“Yesterday I seed Mister Henry ’pon the wharf, with his overseer from the Pelican Sugar Estate—a chap by the name of Jabez Ford. It made me feel terrible queer to see Mister Henry. We was getting a boatload of cocoanuts at the time, so I didn’t make myself knowed to him. But when the chance comes I will.
“That man Ford lost his wife rather sudden two or three nights agone. She was half a black woman and believed in a lot of queer, horrible things like the full-blooded niggers do. And come nightfall, after she died, a awful wailing and howling broke out ashore, for scores of negresses was singing all round Ford’s house to keep the Jumbies away. Jumbies belong to the religion of Obi, and they’m awful, flesh-sucking vampires as scent out a corpse like vultures and come through the air and out of the earth to be at it. But if the beast hears women singing, it chokes him off. Certainly the black females sing very nice; and they sang hymns the parson out here has taught them—hymns that comed from England. I almost cried to hear ’em, Minnie, till I remembered as they were being sung to keep off Jumbies; then I laughed. There’s another awful terrible customer called a loopgaroo.[2] He’s worse than Jumby almost, and he takes off his skin when he’s at his nightly devilries, and hides it onder a silk cotton tree. This be all part of Obeah, and I hear tell there’s an awful wicked and awful powerful Obi Man, called Jesse Hagan, in Tobago, who’s gotten tame Jumbies to work for him. The niggers shiver when they tell about him.
“As to cocoanuts, which you’ve only seed at a revel ‘three shies a penny,’ out here they be a regular trade, though not like what they was. A grower told me that in the old days he’d get a clear profit of £2 on every thousand nuts he sold; now he don’t get £1. We be bringing home hundreds of sacks of ’em, but the seller don’t count to do much good. Another queer freight we be taking back to Barbados is turtles. These creatures be very common round Tobago. They come up out of the sea of a moonlight night and paddle about in the sand, and lay their eggs. Then niggers, as be lying in wait for ’em, rush out and catch ’em, and throw ’em over ’pon their backs. There they lie till the morn do come, and then they’m brought off to the wharf for shipment. First the owner’s mark be branded on the poor devils with a red-hot iron on their yellow bellies; but they be all shell outside, and it don’t hurt ’em more than putting a hot shoe on a horse’s hoof. Then the turtles is tied by their flippers—two and three at a time—and hoisted aboard. On deck we’ve got turtle tanks ’waiting for ’em. These be full of salt water, and the turtle lives there as best he can; or if he can’t, he dies. No beasts on God’s earth have a worse time than turtles when they’m catched. They don’t get bit or sup no more, for there’s nought we can give ’em that they’ll eat. Many die on the way home, if the weather turns very cold; and aboard a ship you can tell how the turtle be faring by the amount of turtle soup as comes to dinner. And if they do get home, ’tis to have their throats cut pretty quick. But they pay well if they get home alive.
“Now I’ll knock off, because I be going ashore to see Mister Henry. We sail to-morrow, so I can’t leave it no longer. I’ll finish this when I’ve had speech with him, and much I do hope as I’ll find he’ll come over to my side.”
Here the unfinished letter broke off, and the things that happened after may be immediately related.
Daniel went ashore with a special message from his captain for the harbour master; but the order was not delivered, because good fortune, as it seemed, had brought Henry Vivian to the pier-head, and, as Daniel climbed up the steps, he almost touched his boyhood’s friend. The overseer of the Pelican Estate stood beside him. Mr Jabez Ford had a private venture of turtles about to be shipped in the Peabody for Barbados, and now he watched his own mark being set upon the unhappy reptiles. Vivian was also an interested spectator. He turned with an expression of sorrow from the turtles and found Daniel Sweetland’s eyes fixed upon them.
“Mister Henry, ’tis I, Sweetland, from home! I be here this minute to speak to you. And I pray you, for old time’s sake, to listen.”
Young Vivian started back, and the blood leapt to his cheek.
“Alive!” he said.