e ceased when the King of Abra, a splendid looking
negro standing nearly six feet four in height, stepped out from behind
the breastwork and shouted a taunting challenge to the Ashantis to come
on. They replied with a loud yell, and with the opening of a continuous
fire round the edge of the wood. On wall and roof of the village the
slugs pattered thickly; but the defenders were all in shelter, and in
reply, from breastwork and loophole, from the windows and roof of the
church, the answering Snider bullets flew out straight and deadly.
Several times Ammon Quatia tried to get his men to make a rush. The war
drums beat, the great horns sounded, and the men shouted, but each time
the English bullets flew so thick and deadly into the wood wherever the
sound rose loudest that the Ashantis' heart failed them, and they could
not be got to make the rush across the hundred yards of cleared ground.

At five o'clock the fire slackened, but shortly after dark the attack
recommenced. The moon was up and full. Frank feared that the Ashantis
would try and crawl a part of the distance across the clearing and
then make a sudden rush; but they appeared to have no idea of a silent
attack. Several times, indeed, they gathered and rushed forward in
large bodies, but each time their shouting and drums gave warning to
the besieged, and so tremendous a fire was opened upon them when they
emerged from the shadow of the trees into the moonlight, that each time
they fell back leaving the ground strewn with dead. Till midnight the
attack was continued, then the Ashantis fell back to their camp.

At Accroful, a village on the main road some four miles distant, the
attack had been heard, and a messenger sent off to Cape Coast to inform
Sir Garnet Wolseley.

In the morning fifty men of the 2d West India regiment marched from
Accroful into Abra Crampa without molestation. Later on some Abra scouts
approached the Ashanti camp and shouted tauntingly to know when the
Ashantis were coming into Abra Crampa.

They shouted in return, "After breakfast," and soon afterwards, a rocket
fired from the roof of the church falling into the camp, they again
sallied out and attacked. It was a repetition of the fight of the day
before. Several times Major Russell withheld his fire altogether, but
the Ashantis could not be tempted to show in force beyond the edge of
the wood. So inspirited were the defenders that they now made several
sorties and penetrated some dist