and would become nothing but a bundle of dead leaves. This had greatly
exercised the credulous there.

Two days after his arrival Frank went down at sunset to bathe in the
river. He had just reached the bank when he heard a cry among some white
soldiers bathing there, and was just in time to see one of them pulled
under water by an alligator, which had seized him by the leg. Frank had
so often heard what was the best thing to do that he at once threw off
his Norfolk jacket, plunged into the stream, and swam to the spot where
the eddy on the surface showed that a struggle was going on beneath. The
water was too muddy to see far through it, but Frank speedily came upon
the alligator, and finding its eyes, shoved his thumbs into them. In
an instant the creature relaxed his hold of his prey and made off, and
Frank, seizing the wounded man, swam with him to shore amid the loud
cheers of the sailors. The soldier, who proved to be a marine, was
insensible, and his leg was nearly severed above the ankle. He soon
recovered consciousness, and, being carried to the camp, his leg was
amputated below the knee, and he was soon afterwards taken down to the
coast.

It had been known that there were alligators in the river, a young one
about a yard long having been captured and tied up like a dog in the
camp, with a string round its neck. But it was thought that the noise
of building the bridge, and the movement on the banks, would have driven
them away. After this incident bathing was for the most part abandoned.

The affair made Frank a great favorite in the naval brigade, and of a
night he would, after dinner, generally repair there, and sit by
the great bonfires, which the tars kept up, and listen to the jovial
choruses which they raised around them.

Two days after the arrival of Sir Garnet, an ambassador came down
from the king with a letter, inquiring indignantly why the English had
attacked the Ashanti troops, and why they had advanced to the Prah.
An opportunity was taken to impress him with the nature of the English
arms. A Gatling gun was placed on the river bank, and its fire directed
upon the surface, and the fountain of water which rose as the steady
stream of bullets struck its surface astonished, and evidently filled
with awe, the Ashanti ambassador. On the following day this emissary
took his departure for Coomassie with a letter to the king.

On the 12th the messengers returned with an unsatisfactory answer to
Sir