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.