I thought that here was a fit illustration for a fairy tale; then I
remembered the Colonel's account of how he had awakened in the act of
entering this romantic plaisance, and I was touched anew by an
unrestfulness, by a sense of the uncanny.
I observed a book lying upon the dressing table, and concluding that it
was one which Harley had brought with him, I took it up, glancing at
the title. It was "Negro Magic," and switching on the light, for there
was a private electric plant in Cray's Folly, I opened the book at
random and began to read.
"The religion of the negro," said this authority, "is emotional, and
more often than not associated with beliefs in witchcraft and in the
rites known as Voodoo or Obi Mysteries. It has been endeavoured by some
students to show that these are relics of the Fetish worship of
equatorial Africa, but such a genealogy has never been satisfactorily
demonstrated. The cannibalistic rituals, human sacrifices, and obscene
ceremonies resembling those of the Black Sabbath of the Middle Ages,
reported to prevail in Haiti and other of the islands, and by some
among the negroes of the Southern States of America, may be said to
rest on doubtful authority.
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