A great square hill rose up on the horizon, and we came to a clump of trees where the moonlight was shut out altogether; we passed through water, and it was pitch-dark, with just a gleam of moonlight here and there to show how dense was that darkness. It was Akway Pool, and a leopard was crying in the thick bush close beside it. It was uncanny, it was weird; all the terror that I had missed till now in Africa came creeping over me, and the men were singing no longer. Very carefully they stepped, and the pool was so deep that lying strung up in the hammock I could still have touched the water with my hand. Could it be only a leopard that was crying so? Might it not be something even worse, something born of the deep, dark pool, and the night? Slowly we went up out of the water, and we stood a moment under the shade of the trees, but with the white light within reach, and Krobo Hill loomed up ahead against the dark horizon. The only hammock-boy who could make himself understood came up.
“Mammy, man be tired. We stop here small.”
It was a reasonable request, but the leopard was crying still, and the gloom and fear of the pool was upon me.
“No, go on.” They might have defied me, but they went on, and to my surprise, my very great surprise, the carriers were still with us. Presently we were out in the moonlight again; I had got the better of my fears and repented me. “Wait small now.”
“No, Mammy,” came the answer, “this be bad place,” and they went on swiftly, singing and shouting as if to keep their courage up, or, as I gathered afterwards, to give the impression of a great company. Only afterwards did I know what I had done that night. Krobo Hill grew larger and larger at every step, and on Krobo Hill was one of the worst, if not the worst blood fetish in West Africa. Every Krobo youth before he could become a man and choose a wife had to kill a man, and he did it generally on Krobo Hill. There the fetish priests held great orgies, and for their ghastly ceremonies and initiations they caught any stranger who was reckless enough to pass the hill. How they killed him was a mystery; some said with tortures, some that only his head was cut off. But the fear in the country grew, and at the end of the last century the British Government interfered; they took Krobo Hill and scattered the fetish priests and their abominations, and they declared the country safe. But the negro revels in mystery and horror, and the fear of the hill still lingers in the minds of the people; every now and then a man disappears and the fear is justified. Only three years ago a negro clerk on his bicycle was traced to that hill and no further trace of him found. His hat was in the road, and the Krobos declared that the great white baboons that infest the hill had taken him, but it is hardly reasonable to suppose that the baboons would have any use for a bicycle, whereas he, strong and young, and his bicycle, together emblems of strength and swiftness, made a very fitting offering to accompany to his last resting-place the dead chief whose obsequies the Krobos were celebrating at the time. Always there are rumours of disappearances, less known men and women than a Government clerk and scholar, and always the people know there is need of men and women for the sacrifices, sacrifices to ensure a plenteous harvest, a good fishing, brave men, and fruitful women.
My men were afraid—even I, who could not understand the reason, grasped that fact; very naturally afraid, for it was quite within the bounds of possibility that a straggler might be cut off.
“Would they have touched me?” I asked afterwards.
“Not with your men round you. Some might escape, and the vengeance would have been terrible.”
“But if I had been by myself?”
“Ah, then they might have said that the baboons had taken you; but you would not have been by yourself.”