sorcerers. His lurking-place, in the defiles of
the John Crow Mountains, was named Nanny Town, after his wife. Here two
mountain streams plunged over a rock nine hundred feet high into a
romantic gorge, where their waters met in a seething caldron called
"Nanny's Pot." Into this, as the negroes believed, the black witch Nanny
could, by her sorcery, cast the white soldiers who pursued them. As for
old Cudjoe himself, the English declared that he must be in league with
the devil, whom he resembled closely enough to be his brother. And they
were not without warrant for this belief, for he held his own against them
for nine long years, at the end of which the Maroons were more numerous
than at the beginning, since those who were killed were more than made up
by fresh accessions of runaway slaves.

It is certain that the British soldiers were no match for Cudjoe the
dwarf. Retreating warily before them, he drew them into many an ambush in
the wild defiles of the mountains, where they were cut down like sheep,
the waters of the "Pot" being often reddened with their blood. From many
of the expeditions sent against him only a few weary and wounded survivors
returned, and it became difficult to induce the soldiers to venture into
that den of death.

At length a British officer succeeded in dragging two mountain howitzers
up the cliffs to a position from which Nanny Town, the inaccessible Maroon
stronghold, could be shelled. When the shells, hurled from the distant
cannon, began to burst among them, the Maroons were at first so filled
with terror that some of them threw themselves over the cliffs, but the
bulk of them merely scattered and let the howitzers do their work among
empty walls.

Cudjoe was astonished at the bursting shells, but he was too old a bird to
be frightened. "Dis a new way de buckra man got to fight," he said. "He
fire big ball arter you, and den de big ball fire little ones arter you.
Dat's berry cunnin', but ole Cudjoe know somethin' better un dat."

Leading his men through the woods with the stealthy tread and noiseless
skill of the American Indians, the dwarf and his Maroons suddenly burst
upon the unwary soldiers from the rear while they were busy about their
guns, delivering a telling volley and then rushing upon them with blade
and axe. Few of the whites escaped this ferocious onset, and the
shell-delivering howitzers remained in Cudjoe's hands.

Despairing of conquering the forest-born Maroons by t