he would return and rule.  He always addressed him by his African name and title in his own tongue.  He took him into the wards of his hospital, and taught him to be useful at surgical operations and to care for the instruments, that he might become familiar with them and with the sight of blood, which at first maddened him.  Once he gave him a drug that made his head throb, and then bled him, with almost instant relief.  He affected an interest in the amulets which hung at his neck, and besought him to give him one to wear.  He committed to his care, with expressions of the greatest solicitude, a strong box, brass bound and carefully locked, which he told him contained his god, a most potent and cruel deity, who would, however, when it pleased him, give back the life of a dead man for blood.  This box contained a silver cup, with a thermometer fixed in its side; a glass syringe holding about a third of a pint; a large curved needle perforated in its length like a tube, sharp at one end, at the other expanded to fit accurately the nozzle of the syringe; a little strainer also fitting the syringe; and last, a small bundle of wires with a handle like an egg-beater.

For the rest, this savage was crooked, ill-shapen and hideous.  His skin was as black as night; his head small, the face immensely disproportionate to the cranium; his jaws massive and armed with glittering white teeth filed to points; his cheeks full, his nose flat, his eyes little, deep-set, restless, wicked.  The usage he received from his new master was so different from his former experience with white men, and so in accord with his own undisciplined nature, that it called forth all the sympathies of his character.  He soon loved the Frenchman with an intensity of affection almost incomprehensible.  It is no exaggeration to say that he would have willingly laid down his life to gratify his master’s slightest wish.  The latter’s knowledge was to him so comprehensive, his power so boundless and his will so imperious and inflexible, that he feared and worshiped him as a god.

Fournier looked upon his monster with satisfaction, and longed for a battle.  His wish was at last gratified.  On the Fourth of July, 1864, an engagement took place three miles north-west of Legareville, near the North Edisto River.  A force of Union soldiery had been assembled from the Sea Islands and from Florida, massed on Seabrook Island, and pushed thence up into South Carolina.  The object of this expedition was unknown; indeed, as nothing whatever was accomplished, the strategy of it remains to this day unexplained.  However, forewarned is forearmed.  Every movement was watched and reported by the rebel scouts; all the troops that could be spared from Charleston were sent out to oppose the invaders; roads were obstructed; bridges were destroyed, batteries erected in strong positions, everything prepared to impede their progress.  Our story needs not that we should dwell upon the sufferings