ENGLISH BOY HELD CAPTIVE BY NEGRO QUEEN IN AFRICA.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18938, 7 December 1929, Page 22 (Supplement)

ENGLISH BOY HELD CAPTIVE BY NEGRO QUEEN IN AFRICA.

CAME NEAR FOUNDING A NEW DYNASTY.

An amazing story of the adventure* of an English boy who was held captive for four years by a scheming West African queen, and who came near to founding a new dynasty on the Ivory Coast, has just been revealed. The boy is now & doctor in the tropics, and the story of his strange experiences is told by Dr. Alfred Torrance in “Tracking Down the Enemies of Mankind.” Dr. Torrance, who Is now In the South Seas, spent many years in the feverridden parts of Africa and Asia. The story opens a good, many years ago when Floyd Dewhurst (a fictitious name) ran away to sea at the age of 15 and sailed in an old tramp steamer from London docks to the Ivory Coast. The tramp dropped anchor at a small coast settlement near the mouth of thel River Sassandra. Fascinated by the tropical 6cenery and the lure of a strange land, Floyd sneaked ashore. When search parties failed to trace him he was given up as lost. “It is believed,” wrote the captain in his log, “that the boy has been stolen by natives.” Four years later Dr. Torrance, working at the Government base hospital in Wassuku territory, on the Ivory Coast, received an urgent summons from a West African Queen Mother to proceed to the Royal palace, where her eon, tho boy King, was lying seriously ill. The note was written in Fanti language by Ambah Saa, Queen Mother of the tribes of Felanis, Segelas, Bwakes and Elenges, inhabiting the region at the junction of the Red and White Bandam Rivers. Four days’ march brought the expedition to the native capital, where they were received with dignity and splendour by the Queen Mother, who had lost her husband four years earlier. Resplendent Queen. The Queen Mother, a remarkable looking woman of about 50, was clothed in a richly gold-brocaded scarlet and pure white robe, and wondrously arrayed with magnificent but crudely set jewels. She was seated on a polished white ivory stool raised from the ground by a platform of forest animal skulls. From her ears hung emeralds as large as birds’ eggs set in plain gold. On her fingers were 30 rings set with diamonds and other precious stones, and on her wrists, almost reaching to her elbows, there must have been 100 gold bracelets. A huge umbrella was held oVer her head by two enormous earless negroes, and she was flanked on either side by two evil-looking, amazingly wrinkled, and aged tongueless females. Although the boy King sat on the throne the Queen Mother was the real ruler. A woman of wonderful boldness and a clever schemes, she had conceived a daring plan for keeping the tribal administration to herself. Among her superstitious subjects she had spread a story of how the great spirits of their forefathers had promised through her to give them a king equal in power and intelligence to the great kings of the white men. Even while Dr. Torrance’s expedition was at the palace, the natives were awaiting the birth of their new king. The crafty, deep-laid plot of the old Queen reached a terrible denouement the night after the expedition’s arrival. Word was brought to Dr. Torrance that the King, fatally stricken with yellow fever, had died, and with it came news of the assassination of the Queen. “As soon as we entered the huts we saw the tragedy. The Queen Mother was dead. She had been stabbed to death in a dozen places by spear thrusts. “By her side was the slashed body of another woman, a very young woman, about to become a mother, who had been killed with her.” The story soon came out. What had happened was that when the King died his wives rushed screaming into the Queen Mother’s chamber to tell her. A glance at the hastily awakened Queen and the young woman at her side was enough to reveal the deception about the promised new king. Barred from becoming mothers themselves, owing to the expected event, these women vented their rage on their, deceiver and her innocent tool. Startling Discovery. A still more startling discovery was still to be made. In an inner room, .luxuriously furnished, a young man lay on a bed of skins. He was emaciated, tinged yellow with disease and drug-sodden. But he was a white man. It was young Floyd Dewhurst, who four years earlier had lost himself on the coast. He had been found by the Queen, and smuggled into the royal palace for the furtherance of her own ambitions. A drugged and fever-weakened prisoner, his mind had been a blank during these four years when the Queen was working out her plan to give her people a king who would combine the best qualities of the white and black races. “The Queen’s efforts being in vain,” writes Dr. Torrance, “she had stolen through witchcraft a virgin of one ©f the neighbouring villages. “The young girls baby, fathered by the white boy, was almost ready to be born, and but for the tragic death of the King her plan would have sucteeded.”