 | CHAPTER V. The wigwam and the cabin |  |
5. CHAPTER V.
The indulgent master that night addressed a letter to the owner
of Methuselah, stating all the circumstances of the case, and
soliciting permission for the wizard, of whom such high expectations
were formed, or fancied, to return with the messenger, who
took with him an extra horse that the journey might be made
with sufficient despatch. To this application a ready assent was
given, and the messenger returned on the day after his departure,
attended by the sage personage in question.
Methuselah was an African, about sixty-five years of age, with
a head round as an owl's, and a countenance quite as grave and
contemplative. His features indicated all the marked characteristics
of his race, low forehead, high cheek bone, small eyes, flat
nose, thick lips, and a chin sharp and retreating. He was not
more than five feet high, and with legs so bowed that—to use
Scipio's expression, when he was so far recovered as to be able
again to laugh at his neighbour,—a yearling calf might easily
run between them without grazing the calf. There was nothing
promising in such a person but his sententiousness and gravity,
and Methuselah possessed these characteristics in remarkable
degree. When asked—
“Can you cure this fellow?” his answer, almost insolently
expressed, was,—
“I come for dat.”
“You can cure people who are bewitched?”
“He no dead?”
“No.”
“Belly well; I cure em;—can't cure dead nigger.”
There was but little to be got out of such a character by examination,
direct or cross; and attending him to Scipio's wigwam, we
tacitly resolved to look as closely into his proceedings as we could,
assured, that in no other way could we possibly hope to arrive at
any knowledge of his modus operandi in so curious a case.
Scipio was very glad to see the wizard of St. Matthew's, and
pointing to a chair, the only one in his chamber, he left us to the
rude stools, of which there happened to be a sufficient supply.
“Well, brudder,” said the African abruptly, “wha's matter?”
“Ha, Mr. 'Tuselah, I bin hab berry bad mout' put 'pon me.”
“I know dat—you eyes run water—you ears hot—you hab
knee shake—you trimble in de joint.”
“You hit um; 'tis jis' dem same ting. I hab ears bu'n berry
much,” and thus encouraged to detail his symptoms, the garrulous
Scipio would have prolonged his chronicle to the crack of
doom, but that the wizard valued his time too much, to suffer any
unnecessary eloquence on the part of his patient.
“You see two tings at a time?” asked the African.
“How! I no see,” replied Scipio, not comprehending the question,
which simply meant, do you ever see double? To this,
when explained, he answered in a decided negative.
“'Tis a man den, put he had mout' 'pon you,” said the
African.
“Gor-a-mighty, how you know dat?” exclaimed Scipio.
“Hush, my brudder—wha' beas' he look like?”
“He's a d—n black nigger ob a crow—a dirty crow, da's lazy
for true.”
“Ha! he lazy—you sure he ain't lame?”
“He no lame.”
Scipio then gave a close description of the crow which had
pestered him, precisely as he had given it to his master, as recorded
in our previous pages. The African heard him with patience,
then proceeded with oracular gravity.
“'Tis old man wha's trouble you!”
“Da's a trute!”
“Hush, my brudder. Whay you bin see dis crow?”
“Crow in de cornfiel', Mr. 'Tuselah; he can't come in de
house.”
“Who bin wid you all de time?”
“Jenny—de gal—he 'tan up in de corner now.”
The magician turned and looked upon the person indicated by
Scipio's finger—a little negro girl, probably ten years old. Then
turning again to Scipio, he asked,
“You bin sick two, tree, seben day, brudder—how long you bin
on you bed?”
“Since Saturday night—da's six day to-day.”
“And you hab nobody come for look 'pon you, since you bin
on de bed, but dis gal, and de buckrah?”
Scipio confessed to several of the field negroes, servants of his
own master, all of whom he proceeded to describe in compliance
with the requisitions of the wizard, who, as if still unsatisfied, bade
him, in stern accents, remember if nobody else had been in the
cabin, or, in his own language, had “set he eye 'pon you.”
The patient hesitated for awhile, but the question being repeated,
he confessed that in a half-sleep or stupor, he had fancied seeing
Gullah Sam looking in upon him through the half-opened door;
and at another time had caught glimpses, in his sleep, of the same
features, through a chink between the logs, where the clay had
fallen.
“Ha! ha!” said the wizard, with a half-savage grin of mingled
delight and sagacity—“I hab nose,—I smell. Well, brudder, I
mus' gib you physic,—you mus' hab good sweat to-night, and
smood skin to-morrow.”
Thus ended the conference with Scipio. The man of mystery
arose and left the hovel, bidding us follow, and carefully fastening
the door after him.
This done, he anointed some clay, which he gathered in the
neighbourhood, with his spittle, and plastered it over the lintel.
He retired with us a little distance, and when we were about to
separate, he for the woods, and we for the dwelling-house, he said
in tones more respectful than those which he employed to Mr.
Carrington on his first coming,
“You hab niggers, mossa—women is de bes'—dat lub for talk
too much?”
“Yes, a dozen of them.”
“You sen' one to de plantation where dis Gullah Sam lib, but
don't sen' um to Gullah Sam; sen' um to he mossa or he missis;
and borrow someting—any ting—old pot or kettle—no matter if
you don't want 'em, you beg um for lend you. Da's 'nough.”
Mr. Carrington would have had the wizard's reasons for this
wish, but finding him reluctant to declare them, he promised his
was to let Gullah Sam know that a formidable enemy had taken
the field against him, and in defence of his victim.[1] This would
seem to account for his desire that the messenger should be a woman,
and one “wha' lub for talk too much.” He then obtained
directions for the nearest path to the swamp, and when we looked
that night into the wigwam of Scipio, we found him returned with
a peck of roots of sundry sorts, none of which we knew, prepared
to make a decoction, in which his patient was to be immersed from
head to heels. Leaving Scipio with the contemplation of this
steaming prospect before him, we retired for the night, not a little
anxious for those coming events which cast no shadow before us,
or one so impenetrably thick, that we failed utterly to see
through it.
Since penning the above conjecture, I remember a story which was related
to me several years ago, by a venerable country lady of South Carolina,
who, to the merit of telling a good story well, added the equally commendable
merit of always believing the story which she told—in which it was insisted
upon, in these controversies between rival wizards, and, if I mistake not, in all
cases where witch or wizard aimed to operate, that, to obtain complete success,
it was necessary that they should succeed in borrowing something out of the
house which was to be the scene of their diablerie. In this story, though a
mere boy at the time, I can well remember the importance attached by a
mother to the instructions which she gave her daughter, on going abroad, to
lend nothing out of the house, under any circumstances, or to any body, during
her absence. She had scarcely disappeared,—the story went on to relate,
—before an old woman of the neighbourhood, whose intentions were already
suspected, came to borrow a sieve. The girl, without admitting her into the
house, for the door had been locked by the provident mother, answered her
demand through the window by an unvarying refusal. Baffled in her aim by
the child's firmness, the prayers and entreaties of the applicant were changed
into the bitterest abuse and execrations, clearly showing, whatever might have
been her pretensions or powers of evil, the devilish malignity of purpose which
she entertained.
| CHAPTER V. The wigwam and the cabin | |