"Yes, sah. And see, he shake his big head once more. Hoo, hoo! How he make me laugh!"
"Tell him that we may also build a fire under him just to keep his toes warm, 'cause it would be a terrible thing if a monarch like he was to catch his death o' cold."
The interpreter had barely finished telling the trembling king all this, when a stir in the after part of the room announced the arrival of the commanding officer, Fraser, and Captain Flint.
The sailors fixed bayonets, and drew silently up.
Then Colonel Fraser, through the interpreter, sternly ordered the king to stand up, and just as sternly addressed him. Pointing out to the assassin the enormity of all his fearful crimes, and what his punishment might be, if he, the commanding officer, cared to go to extremes. He told him much else that need not be mentioned here. But the palaver thus begun did not end for days.
The soldiers and sailors meanwhile commanded a large body of niggers to go everywhere over the town and bury every human carcase, and even every bone. The market stalls were heaped around the crucifixion trees and fired. The trees themselves burned fiercely.
The king's special murder-yard was also seen to. Then a grass and bamboo house was run up for the king in a different part of the town. To this he was escorted, laughed at and jeered by women and children, while his old blood-stained palace and everything in it was burned to the ground. Many of the adjoining huts caught fire, but the conflagration, though at night it looked very alarming, did not extend far, and was soon got under by the natives themselves throwing earth over it.
* * * * * * * * * * *
In another week's time the brave little army was once more on the march back to the river at Sapelé.
But the king had almost emptied his treasures of gold-dust to pay the demanded indemnity; he agreed also to send to New Benin much ivory, copal, nutmegs, and spices and palm-oil. A treaty was signed (it has not been kept, by the way) which bound his Majesty down to discontinue the awful human sacrifices, and to rule his subjects peacefully, on pain of another invasion by British forces, who next time, the commanding officer informed him, would hang him on the nearest tree and annex his country.