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If we offend him death or torture is inevitably our punishment." "Do you think you've offended him?" I inquired. "I know not," he sighed with a serious look. "If I have, then nothing can save me; the fetish-man of Tomboura has worked evil against me."
In the meantime the fire had been bountifully replenished with wood and now blazed up fiercely. By its ruddy light I saw the fetish-man retire to the interior of the temple or fetish-house, to appear immediately afterwards with a rude stone hammer in one hand and what looked like four or five large spike-nails in the other.
A loud murmur of applause from the spectators greeted this effort of the fetish-man, in the midst of which he retired for a few minutes to the interior of the fetish-house, probably to recruit his somewhat exhausted energies. "Now," said Smellie as he turned once more to me, "we shall probably be again threatened on the reappearance of that bloodthirsty villain.
I don't know how, but all the slaves feared me, and my master feared me, for he had seen the man die, and he, although he was a white man, believed in fetish, and he wished to sell me again, but no one would buy a fetish-man, so he made friends with me; for I told him, if I was beat he should die, and he believed me.
At the yearly feast, all these animals are sacrificed at the fetish-house, in which a little of the blood is spilled on the ground. It is stated, moreover, that it depends on the will of the fetish-man, or priest, whether a human being or a cow or other animal is to be sacrificed. If a human being, it is always a criminal, and only one.
The other slaves asked me if I was a fetish-man; I said yes, and I would fetish any man that I did not like: one man laughed, and I held up my finger; I was too weak to get up, for my blood had long boiled with fever, and I said to him, `you shall die; for I meant to have killed him, as soon as I was well. He went away, and in three days he was dead.
Poor girl! she was indeed faithful unto death, for it was my life that yonder murderous wretch thirsted for. You doubtless recognised him the fetish-man who strove so hard to terrify us on the night of the sacrifice in the village!
There was a girl in the town who was beautiful; many asked for her as their wife, but her father had long promised her to my friend; he refused even the greatest warrior of the place, who went away in wrath to the fetish-man, and throwing him his gold armlets asked for a fetish against his rival. It was given, and two days before he was to be married my friend died.
At the signal his four assistants seized their prisoner, and, despite his terrible struggles, rapidly placed him, head downwards, with his back against the tree-stump, and his limbs extended as far as they would go round it, when the fetish-man proceeded with cruel deliberation to secure him in position by nailing him there, the spikes taken from the fetish-house being used for the purpose.
Were any woman to disregard these salutary precautions, the chief fetish-man in the village would fall sick and die, which would be an irreparable loss to society. The miraculous virtue ascribed to menstruous blood is well illustrated in a story told by the Arab chronicler Tabari.
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