s left alone, dragging at the great orchid, till a Pongo
reaching over the canoe drove a spear through his shoulder. He let go of
the orchid because he must and tried to retreat. Too late! Half a dozen
or more of the Pongo pushed themselves between the stern or bow of our
canoe and the reeds, and waded forward to kill him. I could not help,
for to tell the truth at the moment I was stuck in a mud-hole made by
the hoof of a hippopotamus, while the Zulu hunters and the Mazitu were
as yet too far off. Surely he must have died had it not been for the
courage of the girl Hope, who, while wading shorewards a little in front
of me, had turned and seen his plight. Back she came, literally bounding
through the water like a leopard whose cubs are in danger.

Reaching Stephen before the Pongo she thrust herself between him and
them and proceeded to address them with the utmost vigour in their own
language, which of course she had learned from those of the albinos who
were not mutes.

What she said I could not exactly catch because of the shouts of the
advancing Mazitu. I gathered, however, that she was anathematizing them
in the words of some old and potent curse that was only used by the
guardians of the Holy Flower, which consigned them, body and spirit,
to a dreadful doom. The effect of this malediction, which by the way
neither the young lady nor her mother would repeat to me afterwards, was
certainly remarkable. Those men who heard it, among them the would-be
slayers of Stephen, stayed their hands and even inclined their heads
towards the young priestess, as though in reverence or deprecation, and
thus remained for sufficient time for her to lead the wounded Stephen
out of danger. This she did wading backwards by his side and keeping her
eyes fixed full upon the Pongo. It was perhaps the most curious rescue
that I ever saw.

The Holy Flower, I should add, they recaptured and carried off, for I
saw it departing in one of their canoes. That was the end of my orchid
hunt and of the money which I hoped to make by the sale of this floral
treasure. I wonder what became of it. I have good reason to believe that
it was never replanted on the Island of the Flower, so perhaps it was
borne back to the dim and unknown land in the depths of Africa whence
the Pongo are supposed to have brought it when they migrated.

After this incident of the wounding and the rescue of Stephen by the
intrepid Miss Hope, whose interest in him was alread