"Well, I am. With thought and care, I believe I should develop into a very good ju-ju practitioner. Besides, the subject fascinates me. No white men seem to know anything very definite about it, above the fact that it is beyond their comprehension, and it would be rather fine, if the unlikely happened, and one chanced to survive, to be known as the one authority on West African magic." "Oh, Carter, if you meddle with dem ju-ju palaver you lib for die plenty soon. If you walk in bush, tree fall on you; if you ride in canoe, arrow jump on you; if you chop,[*] dem chop he fill with powdered glass, and presently you lib for die of tear-tear-belly. Oh, Carter, you lib for Coast now one year; I lib for Coast all my life; I savvy plenty; you alle-same damfool." [*] In West Coast English to chop is to take food. Chop is food. "My dear Trouble, I've admitted already that I know meddling with ju-ju isn't altogether an insurance proposition. Much obliged to you for the fresh warning all the same. But I'm afraid your constitutional nervousness rather clouds that massive brain of yours at times, or you'd see that Smooth River factory and its three occupants are in the devil of a fix just now. You say the Okky-men when they've rubbed up their courage will presently return; and I don't dispute your reading of the omens. If they do come, we can't shoot them off, and that's a certain thing. As I'm sure Mr. Smith would say, it's a case of _Aut ju-ju aut nullus_, and to follow his rather objectionable knack of translating for a man who happened to have been at a different school to his own, that means we've either got to play the ju-ju card or be scuppered. White-Man's-Trouble, you are hereby made conjurer's confederate." "I no fit." "Am I to hurt your feelings with this piece of packing-case lid?" "Oh, Carter, you look see. There's a nail in him there." "I know there's a nail in it. The occasion demands a nail, and I picked the weapon for that reason. Now, then, are you going to obey orders, or will you take a first-class licking?" "Oh, Carter, I fit for do what you say." "Good. You're an excellent boy when you're handled the right way. Now go to the feteesh and bring the biggest coil of that inch lead piping you can stagger under." Carter himself went to Slade's room and brought from there one of those crude carved wooden figures which the natives make and the traders pick up as curiosities. At home they are sold for stiff prices as the gods of the heathen; but the negroes that make them are not idolaters, and what they exactly are for the present writer knoweth not, save only that they are not articles of worship. Locally they come under that all-embracing term ju-ju, which includes so much and explains so little.