"White pickney go along Terror Cove. No come um back."
"Fo' de sake!" came the astonished exclamation. "Best hop along, see!"
The burly negro, well-built like all his fellows, struck out along the beach. He talked to himself and shook his frizzled head as he went. His pace, which was distinctly that of hurry, betokened his disturbed mind.
"Pickney go alone here, by golly!" he declared as he traced the prints of a booted foot on the white sand and saw that they led only in one direction. "No come back! Dem debbil-trees, get um!"
He turned the corner and paused a minute at the extraordinary sight presented.
In the curve of the cove, dancing about with high, measured steps, like that of a trained carriage-horse, was the boy, his hands clutching a stout stick with which he was beating the air around him as though fighting some imaginary foe, in desperation for his life. The sand around his feet was spotted, as though with gouts of blood, by the ruddy land-crabs, and, from every direction, these repulsive carrion eaters were hastening to their prey.
They formed a horrible alliance—the "debbil-trees" and the blood-red land-crabs!
The negro broke into a run. The old instinct of the black to serve the white rose in him strongly, though his own blood ran cold as he came near the "debbil-trees."
The crabs were swarming all about the boy. Some of the most daring were clawing their way up his trousers, but Stuart seemed to have no eyes for them. With jerky strokes, as though his arms were worked by a string, he struck and slashed at the air at some imaginary enemy about the height of his waist.
As his rescuer came nearer, he could hear the boy screaming, a harsh, inhuman scream of rage and fear and madness combined. Jerky words amid the screams told of his terrors,