XVI
Congo Magic
The thing that started Jibby talking was a feather. Right between his knees when he sat down was a crow’s tail feather, and he picked it up and it reminded him of something, because everything always did remind Jibby of something. He stuck it up in the ground.
“What did you do that for?” I asked him.
He looked at the feather.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I guess it reminded me of the time I was on the Congo River.”
“What about the Congo River does an old crow’s feather remind you of?” I asked him.
“Well, magic,” Jibby said. “A black feather is one of the things the natives use for bad magic. They use a black feather when they want to spoil an enemy’s plans. They stick a black feather in the ground like this, and then they make a ring of other stuff around it and put magic things in the circle.”
He showed me how they did it. He broke up some twigs and made a circle around the feather, and then he felt in his pocket for things to put in the circle. First he found his knife, and he held it in the cup of his two hands and said something like:
“Keeko, muk-muk, chuck-a-wah chang cho!”
Only, of course, I can’t remember what it was he did say. Then he put his knife inside the magic circle, and took out a box of safety matches and said:
“Keeko, muk-muk, chuck-a-wah chang cho!”
Then he put the matches in the magic circle, and dug into his pocket again, and all he could find was three or four nails and a couple of screw eyes big enough to run a tiller rope through. He chanted:
“Keeko, muk-muk, chuck-a-wah chang cho!”
So into the magic circle went the nails and the screw eyes, and he looked around and picked up the map Uncle Beeswax had made, and he chanted over that and put that in the magic circle. Then he held out his hands over the whole business and began some more nonsense-chanting, starting low and getting louder, and I sort of got the idea and began to chant with him, and there we both were, slapping our knees and chanting away like lunatics:
“Keeko! Keeko!
Keeko, muk-muk, keeko!
Chuck-a-wah! Chuck-a-wah!
Chuck-a-wah chang cho chee!”
And over and over again. And then, all of a sudden, somebody was standing behind us. I nearly jumped out of my skin, I was so frightened at first. I thought maybe our magic had really raised an evil spirit or something, and then I saw it was Cawley Romer. And I hadn’t been so far wrong, either, for Cawl Romer is one of the meanest fellows that ever comes to our island. Only one is meaner, and that is his brother Hen. They are great big bullies.
“What are you doing?” Cawl Romer asked in that rough way a bully asks things.
“Magic,” I said, as meek as Moses. “Jibby was showing me how the Congo natives do magic.”
Cawl Romer was looking at the magic circle, and all at once he pushed his foot over it and knocked down the feather and scattered the twigs and things.
“I’ll magic your magic for you!” he said in his mean way, but he kept his foot down and I saw why. He had it on top of the map Jibby had put in the magic circle. He bent down and took the map from under his foot. He turned it one way and another way and looked at it, but he couldn’t make anything out of it, Uncle Beeswax had done it so roughly and in such a hurry.
“I know what this is,” he said. “I know why you’ve got baskets and this rake and this axe here. You know where a grape tree is.”
“It’s none of your business if we do,” I said, sulky-like, because I knew what Cawl Romer would be up to next.
“Is that so!” he said. “Well, I’ll show you mighty soon whether it is my business or not. I saw Old Beeswax chin with you, and I saw him go rowing off up the river. A grape tree belongs to the man that gets it. I just mean to clean this one out before. …”
“Keeko! Keeko!
Keeko muk-muk keeko!”
chanted Jibby Jones.
He paid no attention to Cawl Romer at all, seemed like. He had stuck up the feather again and made his twig circle and was chanting as if nothing had happened.
“You listen to me,” Cawl Romer said, pushing Jibby in the back with his foot. “Do you know where this grape tree is?”
Jibby looked up at him as solemn as an owl.
“I don’t know what’s the matter with my nose!” he said. “I did know where that tree was; it was directly in front of my nose. That’s how I was going to it—I was going to follow my nose. But now my nose won’t point. It’s too bad!”
“Well, I’ll attend to that,” said Cawl Romer. “You’re going to show me where that tree is, nose or no nose, or you’ll be sorry you ever came to this island. And you, too, George. You know me! Now, you listen! I’m going up to my cottage and get Hen and some baskets, and you sit right here and don’t move! Understand that? If you’re not here, I’ll skin you and eat you when I do catch you.”
Then he went away, and he took the map with him. Jibby sat where he was until Cawl Romer was out of sight and then he jumped up like a flash.
“Hasten!” he said. “Hasten!”
I did not know what he was up to.
“What are you going to do?” I asked him.
“Magic,” he said. “Congo magic, Georgie.”
He went to his skiff and took out the bait pail and chucked it and we pulled the
