By Sheer Pluck: A Tale of the Ashanti War, G. A. Henty [100 books to read in a lifetime .TXT] 📗

character of the forest changed. The undergrowth disappeared and the high trees grew thick and close. The plantain, which furnishes an abundant supply of fruit to the natives and had sustained the Ashanti army during its stay south of the Prah, before abundant, extended no further. Mansue stood, like other native villages, on rising ground, but the heavy rains which still fell every day and the deep swamps around rendered it a most unhealthy station.

Beyond Mansue the forest was thick and gloomy. There was little undergrowth, but a perfect wilderness of climbers clustered round the trees, twisting in a thousand fantastic windings, and finally running down to the ground, where they took fresh root and formed props to the dead tree their embrace had killed. Not a flower was to be seen, but ferns grew by the roadside in luxuriance. Butterflies were scarce, but dragonflies darted along like sparks of fire. The road had the advantage of being shady and cool, but the heavy rain and traffic had made it everywhere slippery, and in many places inches deep in mud, while all the efforts of the engineers and working parties had failed to overcome the swamps.

It was a relief to the party when they emerged from the forests into the little clearings where villages had once stood, for the gloom and quiet of the great forest weighed upon the spirits. The monotonous too too of the doves—not a slow dreamy cooing like that of the English variety, but a sharp quick note repeated in endless succession—alone broke the hush. The silence, the apparently never ending forest, the monotony of rank vegetation, the absence of a breath of wind to rustle a leaf, were most oppressive, and the feeling was not lessened by the dampness and heaviness of the air, and the malarious exhalation and smell of decaying vegetation arising from the swamps.

Sootah was the station beyond Mansue, beyond this Assin and Barracoo. Beyond Sootah the odors of the forest became much more unpleasant, for at Fazoo they passed the scene of the conflict between Colonel Wood's regiment and the retiring Ashantis. In the forest beyond this were the remains of a great camp of the enemy's, which extended for miles, and hence to the Prah large numbers of Ashantis had dropped by the way or had crawled into the forest to die, smitten by disease or rifle balls.

There was a general feeling of pleasure as the party emerged from the forest into the large open camp at Prahsue. This clearing was twenty acres in extent, and occupied an isthmus formed by a loop of the river. The 2d West Indians were encamped here, and huts had been erected under the shade of some lofty trees for the naval brigade. In the center was a great square. On one side were the range of huts for the general and his staff. Two sides of the square were formed by the huts for the white troops. On the fourth was the hospital, the huts for the brigadier and his staff, and the post office. Upon the river bank beyond the square were the tents of the engineers and Rait's battery of artillery, and the camps of Wood's and Russell's regiments. The river, some seventy yards wide, ran round three sides of the camp thirty feet below its level.

The work which the engineers had accomplished was little less than marvelous. Eighty miles of road had been cut and cleared, every stream, however insignificant, had been bridged, and attempts made to corduroy every swamp. This would have been no great feat through a soft wood forest with the aid of good workmen. Here, however, the trees were for the most part of extremely hard wood, teak and mahogany forming the majority. The natives had no idea of using an axe. Their only notion of felling a tree was to squat down beside it and give it little hacking chops with a large knife or a sabre.

With such means and such men as these the mere work of cutting and making the roads and bridging the streams was enormous. But not only was this done but the stations were all stockaded, and huts erected for the reception of four hundred and fifty men and officers, and immense quantities of stores, at each post. Major Home, commanding the engineers, was the life and soul of the work, and to him more than any other man was the expedition indebted for its success. He was nobly seconded by Buckle, Bell, Mann, Cotton, Skinner, Bates and Jeykyll, officers of his own corps, and by Hearle of the marines, and Hare of the 22d, attached to them. Long before daylight his men were off to their work, long after nightfall they returned utterly exhausted to camp.

Upon the 1st of January, 1874, Sir Garnet Wolseley, with his staff, among whom Frank was now reckoned, reached the Prah. During the eight days which elapsed before the white troops came up Frank found much to amuse him. The engineers were at work, aided by the sailors of the naval brigade, which arrived two days after the general, in erecting a bridge across the Prah. The sailors worked, stripped to the waist, in the muddy water of the river, which was about seven feet deep in the middle. When tired of watching these he would wander into the camp of the native regiments, and chat with the men, whose astonishment at finding a young Englishman able to converse in their language, for the Fanti and Ashanti dialects differ but little, was unbounded. Sometimes he would be sent for to headquarters to translate to Captain Buller, the head of the intelligence department, the statements of prisoners brought in by the scouts, who, under Lord Gifford, had penetrated many miles beyond the Prah.

Everywhere these found dead bodies by the side of the road, showing the state to which the Ashanti army was reduced in its retreat. The prisoners brought in were unanimous in saying that great uneasiness had been produced at Coomassie by the news of the advance of the British to the Prah. The king had written to Ammon Quatia, severely blaming him for his conduct of the campaign, and for the great loss of life among his army.

All sorts of portents were happening at Coomassie, to the great disturbance of the mind of the people. Some of those related singularly resembled those said to have occurred before the capture of Rome by the Goths. An aerolite had fallen in the marketplace of Coomassie, and, still more strange, a child was born which was at once able to converse fluently. This youthful prodigy was placed in a room by itself, with guards around it to prevent anyone having converse with the supernatural visitant. In the morning, however, it was gone, and in its place was found a bundle of dead leaves. The fetish men having been consulted declared that this signified that Coomassie itself would disappear, and would become nothing but a bundle of dead leaves. This had greatly exercised the credulous there.

Two days after his arrival Frank went down at sunset to bathe in the river. He had just reached the bank when he heard a cry among some white soldiers bathing there, and was just in time to see one of them pulled under water by an alligator, which had seized him by the leg. Frank had so often heard what was the best thing to do that he at once threw off his Norfolk jacket, plunged into the stream, and swam to the spot where the eddy on the surface showed that a struggle was going on beneath. The water was too muddy to see far through it, but Frank speedily came upon the alligator, and finding its eyes, shoved his thumbs into them. In an instant the creature relaxed his hold of his prey and made off, and Frank, seizing the wounded man, swam with him to shore amid the loud cheers of the sailors. The soldier, who proved to be a marine, was insensible, and his leg was nearly severed above the ankle. He