"In massa's arm, at elbow; take him out, presto!—crack! diable—in a minute."
"How?" said I, half amused by his pertinacity.
Benoit deposited his broad hat upon the floor; then sinking upon his knees he gravely took the fetish from his neck, ran his black fingers over the trash which composed it, using many conjurations, mumbling like a Mahometan over his rosary, and bobbing like a Chinaman in a joss-house. Then approaching me with great solemnity in his face, and a curious and crafty leer in his eyes, he passed his hands gently over my wounded arm three times, in the style of a mesmeric professor. How the sensation was produced, I know not, but each time that he did so a nervous tremour pervaded the broken limb, and at the third pass a musket ball seemed to drop from my finger-points upon the bed.
"Bon, bon! fetish good!" exclaimed Benoit, "massa le capitaine be soon cured now."
I had neither strength to laugh at the cunning of the Obeah negro, or to compliment this sleight of hand, by which, like others who pretend to be in league with Obi, and to have especial power through their fetish, he had obtained, I have no doubt, a tolerable livelihood among the ignorant and superstitious slaves, and exerted a great influence over them for good or for evil.
"Massa look astonished! ah, mong Dew, that be nothing to Père Benoit le Noir! There was a damn black nigger from le Looward isles come to me ill—berry ill; ya—oui, so I cure him presto! draw from him belly a big cannon-ball—jolly after that—damn him, hoe sugar and sing. Massa le capitaine tink ob that—ya oui. Capitaine bucra no savey him have another bullet here?"
"Where?"
"In him leg."
"In my leg? no, no Quashy—I savey nothing of the kind."
"A big bullet there, though—mong Dew, Gorramighty ya oui!"