"Down, Sceva, down!" she said, sternly, as he caught his huge paws in the tangled masses of her hair in his rough caresses; "down, I say!" The animal slunk from her and crouched upon a pile of fern in a corner of the hut.
The abode of the sorceress was rude and wild in the extreme. It was a slight frame of branchless firs, constructed against a bare rock, which constituted the east side, or wall of it. The interstices between the upright stakes were filled in with loose limbs of trees, and planks from wrecked fisher's boats; the roof in many places was open to the sky, and in its centre was a large aperture that served for an outlet to the smoke that rose from a fire smouldering beneath a caldron placed underneath. By the fitful glare it sent round, the interior of the hut, with its furniture, was distinctly visible. Entwined about an upright pole that sustained the roof were dead serpents of enormous size, and of brilliant colours, their glittering fangs hideously shining in the firelight. Festoons of toads, lizards, and other revolting reptiles hung from the ceiling, while round the wall were placed human bones arranged in fantastic figures, and ghastly sculls glared on the sight on every side, while all that could affect the imagination was conspicuous to the eyes of the observer. In the caldron in the centre of the hut was seething a dark liquid that emitted a fetid odour, and threw up volumes of smoke, which, unable to escape freely through the roof, hung heavily to within a few feet of the ground floor. Over the caldron bent the figure of an African, who was stirring the liquid with a human thigh bone, and occasionally, with a child's scull, dipping a portion from it and pouring it on the fire beneath, which instantly flamed up fiercely, casting a blue, baleful light throughout the hut. The firelight shone bright upon his person, bringing into relief every feature of his hideous countenance. His head was of huge proportions, and deformed, being perfectly flat on the top, and obtruding in front into a round forehead like an infant's newly born. It was, save a thick fringe of hair that hung shaggy and grisly above his eyes, wholly bald. His eyes were large, and projected red and wild from their beds, while his nose and lips were of enormous dimensions, which, with the total absence of anything like a chin, gave the lower part of his face a brutelike look. Yet there was an extraordinary human intelligence in the expression of his eye, in which dwelt the light of no common intellect.