A very dismal silence succeeded. Blagrove was sinking very fast. When I took his hand it was cold and wet, and his breath began to come in flutterings and gaspings. While I watched him, the light, which burned in a rude iron candlestick, suddenly flickered and went out; and, except for the glimmer of my lantern, we were in darkness. Indeed, it was very terrible. The great branches of the tree overhead groaned as they swayed with the night wind, and sometimes hit the roof with a loud rattle; the dismal croak of the frog sounded incessantly; and the goat-sucker whooped his loud hollow note from the forest. As I watched the dying, I suddenly heard the lattice of the window shake, and, turning round with a start, saw a hideous black face, crowned with a curly mass of grey hair, laid close against the coarse thick glass. My heart beat, and my blood curdled as I gazed. In a moment, however, the face was withdrawn, and I was vainly attempting to persuade myself that the vision I had seen was fancy, when, by the uncertain light of the lantern, I observed the latch of the door move. The cold sweat came out upon me again as the door opened, and a hideous apparition entered. It was that of a very aged negro woman. Her face had that peculiar blackness which marks those negroes actually born on the Guinea coast; and it was, so to speak, a perfect mass of huge wrinkles and skinny folds, through which her white teeth appeared with a ghastly conspicuousness. The principal part of her dress was an old dingy blanket; and round her neck was hung a cord, upon which shreds of cloth, birds’ feathers, pellets of clay and stones with holes in them—the shells of eggs, and fragments of broken bottles were strung. This uncouth being advanced slowly into the hut, holding up in both hands a sort of graven image, or idol, made of a block of wood roughly carved, and stuck over with such scraps of offal and filth as composed her own rude necklace. I was so absorbed in a sort of compassionate horror, that I had no power to prevent her approach, but rather shrank from her—the hag looked so fearful and witch-like. So she proceeded to the very side of the bed—Blagrove, meanwhile, having his eyes shut and his hands clasped, as though in secret prayer—and then suddenly dropping on her knees, she raised her hideous idol before the face of the dying, and said, in a harsh grating voice: ‘Buccra dying—buccra pray to Obi.’ Coming to myself at these words, I dashed forwards, wrenched the idol from the hands of the idolatress, and flung the hag back towards the door. She turned upon me with the fury of a wild cat. ‘What for you here?’ she said; ‘he is Obeah man, me is Obeah woman. Obeah men and women pray to Obi. It is one great Fetish.’ For reply I walked to the door, and, opening it, flung the idol forth into the night. When I turned again, the hag was affixing a bunch of parrot feathers to the bed.