Nearer and nearer he came to the cactus clump, while on the other side of it the two men with the shaven skulls and gashed cheeks, waited and held their breaths. Softly humming an Ashantee love-song he picked his way among the little stones that cast their violet shadows in the moonlight. Right in front of the cactus clump there was a deep black patch on the path, cast by the crest of a fan-palm overhead, whose giant leaves rustled and creaked with a sound like human moans. He stepped into the blot of shade, and like a huge ape one of the watchers leaped out behind him. A stiff grip was on his neck, a knee on his backbone, and the falling load upon his head overthrew his balance. Throwing out his arms in a vain endeavour to save himself, Kobbina fell upon his face, and before he could even utter a yell, the second man was on him and the dull brown cloth was tightly wrapped around his head. Struggling, writhing, and twisting on the ground, he lay at the mercy of his captors. One of the Donkos placed his knee upon the neck, while the other, in spite of all his struggles, swiftly bound the hands and feet of the hapless Ashantee. Long ropes of stringy vines, cut from the sides of the path, were wound round and round his body till they cut so deep into his flesh that every movement was a torture. His stifled shouts did naught but startle, for an instant, the noisy insects in the bushes; and the bareskulled man-hunters grinned with satisfaction at the neatness of their work.

Three nights later there was stirring commotion in the big town on the Coast. It was the celebration of the Yam Custom. The first young yams of the season had been cut that morning in the plantations, amid the songs and dances of the white-robed

Fetish priests. Long processions of yelling blacks had borne the first fruits to the shrine of Sasabonsam, and the beating of many tom-toms and the blare of ivory ivory horns sounded through the land. The whole town was in a tumult, and every one was more or less drunk. It is a British Colony, and His Excellency the Governor had taken all sorts of

precautions to see that the great

festival should be celebrated with no more disorder than was usual, and had worried the unfortunate District Commissioner nearly to death with orders and counter-orders. In the bad old days the celebration of the Yam Custom, in any town that respected itself, was voted a very poor affair if less than a hundred unfortunate natives had their heads hacked off by the three-bladed swords of the Fetish executioners. But the strong rule of Her Majesty is spoiling all the fun now, and the sacrifices, which are absolutely necessary to avert from the tribes plague, pestilence, battle, and murder, have now to be despatched with so much trouble and secrecy that they make no show at all and are scarcely worth the risk.

It takes a deal of strong liquor to fuddle a black man, and the rum-sellers were joyously raking in the coins and the cowries, while the casks in their little dens trickled fire-water like unplugged leaks. The dark alleys between the mud huts were full of reeling negroes, who jostled and pushed each other as they shouted the obscene Fetish songs that are pæans of joy over a well-filled belly women with ragged breasts and gnarled limbs danced the hip-dances of West Africa with hideous contortions and monotonous drone; while a sour reek of smoke, rum, and dirt fouled the night air.

In the centre of the town, where the low-thatched huts are crowded together most thickly, lies the King's

quarter. The palace is no better than the meanest hovel around, and only the number of its dingy huts and squalid courtyards gives it a dignity above the surrounding dens. One of the main thoroughfares of the town passes right through this quarter, but high mud walls, placed one before the other, shut off this little ditch of semi-civilisation as completely as if it were miles away.

In the innermost court, hedged by the highest walls, a dozen men sat in solemn conclave. In the centre a blazing fire of palm-kernels threw a yellow glow on the forms of those grouped around. They were mostly old men, whose black, bald skulls invested them with a certain air of respectability. Some sat on the quaintlycarved stools of Ashantee, and wore great pieces of velvet and brocade thrown around them like a Roman toga. Those were the chiefs and warcaptains of the King, and the scars which you might see on those parts of their legs and chests that were uncovered told of glorious fights in the days when the white men were only traders and did not bother themselves about what happened outside the walls of their forts and factories. Conspicuous in the group were three high-priests of Fetish. Their plain white cloths, wrapped round and round them like shrouds, gleamed in a startling manner in the surrounding colour, while their baleful appearance was not relieved by the black and white beads hanging round their necks, or by the streaks of yellow clay drawn in geometrical designs on their sardonic visages. In the centre of the group sat the King. A fat, besotted-looking boy, scarcely out of his teens, bedizened with strings of gold nuggets, and clad in a gorgeous length of brocade. With his elbows resting on his knees and his chin upon his thumbs, he crouched rather than sat on a low Ashantee

stool, and stared vacantly into the glowing embers at his feet. One of the Fetish priests was speaking. His gaunt form stood out beside the fire, and the lambent flames threw tawny lights on his features. He was excited, and the guttural words fell from his lips in an impassioned flow. He gesticulated much with his thin black arms, and while his excited accents rose and fell on the night air, his eyes unswervingly fixed themselves on the hesitating King.

In a corner of the court, half hidden by the gloom of a thatched roof that projected far beyond the walls, stood Kobbina Dua. His bonds had been loosed sufficiently to allow him to stand; a piece of wood was pressed between his teeth and tightly fastened behind his head, so that a stifled gurgle was all that he could utter. A deep sigh sometimes escaped him, but his eyes, humid with tears of rage, flashed defiance at the group around the fire, and especially at the whiterobed speaker.

The Fetish priest continued his address in a voice that seemed to hiss around the embers: "Oh King, why are you so afeared this season? Twelve moons ago, when the first young yam was shown to the sun, you hesitated not to offer to Bonsam the gift of gratitude that he demanded. A paltry gift it was, alas! a wretched Donko slave, palsied with age and crooked in the back. Nevertheless, his thin neck gaped under the sacred knife and the red blood ran on the very spot where now you sit. Your gold-studded stool was washed in the sacrifice, and the spirits spared us for a while. But this season they are wroth indeed, and their mighty anger is kindled against our tribe. I hear them calling for blood: my brothers have heard them also; and mark me, woe, pestilence and famine will be our lot if this Yam Custom

pass away without a proper offering to Bonsam. I know, oh King, that you have given seven of your goats to Kataori, that their blood may be seen on the doorposts of this town; but my heart shrivels within me at the thought of such a paltry offering. What fear you, Manche? You know full well that though all the tribe shall hear that honour has been done to Bonsam this night, yet not a whisper shall reach the ears of the cursed Police-fo who dare to interfere with Kataori. The arm of Fetish has more hands than there are stars in the sky, and its fingers are as the sands of the sea. Fear not, I say, Manche! No rain have we had since three moons have grown and dwindled, and I smell the spotted sickness in the air. The wrath of the spirits is ready to burst upon us like the

thunder-cloud of a tornado.

You can

avert it, King, by a ready sacrifice. He is here! Bonsam wants his blood, and yet you hesitate!" And the priest of Fetish glared at the captive in the corner with eyes that gleamed with a tiger's lust for blood.

The King thus adjured, roused himself from his lethargy, and drawing his brocade about his shoulders as if he felt a chill, muttered something to the chief who sat beside him. The

silence of suspense fell upon the group and many eyes were turned on the Ashantee, whose sturdy limbs were now and them illuminated by the flames that shot up in the acrid smoke. Brave though he was, Kobbina's heart beat fast while the King whispered with the chief. He heard the rumble of wheels in the street, just a few yards away from him, but the high mud walls and outer alleys hedged the inner courtyard as securely as if it had been miles away in the bush. Nearer and nearer came the wheels, but the stick between his teeth turned his ringing yell

into a smothered gurgle, and the sound of salvation died away in the distance. It was Morton, the Inspector of Police, driving up to Government House in one of the heavy rickshaws used by Her Majesty's officials in West Africa. He was going to dine with the Governor, and would tell His Excellency that all proper precautions had been taken for preventing disturbances during the Yam Custom, and that, barring an increased number of drunken natives in the streets, the town was quiet and orderly as usual.

The sound of the wheels had also been heard by the group around the fire, and had reminded them that, though the anger of Bonsam must be stayed, there was also the wrath of the white Governor to be averted; and they remembered the hanging of four Fetish priests some months before for the sacrifice of three Juabins in Krobo. For over an hour they deliberated and argued. The three priests urged that the victim should be sacrificed there and then in the court in the same way as the Donko has been offered to Bonsam the year before, and they twitted the King unmercifully on his timidity, threatening him and his with all kinds of terrors if the gods were not propitiated in a fitting manner. The war-chiefs, however, though eager enough to have the annual sacrifice, were not inspired by the degree of fanaticism which rendered the excited priests oblivious to consequences, and most of them were in favour of a more prudent

course.

Gradually, the penetrating hum of the crowded town dwindled and sank. The fumes of evil spirits were doing their work, and the huts and alleys were full of snoring negroes grunting and sighing in their besotted sleep. Now and then a quavering shout would echo over the mud walls, while

Two hours later the bell in the fort, where the convicts slept, struck thrice. The moon was slowly sinking behind a bank of clouds on the horizon, throwing a silver sheen on the unruffled waters of the Gulf of Guinea. The sea was like glass, and about a mile from the low-lying shore a canoe rose and fell on the lazy roll of the ground swell. It made no progress

A

and was the centre of a solitude. tall man robed in white, with a string of human teeth about his neck, sat in the stern, and with a leaf-shaped paddle kept the canoe from drifting toward the shore. In the middle of the craft two men crouched over a naked body stretched between them. Their long white robes were tied around their waists, leaving their chests and arms bare to the moonbeams that played on the oily waters. Their bodies swayed to and fro in a slow rhythm, as a hooded cobra sways under the music of the charmer, and they moaned, rather than sang, a Fetish dirge that hummed over the sea like a wail of inexpressible agony. The body that lay between them still throbbed with the full pulses of life. Fathoms of rough-made rope were coiled around the sturdy limbs, rendering the slightest movement impossible. The stick was still between his teeth and beads of cold sweat pearled on the brow of the hapless Ashantee. His eyeballs were all that he could move, and as they restlessly rolled from side to side, they shot gleams of hate and rage and agony so vivid that the

concentrated in them. During the pitiless dirge he thought of Coomassie, of little Bembe, and of the plantain patch behind the goldsmith's house, and then he glared at the crouching priests and longed to tear their hearts out of their breasts. In his impotent agony he moaned unconsciously and seemed to give a keynote to the Fetish wail.

Suddenly the chant ceased, and a dread silence fell like a pall over the canoe. The two robed men, moving stealthily in the unsteady craft, laid hands on their victim, and they haled him out sideways till the back of his neck rested on the gunwale. The moonbeams flashed right into the staring eyes of the victim, a keenedged knife of flint was poised for an instant in the air, the three priests of Fetish screamed a word of dread intent, and the head fell yet further back towards the placid waves.

His Excellency the Governor, in a despatch, number 493 of the 20th of August, to the Right Honourable the Secretary of State for the Colonies, was glad to be able to report to His Lordship that "the celebration of the Yam Custom, which in former years was attended by many atrocities, has just been observed in a very orderly manner, and there is every reason to believe that civilisation is making marked progress among the tribes of the Coast, while the gross superstitions of Fetishism are rapidly losing ground under the teaching of the missionaries of various denominations."

Miss Morleena de Millefleurs.

Undertakes Business,
Comedy Old Women, Heavies.
The Delight of the Intelligent Pit.
On Tour till September.

Dainty Little Dora,
Principal Boy. Disengaged for Panto.
She wears a Sporting Tie.
All Business for Dora must be addressed,
103, Rosemary Lane, Brixton.

The Up-to-Date Girl,
Molly O'Brien.

The Margate "Hoop-La" dancer.
The Finest High-Kicker Ever Seen,
Going Immense.

She Will Show 'Em a Little Life.
Resting 40, Portobello Road East,
With Mother.

I WAS beguiling the way in an omnibus last Christmas by reading the above and kindred advertisements in THE ERA (I always take in THE ERA for old associations' sake), when, at the corner of Bow Street, a young woman jumped in; a young woman, one would have said, of the respectable dressmaker's type, habited sedately almost to primness in a neat ulster (it was raining) and a close bonnet and veil. Presently she recognised a friend opposite her, a woman with a baby and a plush mantle. "I've got it, dearie!" she cried, her face beaming with joy.

"What have you got, sweetie?" asked the friend.

A light broke in upon us; it was the Christmas Pantomime. But any one less like one of the Forty Thieves than the neat young woman beside me could hardly be imagined.

But how stupid it was of me not to have guessed who my friends were before! The dearie and the sweetie ought to have told me at once. Ladies of the profession invariably use these endearments, and very little they sometimes mean. I speak from experience, for it was once my privilege, for the space of a year, to join a company of strolling players. For a time it was advisable that I should earn my living, and the stage seemed to be the most attractive means of earning it. My expectations on this point were, I may now say, not entirely realised; but at the time I assuredly intended that they should be. I had recited and acted at school, and the girls had always applauded my efforts. Being a successfully revolted daughter, I had not much difficulty in getting my own way. I did not change my name and I put no advertisement into the theatrical papers. I got, somehow, an introduction to a provincial manager, who after some demur agreed to take me, at a nominal salary at first. Then I had to provide a wardrobe. To this end a friend who was in the profession took me in hand, and together we visited many cheap sales, and all sorts of curious haunts and bye-ways off the Strand. The first thing we did was to buy large quantities of sham jewellery and beads in Bow Street; I had no idea before that sham jewellery was so indispensable an adjunct of the actor's art. One of my parts, I remember, was to be a Rebel Queen;