Benito Cereno is characterized by a tense and paranoid mood, stemming from the inexplicable mystery at the core of the story. As Captain Delano boards the Spanish ship, the good-natured and generally trusting American cannot shake the feeling that all is not as it seems. As he notes the furtive glances, odd behavior, and concealed whispers of those on board, he comes to feel that he is walking into an unknown conspiracy. When he speaks with the ship’s inhabitants, this tense mood grows as he becomes suspicious of everyone around him and begins to fear for his safety. When he sees Don Benito and the enslaved Babo speaking together in hushed tones, he grows paranoid:
This once more impelled his own glance in the direction of Don Benito, and, as before, he could not but infer that himself formed the subject of the conference. He paused. The sound of the hatchet-polishing fell on his ears. He cast another swift side-look at the two. They had the air of conspirators. In connection with the late questionings and the incident of the young sailor, these things now begat such return of involuntary suspicion, that the singular guilelessness of the American could not endure it.
Glancing at the Spanish Captain’s “conference” with Babo and some of the other enslaved individuals, he becomes convinced that they are talking about him. Increasingly suspicious, he imagines that anyone around him might be the architect of the conspiracy, including two men who are polishing hatchets, whom he believes have “the air of conspirators.” He attempts to calm down and ease his own tensions, but this tense and paranoid mood sticks with him as other small observations seem to affirm his feelings that something is amiss on the ship.
