In The Sacred Grove

: The Great White Queen

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
ith which the basin was now filled to overflowing.



At that instant, as the chief executioner strode forward and held his

dripping blade uplifted, ready to strike, the King raised his hand to

command silence, and the hideously-dressed official paused in wonder, his

sword poised in air.



Betea, the Ocra, bending low, was whispering to the King, when the latter

suddenly took the nut from his mouth and said:



"So it is upon Omar, son of my enemy the Naya of Mo, that my eyes rest!

Let him stand forth with his white companion."



Obedient to the command of the King, the executioners allowed Omar to

rise, and in a few moments we both stood before the royal stool.



"How came you here?" asked Prempeh, scowling.



"I was captured and sold as slave to the Arab dealers," he answered,

drawing himself up with that princely air he always assumed in moments of

danger.



"And your white companion? How is it he is in our capital?"



"I have been to the land of the white men across the sea, and he returned

as my friend," Omar replied. "We were travelling homeward to Mo when by

treachery I was entrapped."



"By whom?"



"By Samory."



Across Prempeh's evil face there spread a sickly smile. He was an ally of

the great Mohammedan chief, and saw at once that Samory had sold the son

of their mutual enemy into slavery.



"Your queen-mother," he said, "has times without number sent her armed

hordes over the border to raid our villages, and it is the fetish that

has delivered you, her son, into our hands. The fetish has not sent you

hither as a sacrifice, but as a hostage. Therefore your life shall be

spared together with that of your white friend, but you shall both be

given as slaves to our trusted Ocra Betea. Let the sacrifice proceed.

Prempeh, King of all the Ashantis, has spoken."



Next second a poor black wretch was dragged along in Omar's place and the

sword fell heavily upon him, while we were both hurried away in charge of

a caboocer to the residence of the man who was, according to Omar, one of

his mother's bitterest foes. Glad were we to escape with our lives from

that awful scene of inhuman butchery, but it seemed that as slaves of

this court favourite to whom we had been given, there would be but little

brightness in our lives.



As day succeeded day our gloomy forebodings were only too truly

realized. Betea, the most powerful of the King's Ocras, seemed to delight

in making our lives a burden to us, for amid luxurious surroundings we

were beaten, starved, and ill-treated, until even death under the

executioner's knife seemed a preferable fate.



Six months passed; six weary months of slavery and wretchedness. Our

position seemed absolutely hopeless, and I began to fear that we should

never escape from the City of Blood. The scenes we witnessed there were

so revolting, that I cannot now reflect upon them without a shudder. The

ghastly "customs," the absence of all protection for life and property,

the grinding oppression, the nameless horrors of all kinds, were

terrible. Blood was continually flowing, for every anniversary demanded

fresh holocausts, and the "Golgotha" presented a sight of indescribable

horror. The unwritten code of laws were of such a sanguinary nature, that

the public executioners formed a numerous section of the community and

were constantly employed collecting their victims, leading them for

exhibition through the capital and then hacking them to pieces in

presence of the king. Soldiers, slaves, retainers of the nobles and

conquered tribes possessed no defined rights, and their lives and

property were practically in the hands of the royal and governing

classes.



Close to the house of our inhuman master was the fetish grove, a horrible

place, surrounded by rank grass, dirt, and reeking with odours

pestilential. Once or twice I wandered in that grove, treading upon human

bones at every step--the heaped-up remains of thousands of miserable

creatures slaughtered to please the Ashanti ruler's lust for blood. Poor

crumbling bones, mouldy and sodden as the rotten wood of older trees,

yet once clothed with form and vigour, lay everywhere, while under the

cotton wood trees skulls were heaped and vultures hovered about in

hundreds.



One evening we attended our master on one of his official visits to

Bantama, the fetish priest's village where we so narrowly escaped

execution, and were able to thoroughly inspect the gruesome place. The

most horrible blood-orgies known to superstition and fetish-worship were

almost daily practised there, and in nearly every abode there were stools

and chairs smeared with human blood, drinking bowls were stained with it,

and some vessels were half-filled with black clotted blood. In the

priests' inner chambers, dark dens filled with foul odours, to which we

entered with Betea, we found not only the whole apartment smeared with

blood, but bones and portions of human remains lying about openly, or

wrapped in rags to serve as charms. One building, probably the residence

of one of the chief priests, was embellished with mud-moulded panels and

scroll work, and the columns facing the principal quadrangle were fluted.

The colours were the prevailing white clay, and red ochre plastered upon

the wattle and mud pillars.



Suddenly, as in the dusk we left this house, a loud horrible shriek

sounded. At first we thought some poor wretch was being sacrificed, but

again and again it sounded, and all turned pale, even the royal Ocra

himself.



"What's that, I wonder?" I asked Omar, who, bearing our master's sword,

was walking at my side.



"The gree-gree!" he gasped, looking round in fear, while at that moment

there sounded two ear-piercing blasts upon a horn.



"Hark!" cried Betea himself, trembling. "The gree-gree is out to-night!"



I remembered that I had been told by one of our fellow-slaves that the

gree-gree was a great fetish who appeared horned like a demon, and killed

all persons he came across. None dare lock their doors when the gree-gree

walked, and only the King himself was invulnerable. This no doubt was

another trick of the priests to frighten the superstitious natives, and

at the same time wreak vengeance upon those who had offended them. Once

again the notes of the horn rose weird and shrill, and died away. Then

Betea, himself affrighted, turned to us saying:



"Fly! fly for your lives. If the gree-gree catches you you will be struck

upon the brow. His arm deals death everywhere."



In a moment all took to their heels, including the royal Ocra, but Omar,

grasping my arm, whispered excitedly:



"Stay. We may now escape."



As the words left his lips we caught sight of a weird black figure

dressed in long coarse grass, with rams' horns upon his head, his face

whitened and a second pair of eyes painted over his own. In his hand

gleamed a long bright knife, while at his side was suspended a

freshly-severed human arm and hand. Yelling and leaping like a veritable

demon, he suddenly noticed the flying figures of our fellow-slaves, and

halting a moment, dashed after them, leaving us alone.



"He will return here, so we must hide," Omar said quickly, and glancing

round, we both saw at the end of the dark ghostly avenue of fetish-trees

an oblong windowless mud building with a high-pitched triple grass

thatched roof. Running towards it we managed to wrench off the padlock

from the door and enter. It was, we discovered, the reputed sepulchre of

the Ashanti kings. Without, it was guarded by all sorts of

fetish-charms, extraordinary odds and ends, animals' claws, broken

pottery, scraps of tin, bits of wood, stones and human bones. Within, by

the aid of a lamp we found burning were revealed several great coffers

clamped with copper and iron, each resting upon two big stools of carved

cotton-wood. Jars and vases filled with water and wine, braziers full of

sweet-smelling leaves, and plates of food were placed beside each,

offerings for the use of the dead.



Omar told me that when an Ashanti king died, he was buried in an ordinary

coffin for a time, but afterwards the body was invariably disinterred,

and the joints of the skeleton articulated with gold bands and wire. It

was then placed, doubled up, in one of these spacious coffers--fully four

feet long by two feet wide and deep--and the other skeletons were

attendants, slaughtered and sent to the land of Shades to wait on the

monarch's ghost.



"Possibly," I said, "much of the ghostly grimness and worked-up horrors

about this place are cunningly devised, not only to protect the Royal

tombs from being plundered by the superstitious natives, but to help to

safeguard the State treasures concealed in yonder coffins."



"Yes," he said. "In this priest-ridden country all the superstition is

heaped up for their benefit and profit. But we must get out of here

before dawn, run past the gree-gree if he is about, and make a dash for

the open forest. It is our only chance of escape, for at dawn the priests

will come again to watch beside the tombs, and if discovered we are

certain to be skewered through the mouth, dragged before Prempeh and

hacked to pieces by the criminal executioner."



"Well, any fate is better than that," I observed. "Let us wait an hour or

so, and then make a rush for it."



"Very well," he answered, and together we resumed the work of exploring

the strange place.



Soon, however, our lamp burned dim, flickered, and went out; then, after

waiting in silence for half an hour in the pitch darkness, we softly

opened the door, and, holding our breaths, crept out. With noiseless

tread we stole along the sacred grove and were nearly at the end when,

without warning, the hideous gree-gree, with a fiendish yell of triumph,

sprang out of some bushes upon us.



Involuntarily, I put up my fist to ward off attack, and in doing so gave

him a well-directed blow full in the face, sending him down flat on his

back.



"Hurrah!" cried Omar in delight. "Floored him! Let's run for our lives."



Ere the midnight murderer could spring to his feet, we had dashed away as

fast as our legs could carry us, running along the fetish-grove, past the

cluster of executioners' houses, across the open space where in the

centre stood the great tree under which Prempeh had sat to witness the

wholesale sacrifice, and continuing until we came to a path through the

high elephant-grass, we soon left the city far behind us, and plunged

into the dark, dismal forest by the narrow winding way that led to the

unexplored regions of the north.



When at length we paused to take breath Omar, panting, said:



"At last we are free again. Betea will not seek us, for he naturally

believes we were killed by the gree-gree. If Zomara favours us we shall

yet live to enter Mo and lead our hosts into the country of Samory."



Then, taking from his neck a little bag of some strange powder, he took

therefrom a pinch, and with fervent words scattered it to the four

quarters of the wind, thus making a thank-offering to the Crocodile-god.



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