“Black kids and white teats.”
“Serve thus the white cow.”
Chanting these words, the Voo Doo priestess struck her head repeatedly upon the hard surface of the floor of the cave. Blood ran down her face to mingle with the froth that dropped from her shriveled and distorted lips.
The mulatto with bursting, straining eye-balls and chattering teeth gasped for breath. The hideous grotesqueness of the scene had frozen the very life-blood in his veins. The vestments of an angel adorning a fiend! Paralyzed by fear, with bulging eyes nearly popping from their sockets, the man stared at the horrible head surrounded by those trappings most closely associated with innocence.
Human nature could stand no more! With one frenzied shriek Manuel broke the spell that held him helpless. Tearing aside the curtain he leaped out of this Temple of Terrors; heedless of the danger of plunging over the precipice he raced along the treacherous path nor paused for breath until miles intervened between Tu Konk, Sybella and himself.
VI.
No social event of the season equalled the Burton-Dunlap wedding. For weeks prior to the date of the ceremony it had been the one all-engrossing theme of conversation with everybody; that is, everybody who was anybody, in the metropolis of the Old Bay State.
The immense settlement, the magnificent gifts, the exquisite trousseau from Paris, the surpassing beauty of the bride, the culture and accomplishments of the handsome groom, the exalted position of the Dunlap family, these formed the almost exclusive topics of Boston’s most exclusive set for many weeks before the wedding.