Fantis and Wangaras had been hired to clear bush for the pipeline. When the crew was near Ansuam, Smith heard the natives arguing in anger and went to see what was happening. Two of his crew were arguing with an old Fanti who was naked, covered with ashes and had stones hanging from his ear lobes.
The Fanti Juju man yelled at the workers and waved a stick at them. He said the place was no good for strangers, especially white men and they had better leave.
Smith noticed that the men seemed to be frightened, but they pushed on. About 200 yards from where they had been confronted, they saw a Juju hut made of thatch and mud. There were skulls of oxen and dogs. Weird designs were on the walls of the hut.
The surveyor told the men to destroy the hut. They refused. They said the hut was a place of powerful Juju and to destroy it would bring great harm to them.
Smith grabbed a crowbar from one of his men and proceeded to destroy the hut. The Fantis fled in terror. Then, he heard an anguished howl from the witch doctor. As Smith destroyed the hut, the Juju man watched him and muttered.
After Smith destroyed the hut, he found rubbish on the hut's floor with two human skulls, dried lizards and rotting corpses of sacrificial birds.
The only man who remained with Smith was Tom, a Krepi. After Smith had demolished the hut and had cleared the path, the Fantis returned. The leader of the Fantis, Ajiny, told Smith that the fetish's spirit lived in the body of a snake and was extremely angry. Smith was in danger.
An hour later, Tom walked under a mass of creepers on big trees. They fell on him and wounded him severely. The Fantis knew why this had happened. Tom was a Krepi and he had helped Smith destroy the hut. Juju was working.
When they passed by the place where the hut had been, the Fantis avoided it, but Smith wanted to explore it. He was poking through the ruins with his surveying peg when he saw something green and scaled move. It was trying to attack his wrist. He threw it into the air with the peg, then hit it. It tried to attack him three more times before Smith paralyzed it. The man had seen and killed many snakes in both Africa and India.
