Superstitions 
When he looked up and saw the white man 
glaring at him so ferociously, th@* demoniacal ex¬ 
pression of his countenance immediately changed 
to one of abject terror. He threw down his 
torch and fled with all his might, hotly pursued 
by one greater than Shango ; but he slipped 
through a hole in a wall and 1 failed to capture 
him. When I turned around expecting to hear 
expressions of gratitude from the people whose 
house I had saved, 1 found myself facing a dan¬ 
gerous and angry mob. They denounced me for 
such a sacrilegious act and hurled at me the most 
terrible curses known to them. My blood was 
now up, too, and lifting up my voice above the 
uproar I shouted, 
“You are a lot of fools. If Shango is a god, 
he does not need you to fight for him. Let him 
fight for himself. I defy him.” 
I could now speak their language very well 
and they understood what I said. They con¬ 
tinued to gesticulate and curse a little longer, and 
then dispersed without doing me any harm. A 
mutilated form of this story was afterward pub¬ 
lished in England in which it was stated that I 
dispossessed Shango with a rod. If this had 
been true, I should not have lived to write this 
true account of the affair. 
93 
