"My doubts were dispersed. This was a meeting-place of Devil-
worshippers, or devotees of the cult of Voodoo! One man only could I
see clearly so as to remember him, a big negro employed upon one of my
estates. He seemed to be a sort of high priest or president of the
orgies. Attached to his arms were giant imitations of bat wings which
he moved grotesquely as if in flight. There were many women in the
throng, which numbered fully I should think a hundred people. But the
final collapse of my brave, unhappy Valera at this point brought home
to me the nature of the peril in which I stood.

"He lay at my feet, moving convulsively, and sinking ever deeper in the
swamp, red leeches moving slowly, slowly over his fast-disappearing
body."

Colonel Menendez paused in his appalling narrative and wiped his moist
forehead with a silk handkerchief. Neither Harley nor I spoke. I knew
not if my friend believed the Spaniard's story. For my own part I found
it difficult to do so. But that the narrator was deeply moved was a
fact beyond dispute.

He suddenly commenced again:

"My next recollection is of awakening in my own bed at the hacienda. I
had staggered back as far as the veranda, in raving delirium, and in
the grip of a strange fever which prostrated me for many months, and
which defied the knowledge of all the specialists who could be procured
from Cuba and the United States. My survival was due to an iron
constitution; but I have never been the same man. I was ordered to
leave the West Indies directly it became possible for me to be moved. I
arranged my affairs accordingly, and did not return for many years.