Now, at this time I did not understand the negro at all. I knew not what he meant by Obeah or Fetish, but I afterwards found that the gloomy life and austere manners of the old Republican, had caused the negroes to believe that he was a sorcerer, or being of supernatural powers, and that they dreaded above all things being obliged to enter his grounds after dark. Seeing Mr. Pratt’s negro, however, in a state of visible terror, at the idea of proceeding further, but having no time to stay to investigate the cause, I took the lantern from his hand, and told him to remain where he was until I came back. This he promised to do, but I had hardly advanced two paces, when I heard him scampering away through the rustling grass as fast as his legs could carry him. I called after the fugitive, but he gave no reply, so after muttering a curse upon his cowardice, I consoled myself by the reflection that he would be likely to get a sound flogging from Mr. Pratt for returning without the lantern, and then slowly advanced towards the light, which yet glimmered through the trees. I was not long in ascertaining that it shone from the rude window of a wattled hut, over which the branches of a great tree waved and rustled in the land wind. Having found the door, I knocked repeatedly, but received no reply, and as I stood listening, I thought I heard the sound of smothered moans. Thereupon I lifted the latch—the door was not otherwise secured—and entered. The cottage consisted of but one room, very rudely furnished. Hoes and spades, and such like implements, lay in the corners. There was a massive oaken table in the centre of the room, and at one end of it stood the candle, whose light I had seen from without. Hanging from the roof, close to the table, was a sort of rude curtain of canvas, which screened off a portion of the chamber, and from behind this curtain I heard the moaning come again: after hesitating for a moment I stepped forward and removed the drapery. Upon a low bed, without any curtains, his head and chest supported by a bag, such as that in which seamen keep their clothes, lay Wright, or Blagrove—now, alas, a dying man. He was terribly wasted, as though by fever or ague; his grey eyes so sunken that they seemed to gleam from the bottom of dark holes, and his features were shrunk and distorted, for the fingers of Death were pressing them. The sick man took no notice of me, so that I could mark a large Bible in which he seemed to have been reading, and which had fallen from his pithless hand upon the bed. ‘Mr. Wright,’ I said. He replied not a word. ‘John Blagrove,’ I repeated. He started, and said feebly, ‘I am he—who calls?’ ‘Leonard Lindsay,’ I replied, ‘the Scots mariner, whom you aided to escape from the ship of Montbars.’