ed. They gyrated in couples, a few at a time, throwing their
bodies into the most startling attitudes and the wildest contortions,
while the whole company of black lookers-on, incited by the tones of the
weird music and the violent posturing of the dancers, swayed and writhed
in passionate sympathy, beating their breasts, palms and thighs in time
with the bones and drums, and at frequent intervals lifting, in that
wild African unison no more to be described than forgotten, the
unutterable songs of the Babouille and Counjaille dances, with their
ejaculatory burdens of "_Aie! Aie! Voudou Magnan!_" and "_Aie Calinda!
Dance Calinda!_" The volume of sound rose and fell with the augmentation
or diminution of the dancers' extravagances. Now a fresh man, young and
supple, bounding into the ring, revived the flagging rattlers, drummers
and trumpeters; now a wearied dancer, finding his strength going,
gathered all his force at the cry of "_Dance zisqu'a mort!_" rallied to
a grand finale and with one magnificent antic fell, foaming at
the mouth.

The amusement had reached its height. Many participants had been lugged
out by the neck to avoid their being danced on, and the enthusiasm had
risen to a frenzy, when there bounded into the ring the blackest of
black men, an athlete of superb figure, in breeches of "Indienne"--the
stuff used for slave women's best dresses--jingling with bells, his feet
in moccasins, his tight, crisp hair decked out with feathers, a necklace
of alligator's teeth rattling on his breast and a living serpent twined
about his neck.

It chanced that but one couple was dancing. Whether they had been sent
there by advice of Agricola is not certain. Snatching a tambourine from
a bystander as he entered, the stranger thrust the male dancer aside,
faced the woman and began a series of saturnalian antics, compared with
which all that had gone before was tame and sluggish; and as he finally
leaped, with tinkling heels, clean over his bewildered partner's head,
the multitude howled with rapture.

Ill-starred Bras-Coupe. He was in that extra-hazardous and irresponsible
condition of mind and body known in the undignified present as
"drunk again."

By the strangest fortune, if not, as we have just hinted, by some
design, the man whom he had once deposited in the willow bushes, and the
woman Clemence, were the very two dancers, and no other, whom he had
interrupted. The man first stupidly regarded, next admiringly gaze