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.