e comfort
from their wise men and soothsayers. The auguries were all against
them. Strange things were happening. The tale was abroad that a child
had just been born who was able to converse fluently immediately after
its birth. Then some falling star had struck the town. And now, the
men who had sat so patiently at the coast, were advancing in spite of
sacrifices, in spite of a liberal shedding of blood. There was little
comfort for the Ashantis. Talking made matters worse. It was better to
go to the privacy of one's own hut and brood alone over the trouble.

Dick heard the stranger bid good-night. Then he watched his figure
disappearing. A minute later he was on his feet, creeping across the
dark patch of ground intervening between his prison and the next
habitation, where James Langdon dwelt.

For a moment we must leave Dick, while we turn to the leader of the
British expedition at the coast, and see what arrangements he had made
for the difficult task before him. For this campaign was no trifling
affair. It was not an ordinary war, wherein battles of great importance
might be expected, with open fields for manoeuvring, but a conflict
wherein our troops and their leaders would have to engage with many
unexpected difficulties, and meet face to face a danger greater than
that offered by the enemy. It was bad enough at the coast, where there
were cool, fresh breezes on occasion, though to be sure the place had
well earned its name of "the white man's grave," but up-country, in the
forest and jungle, with its numerous swamps, its unhealthy exhalations,
its damp heat, and its rotting vegetation, there lurked the germs of
fever, the worst form of ague, that fell disease which has slain so many
men of our race, and with which it may be rightly said our scientists
are only now becoming fully acquainted. Its symptoms, its shivering
attacks, its racking fevers they know well, as intimately as they can be
known; as also the fact that recurrences take place, that many a man
long since returned to England has attacks of jungle fever, or whatever
he may care to term it. But the method of transmission of this malady
to human beings was not so certain a matter, and few knew then rightly
how to battle with it. It was, in fact, the enemy to be contended with,
and had any one doubted that, he had only to ask at the coast and sum up
the number of men and officers already placed _hors de combat_ on its
account. This was