e attacked them in the bush before they
reached the camp. Crouching among the trees the Ashantis opened a
tremendous fire. All the native allies, with the exception of a hundred,
bolted at once, but the remainder, with the Houssas and West Indians,
behaved with great steadiness and gallantry, and for two hours kept up a
heavy Snider fire upon their invisible foes.

Early in the fight Lieutenant Wilmot, while directing the rocket tube,
received a severe wound in the shoulder. He, however, continued at his
work till, just as the fight was ended, he was shot through the heart
with a bullet. Four officers were wounded as were thirteen men of the
2d West India regiment. One of the natives was killed, fifty severely
wounded, and a great many slightly. After two hours' fighting Colonel
Festing found the Ashantis were working round to cut off his retreat,
and therefore fell back again on Dunquah. The conduct of the native
levies here and in two or three smaller reconnaisances was so bad that
it was found that no further dependence could be placed upon them, and,
with the exception of the two partly disciplined regiments under Colonel
Wood and Major Russell, they were in future treated as merely fit to act
as carriers for the provisions.

Although the second reconnaissance from Dunquah had, like the first,
been unsuccessful, its effect upon the Ashantis was very great. They
had themselves suffered great loss, while they could not see that any
of their enemies had been killed, for Lieutenant Wilmot's body had been
carried off. The rockets especially appalled them, one rocket having
killed six, four of whom were chiefs who were talking together. It was
true that the English had not succeeded in forcing their way through the
bush, but if every time they came out they were to kill large numbers
without suffering any loss themselves, they must clearly in the long run
be victorious.

What the Ashantis did not see, and what Frank carefully abstained from
hinting to Ammon Quatia, was that if, instead of stopping and firing at
a distance beyond that which at their slugs were effective, they were
to charge down upon the English and fire their pieces when they reached
within a few yards of them, they would overpower them at once by their
enormous superiority of numbers. At ten paces distant a volley of slugs
is as effective as a Snider bullet, and the whole of the native troops
would have bolted the instant such a charge was made. In the