...And the Night Hissed

Book excerpt: "Had I known what lay ahead of me in the jungles of Africa," he wrote," I would never have contemplated coming in the first place." Dr. Cromwell was part of a notorious West African slave raid that took place in June 1806. He was the ship's head physician with two surgeons and three loblolly boys for assistance. Hence, the voyage to the Dark Continent was routine and uneventful for the most part. However, as soon as his team set foot on the shores of Yorubaland in search of able-bodied slaves, bizarre things began to happen, people disappeared mysteriously, strange tootles were heard in the middle of night. The team's belated knowledge of 'Olori Ejo', a local superstition involving snakes, spirits and sinister deaths, only made matters worse. So when his good friend and budding explorer, Lord Powell, vanished mysteriously one fateful night while the others slept, Cromwell knew he had made a wrong decision.