Chapter LXIII: The Worshippers of the Devil

A lurid light that played and wavered on the rocks and tufted trees of the deep pass, indicated to us distinctly the camp of the enemy, who were evidently engaged in some orgy, ceremony, or sacrifice--we knew not which, amid their fancied security, and under the shadow of night.

The quadroon led me up the face of the rock, by a path known apparently only to himself and the monkeys of that locality, it was so steep and dangerous; but after creeping forward on our hands and knees, I suddenly found myself overlooking a very singular and startling scene.

About fifty yards below me lay the camp of the negroes, on a green plateau, which they had rudely but strongly fortified by palisades of palms and bamboos, pegged or wattled together, and banked up within and without to form a species of breastwork. In the centre of this arena, a vast fire was blazing, and by its light the whole place and its inhabitants were visible as distinctly as they might have been at noon-day. The circular camp seemed to swarm with woolly heads and black forms, glowing redly in the flames, which, as they were blown to and fro by the passing breeze, imparted to every object a weird and unearthly aspect. Amid this sable crowd, gleamed bayonets, muskets, pikes, sabres, and agricultural implements, which had been sharpened and fashioned into impromptu weapons. When I saw their numbers, the ferocity of their black features, their bloodshot eyes and white teeth, as they jabbered and grinned; and when I heard their war-songs, their horrible yells and screams, the smallness of the force under my command, and the desperation of the duty on which I had been sent, came painfully and vividly before me.

Moreover I became aware that if the safety of the abducted M. de Thoisy was to be achieved, there was no time to be lost in attacking them, as preparations for a deed of horror were in rapid progress within the camp.

Nearly the whole of these insurgent slaves were from the small kingdom of Angola, in Western Africa, and were Gangas, or worshippers of the devil. For centuries, the white men have only resorted to their shores for the purchase of slaves, and the supply has always been ample.

With wild shouts of "Gangajumba! Gangajumba!" a circle of hideous old negresses, in a state of perfect nudity, danced hand in hand around an idol of dreadful aspect--the great _Fetish_--which was reared in the centre of the camp. They sang some gibberish, and at intervals burst into those peals of hyena-like laughter which showed all their teeth. Squatted on their hams, close by, were a band of negroes, making a noise which they considered music, with the hoarse rattle of an unbraced drum, shrill fifes, the twangle of the banjo, and the melodious grunting of goat's-horn trumpets. Ere long, the mass in camp became infected by the ardour of the negressses, and all proceeded to dance and scream and whirl about, while loading the night-air with discordant sounds.

Above them towered their idol, Gangajumba, at whose shrine all this infernal hurlyburly preceded a more terrible sacrifice.

It was of appalling aspect, being formed of tortoise-shells, strung over a figure of basket-work, and streaked with red paint to imitate ribs and bones. It was eight feet in height, by nearly three feet broad. The enormous head was surrounded by a string of white men's skulls, scraped clean and white; but the deep cuts and incisions in them bore terrible evidence of the deaths by which these victims perished. Tall, feathery palm-leaves waved over its brow; two pieces of glass composed the eyes, and when a lighted lamp was placed in its head by an old white-haired Congo savage, who acted as ganga or priest, a glare shone through them that was grotesquely terrific.

All this, when viewed by the lurid light of the gigantic fire which cast its gleams on the impending rocks of the deep pass, and on the drooping palms that waved slowly in the night-wind, formed such a scene as I had never beheld. In the background, La Souffrière, or the Brimstone Mountain, which rose to a stupendous height, added to the shadowy horror of the landscape, by emitting from its various craters, sudden jets of light and volumes of black smoke, starred with myriad sparks of fire.

The sable outlaws who were revolving with such frantic energy beneath us, were clad in all kinds of finery, stolen from the plantations they had destroyed; and these were worn in the most absurd manner. Thus, I observed one gigantic fellow who had a white straw hat adorned by nearly a dozen of regimental feathers plaited ingeniously around it. A pair of gold epaulettes hung at his bare, brawny neck, by a string of gilt buttons, and lower down were several crosses of St. Louis, torn, doubtless, from the breasts of dead Frenchmen, worn among ladies' jewels and a necklace of parrot's feathers.

"That man is the chief," whispered my copper-coloured guide, with a voice reduced to a whisper by alarm.

"Scipio,--who destroyed Mademoiselle du Plessis?"

"Yes; and that is his tent with the standard in front of it."

"I cannot see a standard," said I, surveying the cluster of wigwams, which were grouped like bee-hives in a corner of the camp; "but I see a man's head upon a pole or pike."

"A white man's head?"

"Yes."

"Ah,--it belonged to M. le Procureur du Roi, at Basse Terre; they caught him when riding near the town one evening, and his head was off almost before he missed it. Well, that is the standard of Scipio, who is now stringing his banjo 'for a song.'"

"I shall teach this modern Scipio Africanus a sharp lesson to-night. But I do not see M. de Thoisy."

"He is in that tent with the _fetishes_ around it," replied my guide, pointing to a booth which was formed of bamboos and yellow grass matting, and on the sides of which there hung nearly a hundred lesser fetishes, as those guardians of the household or person are named by the negroes of Congo and Angola, and which are composed of hoofs, hair, bones of animals, beaks, skulls and claws of birds, fish-bones, parrots' feathers, or old nails, for nothing is too mean to form the _Lares_ of the degraded Angolians.

"So he is there?"

"Yes--bound hand and foot. Why they saved him, and slew M. le Procureur whom he was accompanying for an evening ride, I cannot divine."

"When will they sacrifice him?"

"When the moon rises above the peak of La Souffrière."

"So soon? then, by Jove, we have no time to lose!"

"He is to endure the most dreadful tortures."

"How?"

"By iron hooks, inserted under his shoulder-blades, he will be suspended alive over a slow fire, and his lower joints will be cut off one by one, with the sharp knives of the gangas, beginning with the toes, and so proceeding upward to the knees and hip-joints; but few live, with the fire playing about them, until the knives come _that_ length."

"When will the moon be over La Souffrière?" said I, starting up at the risk of discovery.

"In another hour," replied the young quadroon, consulting his watch.

"Then we have just time to bring up my men, and make a dash at the palisades," I replied in a loud whisper, as we crawled backward, until we reached the narrow path which led us down the rocks, and from thence I hastened back to the ravine in which we had concealed my company.