8/15 They close in and seize him, kill him, drink his blood, and eat him; by so doing gaining immense additional strength. One, a huge, fat spirit--if you can imagine a fat spirit--carried a green boondee, or waddy, with which he tapped people on the backs of their necks: result, heat apoplexy. A few years ago, an old black fellow laid wait for him and 'flattened him out,' since which there has been no heat apoplexy. We think it is because the bad times have made people too poor to overheat themselves with bad spirits of a liquid kind. The blacks differ, and certainly there were some cases of even total abstainers falling victims to the heat wave. |