Page:Salem - a tale of the seventeenth century (IA taleseventeenth00derbrich).pdf/82

 view a hideous wooden figure—an idol, probably—bearing a mocking and frightful resemblance to a human being. This figure was about two feet high, of ghastly ugliness, and coarsely bedaubed with red and blue paint.

Freeing the figure from its mats, John proceeded to set it up before the face of the rock, and behind the little bonfire which Tituba had heaped up; and then, rubbing some bits of dry wood rapidly together, he procured a fire, and lighted a blaze. Joining their hands together to form a ring, the two next danced silently round the slowly igniting fire, with mad leaps and strange, savage contortions of limb and features, until the whole mass was in a blaze, and the red flames threatened to consume them. Then they unclasped their hands, and Tituba drew forth from the bosom of her dress some gums, herbs, and spices of pungent, acrid odor, and flung them onto the fire, and, making a rude sort of besom of broken green branches, she fanned the rising smoke and curling flames into the grinning face of the idol; while John took from his bosom a small