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.