One bright, cold, moonlight night he was taking this walk as usual, when the sound of a wild, peculiar chant, somewhat mellowed by distance, broke upon his ear. Startled, but not greatly surprised, he paused and listened. “Yes,” thought he, “it must be so!—Those five civilized Spaniards, who are lords and masters here, and bound to show these negroes an example of Christian living, have made themselves drunk with new chica,—and the most active and daring of the slaves have managed to elude their vigilance, and to steal out of their quarters for the purpose of enacting some forbidden and detestable heathen rite.” Guided by his ear, Fray Fernando bent his steps towards the spot whence the sounds proceeded. On a little grassy plateau amongst the rocks, some dozen negroes were engaged in performing a wild mystic dance. Hand in hand they moved; now keeping time to some barbarous tune led by one of their number—now setting time and tune at defiance, and leaping, shouting, screaming like hideous maniacs. But the unexpected appearance of the monk’s gray cowl and mantle brought the weird ceremony to a hasty close. “Shame, shame on you!” he cried, as the dusky group scattered in all directions. “Shame on you!” he repeated once again, advancing to the centre, and raising his arm in a threatening attitude. “You—Christian men, _neofitos_, _reducidos_!—_you_ to return to these vile heathen abominations—to worship the devil!—you who have been taught to know the one living and true God, who made heaven and earth, and all that in them is! Are you not afraid lest He strike you dead, and cast you into the fire that burneth for ever and ever?” The negroes were far from comprehending every word in this address, yet they well understood its general import, and were duly impressed by the solemn tone and threatening gestures of the speaker. They were thoroughly cognisant also of the fact that the Spaniards were the masters and they the slaves. They fled in all directions with the activity of fear; some clambering up the rocks, some running down them, and others hiding in their crevices. Few stayed to hear the cogent and thoroughly intelligible peroration with which the friar concluded his harangue:— “If there be a man among you not found within his quarters ere the moon has passed from beneath yonder cloud, Señor Diego shall reckon with him in the morning.” One only of the negroes—a stalwart ebony giant, recently brought from the wilds of Africa, where he had been a petty chieftain—stood his ground fearlessly, and looked Fray Fernando boldly in the face. “_You_, Pepe!” said the monk. “I expected better things from you.” The African threw out his great bare arms with a gesture of despairing sorrow. “What would you?” said he, in broken Spanish.—“If we worship the Zombi, the Spaniards scourge us, and we die;—if we worship not the Zombi, he sends the small-pox, and we die.—Either way, we die.”