By Sheer Pluck: A Tale of the Ashanti War

by G. A. Henty

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 soon recovered consciousness, and, being carried to the camp, his leg was amputated below the knee, and he was soon afterwards taken down to the coast.

It had been known that there were alligators in the river, a young one about a yard long having been captured and tied up like a dog in the camp, with a string round its neck. But it was thought that the noise of building the bridge, and the movement on the banks, would have driven them away. After this incident bathing was for the most part abandoned.

The affair made Frank a great favorite in the naval brigade, and of a night he would, after dinner, generally repair there, and sit by the great bonfires, which the tars kept up, and listen to the jovial choruses which they raised around them.

Two days after the arrival of Sir Garnet, an ambassador came down from the king with a letter, inquiring indignantly why the English had attacked the Ashanti troops, and why they had advanced to the Prah. An opportunity was taken to impress him with the nature of the English arms. A Gatling gun was placed on the river bank, and its fire directed upon the surface, and the fountain of water which rose as the steady stream of bullets struck its surface astonished, and evidently filled with awe, the Ashanti ambassador. On the following day this emissary took his departure for Coomassie with a letter to the king.

On the 12th the messengers returned with an unsatisfactory answer to Sir Garnet's letter; they brought with them Mr. Kuhne, one of the German missionaries. He said that it was reported in Coomassie that twenty thousand out of the forty thousand Ashantis who had crossed the Prah had died. It is probable that this was exaggerated, but Mr. Kuhne had counted two hundred and seventy-six men carrying boxes containing the bones of chiefs and leading men. As these would have fared better than the common herd they would have suffered less from famine and dysentery. The army had for the most part broken up into small parties and gone to their villages. The wrath of the king was great, and all the chiefs who accompanied the army had been fined and otherwise punished. Mr. Kuhne said that when Sir Garnet's letter arrived, the question of peace or war had been hotly contested at a council. The chiefs who had been in the late expedition were unanimous in deprecating any further attempt to contend with the white man. Those who had remained at home, and who knew nothing of the white man's arms, or white man's valor, were for war rather than surrender.

Mr. Kuhne was unable to form any opinion what the final determination would be. The German missionary had no doubt been restored as a sort of peace offering. He was in a bad state of health, and as his brother and his brother's wife were among the captives, the Ashanti monarch calculated that anxiety for the fate of his relatives would induce him to argue as strongly as possible in favor of peace.

Frank left the camp on the Prah some days before the arrival of the white troops, having moved forward with the scouts under Lord Gifford, to whom his knowledge of the country and language proved very valuable. The scouts did their work well. The Ashantis were in considerable numbers, but fell back gradually without fighting. Russell's regiment were in support, and they pressed forward until they neared the foot of the Adansee Hills. On the 16th Rait's artillery and Wood's regiment were to advance with two hundred men of the 2d West Indians. The Naval Brigade, the Rifle Brigade, the 42d, and a hundred men of the 23d would be up on the Prah on the 17th.