“Just dere, Mass’ Tom,” he replied, pointing with one of his lean, bony, mottled fingers, the black colour of which seemed to have been worked off them by years of rough usage.
“Where?” I repeated, for I could not see the animal as yet anywhere.
“Dere, on manure heap—see?”
“Yes, I see now,” I replied, as, getting nearer to the stables, I noticed something on the top of a mound of straw rubbish. It was a creature like a gigantic lizard, some five or six feet long and as broad about the head as a decent-sized pig.
“Yah, yah, dere he is, dere he is!” shouted out Pompey. “Golly, Mass’ Tom, he am big ’guana, too! Give me de ’tick, and dis niggah will soon ’top um runnin’ ’way.”
The green-looking creature had been basking in the sun, enjoying itself all the more, probably, from the warmth of the manure heap on which it lay; but now, on our nearer approach, it raised its serpent-like head and, puffing out its creamy throat, grew in an instant to double its former size, while the beautiful iridescent colouring of its skin became more conspicuous.
Pompey raised the stick I had handed to him, and the iguana, as if likewise springing to arms to resist attack, elevated a sort of spiny fringe, resembling a mane, that reached from the crest of its head to the shoulders. At the same time, it slung round its tail, in crocodile fashion, as if to give a blow with it to its assailant.
The old darkey, however, was not frightened at the motion. Stepping up to the animal’s side, he gave it one smart stroke on the nose, whereupon the iguana was incontinently settled, turning over on its back a second afterwards. The brightness at once faded from its green and gold skin, while the rich cream-coloured throat changed to a dirty-white in the hues of death, in the same way that a dolphin alters its colour when taken from its native element.
“Guess um well kill’ now, nohow,” said Pompey grimly, taking up the animal by the tail; but it was such a big one that he couldn’t lift it, so he had to drag it along the ground towards the quarters of himself and the other negroes. Here it would, I knew, ere long be skinned and dressed in a very savoury way, known only to African cooks, when a portion of the banquet would be sent in anon to “the big house,” for the kindly acceptance of the white folks there—my mother, and sisters, and myself—elegantly dished up in plantain leaves with red peppers for dressing.
While I stood for a second watching old Pompey making off with his prey in high good-humour, looking in the distance, as he climbed the slope of the hill up to the huts, uncommonly like a lean monkey dragging away a centipede, the intense glare of the tropical noontide, of which I was for the moment oblivious, changed in an instant to a deep gloom resembling the blackness of night. It seemed as if some interposing body had suddenly been placed between the sun and the earth.