CHAPTER XII.
IN THE SACRED GROVE.
ONE by one the slaves of the gang in which we had travelled were dragged forward, held over the execution bowl and sent as messengers to spirit-land, until it came to Omar"s turn. In a second two white-faced demons with keen swords seized him, and despite the cry for mercy that escaped his lips, he was rushed forward, the frenzied executioners flinging him down unceremoniously, and bending his head over the warm blood with which the basin was now filled to overflowing.
At that instant, as the chief executioner strode forward and held his dripping blade uplifted, ready to strike, the King raised his hand to command silence, and the hideously-dressed official paused in wonder, his sword poised in air.
Betea, the Ocra, bending low, was whispering to the King, when the latter suddenly took the nut from his mouth and said:
"So it is upon Omar, son of my enemy the Naya of Mo, that my eyes rest!
Let him stand forth with his white companion."
Obedient to the command of the King, the executioners allowed Omar to rise, and in a few moments we both stood before the royal stool.
"How came you here?" asked Prempeh, scowling.
"I was captured and sold as slave to the Arab dealers," he answered, drawing himself up with that princely air he always a.s.sumed in moments of danger.
"And your white companion? How is it he is in our capital?"
"I have been to the land of the white men across the sea, and he returned as my friend," Omar replied. "We were travelling homeward to Mo when by treachery I was entrapped."
"By whom?"
"By Samory."
Across Prempeh"s evil face there spread a sickly smile. He was an ally of the great Mohammedan chief, and saw at once that Samory had sold the son of their mutual enemy into slavery.
"Your queen-mother," he said, "has times without number sent her armed hordes over the border to raid our villages, and it is the fetish that has delivered you, her son, into our hands. The fetish has not sent you hither as a sacrifice, but as a hostage. Therefore your life shall be spared together with that of your white friend, but you shall both be given as slaves to our trusted Ocra Betea. Let the sacrifice proceed.
Prempeh, King of all the Ashantis, has spoken."
Next second a poor black wretch was dragged along in Omar"s place and the sword fell heavily upon him, while we were both hurried away in charge of a caboocer to the residence of the man who was, according to Omar, one of his mother"s bitterest foes. Glad were we to escape with our lives from that awful scene of inhuman butchery, but it seemed that as slaves of this court favourite to whom we had been given, there would be but little brightness in our lives.
As day succeeded day our gloomy forebodings were only too truly realized. Betea, the most powerful of the King"s Ocras, seemed to delight in making our lives a burden to us, for amid luxurious surroundings we were beaten, starved, and ill-treated, until even death under the executioner"s knife seemed a preferable fate.
Six months pa.s.sed; six weary months of slavery and wretchedness. Our position seemed absolutely hopeless, and I began to fear that we should never escape from the City of Blood. The scenes we witnessed there were so revolting, that I cannot now reflect upon them without a shudder. The ghastly "customs," the absence of all protection for life and property, the grinding oppression, the nameless horrors of all kinds, were terrible. Blood was continually flowing, for every anniversary demanded fresh holocausts, and the "Golgotha" presented a sight of indescribable horror. The unwritten code of laws were of such a sanguinary nature, that the public executioners formed a numerous section of the community and were constantly employed collecting their victims, leading them for exhibition through the capital and then hacking them to pieces in presence of the king. Soldiers, slaves, retainers of the n.o.bles and conquered tribes possessed no defined rights, and their lives and property were practically in the hands of the royal and governing cla.s.ses.
Close to the house of our inhuman master was the fetish grove, a horrible place, surrounded by rank gra.s.s, dirt, and reeking with odours pestilential. Once or twice I wandered in that grove, treading upon human bones at every step--the heaped-up remains of thousands of miserable creatures slaughtered to please the Ashanti ruler"s l.u.s.t for blood. Poor crumbling bones, mouldy and sodden as the rotten wood of older trees, yet once clothed with form and vigour, lay everywhere, while under the cotton wood trees skulls were heaped and vultures hovered about in hundreds.
One evening we attended our master on one of his official visits to Bantama, the fetish priest"s village where we so narrowly escaped execution, and were able to thoroughly inspect the gruesome place. The most horrible blood-orgies known to superst.i.tion and fetish-worship were almost daily practised there, and in nearly every abode there were stools and chairs smeared with human blood, drinking bowls were stained with it, and some vessels were half-filled with black clotted blood. In the priests" inner chambers, dark dens filled with foul odours, to which we entered with Betea, we found not only the whole apartment smeared with blood, but bones and portions of human remains lying about openly, or wrapped in rags to serve as charms. One building, probably the residence of one of the chief priests, was embellished with mud-moulded panels and scroll work, and the columns facing the princ.i.p.al quadrangle were fluted.
The colours were the prevailing white clay, and red ochre plastered upon the wattle and mud pillars.
Suddenly, as in the dusk we left this house, a loud horrible shriek sounded. At first we thought some poor wretch was being sacrificed, but again and again it sounded, and all turned pale, even the royal Ocra himself.
"What"s that, I wonder?" I asked Omar, who, bearing our master"s sword, was walking at my side.
"The gree-gree!" he gasped, looking round in fear, while at that moment there sounded two ear-piercing blasts upon a horn.
"Hark!" cried Betea himself, trembling. "The gree-gree is out to-night!"
I remembered that I had been told by one of our fellow-slaves that the gree-gree was a great fetish who appeared horned like a demon, and killed all persons he came across. None dare lock their doors when the gree-gree walked, and only the King himself was invulnerable. This no doubt was another trick of the priests to frighten the superst.i.tious natives, and at the same time wreak vengeance upon those who had offended them. Once again the notes of the horn rose weird and shrill, and died away. Then Betea, himself affrighted, turned to us saying:
"Fly! fly for your lives. If the gree-gree catches you you will be struck upon the brow. His arm deals death everywhere."
In a moment all took to their heels, including the royal Ocra, but Omar, grasping my arm, whispered excitedly:
"Stay. We may now escape."
As the words left his lips we caught sight of a weird black figure dressed in long coa.r.s.e gra.s.s, with rams" horns upon his head, his face whitened and a second pair of eyes painted over his own. In his hand gleamed a long bright knife, while at his side was suspended a freshly-severed human arm and hand. Yelling and leaping like a veritable demon, he suddenly noticed the flying figures of our fellow-slaves, and halting a moment, dashed after them, leaving us alone.
"He will return here, so we must hide," Omar said quickly, and glancing round, we both saw at the end of the dark ghostly avenue of fetish-trees an oblong windowless mud building with a high-pitched triple gra.s.s thatched roof. Running towards it we managed to wrench off the padlock from the door and enter. It was, we discovered, the reputed sepulchre of the Ashanti kings. Without, it was guarded by all sorts of fetish-charms, extraordinary odds and ends, animals" claws, broken pottery, sc.r.a.ps of tin, bits of wood, stones and human bones. Within, by the aid of a lamp we found burning were revealed several great coffers clamped with copper and iron, each resting upon two big stools of carved cotton-wood. Jars and vases filled with water and wine, braziers full of sweet-smelling leaves, and plates of food were placed beside each, offerings for the use of the dead.
Omar told me that when an Ashanti king died, he was buried in an ordinary coffin for a time, but afterwards the body was invariably disinterred, and the joints of the skeleton articulated with gold bands and wire. It was then placed, doubled up, in one of these s.p.a.cious coffers--fully four feet long by two feet wide and deep--and the other skeletons were attendants, slaughtered and sent to the land of Shades to wait on the monarch"s ghost.
"Possibly," I said, "much of the ghostly grimness and worked-up horrors about this place are cunningly devised, not only to protect the Royal tombs from being plundered by the superst.i.tious natives, but to help to safeguard the State treasures concealed in yonder coffins."
"Yes," he said. "In this priest-ridden country all the superst.i.tion is heaped up for their benefit and profit. But we must get out of here before dawn, run past the gree-gree if he is about, and make a dash for the open forest. It is our only chance of escape, for at dawn the priests will come again to watch beside the tombs, and if discovered we are certain to be skewered through the mouth, dragged before Prempeh and hacked to pieces by the criminal executioner."
"Well, any fate is better than that," I observed. "Let us wait an hour or so, and then make a rush for it."
"Very well," he answered, and together we resumed the work of exploring the strange place.
Soon, however, our lamp burned dim, flickered, and went out; then, after waiting in silence for half an hour in the pitch darkness, we softly opened the door, and, holding our breaths, crept out. With noiseless tread we stole along the sacred grove and were nearly at the end when, without warning, the hideous gree-gree, with a fiendish yell of triumph, sprang out of some bushes upon us.
Involuntarily, I put up my fist to ward off attack, and in doing so gave him a well-directed blow full in the face, sending him down flat on his back.
"Hurrah!" cried Omar in delight. "Floored him! Let"s run for our lives."
Ere the midnight murderer could spring to his feet, we had dashed away as fast as our legs could carry us, running along the fetish-grove, past the cl.u.s.ter of executioners" houses, across the open s.p.a.ce where in the centre stood the great tree under which Prempeh had sat to witness the wholesale sacrifice, and continuing until we came to a path through the high elephant-gra.s.s, we soon left the city far behind us, and plunged into the dark, dismal forest by the narrow winding way that led to the unexplored regions of the north.
When at length we paused to take breath Omar, panting, said:
"At last we are free again. Betea will not seek us, for he naturally believes we were killed by the gree-gree. If Zomara favours us we shall yet live to enter Mo and lead our hosts into the country of Samory."
Then, taking from his neck a little bag of some strange powder, he took therefrom a pinch, and with fervent words scattered it to the four quarters of the wind, thus making a thank-offering to the Crocodile-G.o.d.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE WAY OF THE THOUSAND STEPS.
TO describe in detail our long toilsome journey and the terrible hardships we suffered during the next two months is unnecessary. Suffice it to say that without means of barter, unarmed, and living upon fruit and roots, we tramped along that narrow path through the pestilential marshes and the great forests where no light penetrated through the thick foliage of the giant trees for several weeks, always due north and pa.s.sing villages sometimes, until we crossed the Sene river, ascended the mountains beyond, and found ourselves upon a great level gra.s.s-covered plateau, which occupied us several days in traversing. At last we came to the border of Prempeh"s kingdom, crossed the Volta river that wound in the brilliant sunlight for many miles like a golden thread among the trees, and soon entered the fertile country of the Dagombas, a wild-looking tribe who were allies of the great Naya. At Yendi, seven days" march through the bush from the Volta, we interviewed the Dagomba king and received a most enthusiastic welcome. Presents of food and slaves were given us, as well as a musket each, with some curious ivory-hilted knives, and we were treated as honoured guests of his sable majesty, who, Omar informed me, was indebted to the Naya for his royal position.