculiar
love in negroes of uniting industry with pastime, two and two they
sideways clashed their hatchets together,' like cymbals, with a
barbarous din. All six, unlike the generality, had the raw aspect of
unsophisticated Africans.

But that first comprehensive glance which took in those ten figures,
with scores less conspicuous, rested but an instant upon them, as,
impatient of the hubbub of voices, the visitor turned in quest of
whomsoever it might be that commanded the ship.

But as if not unwilling to let nature make known her own case among his
suffering charge, or else in despair of restraining it for the time, the
Spanish captain, a gentlemanly, reserved-looking, and rather young man
to a stranger's eye, dressed with singular richness, but bearing plain
traces of recent sleepless cares and disquietudes, stood passively by,
leaning against the main-mast, at one moment casting a dreary,
spiritless look upon his excited people, at the next an unhappy glance
toward his visitor. By his side stood a black of small stature, in whose