Those refined, aesthetic features that had made the man “the observed of all observers” at Miss Stanhope’s musicale in Boston, had scarcely been recognized as the same in the strangely flattened nose, the thickened lips, the popped and rolling eyes of the man who, in the forest glade of Haiti danced before the Voo Doo god Tu Konk the serpent.
Burton’s evening dress was torn and disarranged, his hair disheveled, his immaculate linen spotted with blood, his shoes broken and muddy, his face contorted and agonized, as twisting and squirming in every limb he sprang and leaped in a fiercely violent dance before the snake. Yells of long pent-up savage fury rang through the dank night air, as Burton threw back his head and whooped in barbarous license.
Sybella’s flashing eyes gleamed with joy as she gazed at this reclaimed scion of the negro race. She stole toward the flying figure that spun around, transported to the acme of insane emotion, singing in triumphant screeches as she crept forward,
“Tu Konk, the Great one
Tu Konk, I thank thee
Back comes black blood
No longer childless
Tu Konk, I praise thee.”
Mr. Dunlap was aroused at daylight by a messenger wearing the naval uniform of the United States, who waited below with an important communication from Lieutenant Maxon.