"At early dawn, while the hush of the thick white mist yet hangs above the forest, a pyjama-clad figure creeps from its camp-bed in the palm-leaf hut, and kicks up a sleeping drummer to sound 'Reveillé.' Then the tall, dark forest wall around the clearing echoes with the boom of the elephant-tusk horns, whose sound is all the more weird since it comes from between the human jaws with which the horns are decorated. The war-drums rumble out a kind of Morse rattle that is quite understandable to its hearers. The men get up readily enough, but it is merely in order to light their fires and to settle down to eat plaintains, while the white chiefs take their tubs, quinine, and tea. A further rattling of the drum for parade produces no result. The king is called for. 'Why are your men not on parade?' With a deprecatory smile the king explains that he is suffering from rheumatism in the shoulder, and therefore he, and consequently his tribe, cannot march to-day. He is given a Cockle's pill, and is warned that if he is not ready to march in five minutes, he will be fined a shilling. (The luxury of fining a real, live king to the extent of one shilling!) In five minutes he returns and says that if the white officer will give his men some salt to eat with their 'chop' (food), he thinks they will be willing to march. "The white officer grimly says he will get a little salt for them, and proceeds to cut a specimen of a particularly lithe and whippy cane. A hundred pair of eyes are watching him. They read his intention in a moment, and at once there is a stir. A moment later, and _that_ portion of the army are off in a long string upon the forward road, with their goods and chattels and chop tied up in bundles on their heads. "But the whole levy is as yet by no means under way. Here a whole company of another tribe is still squatting, eating plantains, and jabbering away, indifferent to every other sound. 'Call the chief.' Yes, the chief is most willing to do anything; would march straight on to Kumassi if ordered. But his captains are at present engaged in talking over the situation, and he cannot well disturb them. The white chief does not take long about disturbing them, but still the rank and file don't move. The captains have something they would like to communicate to the white chief. 'Well, out with it.' "The head captain has come to the conclusion, from information received, that the Ashantis are a most cowardly race. "'Quite right. Just what I have told you all along; and if you will only hurry up, we can get right up to them in a few days and smash them.' "'Ah! the white chief speaks brave words, but he does not know the ways of the bush warriors. No; the plan which the captains in council have agreed upon is to draw the enemy on by retiring straight away back to Cape Coast Castle. The enemy will follow them, and will run on to the bayonets of the white soldiers who are coming up from the coast.'