He a little revived. But unwilling to leave him unsupported while yet imperfectly restored, the black with one arm still encircled his master, at the same time keeping his eye fixed on his face, as if to watch for the first sign of complete restoration, or relapse, as the event might prove (Melville 1856)
" Third, the trampling of the sailor by the two Negroes without any scolding, and fourth, the cringing submission to their master of all the ship's underlings, mostly blacks. He especially envisions the mental inferiority of San Dominick's Negroes, whom he considers "too stupid" to have established such a "design" on the "whites," who "by nature were the shrewder race" (Andrews)
S. (Karcher) Delano's reveals his own racism from the moment he comes aboard the San Dominick and considers the "noisy indocility" of the blacks and other "peculiarities of captain and crew
The purpose of the story, therefore, is more than Melville's opposition to slavery. By calling the ship "a slumbering volcano" in the story, he is also alerting the leaders of the United States that treating people inhumanly and enslaving them can cause much wider problems (Robbins)
Although Delano finds blacks "fun-loving" individuals who like bright colors and combine "industry with pastime," this approval hides his belief that blacks are not entirely human. In fact, when in the midst of trying to sort out what was going on aboard the San Dominick, he briefly thinks that Cereno might be teaming up with the blacks, but this was impossible, since "who ever heard of a white so far a renegade as to apostatize from his very species almost, by leaguing in against it with Negroes?" Throughout the story, Melville relates how Delano eases his fears by seeing the inferiority of the blacks, like when he feels an "apprehensive twitch" of fear when a group of blacks surround him (Tawill)