Her coloured victims looked on aghast at the audacity of English lawyers. But when they found that Madame was actually going to prison, they rose—just as if they had been French Republicans—deposed their despot after she had been taken prisoner, sacked her magic castle, and levelled it with the ground. Whether they did, or did not, find skeletons of children buried under the floor, or what they found at all, I could not discover; and should be very careful how I believed any statement about the matter. But what they wanted specially to find was the skeleton of a certain rival Obeah-man, who having, some years before, rashly challenged Madame to a trial of skill, had gone to visit her one night, and never left her cottage again.
The chief centre of this detestable system is St. Vincent, where—so I was told by one who knows that island well—some sort of secret College, or School of the Prophets Diabolic, exists. Its emissaries spread over the islands, fattening themselves at the expense of their dupes, and exercising no small political authority, which has been ere now, and may be again, dangerous to society. In Jamaica, I was assured by a Nonconformist missionary who had long lived there, Obeah is by no means on the decrease; and in Hayti it is probably on the increase, and taking—at least until the fall and death of Salnave—shapes which, when made public in the civilised world, will excite more than mere disgust. But of Hayti I shall be silent; having heard more of the state of society in that unhappy place than it is prudent, for the sake of the few white residents, to tell at present.
The same missionary told me that in Sierra Leone, also, Obeah and poisoning go hand in hand. Arriving home one night, he said, with two friends, he heard hideous screams from the house of a Portuguese Negro, a known Obeah-man. Fearing that murder was being done, they burst open his door, and found that he had tied up his wife hand and foot, and was flogging her horribly. They cut the poor creature down, and placed her in safety.
A day or two after, the missionary’s servant came in at sunrise with a mysterious air.
‘You no go out just now, massa.’
There was something in the road: but what, he would not tell. My friend went out, of course, in spite of the faithful fellow’s entreaties; and found, as he expected, a bottle containing the usual charms, and round it—sight of horror to all Negroes of the old school—three white cocks’ heads—an old remnant, it is said, of a worship ‘de quo sileat musa’—pointing their beaks, one to his door, one to the door of each of his friends. He picked them up, laughing, and threw them away, to the horror of his servant.
But the Obeah-man was not so easily beaten. In a few days the servant came in again with a wise visage.
‘You no drink a milk to-day, massa.’
‘Why not?’
‘Oh, perhaps something bad in it. You give it a cat.’