It didn't do any
good, you know! Stealing went on just the same.

"So my partner, down here, went and got hold of the chief Obeah-man or
witch-doctor of the island--paid him a good stiff price, too--and asked
him to put a charm on the plantation. He did it, and those bottles and
feathers are some of the charms. We pay for having them renewed every
year. It costs a tidy bit, but less than the watchmen and police did."

"And have the thefts stopped?"

"Absolutely. There hasn't been a shilling's worth of stuff touched since
the obeah-man was here."

"But obeah wouldn't have any effect on East Indian coolies," objected
Stuart.

"Coolies don't steal," was the terse reply, "those that are Mohammedans
don't, any way. Trinidad negroes do. They're different from the
Barbadian negroes, quite different. Obeah seems to be about the only
thing they care about."

"I ran up against some Obeah in Haiti," remarked Stuart, "though Voodoo
is stronger there."

"I never heard of much real Voodoo stuff here in the Windward Islands,"
the planter rejoined, "but Obeah plays a big part in negro life. And, as
I was just telling you, the whites aren't above using it, sometimes."

"In Haiti," responded Stuart, "Father and I once found an Obeah sign in
the road. Father, who knows a lot about those things, read it as a charm
to prevent any white man going that way. I thought it was silly to pay
any attention, but Father made a long detour around it. A week or so
after I heard that a white trader had been driving along that road, and
he drove right over the sign. Half a mile on, his horse took fright,
threw him out of the buggy and he was killed."

The planter shrugged his shoulders.

"I know," he said. "It's all right to call it coincidence, but down in
these islands that kind of coincidence happens a bit too often. For me,
I'll throw a shilling to an Obeah-man any time I see one, and I won't
play any tricks with charms if I know enough about them to keep away."

The buggy jogged along at a smart pace until the shore was reached, and
then set down the beach over the hard wet sand. On the one side heaved
the long rollers of the Atlantic, on the other was the continuous grove
of coco-nut palms, thirteen miles long, one of the finest unbroken
stretches in the entire world.

A hospitable welcome was extended to Stuart at the house of the Nariva
Cocal, and, after dinner, the planter took him to the shores of the
Nariva River, not more than