‘If you tell de missy,’ Pourtalès answered with rough emphasis, seizing her by the shoulder with his savage grasp, ‘you know what happen to you? Delgado send evil one an’ duppy to creep ober you in de dead ob night, an’ chatter obeah to you, an’ tear de heart out ob you when you lyin’ sleepin’. If you tell de missy, you know what happen to me? Dem will take me down to de big court-house in Wes’moreland village, sit on me so try me for rebel, cut me up into little pieces, burn me dead, an’ trow de ashes for rubbish into de harbour. Den I come, when I is duppy, sit at de head ob your pillow ebbery ebenin’, grin at you, make you scream an’ cry an’ wish youself dead, till you dribben to trow youself down de well, or poison youself for fright wit berry ob manchineel bush!’
This short recital of penalties to come was simple and ludicrous enough in its own matter, but duly enforced by Isaac’s horrid shrugs and hideous grimaces, as well as by the iron clutch with which he dug his firm-gripped fingers, nails and all, deep into her flesh, to emphasise his prediction, it affected the superstitious negro girl a thousand times more than the most deliberately awful civilised imprecation could possibly have done. ‘You doan’t would do dat, Isaac,’ she cried all breathless, struggling in vain to free her arm from the fierce grip that held it resistlessly—‘you doan’t would do dat, me fren’. You doan’t would come when you is duppy to haunt me an’ to frighten me!’
‘I would!’ Isaac answered firmly, with close-pressed lips, inhuman mulatto-fashion (for when there is a demon in the mulatto nature, it is a demon more utterly diabolical than any known to either white men or black men: it combines the dispassionate intellectual power of the one with the low cunning and savage moral code of the other). ‘I would hound you to deat’, Rosie, an’ kill you witout pity. For if you tell de missy about dis, dem will cut your fren’ all up into little pieces, I tellin’ you, le-ady.’
‘Doan’t call me le-ady,’ Rosina said, melting at the formal address and seizing his hand penitently: ‘call me Rosie, call me Rosie. O Isaac, I doan’t will tell de missy, if you doan’t like; but you promise me for true you nebber gwine to take missy an’ kill him.’
Isaac smiled again the sinister smile. ‘I promise,’ he said, with a curious emphasis; ‘I doan’t gwine to kill him, Rosie! When I take him, I no will kill him!’
Rosina hesitated a moment, then she asked shortly: ‘What day you tink Delgado gwine at last to hab him risin’?’
The mulatto laughed a scornful little laugh of supreme mockery. ‘Delgado’s risin’!’ he cried, with a sneer—‘Delgado’s risin’! You tink, den, Rosie, dis is Delgado’s risin’! You tink we gwine to risk our own life, black men an’ brown men, so make Delgado de king ob Trinidad! Ha, ha, ha! dat is too good, now. No, no, me fren’; dis doan’t at all Delgado’s risin’! You tink we gwine to hand ober de whole island to a pack ob common contemptful naygur fellow! Ha, ha, ha! Le-ady doan’t nebber understand politic an’ political business. Hé, Rosie, I tell you de trut’; when we kill de buckra clean out ob de island, I gwine meself to be de chief man in all Trinidad!’ And as he spoke, he drew himself up proudly to his full height, and put one hand behind his back in his most distinguished and magnificent attitude.
Rosina looked up at him with profound admiration. ‘You is clebber gentleman for certain, Isaac,’ she cried in unfeigned reverence for his mental superiority. ‘You let Delgado make de naygur rise; den, when dem done gone risen, you gwine to eat de chestnut yourself him pull out ob de fire witout burn your fingers!’
Isaac nodded sagaciously. ‘Le-ady begin to understand politic a little,’ he said condescendingly. ‘Dat what for dem begin to ax dis time for de female suffrage.’
Grotesque, all of it, if you forget that each of these childish creatures is the possessor of a sharp cutlass and a pair of stout sinewy arms, as hard as iron, wherewith to wield it: terrible and horrible beyond belief if only you remember that one awful element of possible tragedy inclosed within it. The recklessness, the folly, the infantile misapprehension of mischievous children, incongruously combined with the strength, the passions, the firm purpose of fierce and powerful full-grown men. An infant Hercules, with superadded malevolence—the muscles of a gorilla with the brain of a cruel schoolboy—that is what the uneducated negro is in his worst and ugliest moments of vindictive anger.