id we are playing it rather low down on that jumpy old boy,"
said Stephen remorsefully.

"The white woman, the white woman and her daughter," muttered Brother
John.

"Yes," reflected Stephen aloud. "One is justified in doing anything to
get two white women out of this hell, if they exist. So one may as well
have the orchid also, for they'd be lonely without it, poor things,
wouldn't they? Glad I thought of that, it's soothing to the conscience."

"I hope you'll find it so when we are all on that iron grid which I
noticed is wide enough for three," I remarked sarcastically. "Now be
quiet, I want to go to sleep."

I am sorry to have to add that for the most of that night Want remained
my master. But if I couldn't sleep, I could, or rather was obliged to,
think, and I thought very hard indeed.

First I reflected on the Pongo and their gods. What were these and why
did they worship them? Soon I gave it up, remembering that the problem
was one which applied equally to dozens of the dark religions of this
vast African continent, to which none could give an answer, and least
of all their votaries. That answer indeed must be sought in the horrible
fears of the unenlightened human heart, which sees death and terror
and evil around it everywhere and, in this grotesque form or in that,
personifies them in gods, or rather in devils who must be propitiated.
For always the fetish or the beast, or whatever it may be, is not
the real object of worship. It is only the thing or creature which is
inhabited by the spirit of the god or devil, the temple, as it were,
that furnishes it with a home, which temple is therefore holy. And these
spirits are diverse, representing sundry attributes or qualities.

Thus the great ape might be Satan, a prince of evil and blood. The Holy
Flower might symbolise fertility and the growth of the food of man from
the bosom of the earth. The Mother of the Flower might represent mercy
and goodness, for which reason it was necessary that she should be
white in colour, and dwell, not in the shadowed forest, but on a soaring
mountain, a figure of light, in short, as opposed to darkness. Or she
might be a kind of African Ceres, a goddess of the corn and harvest
which were symbolised in the beauteous bloom she tended. Who could tell?
Not I, either then or afterwards, for I never found out.

As for the Pongo themselves, their case was obvious. They were a dying
tribe, the last descendants of some higher race,