“Yes, Hans,” I said, “I did well to take you and you are clever, for had it not been for you, we should now be cooked and eaten in Pongo-land.  I thank you for your help, old friend.  But, Hans, another time please sew up the holes in your waistcoat pocket.  Four caps wasn’t much, Hans.”

“No, Baas, but it was enough; as they were all good ones.  If there had been forty you could not have done much more.  Oh! your reverend father knew all that” (my departed parent had become a kind of patron saint to Hans) “and did not wish this poor old Hottentot to have more to carry than was needed.  He knew you wouldn’t miss, Baas, and that there were only one god, one devil, and one man waiting to be killed.”

I laughed, for Hans’s way of putting things was certainly original, and having got on my coat, went to see Stephen.  At the door of the tent I met Brother John, whose shoulder was dreadfully sore from the rubbing of the orchid stretcher, as were his hands with paddling, but who otherwise was well enough and of course supremely happy.

He told me that he had cleansed and sewn up Stephen’s wound, which appeared to be doing well, although the spear had pierced right through the shoulder, luckily without cutting any artery.  So I went in to see the patient and found him cheerful enough, though weak from weariness and loss of blood, with Miss Hope feeding him with broth from a wooden native spoon.  I didn’t stop very long, especially after he got on to the subject of the lost orchid, about which he began to show signs of excitement.  This I allayed as well as I could by telling him that I had preserved a pod of the seed, news at which he was delighted.

“There!” he said.  “To think that you, Allan, should have remembered to take that precaution when I, an orchidist, forgot all about it!”

“Ah! my boy,” I answered, “I have lived long enough to learn never to leave anything behind that I can possibly carry away.  Also, although not an orchidist, it occurred to me that there are more ways of propagating a plant than from the original root, which generally won’t go into one’s pocket.”

Then he began to give me elaborate instructions as to the preservation of the seed-pod in a perfectly dry and air-tight tin box, etc., at which point Miss Hope unceremoniously bundled me out of the tent.

That afternoon we held a conference at which it was agreed that we should begin our return journey to Beza Town at once, as the place where we were camped was very malarious and there was always a risk of the Pongo paying us another visit.

So a litter was made with a mat stretched over it in which Stephen could be carried, since fortunately there were plenty of bearers, and our other simple preparations were quickly completed.  Mrs. Eversley and Hope were mounted on the two donkeys; Brother John, whose hurt leg showed signs of renewed weakness, rode his white ox, which was now quite fat again; the wounded hero, Stephen, as I have said, was carried; and I walked, comparing notes with old Babemba on the Pongo, their manners, which I am bound to say were good, and their customs, that, as the saying goes, were “simply beastly.”