Benito Cereno, Part One
ANNOUNCER: Now, the V.O.A. Special English program, American Stories.
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Our story today is called “Benito Cereno.” It was written by Herman Melville. We tell the story in three parts. Here is Shep O’Neal with part one of “Benito Cereno.”
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STORYTELLER: Captain Benito Cereno hurried aboard his ship. It was ready to sail. A bright sun and a soft breeze promised good weather ahead. The ship’s anchor was raised. And the San Dominick — old but still seaworthy – moved slowly out of the harbor of Valparaiso, on the west coast of Chile. It was carrying valuable products and slaves up the Pacific coast to Callao, another Spanish colonial port near Lima, Peru.
The slaves, both male and female, slept on deck. They were not chained, because their owner, Don Alexandro, said they were peaceful.
The San Dominick moved steadily forward under a clear sky. The weather showed no sign of change. Day after day, the soft breeze kept the ship on course toward Peru.
Slave traffic between Spain’s colonial ports in this year of seventeen ninety-nine had been steady. But there were few outbreaks of violence. What happened, therefore, on board the San Dominick could not have been expected.
On the seventh day out, before daybreak, the slaves rose up in rebellion. They swept through the ship with handspikes and hatchets moving with the fury of desperate men. The attack was a complete surprise. Few of the crew were awake. All hands, except the two officers on the watch, lay in a deep untroubled sleep. The rebels sprang upon the two officers and left them half dead. Then, one by one, they killed eighteen of the sleeping crew. They threw some overboard, alive. A few hid and escaped death. The rebels tied up seven others, but left them alive to navigate the ship.
As the day began to break, Captain Cereno came slowly, carefully up the steps toward the chief rebel leader, Babo, and begged for mercy. He promised to follow Babo’s commands if he would only put an end to the killings. But this had no effect. Babo had three men brought up on deck and tied. Then, the three Spaniards were thrown overboard. Babo did this to show his power and authority — that he was in command. Babo, however, promised not to murder Captain Cereno. But everything he said carried a threat. He asked the captain if in these seas there were any negro countries.
“None,” Cereno answered.
“Then, take us to Senegal or the neighboring islands of Saint Nicholas.”
Captain Cereno was shaken. “That is impossible!” he said. “It would mean going around Cape Horn. And this ship is in no condition for such a voyage. And we do not have enough supplies, or sails or water.”
“Take us there, anyway,” Babo answered sharply, showing little interest in such details. “If you refuse, we will kill every white man on board.”
Captain Cereno knew he had no choice. He told the rebel leader that the most serious problem in making such a long voyage was water. Babo said they should sail to the island of Santa Maria near the southern end of Chile. He knew that no one lived on the island. But water and supplies could be found there.
He forced Captain Cereno to keep away from any port. He threatened to kill him the moment he saw him start to move toward any city, town or settlement on shore.
Cereno had to agree to sail to the island of Santa Maria. He still hoped that he might meet along the way, or at the island itself, a ship that could help him. Perhaps — who knows — he might find a boat on the island and be able to escape to the nearby coast of Arruco. Hope was all he had left. And that was getting smaller each day.
Captain Cereno steered south for Santa Maria. The voyage would take weeks.
Eight days after the ship turned south, Babo told Captain Cereno that he was going to kill Don Alexandro, owner of the slaves on board. He said it had to be done. Otherwise, he and the other slaves could never be sure of their freedom. He refused to listen to the captain’s appeals, and ordered two men to pull Don Alexandro up from below and kill him on deck. It was done as ordered. Three other Spaniards were also brought up and thrown overboard. Babo warned Cereno and the other Spaniards that each one of them would go the same way if any of them gave the smallest cause for suspicion.
Cereno decided to do everything possible to save the lives of those remaining. He agreed to carry the rebels safely to Senegal if they promised peace and no further bloodshed. And he signed a document that gave the rebels ownership of the ship and its cargo.
Later, as they sailed down the long coast of Chile, the wind suddenly dropped. The ship drifted into a deep calm. For days, it lay still in the water. The heat was fierce; the suffering intense. There was little water. That made matters worse. Some of those on board were driven mad. A few died. The pressure and tension made many violent. And they killed a Spanish officer.
After a time, a breeze came up and set the ship free again. And it continued south. The voyage seemed endless. The ship sailed for weeks with little water on board. It moved through days of good weather and periods of bad weather. There were times when it sailed under heavy skies, and times when the wind dropped and the ship lay be-calmed in lifeless air. The crew seemed half dead.
At last, one evening in the month of August, the San Dominick reached the lonely island of Santa Maria. It moved slowly toward one of the island’s bays to drop anchor. Not far off lay an American ship. And, the sight of the ship caught the rebels by surprise.
The slaves became tense and fearful. They wanted to sail away, quickly. But their leader, Babo, opposed such a move. Where could they go. Their water and food were low. He succeeded in bringing them under control and in quieting their fears. He told them they had nothing to fear. And they believed him.
Then, he ordered everyone to go to work, to clean the decks and put the ship in proper and good condition, so that no visitor would suspect anything was wrong.
Later, he spoke to Captain Cereno, warning him that he would kill him if he did not do as he was told. He explained in detail what Cereno was to do and say if any stranger came on board. He held a dagger in his hand, saying it would always be ready for any emergency.
The American vessel was a large tradeship and seal hunter, commanded by Captain Amasa Delano. He had stopped at Santa Maria for water.
On the American ship, shortly after sunrise, an officer woke Captain Delano, and told him a strange sail was coming into the bay. The captain quickly got up, dressed and went up on deck. Captain Delano raised his spy glass and looked closely at the strange ship coming slowly in. He was surprised that there was no flag. A ship usually showed its flag when entering a harbor where another ship lay at anchor.
As the ship got closer, Captain Delano saw it was damaged. Many of its sails were ripped and torn. A mast was broken. And the deck was in disorder. Clearly the ship was in trouble.
The American captain decided to go to the strange vessel and offer help. He ordered his whale boat put into the water, and had his men bring up some supplies and put them in the boat. Then they set out toward the mystery ship.
As they approached, Captain Delano was shocked at the poor condition of the ship. He wondered what could have happened. . . And what he would find. That will be our story next week.
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ANNOUNCER: You have heard part one of the American story “Benito Cereno.” It was written by Herman Melville. Your storyteller was Shep O’Neal. Listen again next week at this time when we continue the American story “Benito Cereno” in V.O.A. Special English. I’m Barbara Klein.
Feathertop
ANNOUNCER: Now, the V.O.A. Special English program, AMERICAN STORIES.
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ANNOUNCER: Our story today is called “Feathertop.” It was written by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Here is Shep O’Neal with the story.
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STORYTELLER: The long cold winter was gone at last. At first the cold nights went away slowly. Then suddenly, the warm days of spring started to come. There was new life again in the earth. Things started to grow and come up. For the first time, green corn plants began to show. They pushed through the soil and could now be seen above the ground.
After the long winter months, the crows, the big black birds, were hungry. And when they saw the little green plants, they flew down to eat them. Old Mother Rigby tried to make the noisy and hungry birds go away. They made her very angry. She did not want the black birds to eat her corn. But the birds would not go away. So, early one morning, just as the sun started to rise, Mother Rigby jumped out of bed. She had a plan to stop those black birds from eating her corn.
Mother Rigby could do anything. She was a witch, a woman with strange powers. She could make water run uphill, or change a beautiful woman into a white horse. Many nights when the moon was full and bright, she could be seen flying over the tops of the houses in the village, sitting on a long wooden stick. It was a broomstick, and it helped her to do all sorts of strange tricks.
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Mother Rigby ate a quick breakfast and then started to work on her broomstick. She was planning to make something that would look like a man. It would fill the birds with fear, and scare them from eating her corn, the way most farmers protect themselves from those black, pesky birds.
Mother Rigby worked quickly. She held her magic broomstick straight, and then tied another piece of wood across it. And already, it began to look like a man with arms.
Then she made the head. She put a pumpkin, a vegetable the size of a football, on top of the broomstick. She made two small holes in the pumpkin for eyes, and made another cut lower down that looked just like a mouth.
At last, there he was. He seemed ready to go to work for Mother Rigby and stop those old birds from eating her corn. But, Mother Rigby was not happy with what she made. She wanted to make her scarecrow look better and better, for she was a good worker. She made a purple coat and put it around her scarecrow, and dressed it in white silk stockings. She covered him with false hair and an old hat. And in that hat, she stuck the feather of a bird.
She examined him closely, and decided she liked him much better now, dressed up in a beautiful coat, with a fine feather on top of his hat. And, she named him Feathertop.
She looked at Feathertop and laughed with happiness. He is a beauty, she thought. “Now what?” she thought, feeling troubled again. She felt that Feathertop looked too good to be a scarecrow. “He can do something better,” she thought, “than just stand near the corn all summer and scare the crows.” And she decided on another plan for Feathertop.
She took the pipe of tobacco she was smoking and put it into the mouth of Feathertop. “Puff, darling, puff,” she said to Feathertop. “Puff away, my fine fellow.” It is your life.” Smoke started to rise from Feathertop’s mouth. At first, it was just a little smoke, but Feathertop worked hard, blowing and puffing. And, more and more smoke came out of him.
“Puff away, my pet,” Mother Rigby said, with happiness. “Puff away, my pretty one. Puff for your life, I tell you.” Mother Rigby then ordered Feathertop to walk. “Go forward,” she said. “You have a world before you.”
Feathertop put one hand out in front of him, trying to find something for support. At the same time he pushed one foot forward with great difficulty. But Mother Rigby shouted and ordered him on, and soon he began to go forward. Then she said, “you look like a man, and you walk like a man. Now I order you to talk like a man.”
Feathertop gasped, struggled, and at last said in a small whisper, “Mother, I want to speak, but I have no brain. What can I say?”
“Ah, you can speak,” Mother Rigby answered. “What shall you say? Have no fear. When you go out into the world, you will say a thousand things, and say them a thousand times…and saying them a thousand times again and again, you still will be saying nothing. So just talk, babble like a bird. Certainly you have enough of a brain for that.”
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Mother Rigby gave Feathertop much money and said “Now you are as good as any of them and can hold your head high with importance.”
But she told Feathertop that he must never lose his pipe and must never let it stop smoking. She warned him that if his pipe ever stopped smoking, he would fall down and become just a bundle of sticks again.
“Have no fear, Mother,” Feathertop said in a big voice and blew a big cloud of smoke out of his mouth.
“On your way,” Mother Rigby said, pushing Feathertop out the door. “The world is yours. And if anybody asks you for your name, just say Feathertop. For you have a feather in your hat and a handful of feathers in your empty head.”
Feathertop found the streets in town, and many people started to look at him. They looked at his beautiful purple coat and his white silk stockings, and at the pipe he carried in his left hand, which he put back into his mouth every five steps he walked. They thought he was a visitor of great importance.
“What a fine, noble face” one man said. “He surely is somebody,” said another. “A great leader of men.”
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As Feathertop walked along one of the quieter streets near the edge of town, he saw a very pretty girl standing in front of a small red brick house. A little boy was standing next to her. The pretty girl smiled at Feathertop, and love entered her heart. It made her whole face bright with sunlight.
Feathertop looked at her and had a feeling he never knew before. Suddenly, everything seemed a little different to him. The air was filled with a strange excitement. The sunlight glowed along the road, and people seemed to dance as they moved through the streets. Feathertop could not stop himself, and walked toward the pretty smiling young girl. As he got closer, the little boy at her side pointed his finger at Feathertop and said, “Look, Polly! The man has no face. It is a pumpkin.”
Feathertop moved no closer, but turned around and hurried through the streets of the town toward his home. When Mother Rigby opened the door, she saw Feathertop shaking with emotion. He was puffing on his pipe with great difficulty and making sounds like the clatter of sticks, or the rattling of bones.
“What’s wrong?” Mother Rigby asked.
“I am nothing, Mother. I am not a man. I am just a puff of smoke. I want to be something more than just a puff of smoke.” And Feathertop took his pipe, and with all his strength smashed it against the floor. He fell down and became a bundle of sticks as his pumpkin face rolled toward the wall.
“Poor Feathertop,” Mother Rigby said, looking at the heap on the floor. “He was too good to be a scarecrow. And he was too good to be a man. But he will be happier, standing near the corn all summer and protecting it from the birds. So I will make him a scarecrow again.”
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ANNOUNCER: You have heard the American story, “Feathertop.” It was written by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Your storyteller was Shep O’Neal. The producer was Lawan Davis. Listen again next week at this time for another American story in V.O.A. Special English. I’m Steve Ember.
The Law of Life
ANNOUNCER: Now, the V.O.A. Special English Program, AMERICAN STORIES.
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Our story today is called “The Law of Life.” It was written by Jack London. Here is Shep O’Neal with the story.
STORYTELLER: The old Indian was sitting on the snow. It was Koskoosh, former chief of his tribe. Now, all he could do was sit and listen to the others. His eyes were old. He could not see, but his ears were wide open to every sound.
“Aha.” That was the sound of his daughter, Sit-cum-to-ha. She was beating the dogs, trying to make them stand in front of the snow sleds. He was forgotten by her, and by the others, too. They had to look for new hunting grounds. The long, snowy ride waited. The days of the northlands were growing short. The tribe could not wait for death. Koskoosh was dying.
The stiff, crackling noises of frozen animal skins told him that the chief’s tent was being torn down. The chief was a mighty hunter. He was his son, the son of Koskoosh. Koskoosh was being left to die.
As the women worked, old Koskoosh could hear his son’s voice drive them to work faster. He listened harder. It was the last time he would hear that voice. A child cried, and a woman sang softly to quiet it. The child was Koo-tee, the old man thought, a sickly child. It would die soon, and they would burn a hole in the frozen ground to bury it. They would cover its small body with stones to keep the wolves away.
“Well, what of it? A few years, and in the end, death. Death waited ever hungry. Death had the hungriest stomach of all.”
Koskoosh listened to other sounds he would hear no more: the men tying strong leather rope around the sleds to hold their belongings; the sharp sounds of leather whips, ordering the dogs to move and pull the sleds.
“Listen to the dogs cry. How they hated the work.”
They were off. Sled after sled moved slowly away into the silence. They had passed out of his life. He must meet his last hour alone.
“But what was that?” The snow packed down hard under someone’s shoes. A man stood beside him, and placed a hand gently on his old head. His son was good to do this. He remembered other old men whose sons had not done this, who had left without a goodbye.
His mind traveled into the past until his son’s voice brought him back. “It is well with you?” his son asked. And the old man answered, “It is well.”
“There is wood next to you and the fire burns bright,” the son said. “The morning is gray and the cold is here. It will snow soon. Even now it is snowing. Ahh, even now it is snowing.
“The tribesmen hurry. Their loads are heavy and their stomachs flat from little food. The way is long and they travel fast. I go now. All is well?”
“It is well. I am as last year’s leaf that sticks to the tree. The first breath that blows will knock me to the ground. My voice is like an old woman’s. My eyes no longer show me the way my feet go. I am tired and all is well.”
He lowered his head to his chest and listened to the snow as his son rode away. He felt the sticks of wood next to him again. One by one, the fire would eat them. And step by step, death would cover him. When the last stick was gone, the cold would come. First, his feet would freeze. Then, his hands. The cold would travel slowly from the outside to the inside of him, and he would rest. It was easy…all men must die.
He felt sorrow, but he did not think of his sorrow. It was the way of life. He had lived close to the earth, and the law was not new to him. It was the law of the body. Nature was not kind to the body. She was not thoughtful of the person alone. She was interested only in the group, the race, the species.
This was a deep thought for old Koskoosh. He had seen examples of it in all his life. The tree sap in early spring; the new-born green leaf, soft and fresh as skin; the fall of the yellowed, dry leaf. In this alone was all history.
He placed another stick on the fire and began to remember his past. He had been a great chief, too. He had seen days of much food and laughter; fat stomachs when food was left to rot and spoil; times when they left animals alone, unkilled; days when women had many children. And he had seen days of no food and empty stomachs, days when the fish did not come, and the animals were hard to find.
For seven years the animals did not come. Then, he remembered when as a small boy how he watched the wolves kill a moose. He was with his friend Zing-ha, who was killed later in the Yukon River.
Ah, but the moose. Zing-ha and he had gone out to play that day. Down by the river they saw fresh steps of a big, heavy moose. “He’s an old one,” Zing-ha had said. “He cannot run like the others. He has fallen behind. The wolves have separated him from the others. They will never leave him.”
And so it was. By day and night, never stopping, biting at his nose, biting at his feet, the wolves stayed with him until the end.
Zing-ha and he had felt the blood quicken in their bodies. The end would be a sight to see.
They had followed the steps of the moose and the wolves. Each step told a different story. They could see the tragedy as it happened: here was the place the moose stopped to fight. The snow was packed down for many feet. One wolf had been caught by the heavy feet of the moose and kicked to death. Further on, they saw how the moose had struggled to escape up a hill. But the wolves had attacked from behind. The moose had fallen down and crushed two wolves. Yet, it was clear the end was near.
The snow was red ahead of them. Then they heard the sounds of battle. He and Zing-ha moved closer, on their stomachs, so the wolves would not see them. They saw the end. The picture was so strong it had stayed with him all his life. His dull, blind eyes saw the end again as they had in the far off past.
For long, his mind saw his past. The fire began to die out, and the cold entered his body. He placed two more sticks on it, just two more left. This would be how long he would live.
It was very lonely. He placed one of the last pieces of wood on the fire. Listen, what a strange noise for wood to make in the fire. No, it wasn’t wood. His body shook as he recognized the sound…wolves.
The cry of a wolf brought the picture of the old moose back to him again. He saw the body torn to pieces, with fresh blood running on the snow. He saw the clean bones lying gray against the frozen blood. He saw the rushing forms of the gray wolves, their shinning eyes, their long wet tongues and sharp teeth. And he saw them form a circle and move ever slowly closer and closer.
A cold, wet nose touched his face. At the touch, his soul jumped forward to awaken him. His hand went to the fire and he pulled a burning stick from it. The wolf saw the fire, but was not afraid. It turned and howled into the air to his brother wolves. They answered with hunger in their throats, and came running.
The old Indian listened to the hungry wolves. He heard them form a circle around him and his small fire. He waved his burning stick at them, but they did not move away. Now, one of them moved closer, slowly, as if to test the old man’s strength. Another and another followed. The circle grew smaller and smaller. Not one wolf stayed behind.
Why should he fight? Why cling to life? And he dropped his stick with the fire on the end of it. It fell in the snow and the light went out.
The circle of wolves moved closer. Once again the old Indian saw the picture of the moose as it struggled before the end came. He dropped his head to his knees. What did it matter after all? Isn’t this the law of life?
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ANNOUNCER: You have just heard the American story “The Law of Life.” It was written by Jack London. Your storyteller was Shep O’Neal. Listen again next week for another American story in V.O.A. Special English. I’m Faith Lapidus.
