him. I fear there will be, or may be, grave trouble with him."

"Yes, sir, I've heard a good deal about him--of course it is not
official; but hearsay must guide us at first. You know my man
Davenport--private secretary, confidential man of business, and general
factotum. He is devoted to me, and has my full confidence. I asked him
to stay on board the _West African_ and have a good look round, and find
out what he could about Mr. Caswall. Naturally, he was struck with the
aboriginal savage. He found one of the ship's stewards, who had been on
the regular voyages to South Africa. He knew Oolanga and had made a
study of him. He is a man who gets on well with niggers, and they open
their hearts to him. It seems that this Oolanga is quite a great person
in the nigger world of the African West Coast. He has the two things
which men of his own colour respect: he can make them afraid, and he is
lavish with money. I don't know whose money--but that does not matter.
They are always ready to trumpet his greatness. Evil greatness it is--but
neither does that matter. Briefly, this is his history. He was
originally a witch-finder--about as low an occupation as exists amongst
aboriginal savages. Then he got up in the world and became an Obi-man,
which gives an opportunity to wealth _via_ blackmail. Finally, he
reached the highest honour in hellish service. He became a user of
Voodoo, which seems to be a service of the utmost baseness and cruelty. I
was told some of his deeds of cruelty, which are simply sickening. They
made me long for an opportunity of helping to drive him back to hell. You
might think to look at him that you could measure in some way the extent
of his vileness; but it would be a vain hope. Monsters such as he is
belong to an earlier and more rudimentary stage of barbarism. He is in
his way a clever fellow--for a nigger; but is none the less dangerous or
the less hateful for that. The men in the ship told me that he was a
collector: some of them had seen his collections. Such collections! All