HOW VOODOO BROUGHT SUCCESS
Jamaica’s Blue Mountains, looking with their lordly heads over the wide
expanse of a sunlit sea, discerned a white sail. That was no unusual
sight to them; but this particular sail seemed, in some way, to be more
important than the rest.
It was. Under its wide, unreefed expanse, three youths, a colored and a
white man watched eagerly for the closer signs of the island’s harbor at
Kingston.
In time they landed, and, after a while, they had secured a conveyance
and were whirling out through the lazy streets, noticing with delight
the familiar sights, the indolent colored people on the streets and in
the shops, the family “flitting” or moving, its colored woman heading
the procession with the dining room table balanced on her head, its legs
sticking aloft, the family stuff piled within its upturned top; while
the children bore their respective loads and the man of the family, as
usual, stalked along behind—carrying nothing!
“It’s great to see the cactus again!” grinned Nicky, noting the great
plants by the wayside when they left the city and rose into higher
ground, seeing cactus plants many feet high, sometimes making a
veritable forest with their close-set ranks.
In time Mr. Gray, Cliff’s father, greeted them on the old plantation.
They had cabled from Florida before sailing back in Sam’s _Treasure
Belle_.
Many were the greetings exchanged, and long were the tales that had to
be told. Nelse and the hi-jackers were in prison.
“Mr. Coleson was let go free,” Nicky explained. “I guess the naval
patrol did not want to get into any trouble with the British—or the
authorities in Jamaica.”
“It would have brought about complications,” said Mr. Neale. “I
understand that Mr. Coleson won’t return to Jamaica.”
“He cabled me,” said Mr. Gray. “He asked me if I wanted to buy this
plantation.”
“Will you?” Cliff asked his father, the scholar who wrote many books
about ancient civilizations.
“No, sar,” broke in Sam, smiling his bright smile. “But Sam will.”
“So that’s how you will spend your share of the treasure?” asked Nicky.
“Part of it,” agreed Sam.
“But you haven’t yet told me how you discovered it,” Mr. Gray said. “You
stopped at the point where you failed to bring it up from the burned
vessel.”
“Well,” said Nicky, “we ‘worked’ a little voodoo, sort of, didn’t we,
fellows?” Tom and Cliff nodded.
“You see, if the treasure wasn’t in the burned boat somebody must have
hidden it,” Cliff took up the explanation. “Nicky suggested that we make
an experiment. He thought that as long as Don Ortiga declared, up and
down, he knew nothing about it, and Senor Ortiga and Mr. Coleson said
the same, it might be that somebody else had hidden it during the night.
Mr. Coleson, who was sorry for what he had done, tried to help us, and
we believed his statement.”
“Yes,” said Tom. “So Nicky got Sam and Jim, the colored boys, and made
them tell all they knew, or guessed, about voodoo.”
“He certainly was clever, sar,” broke in Sam. “He found out that we had
heard of people ‘divining’ from tricks, and that night we had a voodoo
affair on the after deck of the _Senorita_.”
“Yes,” Cliff took up the tale, “Nicky got Lieutenant Sommerlee to get
the sailors and Tew together on the deck, then he and Sam and Jim put on
a regular show, making believe they were going to find out who knew
about it. They had a smoky fire, and took bits of hair off the heads of
the sailors and burned them. Tew acted as though he was afraid of it
all—he was superstitious. So he refused to give us his hair and then
Sam, here, pretended to slip up behind him and snip some off with a
knife. And that made Tew nervous, but what we really burned was some of
the other sailors’ hair—only Tew didn’t know that. Then Sam leaped up
and pointed to Tew, and said: ‘You know, sar,’ and Tew broke down and
showed by his face that he did.
“And do you know where it was?” demanded Nicky, unable to repress
himself any longer. “He had waited till they were all asleep, the night
before they were caught, and he had dropped the bars, one at a time,
into a pool beside the boat. We found them there.
“And Lieutenant Sommerlee took us around to Miami, and we stayed there
several days, unloaded the gold bars, had the bank assay and value them,
and deposited—oh, a heap for everybody!”
“And of course the hi-jackers were sent to prison,” Tom added.
“Has anyone been found belonging to the old Governor’s family who should
rightfully share in our find?” asked Mr. Neale.
“Yes,” said Mr. Gray. “An old, widowed lady, and she will be very glad
of the money for she is poor.”
The boys were glad for her, and unselfishly voted to add a little from
their plenty to help the lady. Later she refused to take more than a
fair part, for that, she said, would keep her in easy circumstances for
the rest of her life.
While the boys were adding details of their adventure and discussing
what they might do with some of the gold, and Mr. Neale and Mr. Gray
were comparing notes on the gold figures and silver placques of a looted
Inca city which had been secured later from the treasure key, a knock
came at the door and Ma’am Sib, the old voodoo woman, came in with a
goggle-eyed boy of dark skin and about ten years old.
“Who sen for Ma’am Sib?” she demanded in her high, querulous tones. “Did
you, white sirs?”
“We did,” Nicky stated. “We, the three members of a secret order as
powerful as any in the world.”
She looked at him sharply to see if he was joking or trying to make her
feel ridiculous. Oddly enough, Nicky was really serious.
“This won’t be a lecture, Ma’am Sib,” Cliff added. “But we want to show
you something about voodoo that even you won’t guess about. If you can
tell us how it’s done, we’ll be glad.”
She looked at him curiously.
Nicky, very serious, nodded to Tom who rose and walked slowly over to
the window.
“It’s just a roundabout way to do her a favor,” Mr. Neale whispered to
the mystified father Cliff was winking at. “There’s no harm.”
Tom was unostentatiously moving aside the curtain on a small chest of
shelves in which various relics were stored.
Cliff came close to Ma’am Sib.
“Ever see anything like this before?” he asked. He laid on the table
before the shriveled old crone a small, rude figure, cut out of stone,
very much discolored, with its legs broken off, and having a hideous
face and arms that stuck down without any hands to finish them off.
The old woman stared.
“Why—why—let me see! I know that—I seem to remember——”
“Oh, no,” laughed Nicky. “Don’t strain your memory, Ma’am Sib. That is
one of the ancient Gods of an old Central American tribe. We got hold of
it—well, never mind,” he did not wish to say they had found it in the
despatch box with treasure, recovered later from the locker of the
burned _Libertad_, and that they supposed the Spanish Inquisitors had
taken it from the Indians. “It’s a powerful god.”
“I—I seem to see—” began the crone, rolling her eyes toward the ceiling.
“Oh, no, you’re not as old as this god,” Cliff told her. “But it has
strange powers and we are going to show them to you.” She shivered and
drew back but Nicky smiled gaily at her.
“It won’t hurt you,” he said. “Now you stand it up in front of you—prop
it against this book! Now, make a circle in the air in front of it, and
then draw a circle around it with your index finger on your left hand,
and then say—‘Abacca-abbaca-brab!’ three times and see what happens—it
won’t hurt.”
The woman looked at Sam. He was grinning, but he nodded for her to do
it. She hesitated and then, taking some bits of queer stuff from a bag
she had, muttering some charm to protect herself from evil, she made the
circles and muttered the words of Nicky’s fol-de-rol.
There came a thump, and a small bar of gold fell onto the table. Tom had
flung it adroitly, of course, but she fixed her eyes and stared as if
she would pop her eyes out.
“How—how—” she stammered.
“Want to know how it was done?” demanded Nicky.
“I’ll give you this gold if you tell me,” she said.
“I see,” began Tom.
“I know,” said Nicky.
“I’ll tell—” began Cliff. But suddenly all three saw that Mr. Neale,
whom they had long before taught their secret signs, was making a sign
which they all interpreted to mean, “Seeing All, I see nothing; Knowing
All, I know nothing; Telling All, I tell nothing,” the oath of the
Mystery Boys. Nicky grinned and nodded.
“This is it,” he said. “Once you made three clay figures of us and stuck
their heads in the sun; they brought us good luck so we brought this god
to give you some of it.”
And that was all she ever found out.
THE END
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Transcriber’s note:
--Silently corrected obvious typographical errors.
--Left non-standard spellings and dialect unchanged.