The scene was wild enough. Before the door a circle was formed by about
twenty women, all in their best clothes, sitting on the ground, and
swaying their bodies to and fro, while they sung in chorus the wild dirge
already mentioned, the words of which I could not make out; in the centre
of the circle sat four men playing on gumbies, or the long drum formerly
described, while a fifth stood behind them, with a conch--shell, which he
kept sounding at intervals. Other three negroes kept circling round the
outer verge of the circle of women, naked all to their waist cloths,
spinning about and about with their hands above their heads, like so many
dancing dervishes. It was one of these three that from time to time took
up the recitative, the female chorus breaking in after each line. Close
to the drummers lay the body in an open coffin, supported on two low
stools or trestles; a piece of flaming resinous wood was stuck in the
ground at the head, and another at the feet; and a lump of kneaded clay,
in which another torchlike splinter was fixed, rested on the breast. An
old man, naked like the solo singer, was digging a grave close to where
the body lay. The following was the chant:--
"I say, broder, you can't go yet."
THEN THE CHORUS OF FEMALE VOICES
"When de morning star rise, den we put you in a hole."
CHORUS AGAIN
"Den you go in a Africa, you see Fetish dere."
CHORUS
"You shall nyam goat dere, wid all your family.
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