Gesticulating violently, they seemed to demand the surrender of the scarabœus, which proved eventually to be a famous fetish—famous even as the skull of the murdered Sir Charles MacCarthy, which the king had carried off with him as the chief palladium of Ashantee.
Fortunately Dalton had his sword in his hand, and kept them at bay till they were expelled at the bayonet point by some of the Royal Engineers, but when he and Jerry came forth they were conscious that these two Ashantees with the jaw-bones were watching them and dogging their footsteps, and were menacing them; but anon they slunk away when Dalton put his hand to his revolver case.
Then they re-appeared again and again to his great annoyance and irritation.
'This looks ill,' said Jerry; 'it is some state fetish. Throw the confounded thing away. Chuck it at their woolly heads ere worse comes of it.'
'What can come of it?' asked Dalton.
'Your assassination or mine before we reach the coast, perhaps.'
'As for their menaces,' said Dalton, laughing, 'I value them as little as an old troop horse might a pistol-shot.'
But not long after he had cause to regret not taking Jerry's advice.
In a wattle-built house, of which they had taken possession merely as a shelter from the heat of the sun by day and the baleful dew by night, the two friends were partaking of a kind of 'tiffin' of tinned beef and biscuits, with a glass of grog, before the march, when, at an opening which served as a window, they became suddenly conscious of two woolly heads and two dark faces, the gleaming eyes of which were stealthily watching them, but vanished the moment Dalton started up.
'Look here, Dalton,' said Jerry, 'I don't like this business at all. I am not a timid fellow, nor a very thoughtful one perhaps, but I have an unpleasant presentiment that there is more in this matter than you think.'