Travis eye that boded ill for somebody, and
one by one the more prudent gamesters withdrew.

Then suddenly the storm broke.

Later accounts were not clear as to just what started the fray, but
start it did.

Dominique's knife appeared from some place, and the table crashed.
Then the knife swished through space like a hornet and buried its
point harmlessly in a door across the room.

What followed is still a subject of wondering conversation on San
Juan Hill.

It seems that Mr. Travis seized Mr. Raffin by the collar of his coat,
and swung him round and round and over his head. Mr. Raffin streamed
almost straight out, like the imitation airplanes that whirl dizzily
about the tower in an amusement park. Suddenly there was a rending
of cloth, and Dominique shot through the air to encounter the wall
with a soul-satisfying thump.

Ambrose looked bewildered at the torn clothing he held in his hand,
and then at the limp form of his late antagonist. Mr. Raffin lay
groaning, naked from the waist up.

Ambrose strode across to administer further chastisement, but
was halted by a cry from one of the onlookers. This man stood
pointing at Dominique's naked back--pointing, and staring with eyes
that rolled with genuine negro terror.

"Look!" gasped the affrighted one. "Look! It's de Voo-doo Eye--
_dat man's a witch_! Ambrose, fo' de Lawd's sake, git away from
hyar!"

"What you-all talkin' about?" scoffed Ambrose, striding closer, and
rolling Dominique so that the light shone full on his back.
"What you-all talkin'----_Good Lawd_"!

This last ejaculation from Ambrose was caused by the sight that met
his gaze.

There, on the yellow back before him, reaching from shoulder to
shoulder, was tattooed the likeness of a great human eye!

Everyone saw it now. To some--the Northern darkies--it meant nothing.
But to the old-school Southern negroes it meant mystery--magic--death.
_It was the sign of the Voodoo_!

Several of the more superstitious onlookers retreated in poor order,
their teeth chattering. Their mammies had told them about the Voodoo
Eye. They remembered the tales whispered in the slave quarters about
people being prayed to death by these baleful creatures of ill omen!
They weren't going to take any chances!

Ambrose, for all his natural courage, was shaken. He remembered old
Tom Blue, the Texas Voodoo, who poisoned twenty-one people and came
to life after the white men lynched him. And now he had laid rough
ha