s face a rough image of
an ape holding a flower in its right paw. As it was also ancient, this
seemed to show that the monkey god and the orchid had been from the
beginning jointly worshipped by the Pongo.

When she had opened the door, there appeared, growing in the centre of
the enclosure, the most lovely plant, I should imagine, that man ever
saw. It measured some eight feet across, and the leaves were dark green,
long and narrow. From its various crowns rose the scapes of bloom. And
oh! those blooms, of which there were about twelve, expanded now in the
flowering season. The measurements made from the dried specimen I have
given already, so I need not repeat them. I may say here, however, that
the Pongo augured the fertility or otherwise of each succeeding year
from the number of the blooms on the Holy Flower. If these were many
the season would prove very fruitful; if few, less so; while if, as
sometimes happened, the plant failed to flower, draught and famine were
always said to follow. Truly those were glorious blossoms, standing as
high as a man, with their back sheaths of vivid white barred with black,
their great pouches of burnished gold and their wide wings also of gold.
Then in the centre of each pouch appeared the ink-mark that did indeed
exactly resemble the head of a monkey. But if this orchid astonished me,
its effect upon Stephen, with whom this class of flower was a mania, may
be imagined. Really he went almost mad. For a long while he glared at
the plant, and finally flung himself upon his knees, causing Miss Hope
to exclaim:

"What, O Stephen Somers! do you also make sacrifice to the Holy Flower?"

"Rather," he answered; "I'd--I'd--die for it!"

"You are likely to before all is done," I remarked with energy, for I
hate to see a grown man make a fool of himself. There's only one thing
in the world which justifies _that_, and it isn't a flower.

Mavovo and Hans had followed us into the enclosure, and I overheard a
conversation between them which amused me. The gist of it was that Hans
explained to Mavovo that the white people admired this weed--he called
it a weed--because it was like gold, which was the god they really
worshipped, although that god was known among them by many names.
Mavovo, who was not at all interested in the affair, replied with a
shrug that it might be so, though for his part he believed the true
reason to be that the plant produced some medicine which gave courage or
streng