Chapter II: The Scarabœus

Before the troops, on the side of a large, rocky hill, and in the red fiery light of the setting sun, setting in a sky where it flamed like a vast crimson globe amid an orange and amber space that blended into green and blue overhead, lay Coomassie, with all its long spacious streets of wigwam-like houses, built of wattlework and mud, plastered and washed with white clay, ornamented with rows of beautiful banyan trees, and having before the door of each dwelling a special tree, at the foot of which were placed idols, calabashes, and human bones, as fetishes for protection against evil.

It was four miles in circumference, and its most important edifice was the palace from which King Koffee had fled--a central stone building of European architecture, in the chief thoroughfare, so spacious that it included two or three small streets, besides piazzas for the royal recreation, with arcades of bamboo, the bases of which were ornamented with elegant trellis work of an Egyptian character. The accommodation was most ample, as befitted a monarch whom the State required to possess 3333 wives.

'There go the bugles at last, Dalton!' shouted Jerry, cheerfully, as he sprang up and drew his sword, when the advance was sounded, just as the sun went down, and the troops began to approach this terrible place, through ground the atmosphere of which was made appalling by the awful stench from exposed corpses which lay about in every direction, and over which great vultures flapped their wings--the dead of past days of local slaughter for various royal reasons; thus it was dark when the 42d and the Rifles reached the edge of the swamp which nearly surrounds the place--on three sides at least--that horrible and pestilential swamp, with floating bones and the rotting flesh of the victims.

The first man through it, and actually in Coomassie, was young Lord Gifford, who led the way with his scouts till he was wounded, when the enemy opened fire for a time; but as the king had fled with his warriors, the resistance was merely nominal, and tremendously hearty was the cheer of the 42d as they entered the place, and the pipes sent up a skirl of triumph, which announced that fact to all the troops who were coming on.

Excitement over now, Jerry Wilmot felt his soul sicken as he marched at the head of his company up one of the principal streets, with the awful odour of dead flesh everywhere around--victims never being buried, but left where they were killed, or cast into the adjacent swamp. Over all that town, as a writer has it, the odour of death hung everywhere, and came on every sickly breath of hot wind--'a town where here and there a vulture hops at one's very feet, too gorged to join the filthy flock, preening itself on the gaunt dead trunks that line the way; where blood is plastered like a pitch coating over trees, floors and stools--blood of a thousand (fetish) victims yearly renewed; where headless bodies make common sport; where murder pure and simple--the monotonous massacre of bound men--is the one employment of the king and the one spectacle of the populace.'

Amid such surroundings the troops piled arms in the market-place, guards were posted, and the rest sat down to their rations, amid the light from blazing houses, which the native levies began to loot and then set aflame; while many Ashantee warriors, who had been but recently fighting with our men, lingered near the groups quietly, with their muskets in their hands, saying ever and anon, 'Tank you, tank you'--an attempt at the only English they knew.

The Fantee prisoners the troops had come so far to release were found chained to logs; and one European, an Englishman, who was found free, displayed like them the most extravagant joy on finding himself saved from death at the hands of King Koffee.

'Is there a drop in your flask, Dalton?' said an officer, propping himself on his sword. 'The odour here is literally awful.'

'You are welcome to what remains, but a strong cigar is best, my boy,' replied Dalton, as he wrenched open a tin of preserved meat with the blade of his sword.

'Now that we are here,' said Jerry, 'what will the next move be?'

'Burn the whole place, no doubt, and then be off like birds,' was the reply of more than one.

'And so end the most hideous and uninteresting war in which British soldiers have been engaged.'

'What the devil is that? Trundle it out of sight,' cried Jerry to a rifleman, who was dragging near them an object which he had found, and which proved to be one of the king's war-drums, ornamented with sixteen human skulls and thirty-two thigh bones, and in the cords of which were stuck three war-trumpets, made each to imitate a throat, with a tongue of red cloth, and jaws but too real to form the mouthpiece. 'Take away the d----d thing! Who could sup with that beside them?' exclaimed Jerry, in great disgust, as the soldier laughed, saluted, and dragged away the ghastly trophy, on the resounding head of which some of his comrades were ere long beating while they sang some familiar music-hall ditty.

As it was expected that King Koffee might still come to terms, his capital was not yet given to the flames. Indeed, he had sent messengers to Sir Garnet Wolseley with missives to the effect that he would be early with him next day and arrange for peace; but the morning of the next day passed and noon without any sign of his coming, though the general and staff were in readiness to receive him, and all were restless and uneasy, as it was impossible to linger long in such a vast charnel-house as Coomassie.

A dreadful tempest of rain made the adjacent country a swamp, giving a hint that the fatal and pestilential wet season was at hand, and the words, 'We must be off,' were in everyone's mouth.

When five o'clock on that day came, and there were no tidings from King Koffee--now that he had betaken himself into the interior, thus proving himself unworthy of trust--it was resolved to leave marks of our power and vengeance that would never be forgotten.

The troops knew that the streams in their rear would be swollen, that the mere runnels in the ravines would soon become brawling torrents, so there was no time to be lost in getting back to the coast, where the ships awaited the army, which had only five days' provisions, so it was requisite that the campaign should end sharply, surely, and sternly.

The royal state umbrella and various gold ornaments were taken as presents for the Queen from the palace, in which the Highlanders were much exercised in their minds to find, framed upon the wall of a room, an engraving of 'Burns and Highland Mary' beside a bird organ, and various old clocks, pots, and kettles; stools wet with the blood of recent human victims, the royal couch garnished with human skulls--and skulls, indeed, adorned most of the rooms, the floors of which were full of graves. In fact, the whole palace, as Mr. Henty wrote, appeared to be little better than a cemetery, though in its cellars were found bottles of brandy, palm wine, and even champagne, which the discoverers thereof were not slow to fully appreciate, and drain off to 'The girls we've left behind us.'

At last orders were given that the palace was to be blown up, the whole town reduced to ashes, and a start was to be made for the sea; then the five past days of continued toil and incessant fighting were forgotten, and every heart beat happily and every bronzed face grew bright.

On the day the Engineers began to mine the palace, Dalton and Jerry Wilmot paid it a visit, and the latter made very merry about the three thousand three hundred and thirty-three wives of the fugitive king.

Unluckily for them both, the former saw a gold _scarabœus_, about the size of a goose-egg, among the many strange ornaments at the head of the king's bed, and with some force contrived to wrench it off, saying to Tony as he did so, 'An article of _bijoutric_ for Laura's boudoir--a souvenir of Coomassie!'

The words were hardly out of his mouth when two tall and powerful savages, who had been quietly--if sullenly and resentfully--watching the 'looting' of much royal paraphernalia and rubbish by officers and men, threw themselves upon him with yells, while brandishing long straight daggers that were minus guards or proper hilts, and who wore each at his neck a human jaw, polished clean and white, as a kind of order of valour perhaps.

Gesticulating violently, they seemed to demand the surrender of the _scarabœus_, which proved eventually to be a famous fetish--famous even as the skull of the murdered Sir Charles MacCarthy, which the king had carried off with him as the chief palladium of Ashantee.

Fortunately Dalton had his sword in his hand, and kept them at bay till they were expelled at the bayonet point by some of the Royal Engineers, but when he and Jerry came forth they were conscious that these two Ashantees with the jaw-bones were watching them and dogging their footsteps, and were menacing them; but anon they slunk away when Dalton put his hand to his revolver case.

Then they re-appeared again and again to his great annoyance and irritation.

'This looks ill,' said Jerry; 'it is some state fetish. Throw the confounded thing away. Chuck it at their woolly heads ere worse comes of it.'

'What can come of it?' asked Dalton.

'Your assassination or mine before we reach the coast, perhaps.'

'As for their menaces,' said Dalton, laughing, 'I value them as little as an old troop horse might a pistol-shot.'

But not long after he had cause to regret not taking Jerry's advice.

In a wattle-built house, of which they had taken possession merely as a shelter from the heat of the sun by day and the baleful dew by night, the two friends were partaking of a kind of 'tiffin' of tinned beef and biscuits, with a glass of grog, before the march, when, at an opening which served as a window, they became suddenly conscious of two woolly heads and two dark faces, the gleaming eyes of which were stealthily watching them, but vanished the moment Dalton started up.

'Look here, Dalton,' said Jerry, 'I don't like this business at all. I am not a timid fellow, nor a very thoughtful one perhaps, but I have an unpleasant presentiment that there is more in this matter than you think.'

'More in what?' asked Dalton, testily.

'This confounded gold beetle that you've bagged. Perhaps it is brass.'

'Not at all. Well?'

'It is said to be some great fetish, and you may be followed, tracked to the bitter end--to Cape Coast, for all I know--till it is recaptured, or you, perhaps, made away with. You remember the story of the "Moonstone," published about ten years ago, and how the possessor of it was followed about till it was re-won?'

'Pshaw!--that was in a novel.'

'And this is reality. Novels are supposed to represent real life.'

'There go the bugles; the advance guard is falling in,' said Dalton, as he put the gold _scarabœus_ in his haversack, and they hurried forth.

At six o'clock in the evening the advanced guard moved off, and the main body followed in the dusk, about an hour after. The Black Watch remained as a rear-guard to cover the Engineers and burning party, which consisted of about a hundred men of the latter corps.

Furnished with palm-leaf torches, they began the work of stern and deliberate destruction, and, although grave fears were expressed that the late tempests of rain would prevent the streets of thatch and wood from burning, ere long the retiring troops saw, with cheers, mighty volumes of smoke rolling from end to end of Coomassie, and there was but one regret expressed, that the flames did not consume the Bantama (or burial-place of the kings), with the temples of their hideous and atrocious paganism, made terrible by the gore of a myriad human victims.

The pipers struck up, and merrily the Highlanders began their homeward march, after the officer commanding the Engineers had reported the total destruction of the palace, which he mined at four corners, and brought down like a house of cards.

Around it all was in flames, and, owing to the dampness of the materials of which the town was built, astounding were the columns, vast and dense, of black smoke that rolled, not only over the whole site of Coomassie, but the adjacent country, while ever and anon clear, bright pyramids of flames shot skyward as the retiring troops toiled round the margin of the corpse-strewn swamp on their homeward way, with their arms at 'the slope,' as all were loaded.

And so the dire portents of the fetishmen, that Coomassie--the City of the Tree--would pass away, and nothing remain of it but dead leaves, were being realised to the fullest extent.

From the nature of the narrow path, the country through which it lay, and the obscurity caused by the smoke enveloping the scenery, the march of the troops was of a somewhat straggling nature, and proved a terrible one. They had barely proceeded a hundred yards before they had every reason to rejoice that the rains so greatly dreaded had not set in three days earlier than they did.

In some parts through which the line of march lay, the district had become an entire morass, and in one place, through which--in advancing--they had passed nearly dry-shod there was a sheet of water nearly five hundred yards broad, and in another, over which a narrow wooden bridge had been thrown, there was a depth of six feet. 'So King Koffee had calculated on these spring rains, as the Emperor Nicholas did on the winter snows, to destroy our troops; but, happily, both calculated in vain.'

It was during the straggling march, caused by some of these obstructions, that the catastrophe we have to narrate took place.

Again the troops were at times marching almost in file, and in rear of the last company of Rifles were the two friends, Jerry and Dalton, and, leaving their men to be led by their senior subalterns, they paced on together, laughing from time to time, and talking of home and those who awaited them there, now that the brief campaign was over, for homeward now went the thoughts of all; but these two were unaware that their steps were dogged and watched surely and stealthily.

As they made a little detour to avoid a more than usually deep pool surrounded by some straggling palm-trees, they suddenly found themselves face to face with at least a dozen of Ashantees--notably two of them the fellows with the jawbones. They seemed to have sprung out of the earth, so suddenly did they appear amid the eddying smoke and misty vapour; and they at once struck Dalton down before he could utter a word.

Jerry instantly shot three in quick succession with his revolver, and, knowing the reports would at once summon succour, he shouted cheerily, and dragged Dalton to his feet, but at the same moment was struck down senseless by a tremendous blow on the head, and falling--falling, he knew not where--remembered no more...

In short, he had tumbled into a species of nullah or hollow, completely fringed round with enormous boughs and luxuriant greenery, where he lay hidden and undiscovered by the riflemen whom his pistol-shots summoned, and who searched the whole vicinity in vain, till they could delay no longer, as the waters were rising fast. They carried off with them Dalton, who was severely wounded by dagger-blades, and whose haversack had been cut away, and taken, and with it, of course, the unlucky _scarabœus_.

And so, while poor Jerry lay where we have described, the army pushed on its homeward way, and ere long found the obstructions increase as the night advanced. Where there had been a small stream at one place the water was three hundred yards wide and five feet deep. With great toil the Engineers bridged this by felling a huge tree, over which the white troops defiled slowly, while the carriers and others had to splash their way through as best they could, and many of the shorter men disappeared under the surface more than once.

A worse obstruction still was encountered at Ordah, where the water had risen two feet above the bridge built by the Engineers, and was more than five feet deep in the mid-channel, and there the shorter men had all to be assisted by their comrades who could swim. Another day crept on, and by five o'clock in the afternoon the whole of the white troops had succeeded in crossing the half-hidden bridge; but darkness was coming on, the river was rising fast, and for all they knew the Ashantees, infuriated by the destruction of Coomassie, might be pouring in wild hordes upon their rear!

Dalton's wounds had been dressed, but ere that was done he had lost so much blood that his chances of recovery seemed very precarious; and meanwhile how fared Jerry Wilmot?

When he struggled back to consciousness, and half raised himself out of the place in which he lay by grasping the branch of a bush, he found himself alone, and surrounded by dead silence. Not a sound fell on his ear, and at a little distance he could see the red smouldering flames of Coomassie. But where were the troops?

'Oh, God, help me!' he wailed out. 'Gone--gone, and I am left alone and helpless behind them!'

There was a gleam of moonlight now, and after several futile efforts, for his senses reeled like those of one intoxicated, he made out the hour on his watch.

'Midnight--and they have been six hours on the march!'

He had been in a state of semi-unconsciousness for some two hours. The sense--the conviction that he must instantly do something--attempt to overtake them, made him struggle up desperately, feebly, and half blinded in his own blood.

'Oh, Lord,' thought Jerry, 'I shall lose the little reason I have left! Why did Dalton covet that infernal beetle!'

Alone--alone at Coomassie. Was not this some horrible nightmare, and not a reality, crushing and bewildering? for but two fates seemed to await him. If he did not die of hunger in the wilderness, he would be sure to be tracked and taken; and then, if not killed at once, he would be doomed to a lingering death by torture in Coomassie, or what remained of it--tortures such as devils alone could devise.

He made an attempt to stand, but all power of volition seemed to have left him; he fell again into the leafy hollow, and for a time remembered no more.