e succeeded in
eluding their vigilance death lurks everywhere in a hundred different
forms."

"Well, at present we are slaves hounded on towards the dreaded Golgotha
of the Ashantis," I said. "We have escaped one fate only to be threatened
by one more terrible."

"True," he answered. "But down on the Coast they have an old proverb in
the Negro-English jargon which says, 'Softly, softly catchee monkey.' Let
us proceed cautiously, bear our trials with patience, seek not to incense
these brutal Arabs against us, and we may yet tread the path that leads
into my mother's kingdom. Then, within a week, the war-drums will sound
and we will accompany our hosts against Samory and his hordes."

"I shall act as you direct," I replied. "If you think that by patience
all may come right no complaint shall pass my lips. We are companions in
misfortune, therefore let us arm ourselves against despair."

The compact thus made, we endured the toil and hardships of travel
without murmur. At first our bearded masters heaped upon the queen's son
every indignity they could devise, but finding they could not incense
him, nor cause him to utter complaint, ceased their taunts and cuts from
their loaded whips, and soon began to treat us with less severity.

Yet the fatigues of that march were terrible. The suffering I witnessed
in that slave gang is still as vivid in my memory as if it were only
yesterday. Ere we had passed through the great forest and gained the Kong
mountains, a dozen of our unfortunate companions who had fallen sick had
been left in the narrow path to be eaten alive by the driver-ants and
other insects in which the gloomy depths abound, while during the twenty
days which the march to the Ashanti border occupied many others succumbed
to fever. Over all the marshes there hung a thick white mist deadly to
all, but the more so to the starving wretches who came from the high
lands far north beyond the Niger. Scarcely a day broke without one or
more of the lean, weak negroes being attacked, and as a sick slave is
only an incumbrance, they were left to die while we were marched onward.
Whose turn it might next be to be left behind to be devoured alive none
knew, and in this agony of fear and suspense we pushed forward from day
to day until we at last reached the undulating grass-land that Omar told
me was within a few days' march of Kumassi.

Here, even if the sun blazed down upon us like a ball of fire, it was far
healthier tha