Such were the words which reached and, oddly enough, impressed themselves upon my darkening brain.  Or rather they were part of the words, excerpts from a long speech that there is no doubt Sammy had carefully prepared during our absence.

CHAPTER XIX

THE TRUE HOLY FLOWER

When I came to myself again it was to find that I had slept fifteen or sixteen hours, for the sun of a new day was high in the heavens.  I was lying in a little shelter of boughs at the foot of that mound on which we flew the flag that guided us back over the waters of the Lake Kirua.  Near by was Hans consuming a gigantic meal of meat which he had cooked over a neighbouring fire.  With him, to my delight, I saw Mavovo, his head bound up, though otherwise but little the worse.  The stone, which probably would have killed a thin-skulled white man, had done no more than knock him stupid and break the skin of his scalp, perhaps because the force of it was lessened by the gum man’s-ring which, like most Zulus of a certain age or dignity, he wore woven in his hair.

The two tents we had brought with us to the lake were pitched not far away and looked quite pretty and peaceful there in the sunlight.

Hans, who was watching me out of the corner of his eye, ran to me with a large pannikin of hot coffee which Sammy had made ready against my awakening; for they knew that my sleep was, or had become of a natural order.  I drank it to the last drop, and in all my life never did I enjoy anything more.  Then while I began upon some pieces of the toasted meat, I asked him what had happened.

“Not much, Baas,” he answered, “except that we are alive, who should be dead.  The Maam and the Missie are still asleep in that tent, or at least the Maam is, for the Missie is helping Dogeetah, her father, to nurse Baas Stephen, who has an ugly wound.  The Pongos have gone and I think will not return, for they have had enough of the white man’s guns.  The Mazitu have buried those of their dead whom they could recover, and have sent their wounded, of whom there were only six, back to Beza Town on litters.  That is all, Baas.”

Then while I washed, and never did I need a bath more, and put on my underclothes, in which I had swum on the night of the killing of the Motombo, that Hans had wrung out and dried in the sun, I asked that worthy how he was after his adventures.

“Oh! well enough, Baas,” he answered, “now that my stomach is full, except that my hands and wrists are sore with crawling along the ground like a babyan (baboon), and that I cannot get the stink of that god’s skin out of my nose.  Oh! you don’t know what it was:  if I had been a white man it would have killed me.  But, Baas, perhaps you did well to take drunken old Hans with you on this journey after all, for I was clever about the little gun, wasn’t I?  Also about your swimming of the Crocodile Water, though it is true that the sign of the spider and the moth which your reverend father sent, taught me that.  And now we have got back safe, except for the Mazitu, Jerry, who doesn’t matter, for there are plenty more like him, and the wound in Baas Stephen’s shoulder, and that heavy flower which he thought better than brandy.”