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This no doubt was another trick of the priests to frighten the superstitious natives, and at the same time wreak vengeance upon those who had offended them. Once again the notes of the horn rose weird and shrill, and died away. Then Betea, himself affrighted, turned to us saying: "Fly! fly for your lives. If the gree-gree catches you you will be struck upon the brow.
He never imagined that the year 1773 would behold him beneath the rainy season in a tropical country, wading through marshes and splashing through lakes, exploring with his feet for submerged paths, commanding impracticable troops and commanded by an insufferable colonel, feeding on gree-gree worms and fed upon by mosquitoes, howled at by jaguars, hissed at by serpents, and shot at by those exceedingly unattainable gentlemen, "still longed for, never seen," the Maroons of Surinam.
But we must get out of here before dawn, run past the gree-gree if he is about, and make a dash for the open forest. It is our only chance of escape, for at dawn the priests will come again to watch beside the tombs, and if discovered we are certain to be skewered through the mouth, dragged before Prempeh and hacked to pieces by the criminal executioner."
When at length we paused to take breath Omar, panting, said: "At last we are free again. Betea will not seek us, for he naturally believes we were killed by the gree-gree. If Zomara favours us we shall yet live to enter Mo and lead our hosts into the country of Samory."
"The gree-gree is out to-night!" I remembered that I had been told by one of our fellow-slaves that the gree-gree was a great fetish who appeared horned like a demon, and killed all persons he came across. None dare lock their doors when the gree-gree walked, and only the King himself was invulnerable.
The delighted negroes went to mass as to their favorite Calenda; the tawdry garments and detestable drone of the priest, whose only Catholicism was his indiscriminate viciousness, appeared to them a superior sorcery; the Host was a great Gree-gree; the muttered liturgy was a palaver with the spirits; music, incense, and gilding charmed them for a while away from the barbarous ritual of their midnight serpent-worship.
With noiseless tread we stole along the sacred grove and were nearly at the end when, without warning, the hideous gree-gree, with a fiendish yell of triumph, sprang out of some bushes upon us. Involuntarily, I put up my fist to ward off attack, and in doing so gave him a well-directed blow full in the face, sending him down flat on his back. "Hurrah!" cried Omar in delight. "Floored him!
At first we thought some poor wretch was being sacrificed, but again and again it sounded, and all turned pale, even the royal Ocra himself. "What's that, I wonder?" I asked Omar, who, bearing our master's sword, was walking at my side. "The gree-gree!" he gasped, looking round in fear, while at that moment there sounded two ear-piercing blasts upon a horn. "Hark!" cried Betea himself, trembling.
As for Stedman, he still went bare-footed, still quarrelled with his colonel, still sketched the scenery and described the reptiles, still reared gree-gree worms for his private kitchen, still quoted good poetry and wrote execrable, still pitied all the sufferers around him, black, white, and red, until finally he and his comrades were ordered back to Holland in 1776.
On this, and other occasion, the word gree-gree is applied to a house whence oracles are delivered: but it is also used for a charm or obi. They have one against poison; another against a musket; another against a sword; and another against a knife; and, indeed, against almost every thing that they think can hurt them.
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