94 



rashness and his eagerness to taste the liquor, of 

 which he had so long been deprived, he opened the 

 flagon, and swallowed draught after draught, till he 

 sunk upon the ground in a state of complete insen- 

 sibility. The watchman then summoned the two 

 negroes from their concealment, who bound his 

 arms, and conveyed him to Montego Bay, where he 

 was immediately sentenced to execution. He died 

 most heroically ; kept up the terrors of his impos- 

 ture to his last moment ; told the magistrates, who 

 condemned him, that his death should be revenged 

 by a storm, which would lay waste the whole island, 

 that year ; and, when his negro gaoler was binding 

 him to the stake at which he was destined to suffer, 

 he assured him that he should not live long to 

 triumph in his death, for that he had taken good 

 care to Obeah him before his quitting the prison. 

 It certainly did happen, strangely enough, that, 

 before the year was over, the most violent storm 

 took place ever known in Jamaica ; and as to the 

 gaoler, his imagination was so forcibly struck by 

 the threats of the dying man, that, although every 

 care was taken of him, the power of medicine ex- 

 hausted, and even a voyage to America under- 

 taken, in hopes that a change of scene might 

 change the course of his ideas, still, from the 

 moment of Plato's death, he gradually pined and 

 withered away, and finally expired before the 

 completion of the twelvemonth. 



The belief in Obeah is now greatly weakened, 



