At various points in the narrative, Captain Delano misinterprets the situation on board the Spanish ship. When he first boards the San Dominick, he uses a simile that compares Babo to “a shepherd’s dog,” a characterization that is highly situationally ironic, given the true nature of Babo’s relationship to Captain Cereno:
[T]he 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 [...] By his side stood a black of small stature, in whose rude face, as occasionally, like a shepherd’s dog, he mutely turned it up into the Spaniard’s, sorrow and affection were equally blended.
Delano struggles to make sense of the scene he encounters aboard the ship. The Spanish captain appears to be “dressed with singular richness” but nevertheless bears “plain traces of recent sleepless cares and disquietudes,” a state of visible exhaustion that requires him to rely on Babo. Babo’s face, according to the narrator, is “like a shepherd’s dog,” or in other words, a sheepdog. Delano, then, makes certain racist assumptions about Babo’s attentiveness as a sign of his dog-like loyalty to Cereno. Later events in the story, however, cast an ironic light upon this simile. Delano’s simile might also hint that Babo is the one leading or controlling Cereno, much as a sheepdog herds and directs a flock of sheep.
As a mysterious Spanish ship enters the harbor, the narrator uses two similes to compare its slow advance to that of the dawning sun and the eye of a local woman:
With no small interest, Captain Delano continued to watch her—a proceeding not much facilitated by the vapors partly mantling the hull, through which the far matin light from her cabin streamed equivocally enough; much like the sun—by this time hemisphered on the rim of the horizon, and apparently, in company with the strange ship, entering the harbor—which, wimpled by the same low, creeping clouds, showed not unlike a Lima intriguante’s one sinister eye peering across the Plaza from the Indian loop-hole of her dusk sayay-manta.
Captain Delano is curious about the ship because it has failed to signal its presence with flags, as was customary at the time. As he struggles to observe the ship through the heavy mist of the morning, he describes its progress through the water as being “like the sun,” rising slowly on the “rim of the horizon.” In fact, he claims, the sun is actually rising at that exact moment, “in company with the strange ship.” Further, in another simile he compares the ship, just visible over the “low, creeping crowds,” to that of a “Lima intriguante’s one sinister eye,” which can be seen “from the Indian loop-hole of her dusk sayay-manta.” Here, his simile compares the boat to the eye of a Chilean “intriguante,” or in other words, a mysterious and intriguing woman who conceals her identity with a veil.
