We were threading our way through one of these passages, treading daintily on the crackling _débris_ that formed the floor (for the mysterious twilight of the place somehow induced a silent and stealthy manner of movement), when Annan, who was leading, suddenly stopped dead, and peering down a dark side-aisle began to talk in a loud, startled tone. At the same moment I noticed a group of men crouching and almost hidden in the deeper shadow of one of the clusters of canes, and our carriers, catching sight of them too, hastily laid down their burdens, and broke out into excited and voluble jabbering, so that the previously silent crypt was a Babel of noise. In a few moments the men came forth from their hiding-place into the dim light of the passage in which we stood, and a sinister-looking crowd they were, quite nude, with the exception of the narrow loin-cloth, and each provided with a long flintlock gun with a red-painted stock and a large knife in a leopard-skin sheath. They were evidently not travelling far from home, for none of them carried any baggage or provisions beyond the bottle-shaped gourd which served as a powder flask, and a bag of slugs. A tall, elderly man, apparently the leader of the party, came forward and made a long statement to Annan, gesticulating and grimacing in the native fashion and pointing frequently in the direction in which we were going; then, after Annan had replied in a quieter tone, the carriers took up their burdens and we moved forward, while the armed men returned to their retreat. “Who are those men?” I asked, as we came out once more into the light of day. “Dose men,” replied Annan, “is Akotádi people, and dey tell me some very bad news. Dey say all de roads shut everywhere.” “What do they mean? Who has shut the roads?” “Because of de war palaver,” replied Annan. “Dey say dat ’Shanti people fight wid Békwe, and Adánsi people fight wid ’Shanti and Akém. Plenty war palaver everywhere.” “Then it won’t be very safe going through Ashanti, will it?” said I. “Safe!” yelled Annan. “I tell you all de roads shut. Spose ’Shanti man see us he tink we Adánsis and he shoot us. Spose Békwe man see us, he say we Akém and he shoot us. Eberybody shoot us. Shia! m’nyohum!” He shook his fist in the air and spat on the ground. I could not help laughing at this outburst, for, apart from the highly inappropriate application of a disgusting and untranslatable Fanti expletive, the picture that Annan drew of our progress through the country was farcical in the extreme. We were Ishmaelites indeed! “Why de debbil you laugh?” exclaimed Annan, looking as if he could have cut my throat with pleasure. “You no laugh if ’Shanti man catch you.” “No,” I agreed, “I suppose not. But what shall you do? You won’t turn back, will you?” “Me turn back!” he shouted. “I tell you, sah, I come to get monkey skin, and I fit for get monkey skin. ’Shanti man can go to hell.”