The Short Stories Of Henry S Whitehead – Volume 1

I had it now. The screaming woman believed, and the crowd about her believed, that some evil witchery was afoot. Some enemy had enlisted the services of the dreaded witch-doctor – the papaloi – and something fearful, some curse or charm, had been ‘put on’ her or someone belonging to her family. All that the word ‘Jumbee’ had told me clearly.

I ran out to the semi-enclosed gallery which runs along the front of my house on the Copagnie Gade, the street of hard-pounded earth below, and looked down.

A group of early risen Blacks in nondescript garb was assembled down there, and the number was increasing every instant. Men, women, small Black children were gathered in a rapidly tightening knot directly in front of the house, their guttural mumbles of excitement forming a contrapuntal background to the solo of that sustained scream; for the woman, there in the center, was at it again now, with fresh breath, uttering her blood-curdling, hopeless, screeching wail, a thing to make the listener wince.

Not one of the throng of Blacks touched the woman in their midst. I listened to their guttural Creole, trying to catch some clue to what this disturbance was about. I would catch a word of the broad patois here and there, but nothing my mind could lay hold upon. At last it came, the clue; in a childish, piping treble; the clear-cut word, Jumbee.

I had it now. The screaming woman believed, and the crowd about her believed, that some evil witchery was afoot. Some enemy had enlisted the services of the dreaded witch-doctor – the papaloi – and something fearful, some curse or charm, had been ‘put on’ her or someone belonging to her family. All that the word ‘Jumbee’ had told me clearly.