The word appears 2 times.
The novel takes place in a time shortly after the emancipation of slaves. It is set in Jamaica and is the story of a group of children who are kidnapped and left unsupervised. It has some elements of The Lord of the Flies in this regard.
...One of the (white) children has come to a village, and the blacks there are afraid of her...
Encouraged by the comfortable feeling of inspiring fright she advanced, and at last found and old creature who would talk: Dis Liberty Hill, dis Black Man's Town, Old-time niggers, dey go fer run from de busheas (overseers), go fer live here. De piccaninnies, dey never see buckras (whites)... And so on. It was a refuge, built by runaway slaves, and still inhabited.
... The following is a description of the wind in a storm..
The bouncing rain seemded to cover the ground with a white smoke, a sort of sea in which the blacks wallowed like porpoises. One nigger-boy began to roll away: his mother, fogetting caution, rose to her feet: and immediately the fat old bedlam was blown clean away, bowling along across fields and hedgerows like some one in a funny fairy-story, till she fetched up against a wall and was pinned there, unable to move.