'There go the bugles at last, Dalton!' shouted Jerry, cheerfully, as he sprang up and drew his sword, when the advance was sounded, just as the sun went down, and the troops began to approach this terrible place, through ground the atmosphere of which was made appalling by the awful stench from exposed corpses which lay about in every direction, and over which great vultures flapped their wings—the dead of past days of local slaughter for various royal reasons; thus it was dark when the 42d and the Rifles reached the edge of the swamp which nearly surrounds the place—on three sides at least—that horrible and pestilential swamp, with floating bones and the rotting flesh of the victims.
The first man through it, and actually in Coomassie, was young Lord Gifford, who led the way with his scouts till he was wounded, when the enemy opened fire for a time; but as the king had fled with his warriors, the resistance was merely nominal, and tremendously hearty was the cheer of the 42d as they entered the place, and the pipes sent up a skirl of triumph, which announced that fact to all the troops who were coming on.
Excitement over now, Jerry Wilmot felt his soul sicken as he marched at the head of his company up one of the principal streets, with the awful odour of dead flesh everywhere around—victims never being buried, but left where they were killed, or cast into the adjacent swamp. Over all that town, as a writer has it, the odour of death hung everywhere, and came on every sickly breath of hot wind—'a town where here and there a vulture hops at one's very feet, too gorged to join the filthy flock, preening itself on the gaunt dead trunks that line the way; where blood is plastered like a pitch coating over trees, floors and stools—blood of a thousand (fetish) victims yearly renewed; where headless bodies make common sport; where murder pure and simple—the monotonous massacre of bound men—is the one employment of the king and the one spectacle of the populace.'
Amid such surroundings the troops piled arms in the market-place, guards were posted, and the rest sat down to their rations, amid the light from blazing houses, which the native levies began to loot and then set aflame; while many Ashantee warriors, who had been but recently fighting with our men, lingered near the groups quietly, with their muskets in their hands, saying ever and anon, 'Tank you, tank you'—an attempt at the only English they knew.
The Fantee prisoners the troops had come so far to release were found chained to logs; and one European, an Englishman, who was found free, displayed like them the most extravagant joy on finding himself saved from death at the hands of King Koffee.
'Is there a drop in your flask, Dalton?' said an officer, propping himself on his sword. 'The odour here is literally awful.'
'You are welcome to what remains, but a strong cigar is best, my boy,' replied Dalton, as he wrenched open a tin of preserved meat with the blade of his sword.
'Now that we are here,' said Jerry, 'what will the next move be?'
'Burn the whole place, no doubt, and then be off like birds,' was the reply of more than one.
'And so end the most hideous and uninteresting war in which British soldiers have been engaged.'