“So it would seem, O Stephen Somers, that it is you who are saviour to us.”

“Certainly,” answered Stephen, “but why?”

“Because you see the dry Holy Flower far away in England, and you say, ‘I must be Holy Father to that Flower.’  Then you pay down shekels (here her Bible reading came in) for the cost of journey and hire brave hunter to kill devil-god and bring my old white-head parent with you.  Oh yes, you are saviour,” and she nodded her head at him very prettily.

“Of course,” replied Stephen with enthusiasm; “that is, not exactly, but it is all the same thing, as I will explain later.  But, Miss Hope, meanwhile could you show us the Flower?”

“Oh!  Holy Mother must do that.  If you look thereon without her, you die.”

“Really!” said Stephen, without alluding to his little feat of wall climbing.

Well, the end of it was that after a good deal of hesitation, the Holy Mother obliged, saying that as the god was dead she supposed nothing else mattered.  First, however, she went to the back of the house and clapped her hands, whereon an old woman, a mute and a very perfect specimen of an albino native, appeared and stared at us wonderingly.  To her Mrs. Eversley talked upon her fingers, so rapidly that I could scarcely follow her movements.  The woman bowed till her forehead nearly touched the ground, then rose and ran towards the water.

“I have sent her to fetch the paddles from the canoe,” said Mrs. Eversley, “and to put my mark upon it.  Now none will dare to use it to cross the lake.”

“That is very wise,” I replied, “as we don’t want news of our whereabouts to get to the Motombo.”

Next we went to the enclosure, where Mrs. Eversley with a native knife cut a string of palm fibres that was sealed with clay on to the door and one of its uprights in such a fashion that none could enter without breaking the string.  The impression was made with a rude seal that she wore round her neck as a badge of office.  It was a very curious object fashioned of gold and having deeply cut upon its 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;