Returning from this lively episode with sharp appetites, the Commodore and party of officers were just about to sit down to dinner, when an alarm gun, fired from Mount Tulman, startled them. Almost immediately afterwards a messenger, running in hot haste, announced that the wild natives from the bush beyond were about to force their way to the settlement and attack the colonists. They had mistaken the salute to the Commodore, and thought that hostilities had already begun with King Freeman. They had come to support the native party and be in at the division of the spoils. At once the Commodore accompanied by the Governor and his force marched through the blazing sun four miles to the scene of hostilities. On the Mount Tulman, named after a philanthropic Baltimorean, they found a picketed level space to which the civilized colonists, men, women and children, had fled for refuge. They were defended by fifteen or sixteen men then on the watch. The savage natives had been repulsed and some of them killed. As there was nothing to do, the party enjoyed, for a few minutes, the superb scenery. The village beneath, and the white buildings of the Mount Vaughan Episcopal mission glittered in the sun, and the beach and ocean view was grand. The descent of the hill with their belated dinner in view, was an easy and grateful task. At Cape Palmas, or “Maryland in Africa,” the naval force landed Dec. 9th, for a palaver with twenty-three “kings” and head men. The Commodore and Governor, at the usual table, were face to face with the sable orators, whose talking powers were prodigious. His Majesty, King Freeman, was a prepossessing negro, who, in features, recalled to the narrator Horatio Bridge,[14] Henry Clay. The interpreter was Yellow Will, a voluble and amazing creature in scarlet and Mazarin-yellow lace. The substance of the palaver was the request that King Freeman should, for the good of the American colonists, remove his capital. The meeting was adjourned to re-assemble in the royal kraal or city two days later. On December 11, twelve armed boats were sent ashore from three ships. The feat of landing in the surf was accomplished after several ridiculous tumbles and considerable wetting from the spray. On shore there were about fifty natives in waiting, as an escort to the palaver house. These braves were armed with various weapons, muskets guiltless of polish, iron war spears, huge wooden fish-harpoons, and broad knives.