“Go on! Squash-head,” she ordered.
“Twenty priests, with a Bishop at their head, have come from France, and go among the people urging them to attend the churches, and threatening them with awful punishment hereafter if they fail to heed the commands of the priests,” continued Manuel.
“Much good may it do the black-gowns,” chuckled the old creature, making a horrible grimace in so doing.
“My children fear Sybella more than the black-gowns’ hell,” she cackled exultantly.
“The priests are trying to persuade the Dictator to give them permission to re-open those schools that have been closed so long, but Dupree has not consented yet. He seems to fear the anger of the black party in Haiti,” said the witch’s newsman.
“He does well to hesitate!” exclaimed Sybella.
“If he consent, I shall set up my altar, call my children around me and then! and then! No matter, he is a coward; he will never dare consent,” she added. The mulatto here drew from his bosom a newspaper. Shading his eyes from the sun’s glare, he began searching for any item of news in the Boston paper that he had secured in Port au Prince, which might interest his terrifying auditor.
“Do you wish to know about the Yankee President and Congress?” he asked humbly, pausing as he turned the sheet of the newspaper.
“No! you ape, unless they mention our island,” replied the woman, her watchful eyes looking curiously at the printed paper that the man held.
“About the ships coming and going between the United States and Haiti?” he asked anxiously, as if fearing that he might miss something of importance to the black seeress.