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Updated: May 16, 2025
The sand around his feet was spotted, as though with gouts of blood, by the ruddy land-crabs, and, from every direction, these repulsive carrion eaters were hastening to their prey. They formed a horrible alliance the "debbil-trees" and the blood-red land-crabs! The negro broke into a run.
The old instinct of the black to serve the white rose in him strongly, though his own blood ran cold as he came near the "debbil-trees." The crabs were swarming all about the boy. Some of the most daring were clawing their way up his trousers, but Stuart seemed to have no eyes for them.
Day by day the boy practised, and then turned his hand to writing a story of his experiences with the "debbil-trees" which story, by the way, he had to rewrite three times before his host would let him send it. "Writing," he would say, "is like everything else in the world.
"An' there is mo' kinds of debbil-trees 'an them on Terror Cove?" "Plenty more kinds," was the answer, "though few of them are as deadly. These are famous. Lord Nelson, when a young man here in Barbados, was made very ill by drinking from a pool into which some branches of the manchineel had been thrown. In fact, he never really got over it." "How about me, Doctor?" enquired Stuart.
He talked to himself and shook his frizzled head as he went. His pace, which was distinctly that of hurry, betokened his disturbed mind. "Pickney go alone here, by golly!" he declared as he traced the prints of a booted foot on the white sand and saw that they led only in one direction. "No come back! Dem debbil-trees, get um!"
"Mister Ol' Doc," he said, "this pickney down by de debbil-trees, they got um sartain. You potion um quick!" The doctor stepped aside from the door. "Put him in there, Mark!" he directed. "Hold him, I'll be back in a minute!" The negro threw Stuart on a cot and held him down, an easy task, now, for the boy's strength was ebbing fast. The doctor was back in a moment, with a small phial.
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