“They? Why they wouldn’t care if you carted the whole lot out.” I thought I had been hearing rather contradictory evidence, so I told him about my interview with the Christian negro who had hindered me from committing sacrilege. He listened with great attention, and finally asked: “Was this man tall?” “Yes.” “Was he fat?” “Yes.” “Was he very ugly?” “Yes.” “Had he got a strawberry ...? No, I don’t mean that. Had he lost some of his front teeth?” “Yes.” Then the Commandant heaved a sigh of relief, and sent for a sergeant of police. When that myrmidon arrived he told him that he thought that Mr. W---- was caught at last; and directed him to take three or four men, and go and see if he could find anything in the fetish ground. While we were waiting to see the upshot of this search the Commandant informed me that my Christian friend, Mr. W----, was a notorious smuggler, who was famed for the facility with which he robbed Her Majesty’s Customs. In about a quarter of an hour a procession, bearing some forty or fifty demijohns of rum, marched into the yard; and the sergeant informed us that he had left a man in charge of as much more. All this spirit had been smuggled from Porto Novo, and then hidden in the fetish-ground, where no native wandering in the outer darkness of unbelief would dare to venture; but which my Christian friend, who like all such negroes had repudiated the fetish moral, or immoral, code without adopting any other in its place, had no scruple about making use of. No wonder he was anxious that I should not outrage the religious prejudices of the Badagrans. I met him afterwards, and he called me names, and was good enough to say that my idle curiosity had caused him to lose more money than I had ever possessed or could dream of possessing. Such are the usual conversational pleasantries of negro traders.