Then came the native levies, then Major Gordon's flank detachment, and finally the main body--and Prempeh and his chiefs sat by and watched. Baden-Powell's account of the scene is full of life and colour:-- [Illustration: King Prempeh watching the arrival of Troops.] "The drumming in the town was getting louder, and the roar of voices filled the air; but, alas! it was peace drumming. The great coloured umbrellas were soon seen dancing and bobbing above the heads of the surging crowds of natives. Stool-bearers ran before, then came the whirling dancers with their yellow skirts flying round them. Great drums, like beer-barrels, decked with human skulls, were booming out their notes, and bands of elephant-tusk horns were adding to the din. The king and all his chiefs were coming out to see the troops arrive. Presently they arranged themselves in a dense long line. The umbrellas formed a row of booths, beneath which the chiefs sat on their brass-nailed chairs, with all their courtiers round them. This was nine o'clock, and there they sat till five. "Often had they sat like this before upon that same parade-ground; but never had their sitting been without the sight of blood. The object of this open space was not for parading troops, but for use as the theatre of human sacrifice. Orders had been given before our arrival to clean away all signs of this custom, nor were the people to speak of it to the white men; but with very little cross-examination all the facts came out. Indeed, while standing about the parade-ground, 'The Sutler' peered into the coppice close by, where the trees supported a flock of healthy-looking vultures, and there at once he found skulls and bones of human dead. "And there sits Prempeh, looking very bored, as three scarlet-clad dwarfs dance before him, amid the dense crowd of sword-bearers, court criers, fly-catchers, and other officials. He looks a regal figure as he sits upon a lofty throne with a huge velvet umbrella standing over him, upon his head a black and gold tiara, and on his neck and arms large golden beads and nuggets." It was all over with Prempeh. He and his chiefs heard the doom of the nation pronounced, and found themselves prisoners, and within a very short time of the arrival of the British punitive force at Kumassi it was on its way back to Cape Coast Castle with the Ashanti monarch and his queen-mother in custody of the 2nd West Yorkshire Regiment. It is very evident that Baden-Powell was disappointed because there was no fighting--disappointed, perhaps, more on account of the men than on his own. In his journal, under date February 8th, 1896, he pays a magnificent tribute to the British soldier's pluck and endurance:-- "CAPE COAST CASTLE, _February 8th, 1896_.