"Behold! Tremble! The King makes the great yam custom. The death-drum beats, and to the fetish we offer sacrifice. Who is so great as the King of all the Ashantis, and who is so powerful as the fetish? Yonder are the graves of the great kings, and the marks on yonder walls show the number of men who were sacrificed when their graves were watered. Listen! The mighty King Prempeh is about to sacrifice. To-day he sends five hundred men to the dark world as a thank offering for the harvest, and as an offering to the fetish to enable us to eat up our enemies, the whites. When our mighty King says war, we will arm against them, and their heads shall fill many baskets. Of a truth our lord Prempeh is the greatest monarch who has ever sat upon the stool. The earth quakes when he speaks, and his enemies are paralysed by fear. Betea has spoken."
Then the crowd set up a series of wild shrieks and yells, they gesticulated, fired guns indiscriminately, and danced wildly, while some of the enthusiasts pressing forward, dipped their hands into the blood already in the bowl, and besmeared themselves with it; and others, turning upon myself and my companion as we stood silent and trembling, heaped every insult upon us.
In a few moments, however, the crowd was driven back, and at a signal from the King the executions recommenced, until the smell of blood grew sickening, and the awful scene caused me to shake like an aspen.
I knew that nothing could save me from the hands of these demoniacal whitewashed executioners, and in a few moments I, a slave purchased like an ox for the slaughter, would be borne down over the bowl and decapitated.
I looked at Omar. His face was pale, but his lips were tightly set, although there was an expression of utter hopelessness upon his countenance.
The horror of that moment held me breathless.
CHAPTER XII.
IN THE SACRED GROVE.
One by one the slaves of the gang in which we had travelled were dragged forward, held over the execution bowl and sent as messengers to spirit-land, until it came to Omar's turn. In a second two white-faced demons with keen swords seized him, and despite the cry for mercy that escaped his lips, he was rushed forward, the frenzied executioners flinging him down unceremoniously, and bending his head over the warm blood with which the basin was now filled to overflowing.