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Updated: May 18, 2025
Frank was often called into council, as Ammon Quatia had conceived a high opinion of his judgment, which had proved invariably correct so far. "We are going," he said one day, "to take Abra Crampa and to kill its king, and then to fall back across the Prah." "I think you had better fall back at once," Frank answered.
In the afternoon Sir Garnet Wolseley, with the greater portion of the force from Abra Crampa, marched in, and Frank was introduced by Captain Bradshaw to the general. As the latter was anxious to press on at once to Cape Coast, in order that the sailors and marines might sleep on board ship that night, he asked Frank to accompany him, and on the road heard the story of his adventures.
Ammon Quatia now began to meditate falling back upon the Prah the sick and wounded were already sent back but he determined before retiring to attack Abra Crampa, whose king had sided with us, and where an English garrison had been posted.
The remainder, when they arrived at Assaibo, five miles from Abra Crampa, were so utterly exhausted that a long halt was necessary, although a faint but continuous fire could be heard from the besieged place. Chocolate and cold preserved meat were served out to the men, and in the course of another three hours a large number of the stragglers came in.
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.
"I am going," Ammon Quatia said to Frank, "to eat up Dunquah and Abra Crampa. We shall do better this time. We know what the English guns can do and shall not be surprised." With ten thousand men Ammon Quatia halted at the little village of Asianchi, where there was a large clearing, which was speedily covered with the little leafy bowers which the Ashantis run up at each halting place.
It was not till upwards of six weeks after the fight at Abra Crampa that the last of the Ashanti army crossed the Prah. When arriving within a short distance of that river they had been met by seven thousand fresh troops, who had been sent by the king with orders that they were not to return until they had driven the English into the sea.
Two days later Sir Garnet Wolseley with a strong force marched out from Cape Coast to Abra Crampa, halting on the way for a night at Assaiboo, ten miles from the town. On the same day the general sent orders to Colonel Festing of the Marine Artillery, who commanded at Dunquah, to make a reconnaissance into the forest from that place.
"You have saved my life," he said to Frank. "Had it not been for you I must have been killed. You shall not find me ungrateful. When I have taken Abra Crampa I will manage that you shall return to your friends. I dare not let you go openly, for the king would not forgive me, and I shall have enough to do already to pacify him when he hears how great have been our losses. But rest content.
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.
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