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
befor