Clad in the flaming cotton robe of red and yellow which is the West African equivalent of royal ermine, worn over a pair of very soiled pajamas, his Majesty received me on the veranda of his little dwelling in the presence of the constable who guards him and who acts as interpreter when the King's scanty store of English gives out. Now I am not an entire stranger to the ways of the Lord's Anointed, but this audience with Prempeh of Ashantee was one of the most memorable experiences that I can recall. In the first place, the mercury had crept up and up and up until it hovered in the neighbourhood of one hundred and thirty degrees in the shade of the house; in the second place, the sons of the King (he told me that he had forty-two in all) had crowded into the tiny room until the place fairly reeked with the smell of perspiration; in the third place, I was at a loss what to talk to his Majesty about. The questions which one would like to ask a cannibal king are obvious—whether he takes his meat rare or well done, whether he prefers the tenderloin or the sirloin, whether he likes white meat better than black—but Prempeh of Ashantee is not at all the sort of person with whom one would feel inclined to take liberties, and I was very far from being sure whether he would consider such questions as liberties or not. After an awkward pause, during which the King shuffled his feet uneasily and I wiped away rivulets of perspiration, he said something in Ashantee—at least I suppose it was Ashantee—to one of his attendants, who shortly returned with a tin tray holding a bottle of whiskey, a siphon of lukewarm seltzer, and a couple of very dirty glasses. After another long and uncomfortable pause, the King asked me if I wouldn't have something to drink. Taking it for granted that Prempeh's capacity for drink would be as _outré_ as his choice of food, I poured his beer glass full to the brim with whiskey, giving to myself the drink sanctioned by civilised custom. “In my country,” said the King, leaning forward and speaking in the broken English which he had acquired from the government chaplain, “bad men sometimes try to poison king, so king turn drinks other way round,” and, suiting the action to the words, he turned the tray so as to place before _me_ the beer-glassful of whiskey. I have never been quite certain whether there was a twinkle in the eye of that simple-hearted cannibal when he literally turned the table on me or not.