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Read books online » Fiction » By Sheer Pluck: A Tale of the Ashanti War by G. A. Henty (book club recommendations .txt) 📖

Book online «By Sheer Pluck: A Tale of the Ashanti War by G. A. Henty (book club recommendations .txt) 📖». Author G. A. Henty



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loaded musket by their side proceeding up country for an indefinite period. A school teacher was missing, and was found to have gone up with a case of ammunition. Casual visitors from down the coast had their stay prolonged.

Lazy Sierra Leone men, discharged by their masters for incurable idleness, and living doing nothing, earning nothing, kept by the kindness of friends and the aid of an occasional petty theft, found themselves, in spite of the European cut of their clothes, groaning under the weight of cases of preserved provisions.

Everywhere the town was busy and animated, but it was in the castle courtyard Frank found most amusement. Here of a morning a thousand negroes would be gathered, most of them men sent down from Dunquah, forming part of our native allied army. Their costumes were various but scant, their colors all shades of brown up to the deepest black. Their faces were all in a grin of amusement. The noise of talking and laughing was immense. All were squatted upon the ground, in front of each was a large keg labelled “pork.” Among them moved two or three commissariat officers in gray uniforms. At the order, “Now then, off with you,” the negroes would rise, take off their cloths, wrap them into pads, lift the barrels on to their heads, and go off at a brisk pace; the officer perhaps smartening up the last to leave with a cut with his stick, which would call forth a scream of laughter from all the others.

When all the men had gone, the turn of the women came, and of these two or three hundred, who had been seated chattering and laughing against the walls, would now come forward and stoop to pick up the bags of biscuit laid out for them. Their appearance was most comical when they stooped to their work, their prodigious bustles forming an apex. At least two out of every three had babies seated on these bustles, kept firm against their backs by the cloth tightly wrapped round the mother's body. But from the attitudes of the mothers the position was now reversed, the little black heads hanging downwards upon the dark brown backs of the women. These were always in the highest state of good temper, often indulging when not at work in a general dance, and continually singing, and clapping their hands.

After the women had been got off three or four hundred boys and girls, of from eleven to fourteen years old, would start with small kegs of rice or meat weighing from twenty-five to thirty-five pounds. These small kegs had upon their first arrival been a cause of great bewilderment and annoyance to the commissariat officers, for no man or woman, unless by profession a juggler, could balance two long narrow barrels on the head. At last the happy idea struck an officer of the department that the children of the place might be utilized for the purpose. No sooner was it known that boys and girls could get half men's wages for carrying up light loads, than there was a perfect rush of the juvenile population. Three hundred applied the first morning, four hundred the next. The glee of the youngsters was quite exuberant. All were accustomed to carry weights, such as great jars of water and baskets of yams, far heavier than those they were now called to take up the country; and the novel pleasure of earning money and of enjoying an expedition up the country delighted them immensely.

Bullocks were now arriving from other parts of the coast, and although these would not live for any time at Cape Coast, it was thought they would do so long enough to afford the expedition a certain quantity of fresh meat; Australian meat, and salt pork, though valuable in their way, being poor food to men whose appetites are enfeebled by heat and exhaustion.

It was not till upwards of six weeks after the fight at Abra Crampa that the last of the Ashanti army crossed the Prah. When arriving within a short distance of that river they had been met by seven thousand fresh troops, who had been sent by the king with orders that they were not to return until they had driven the English into the sea. Ammon Quatia's army, however, although still, from the many reinforcements it had received, nearly twenty thousand strong, positively refused to do any more fighting until they had been home and rested, and their tales of the prowess of the white troops so checked the enthusiasm of the newcomers, that these decided to return with the rest.





CHAPTER XXI: THE ADVANCE TO THE PRAH

A large body of natives were now kept at work on the road up to the Prah. The swamps were made passable by bundles of brushwood thrown into them, the streams were bridged and huts erected for the reception of the white troops. These huts were constructed of bamboo, the beds being made of lattice work of the same material, and were light and cool.

On the 9th of December the Himalaya and Tamar arrived, having on board the 23d Regiment, a battalion of the Rifle Brigade, a battery of artillery, and a company of engineers. On the 18th, the Surmatian arrived with the 42d. All these ships were sent off for a cruise, with orders to return on the 1st of January, when the troops were to be landed. A large number of officers arrived a few days later to assist in the organization of the transport corps.

Colonel Wood and Major Russell were by this time on the Prah with their native regiments. These were formed principally of Houssas, Cossoos, and men of other fighting Mahomedan tribes who had been brought down the coast, together with companies from Bonny and some of the best of the Fantis. The rest of the Fanti forces had been disbanded, as being utterly useless for fighting purposes, and had been turned into carriers.

On the 26th of December Frank started with the General's staff for the front. The journey to the Prah was a pleasant one. The stations had been arranged at easy marches from each other. At each of these, six huts for the troops, each capable of holding seventy men, had been built, together with some smaller huts for officers. Great filters formed of iron tanks with sand and charcoal at the bottom, the invention of Captain Crease, R.M.A., stood before the huts, with tubs at which the native bearers could quench their thirst. Along by the side of the road a single telegraph wire was supported on bamboos fifteen feet long.

Passing through Assaiboo they entered the thick bush. The giant cotton trees had now shed their light feathery foliage, resembling that of an acacia, and the straight, round, even trunks looked like the skeletons of some giant or primeval vegetation rising above the sea of foliage below. White lilies, pink flowers of a bulbous plant, clusters of yellow acacia blossoms, occasionally brightened the roadside, and some of the old village clearings were covered with a low bush bearing a yellow blossom, and convolvuli white, buff, and pink. The second night the party slept at Accroful, and the next day marched through Dunquah. This was a great store station, but the white troops were not to halt there. It had been a large town, but the Ashantis had entirely destroyed it, as well as every other village between the Prah and the coast. Every fruit tree in the clearing had also been destroyed, and at Dunquah they had even cut down a great cotton tree which was looked upon as a fetish by the Fantis. It had taken them seven days' incessant work to overthrow this giant of the forest.

The next halting place was Yancoomassie. When approaching Mansue the

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