Six months passed; six weary months of slavery and wretchedness. Our position seemed absolutely hopeless, and I began to fear that we should never escape from the City of Blood. The scenes we witnessed there were so revolting, that I cannot now reflect upon them without a shudder. The ghastly "customs," the absence of all protection for life and property, the grinding oppression, the nameless horrors of all kinds, were terrible. Blood was continually flowing, for every anniversary demanded fresh holocausts, and the "Golgotha" presented a sight of indescribable horror. The unwritten code of laws were of such a sanguinary nature, that the public executioners formed a numerous section of the community and were constantly employed collecting their victims, leading them for exhibition through the capital and then hacking them to pieces in presence of the king. Soldiers, slaves, retainers of the nobles and conquered tribes possessed no defined rights, and their lives and property were practically in the hands of the royal and governing classes. Close to the house of our inhuman master was the fetish grove, a horrible place, surrounded by rank grass, dirt, and reeking with odours pestilential. Once or twice I wandered in that grove, treading upon human bones at every step--the heaped-up remains of thousands of miserable creatures slaughtered to please the Ashanti ruler's lust for blood. Poor crumbling bones, mouldy and sodden as the rotten wood of older trees, yet once clothed with form and vigour, lay everywhere, while under the cotton wood trees skulls were heaped and vultures hovered about in hundreds. One evening we attended our master on one of his official visits to Bantama, the fetish priest's village where we so narrowly escaped execution, and were able to thoroughly inspect the gruesome place. The most horrible blood-orgies known to superstition and fetish-worship were almost daily practised there, and in nearly every abode there were stools and chairs smeared with human blood, drinking bowls were stained with it, and some vessels were half-filled with black clotted blood. In the priests' inner chambers, dark dens filled with foul odours, to which we entered with Betea, we found not only the whole apartment smeared with blood, but bones and portions of human remains lying about openly, or wrapped in rags to serve as charms. One building, probably the residence of one of the chief priests, was embellished with mud-moulded panels and scroll work, and the columns facing the principal quadrangle were fluted. The colours were the prevailing white clay, and red ochre plastered upon the wattle and mud pillars. Suddenly, as in the dusk we left this house, a loud horrible shriek sounded. At first we thought some poor wretch was being sacrificed, but again and again it sounded, and all turned pale, even the royal Ocra himself. "What's that, I wonder?" I asked Omar, who, bearing our master's sword, was walking at my side.