Chapter LXVI: The Obeah Negro

It seemed to me as if two or three days must have elapsed before recovering perfect consciousness, and such was the case; then I appeared to waken to it, as from the long and delirious lethargy of the dreadful yellow fever, for I had lost much more blood than I was aware of.

I found myself in bed--in a luxurious couch--and in a large and airy apartment. Its ceiling was lofty; painted a light azure and starred with gold; the flowing window-curtains, being sprinkled with lime-juice for coolness, imparted a delightful fragrance, which, with the summer odours that were wafted through the open jealousies, proved delicious to a feverish patient. Everything about me betokened wealth, splendour, and tropical luxury. From each of the three tall windows of my apartment, on which the flower-covered verandah without cast a chastening shadow, hung a basket of creeping plants, and in one of these a pair of beautiful humming-birds had built their little nests of cotton, pilfered no doubt, by their tiny beaks, from the fresh-bursting buds of the cotton-tree.

The intense stiffness, benumbed and leaden sensation in my right arm, at once informed me, that the bones had been set, splinted, and bandaged, but by whom I knew not. There were dreams of soft female voices having spoken to me; and memories of their faces seemed to float before me, amid the misty memories of pain and suffering; but these were mere dreams, doubtless, like the vision of Amy Lee appearing at the porch of the villa, as I sank in agony and almost in despair on the steps that led to it.

After lying still for a time with closed eyes, I looked around me again, half in expectation that some _other_ scene--perhaps a tent, a ship's cabin, a bivouac, or something equally familiar would display itself; but no--the splendid bedchamber remained unchanged in all its details, save that it now had one other occupant than me.

A beautiful young girl, no doubt, the reader may suppose!

Not at all--nothing nearly so pleasant; but a hideous old negro, who was slowly approaching on tiptoe, softly, and with his stealthy and glittering eyes fixed on mine. Danger was my first thought, but this old man was without any knife or weapon. His grey woolly locks straggled like horsehair under a blue cotton kerchief, which encircled his huge round caput, beneath a broad rush-plaited hat, in the band of which two short tobacco-pipes were jauntily stuck. His jacket and short wide trowsers were composed of white cotton striped with flaming red; but his feet were bare like his breast, on which hung a necklace or fetish of old buttons, rusty nails, bits of broken glass, and green or scarlet parrots' feathers; to all of which he attached, no doubt, some deep and cabalistic value. The tattooing which was visible on his black breast, indicated that in his own sun-scorched country he had been esteemed as a chief or warrior of note, before he had been compelled by the whip of the white man, to relinquish the hatchet and arrows for the spade and hoe of the sugar-fields; and now, as he drew nearer, I recognized an old acquaintance.

"Benoit," said I; "Benoit."

"Ya--ya, massa le capitaine," he replied, showing all his yellow fangs; "Benoit le Noir--you memory ob me, massa?"

"Remember you, old fellow--of course I do!"

"Très bon! I watch massa in his sleep--me an Obeah nigger," he added, handing to me a crystal jug containing a draught of some cool and medicated preparation, which wonderfully strengthened and revived me.

"Where am I, Benoit?"

"In Carucueira."

"Where?" I exclaimed with astonishment.

"La Grande Terre de Guadaloupe, him called now--Carucueira in the days of painted warriors."

"I have been ill--weak, Benoit."

"Ya--massa le capitaine have leaden shot in him body."

"Impossible--my arm was broken by a ball which, however did not penetrate deep, though I have lost much blood."

"Oui--ya; but shot go very fast in the air--massa le capitaine no see him enter."

"Ah, that is all bosh, old Snowball."

"Ah--pardonnez--mong Dew--ya, oui," continued poor Benoit, whose language was a strange medley; "shot be in _here_ massa."

"Where?"

"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!"

"Go; you tease me by all this bosh," said I, impatiently.

"Me poor slave, but me known to Obi--me savey better than bucra man," replied Benoit, resuming his fetish and broad-leaved castor, with a half-mock air of offended dignity; "but le capitaine would like something to eat--just leetle picking?"

"Yes, thank you."

"Young leg ob monkey--bon, good, with pepper and pimento--très bon!"

"No, no."

"Guana--like big green lizard--tender, sweet--dam bon très good; you savey it?"

"Stuff; get me a bit of boiled chicken and a glass of Nevis wine; but ere you go, tell me where I am, as I have naturally some curiosity about it."

"In the villa de Thoisy."

"What--in the house of Monsieur Thoisy, whom I saved from Scipio at the pass of Dos d'Ane!"

"Ya, massa, oui," replied the negro, with a grin from ear to ear; but adding gravely, "but Massa de Thoisy be far happier if offered up to Obi."

"I believe he has some doubts of that, Benoit; but how came _you_ here?"

"Mamselle Eulalie--you memory ob her?"

"Yes, Benoit--how shall I ever forget her?"

"She sent me to Massa de Thoisy as a present--I served her father long, massa, berry faithful, and he loved me well, though a poor black man, berry well--bo-hoo-o-o-o!" and with a true negro outburst of grief, the old fellow left me, weeping like a child.