"Salomon was probably the best of them all. He was an immense negro, some six feet four inches tall, with a pock-marked face, who had received an education in Paris and married a Frenchwoman. He, like the rest, however, was superstitious and cruel at heart. Hyppolite was a Voodoo priest and, it is said, an anthropophagist. The people of the interior have an intense hatred for the white man, and still retain many of the barbarous customs of the savages of the African interior. "The Voodoo dance is presided over by a high priest, who usually commands a goat or a hen to be killed, but in some of the more important ceremonies a child is murdered, and its blood mixed with the _tafia_ and drunk by the dancers. The high priest is called _Papoloy_. Every two years after the dance of the moon a human sacrifice is ordered; generally a young girl is killed and eaten. You probably ran up against one of the Voodoo gods, and the large stone in front was undoubtedly the sacrificial stone. How you ever got away alive passes my comprehension. They evidently thought that you would try to leave in the day-time, and had things all arranged for taking a shot at you somewhere, but your nocturnal skedaddle knocked their plans galley west. There is one thing dead sure, those Voodoo priests are bad medicine, as we used to say out West, and you want to keep your weather-eye open until you are safe on board a steamer and out of the harbor. I wouldn't give five cents for your life if you walked about the streets of Porto Prince. When the time comes to leave I will have you smuggled on board. The authorities would wink at your assassination, but they would not openly countenance it." Jones remarked wearily that he had begun to believe it might be as well for him to rest quietly in the consulate, and not give them another chance.