It was evident that there would soon be fighting now. 'Sir Garnet's demands were that the king must release all European prisoners' (of whom he had several), 'pay £200,000 for the cost of the war, and sign in presence of our forces a treaty securing firmly the British Protectorate from future aggression. Private warnings, however, and the information gained by Lord Gifford and Major Russel in their scouting advance beyond the Prah, caused Sir Garnet to distrust completely all the king's overtures for peace.'
On the night after the dusky ambassadors had departed, Tony Dalton had command of an out-piquet in the direction of the enemy, and as the sunset passed away he had, as in duty bound, examined carefully all the ground in his vicinity.
A night piquet, especially in a wood and in a savage country, is always a post of danger. By day sentries can see about them more or less, but not so in the gloom of night, and in a jungly wilderness where savages might creep upon them unawares—even past or between them—and cut the piquet off. Hence no man thought of sleeping, and Dalton had at least one connecting sentry on the narrow track that led to the front where his line was posted.
The pipers of the Black Watch, playing tattoo in the hutted camp, had made the mighty woods of the Prah re-echo to the notes of the 'Pibroch of Donuil Dhu,' its last notes had died away in the leafy dingles, and as silence stole over the plain Dalton gave way to thought.
The war in which he was engaged had been stigmatised as one against savages, but they were savages who were far from being feeble foes; and if (as a print of the time said) 'by honour and glory is meant the creditable performance of duty at the call of the State, then is that just as applicable to soldiers and sailors who fight savages as to those engaged in the more showy scenes of European war. Her Majesty's troops do not pick and choose either the enemies they have to encounter, or the regions wherein their valour and fortitude are to be displayed; and it is unjust to shower laurels on one set of men, while another, equally employed in defending our empire, are deprived of due recognition.'
It was with a consciousness of this—the high sense of duty—that our troops landed cheerfully on the perilous Gold Coast; yet Dalton, like many of his comrades, had been elsewhere engaged in 'the big wars that make ambition virtue,' and he felt that this Ashanti strife, though a petty one, was fraught with many dangers peculiar to itself. Would he escape them, and yet be spared to enjoy the society of the now brilliant and beautiful Laura and their sweet little daughter? How hard if the bullet of a naked savage deprived him of that double joy, and gave him a grave amid the eternal forest that spread from the Prah to Coomassie!
He tried to shun this thought—that almost fear, which came to his naturally gallant spirit—but failed. It would come again and again, with a persistency that troubled him; for life seemed dearer, sweeter now, than it had ever been before. He never thought of sleep, but indulged in waking dreams of scenes and faces far away in pleasant Hampshire, and in hopes that the wild work would soon be over, and hideous Coomassie won.
The night wind was whispering among rushes and reeds of wondrous growth, or stirring the foliage of the cotton-trees, between which could be seen the stars—constellations unknown in our northern hemisphere; and he could hear the ripple of the Prah as it poured between its banks on its way to St. Sebastian, the chirp of enormous insects, the twitter of brilliantly plumaged birds, scared by the red gleams of the watch-fire. Round the latter were the men of the picket, in their grey Ashanti uniforms and tropical helmets, in groups, sitting or lying beside their piled rifles, the barrels of which reflected the sheen of the flames.
As Dalton looked and listened, he felt as one in a dream, amid surroundings so strange, and far over the seas his heart seemed to go, to where no doubt at that hour little Netty, his daughter—his daughter, how strangely it sounded!—was sleeping by her mother's side 'like a callow cygnet in its nest'—Netty so recently found, one of whose existence he had been so long ignorant.
The two tresses of hair he had got in such hot haste at Southampton were many a time drawn forth from the breast-pocket of his Ashanti patrol-jacket, to be tenderly unfolded, kissed, and replaced, for as yet no locket had been procured in which to enshrine them, and such an ornament was not likely to be procured among the reed-built wigwams of Coomassie.