Long before daylight his men
were off to their work, long after nightfall they returned utterly
exhausted to camp.
Upon the 1st of January, 1874, Sir Garnet Wolseley, with his staff,
among whom Frank was now reckoned, reached the Prah. During the
eight days which elapsed before the white troops came up Frank
found much to amuse him. The engineers were at work, aided by the
sailors of the naval brigade, which arrived two days after the
general, in erecting a bridge across the Prah. The sailors worked,
stripped to the waist, in the muddy water of the river, which was
about seven feet deep in the middle. When tired of watching these
he would wander into the camp of the native regiments, and chat
with the men, whose astonishment at finding a young Englishman able
to converse in their language, for the Fanti and Ashanti dialects
differ but little, was unbounded. Sometimes he would be sent for
to headquarters to translate to Captain Buller, the head of the
intelligence department, the statements of prisoners brought in
by the scouts, who, under Lord Gifford, had penetrated many miles
beyond the Prah.
Everywhere these found dead bodies by the side of the road, showing
the state to which the Ashanti army was reduced in its retreat.
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