“Things look bad, Frank,” Mr. Goodenough said as they walked towards their home. “I fear that the king is determined upon war, and if so our lives are not worth a month's purchase.”
“It can't be helped,” Frank said as cheerfully as he could. “We must make the best of it. Perhaps something may occur to improve our position.”
The next day the four German missionaries, who had so long been kept captive, called upon them, and they obtained a full insight into the position. This seemed more hopeful than the king's words had given them to expect. The missionaries said that negotiations were going on for their release, and that they expected very shortly to be sent down to Cape Coast. So far as they knew everything was being done by the English to satisfy the king, and they looked upon the establishment of peace as certain. They described the horrible rites and sacrifices which they had been compelled to witness, and said that at least three thousand persons were slaughtered annually in Coomassie.
“You noticed,” one of them said, “the great tree in the marketplace under which the king sat. That is the great fetish tree. A great many victims are sacrificed in the palace itself, but the wholesale slaughters take place there. The high brushwood comes up to within twenty yards of it, and if you turn in there you will see thousands of dead bodies or their remains putrefying together.”
“I thought I felt a horribly offensive smell as I was talking to the king,” Frank said shuddering. “What monsters these people must be! Who would have thought that all that show of gold and silver and silks and bright colors covered such horrible barbarism!”
After chatting for some time longer, and offering to do anything in their power to assist the captives, the Germans took their leave.
CHAPTER XVII: THE INVASION OF FANTI LAND
The following morning Mr. Goodenough and Frank were called to the door by the noise of a passing crowd, and to their horror saw a man being taken to sacrifice. He was preceded by men beating drums, his hands were pinioned behind him. A sharp thin knife was passed through his cheeks, to which his lips were noozed like the figure 8. One ear was cut off and carried before him, the other hung to his head by a small piece of skin. There were several gashes in his back, and a knife was thrust under each shoulder blade. He was led by a cord passed through a hole bored in his nose. Frank ran horror stricken back into the house, and sat for a while with his hand over his eyes as if to shut out the ghastly spectacle.
“Mr. Goodenough,” he said presently, “if we are to be killed, at least let us die fighting to the last, and blow out our own brains with the last shots we have left. I don't think I'm afraid of being killed, but to be tortured like that would be horrible.”