"When once a man had been selected and seized for execution, there were only two ways by which he could evade it. One was to repeat the 'king's oath'—a certain formula of words—before they could gag him; the other was to break loose from his captors and run as far as the Bantama-Kumassi cross road; if he could reach this point before being overtaken, he was allowed to go free. In order to ensure against their prisoners getting off by either of these methods, the executioners used to spring on the intended victim from behind, and while one bound his hands behind his back, another drove a knife through both his cheeks, which effectually prevented him from opening his mouth to speak, and in this horrible condition he had to await his turn for execution. When the time came, the executioners, mad with blood, would make a rush for him and force him on to the bowl or stool, whichever served as the block. Then one of them, using a large kind of butcher's knife, would cut into the spine, and so carve the head off. As a rule, the victims were killed without extra torture, but if the order was given for an addition of this kind, the executioners vied with each other in devising original and fiendish forms of suffering. At great executions torture was apparently resorted to in order to please the spectators. It certainly seems that the people had by frequent indulgence become imbued with a kind of blood-lust, and that to them an execution was as attractive an entertainment as is a bull-fight to a Spaniard or a football match to an Englishman."
On November 14th, 1895, Baden-Powell received orders to proceed on active service, and a month later he was at Cape Coast Castle, charged with the onerous duties of getting the punitive force through from that point to Kumassi. What a task it was that lay before him few people can imagine. Between Cape Coast Castle and Kumassi the road was nothing but a narrow pathway, leading for the greater part of its 150 miles through primeval forest, dark, pestilential, and infested by the tsetse fly. To plunge an army of white troops into such a district was to court immediate trouble in the way of sickness, if not of death; accordingly it was necessary that many things should be thought of, and thought of with a thoroughness and care which the stay-at-home man can scarcely conceive. The details relating to transport, commissariat, reserve stores, engineering and telegraphic work, hospital provision, equipment for making roads and building bridges, had all to be considered and debated. Before he reached Cape Coast Castle, Baden-Powell had considered them all, and had put his ideas about them on paper. When he landed there innumerable difficulties lay before him, such difficulties that, as he says, "One could sit down and laugh to tears at the absurdity of the thing," but going on the old West Coast proverb, "Softly, softly, catchee monkey," he gradually reduced chaos into order, and at last found himself in command of "a jabbering, laughing mob," whose only uniform was—a red fez! All the way to Prahsu, seventy miles off, did Baden-Powell and his assistant, Captain Graham, lead and drive this motley assemblage. There they handed over to the Commissariat Department the loads they had brought up, and then set to work with their levies at clearing the bush, making roads, and doing general pioneer work. What sort of life he and Graham spent at that time is shown in a characteristic passage of Baden-Powell's diary:—
"At early dawn, while the hush of the thick white mist yet hangs above the forest, a pyjama-clad figure creeps from its camp-bed in the palm-leaf hut, and kicks up a sleeping drummer to sound 'Reveillé.' Then the tall, dark forest wall around the clearing echoes with the boom of the elephant-tusk horns, whose sound is all the more weird since it comes from between the human jaws with which the horns are decorated. The war-drums rumble out a kind of Morse rattle that is quite understandable to its hearers. The men get up readily enough, but it is merely in order to light their fires and to settle down to eat plaintains, while the white chiefs take their tubs, quinine, and tea. A further rattling of the drum for parade produces no result. The king is called for. 'Why are your men not on parade?' With a deprecatory smile the king explains that he is suffering from rheumatism in the shoulder, and therefore he, and consequently his tribe, cannot march to-day. He is given a Cockle's pill, and is warned that if he is not ready to march in five minutes, he will be fined a shilling. (The luxury of fining a real, live king to the extent of one shilling!) In five minutes he returns and says that if the white officer will give his men some salt to eat with their 'chop' (food), he thinks they will be willing to march.
"The white officer grimly says he will get a little salt for them, and proceeds to cut a specimen of a particularly lithe and whippy cane. A hundred pair of eyes are watching him. They read his intention in a moment, and at once there is a stir. A moment later, and that portion of the army are off in a long string upon the forward road, with their goods and chattels and chop tied up in bundles on their heads.
"But the whole levy is as yet by no means under way. Here a whole company of another tribe is still squatting, eating plantains, and jabbering away, indifferent to every other sound. 'Call the chief.' Yes, the chief is most willing to do anything; would march straight on to Kumassi if ordered. But his captains are at present engaged in talking over the situation, and he cannot well disturb them. The white chief does not take long about disturbing them, but still the rank and file don't move. The captains have something they would like to communicate to the white chief. 'Well, out with it.'
"The head captain has come to the conclusion, from information received, that the Ashantis are a most cowardly race.
"'Quite right. Just what I have told you all along; and if you will only hurry up, we can get right up to them in a few days and smash them.'
"'Ah! the white chief speaks brave words, but he does not know the ways of the bush warriors. No; the plan which the captains in council have agreed upon is to draw the enemy on by retiring straight away back to Cape Coast Castle. The enemy will follow them, and will run on to the bayonets of the white soldiers who are coming up from the coast.'
"'A very good plan, but not quite identical with that of the white chief. There is only one plan in his mind, and that is to go forward, and this plan must be carried out by all. He has in his hand a repeating rifle which fires fourteen shots. When the regiment begins its retirement, he will go to the head of it and will shoot at each man as he comes by. Fourteen corpses will suffice to block up the path. And now any who like to go back on these conditions can do so; the gun is already loaded. Those who like to go forward to get their chop at the next halting-place can move on. Those who like to sit where they are can do so till it is their turn to be tied to a tree, to get a dozen lashes, commencing with this gentleman.' Loads are taken up, and in a moment the whole force goes laughing and singing on the forward path.
