Voodoo Tales: The Ghost Stories of Henry S Whitehead by Henry S. Whitehead & David Stuart Davies

Author:Henry S. Whitehead & David Stuart Davies [Whitehead, Henry S.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wordsworth Editions Ltd
Published: 2012-09-01T00:00:00+00:00

Cassius

Originally published in

Strange Tales of Mystery and Terror, November 1931

My house-man, Stephen Penn, who presided over the staff of my residence in St Thomas, was not, strictly speaking, a native of that city. Penn came from the neighboring island of St Jan. It is one of the ancient West Indian names, although there remain in the islands nowadays no Caucasians to bear that honorable cognomen.

Stephen’s travels, however, had not been limited to the crossing from St Jan – which, incidentally, is the authentic scene of R. L. Stevenson’s Treasure Island – which lies little more than a rowboat’s journey away from the capital of the Virgin Islands. Stephen had been ‘down the Islands’, which means that he had been actually as far from home as Trinidad or, perhaps, British Guiana, down through the great sweep of former mountaintops, submerged by some vast, cataclysmic, prehistoric inundation and named the Bow of Ulysses by some fanciful, antique geographer. That odyssey of humble Stephen Penn had taken place because of his love for ships. He had had various jobs afloat and his exact knowledge of the house-man’s art had been learned under various man-driving ship’s stewards.

During this preliminary training for his life’s work, Stephen had made many acquaintances. One of these, an upstanding, slim, parchment-colored Negro of thirty or so, was Brutus Hellman. Brutus, like Stephen, had settled down in St Thomas as a house-man. It was, in fact, Stephen who had talked him into leaving his native British Antigua, to try his luck in our American Virgin Islands. Stephen had secured for him his first job in St Thomas, in the household of a naval officer.

For this friend of his youthful days, Stephen continued to feel a certain sense of responsibility; because, when Brutus happened to be abruptly thrown out of employment by the sudden illness and removal by the Naval Department of his employer in the middle of the winter season in St Thomas, Stephen came to me and requested that his friend Brutus be allowed to come to me ‘on board-wages’ until he was able to secure another place.

I acquiesced. I knew Brutus as a first-rate house-man. I was glad to give him a hand, to oblige the always agreeable and highly efficient Stephen, and, indeed, to have so skilful a servant added to my little staff in my bachelor quarters. I arranged for something more substantial than the remuneration asked for, and Brutus Hellman added his skilled services to those of the admirable Stephen. I was very well served that season and never had any occasion to regret what both men alluded to as my ‘very great kindness’!

It was not long after Brutus Hellman had moved his simple belongings into one of the servants’-quarters cabins in my stone-paved yard, that I had another opportunity to do something for him. It was Stephen once more who presented his friend’s case to me. Brutus, it appeared, had need of a minor operation, and, Negro-like, the two of them, talking the matter over between themselves, had decided to ask me, their present patron, to arrange it.

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