Several Haytian men and women were arrested for the murder of children whom they had kidnapped and then offered up to the _Vaudoux_ on the fetish altars somewhere in the mountains near Port-au-Prince. One of the prisoners, a negress, turned informer and told how the _papaloi_ bribed men to dig up the newly buried dead from the cemeteries, where many graves had been found disturbed.—See “Memoirs of Moreau de St. Mery.”
“Father!” whispered Sestrina in her terror. She saw a wild look in his eyes that horrified her. She lifted her hands as though she would ward off a terrible blow. The gleam of the fevered eyes sent a death-like chill to the girl’s heart. She instinctively realised that the personality of the man before her was lost in some deadly sleep, though she did not dream that the fumes that had done this thing to her father were the fumes of human blood and white rum. Though Sestrina had heard the word “_vaudoux_” whispered in awestruck tones by the negresses and negroes of the palace, she had no idea as to what it really meant. All she knew was, that it caused madness among many people, for the blood and rum drinking, and the strain on the _vaudoux_ worshippers’ frenzied imagination, generally ended in paralysis and idiocy, and often in violent madness.
“_Vaudoux, loup garou!_” whispered the man as he stared at the girl. Then he seemed slightly to recover himself.
“It’s you! you! Sestrina!” he murmured as the girl took his hand very gently, and in pathetic, mute appeal looked up into her father’s face. Her heart thumped violently as she watched the expression of his eyes. Then she gave a sigh of relief. And still she fawned before him, caressed his bloodstained hands, delight on her troubled face as she saw the gleam of reason stealing back into his bloodshot eyes.
“It’s me! me!” she whispered, as she once more caressed that hand in her terrifying eagerness to press her advantage. She saw the look of recognition leap into his eyes.
“Sestrina, what did I do? What have I said? help me!” he moaned, as he leaned forward and gazed into the terrified eyes of his daughter. What had he said? What had the devil that possessed him muttered for the girl’s hearing?
Gravelot’s stupefied brain had begun to realise the relationship and the wickedness of his own terrible nature as he threw off the vile spell that _vaudoux_ worship had cast over him. The change in his manner was swift; already the fever of his eyes had changed to a look of tenderness. “Go to bed at once, Sestrina,” he muttered in a hoarse voice that Sestrina hardly recognised. He reeled about like a drunken man as he began to take off his flowing cloak, which he wore as a disguise whenever he stole away to the fetish temples in the mountains.