"'All here, sir, but some few men away sick—and two he never come'—and so on and so on. At last it is over, except that a despatch-runner comes in with a telegram, forwarded from the last telegraph station, to ask from Cape Coast Castle offices immediate reason why the men's pay-list has been sent in in manuscript, instead of on Army Form O 1729!"
From Prahsu the expedition, under the command of Sir Francis Scott, went on its way towards Kumassi. Its formation when it came near to that plague-spot of the earth was as follows:—First came Baden-Powell's crowd of red-fezzed natives, keeping a variable distance from the advanced guard, which consisted of two companies of the Gold Coast Houssas and a Maxim gun. A quarter of a mile after that came the main body, covering a distance of nine miles, and consisting of Special Service Corps, two guns, a Maxim gun, the Headquarters Staff, a half of the Bearer Company, six companies of the 2nd West Yorkshire Regiment, two guns and two rockets, the other half of the Bearer Company, the Ammunition Column, the Baggage Column, the Supply Column, the Field Hospital, and, as rearguard, two more companies of the 2nd West Yorkshire Regiment and the Lagos Houssas with a Maxim. Flanking the latter portion of the main column on the right, and distributed by half-sections, came one company of the 2nd West India Regiment. It is evident from his diary that Baden-Powell wanted some fighting—at Ordasu an embassy from King Prempeh offered that bloodthirsty savage's complete and unconditional surrender to Captain Stuart, Political Officer accompanying the column, and Baden-Powell remarks, characteristically enough, "Alas! this looks like a peaceful end of all our work," and a few days afterwards, recording the entrance into Kumassi, he dwells rather bitterly on the disappointment which the men felt in having no fighting. But the expedition was destined to be a peaceful one—the British troops and native levies marched into the city of death quietly enough. Baden-Powell and his assistant, Graham, with their scouts, were in first, and with them were the Political Officer and Major Piggott, who bore the Union Jack on a silver-mounted hog-spear. Then came the native levies, then Major Gordon's flank detachment, and finally the main body—and Prempeh and his chiefs sat by and watched. Baden-Powell's account of the scene is full of life and colour:—
King Prempeh watching the arrival of Troops.
"The drumming in the town was getting louder, and the roar of voices filled the air; but, alas! it was peace drumming. The great coloured umbrellas were soon seen dancing and bobbing above the heads of the surging crowds of natives. Stool-bearers ran before, then came the whirling dancers with their yellow skirts flying round them. Great drums, like beer-barrels, decked with human skulls, were booming out their notes, and bands of elephant-tusk horns were adding to the din. The king and all his chiefs were coming out to see the troops arrive. Presently they arranged themselves in a dense long line. The umbrellas formed a row of booths, beneath which the chiefs sat on their brass-nailed chairs, with all their courtiers round them. This was nine o'clock, and there they sat till five.
"Often had they sat like this before upon that same parade-ground; but never had their sitting been without the sight of blood. The object of this open space was not for parading troops, but for use as the theatre of human sacrifice. Orders had been given before our arrival to clean away all signs of this custom, nor were the people to speak of it to the white men; but with very little cross-examination all the facts came out. Indeed, while standing about the parade-ground, 'The Sutler' peered into the coppice close by, where the trees supported a flock of healthy-looking vultures, and there at once he found skulls and bones of human dead.
"And there sits Prempeh, looking very bored, as three scarlet-clad dwarfs dance before him, amid the dense crowd of sword-bearers, court criers, fly-catchers, and other officials. He looks a regal figure as he sits upon a lofty throne with a huge velvet umbrella standing over him, upon his head a black and gold tiara, and on his neck and arms large golden beads and nuggets."
It was all over with Prempeh. He and his chiefs heard the doom of the nation pronounced, and found themselves prisoners, and within a very short time of the arrival of the British punitive force at Kumassi it was on its way back to Cape Coast Castle with the Ashanti monarch and his queen-mother in custody of the 2nd West Yorkshire Regiment. It is very evident that Baden-Powell was disappointed because there was no fighting—disappointed, perhaps, more on account of the men than on his own. In his journal, under date February 8th, 1896, he pays a magnificent tribute to the British soldier's pluck and endurance:—
"Cape Coast Castle, February 8th, 1896.