Page:Weird Tales v15n01 1930-01.djvu/99

"The girl was Finotte, whom I had seen buried."

If you have read Mr. Seabrooke's book on Haiti, The Magic Island, recently published, you must have been struck by the chapter entitled Dead Men Working in the Cane Fields.

As I was talking recently on this matter to Mr. de Travers the neurologist of Geneva, American born and with a large experience of the West Indies and of the negro mind, he said, "Why not?"

"Because," said I, "it's impossible. It would be easier to make one of Karel Capek's robots than to take a dead man and put motive power into him and turn him into a slave. You know yourself the post-mortem changes that take place in the tissues of the body; even magic has limits, and———"

"A moment," said he. "I mentioned Mr. Seabrooke's book as confirmation of the story I had to tell you, and perhaps you will suspend judgment on the whole matter till I have finished. The story has to do with Martinique.

"Many years ago when quite a young man I lived at St. Pierre, Martinique.

"St. Pierre, now a mound of ashes, stood quite alone amongst the towns of the world; there was no other place like it: gay as Paris with a touch of New Orleans, yellow-tinted and palm-