CHAPTER XII.
IN THE SACRED GROVE.
ONE by one the slaves of the gang in which we had travelled were draggedforward, held over the execution bowl and sent as messengers tospirit-land, until it came to Omar's turn. In a second two white-faceddemons with keen swords seized him, and despite the cry for mercy thatescaped his lips, he was rushed forward, the frenzied executionersflinging him down unceremoniously, and bending his head over the warmblood with which the basin was now filled to overflowing.
At that instant, as the chief executioner strode forward and held hisdripping blade uplifted, ready to strike, the King raised his hand tocommand silence, and the hideously-dressed official paused in wonder, hissword poised in air.
Betea, the Ocra, bending low, was whispering to the King, when the lattersuddenly 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 torise, 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 assumed in moments ofdanger.
"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 returnedas my friend," Omar replied. "We were travelling homeward to Mo when bytreachery I was entrapped."
"By whom?"
"By Samory."
Across Prempeh's evil face there spread a sickly smile. He was an ally ofthe great Mohammedan chief, and saw at once that Samory had sold the sonof their mutual enemy into slavery.
"Your queen-mother," he said, "has times without number sent her armedhordes over the border to raid our villages, and it is the fetish thathas delivered you, her son, into our hands. The fetish has not sent youhither as a sacrifice, but as a hostage. Therefore your life shall bespared together with that of your white friend, but you shall both begiven 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 thesword fell heavily upon him, while we were both hurried away in charge ofa caboocer to the residence of the man who was, according to Omar, one ofhis mother's bitterest foes. Glad were we to escape with our lives fromthat awful scene of inhuman butchery, but it seemed that as slaves ofthis court favourite to whom we had been given, there would be but littlebrightness in our lives.
As day succeeded day our gloomy forebodings were only too trulyrealized. Betea, the most powerful of the King's Ocras, seemed to delightin making our lives a burden to us, for amid luxurious surroundings wewere beaten, starved, and ill-treated, until even death under theexecutioner's knife seemed a preferable fate.
Six months passed; six weary months of slavery and wretchedness. Ourposition seemed absolutely hopeless, and I began to fear that we shouldnever escape from the City of Blood. The scenes we witnessed there wereso revolting, that I cannot now reflect upon them without a shudder. Theghastly "customs," the absence of all protection for life and property,the grinding oppression, the nameless horrors of all kinds, wereterrible. Blood was continually flowing, for every anniversary demandedfresh holocausts, and the "Golgotha" presented a sight of indescribablehorror. The unwritten code of laws were of such a sanguinary nature, thatthe public executioners formed a numerous section of the community andwere constantly employed collecting their victims, leading them forexhibition through the capital and then hacking them to pieces inpresence of the king. Soldiers, slaves, retainers of the nobles andconquered tribes possessed no defined rights, and their lives andproperty were practically in the hands of the royal and governingclasses.
Close to the house of our inhuman master was the fetish grove, a horribleplace, surrounded by rank grass, dirt, and reeking with odourspestilential. Once or twice I wandered in that grove, treading upon humanbones at every step--the heaped-up remains of thousands of miserablecreatures slaughtered to please the Ashanti ruler's lust for blood. Poorcrumbling bones, mouldy and sodden as the rotten wood of older trees,yet once clothed with form and vigour, lay everywhere, while under thecotton wood trees skulls were heaped and vultures hovered about inhundreds.
One evening we attended our master on one of his official visits toBantama, the fetish priest's village where we so narrowly escapedexecution, and were able to thoroughly inspect the gruesome place. Themost horrible blood-orgies known to superstition and fetish-worship werealmost daily practised there, and in nearly every abode there were stoolsand chairs smeared with human blood, drinking bowls were stained with it,and some vessels were half-filled with black clotted blood. In thepriests' inner chambers, dark dens filled with foul odours, to which weentered with Betea, we found not only the whole apartment smeared withblood, but bones and portions of human remains lying about openly, orwrapped in rags to serve as charms. One building, probably the residenceof one of the chief priests, was embellished with mud-moulded panels andscroll work, and the columns facing the principal quadrangle were fluted.The colours were the prevailing white clay, and red ochre plastered uponthe wattle and mud pillars.
Suddenly, as in the dusk we left this house, a loud horrible shrieksounded. At first we thought some poor wretch was being sacrificed, butagain and again it sounded, and all turned pale, even the royal Ocrahimself.
"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 momentthere 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 thegree-gree was a great fetish who appeared horned like a demon, and killedall persons he came across. None dare lock their doors when the gree-greewalked, and only the King himself was invulnerable. This no doubt wasanother trick of the priests to frighten the superstitious natives, andat the same time wreak vengeance upon those who had offended them. Onceagain the notes of the horn rose weird and shrill, and died away. ThenBetea, himself affrighted, turned to us saying:
"Fly! fly for your lives. If the gree-gree catches you you will be struckupon 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 figuredressed in long coarse grass, with rams' horns upon his head, his facewhitened and a second pair of eyes painted over his own. In his handgleamed a long bright knife, while at his side was suspended afreshly-severed human arm and hand. Yelling and leaping like a veritabledemon, he suddenly noticed the flying figures of our fellow-slaves, andhalting a moment, dashed after them, leaving us alone.
"He will return here, so we must hide," Omar said quickly, and glancinground, we both saw at the end of the dark ghostly avenue of fetish-treesan oblong windowless mud building with a high-pitched triple grassthatched roof. Running towards it we managed to wrench off the padlockfrom the door and enter. It was, we discovered, the reputed sepulchre ofthe Ashanti kings. Without, it was guarded by all sorts offetish-charms, extraordinary odds and ends, animals' claws, brokenpottery, scraps of tin, bits of wood, stones and human bones. Within, bythe aid of a lamp we found burning were revealed several great coffersclamped with copper and iron, each resting upon two big stools of carvedcotton-wood. Jars and vases filled with water and wine, braziers full ofsweet-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 ordinarycoffin for a time, but afterwards the body was invariably disinterred,and the joints of the skeleton articula
ted with gold bands and wire. Itwas then placed, doubled up, in one of these spacious coffers--fully fourfeet long by two feet wide and deep--and the other skeletons wereattendants, slaughtered and sent to the land of Shades to wait on themonarch's ghost.
"Possibly," I said, "much of the ghostly grimness and worked-up horrorsabout this place are cunningly devised, not only to protect the Royaltombs from being plundered by the superstitious natives, but to help tosafeguard the State treasures concealed in yonder coffins."
"Yes," he said. "In this priest-ridden country all the superstition isheaped up for their benefit and profit. But we must get out of herebefore dawn, run past the gree-gree if he is about, and make a dash forthe open forest. It is our only chance of escape, for at dawn the priestswill come again to watch beside the tombs, and if discovered we arecertain to be skewered through the mouth, dragged before Prempeh andhacked to pieces by the criminal executioner."
"Well, any fate is better than that," I observed. "Let us wait an hour orso, and then make a rush for it."
"Very well," he answered, and together we resumed the work of exploringthe strange place.
Soon, however, our lamp burned dim, flickered, and went out; then, afterwaiting in silence for half an hour in the pitch darkness, we softlyopened the door, and, holding our breaths, crept out. With noiselesstread 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 gavehim a well-directed blow full in the face, sending him down flat on hisback.
"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 asfast as our legs could carry us, running along the fetish-grove, past thecluster of executioners' houses, across the open space where in thecentre stood the great tree under which Prempeh had sat to witness thewholesale sacrifice, and continuing until we came to a path through thehigh elephant-grass, we soon left the city far behind us, and plungedinto the dark, dismal forest by the narrow winding way that led to theunexplored 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 naturallybelieves we were killed by the gree-gree. If Zomara favours us we shallyet 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 tooktherefrom a pinch, and with fervent words scattered it to the fourquarters of the wind, thus making a thank-offering to the Crocodile-god.