AN ISLAND EXISTENCE 83 



away. We followed the sounds, listening intently. Presently 

 the chanting became louder and then very plain. It appeared 

 to issue from a wooden building near the back edge of town. 

 We moved closer and slipped quietly to the walls. Light shone 

 through a crack in the boards and we pressed our faces close. 



Inside were David, Ophelia and Thomas of the Lagoon Chris- 

 tophe and a number of other Negroes. But they had undergone 

 a transformation. No longer were they wearing the easy rags 

 of a few days past. Mail order clothes adorned their bodies and 

 patent leather shoes concealed their horny feet. But the great- 

 est change was in their expressions. 



The hulking David was pounding madly on a large drum 

 and his eyes appeared about to burst from their sockets. Big 

 veins stood out heavily on his forehead, sweat poured in streams 

 down his neck. "Hallelujah!" he shouted and came down on 

 the drums with a thunderous vibration. Ophelia was shaking 

 with the ague and little bits of froth showed on her lips. Little 

 Thomas was in nearly as bad a state and was shouting at the 

 top of his lungs, "Hallelujah!" It was a good old-time southern 

 Negro revival, garnished with a Bahaman flavor. I understood 

 then what Thomas had meant when he said he was a minister 

 of the Gospel. The other blacks were in like condition and they 

 were clapping their hands and stomping their feet in time to 

 the drum. The instrument increased in fervor and the entire 

 congregation shook with the power of it. "Hallelujah!" they 

 roared in one voice. "Hallelujah, praise de Lawd!" Ophelia 

 rose unsteadily and began writhing with the ecstasy of the 

 music. But soon her convolutions assumed the rhythm of the 

 drum, beat and sway, beat and sway, and the tempo changed— 

 slowly— then fast and sensuous. It was no longer religious re- 

 vival but African Congo such as I had seen many times in 

 near-by Haiti. The gentle and smiling Ophelia who had baked 

 our bread in the sand at the Lagoon Christophe was a woman 



