4o8
Martinique
Sketches.
—"Anni toque Diabe-là cagnan /" He would never have been able to do anything ;—and his wife had a great mind just to send him to bed at once, instead of letting him sit down to eat all those nice things. But she was a kind-hearted soul ; and so she let Y é stay and eat with the children, though he did not deserve it. And they all ate and ate, and kept on eating and filling themselves until daybreak—-pauvpiti! But during this time the Devil had begun to smell badly, and he had become swollen so big that Y é found he could not move him. Still, they knew they must get him out of the way somehow. The children had eaten so much that they were all full of strength—yo té plein lafbce ; and Y é got a rope and tied one end round the Devil's foot ; and then he and the children—all pulling together—managed to drag the Devil out of the cabin and into the bushes, where they left him just like a dead dog. They all felt themselves very happy to be rid of that old Devil. But some days after old good-for-nothing Y é went off to hunt for birds. He had a whole lot of arrows with him. He suddenly remembered the Devil, and thought he would like to take one more look at him. And he did. Fouinq ! what a sight ! The Devil's belly had swelled up like a morne : it was yellow and blue and green,— looked as if it was going to burst. And Yé, like the old fool he always was, shot an arrow up in the air, so that it fell down and stuck into the Devil's belly. Then he wanted to get the arrow, and he climbed up on the Devil, and pulled and pulled till he got the arrow out. Then he put the point of the arrow to his nose,—just to see what sort of a smell dead Devils had. The moment he did that, his nose swelled up as big as the refinery-pot of a sugar-plantation. #