With some irritation, for I hated that sentence of Brother John’s, I replied that I had arranged nothing, but that as none of them seemed to have any suggestions to make, I would go out and talk the matter over with Hans and Mavovo, which I did.

I need not chronicle the results of our conference since other arrangements were being made for us at which I little guessed.

It all came very suddenly, as great things in the lives of men and nations sometimes do.  Although the Mazitu were of the Zulu family, their military organization had none of the Zulu thoroughness.  For instance, when I remonstrated with Bausi and old Babemba as to their not keeping up a proper system of outposts and intelligence, they laughed at me and answered that they never had been attacked and now that the Pongo had learnt a lesson, were never likely to be.

By the way, I see that I have not yet mentioned that at Brother John’s request those Pongos who had been taken prisoners at the Battle of the Reeds were conducted to the shores of the lake, given one of the captured canoes and told that they might return to their own happy land.  To our astonishment about three weeks later they reappeared at Beza Town with this story.

They said that they had crossed the lake and found Rica still standing, but utterly deserted.  They then wandered through the country and even explored the Motombo’s cave.  There they discovered the remains of the Motombo, still crouched upon his platform, but nothing more.  In one hut of a distant village, however, they came across an old and dying woman who informed them with her last breath that the Pongos, frightened by the iron tubes that vomited death and in obedience to some prophecy, “had all gone back whence they came in the beginning,” taking with them the recaptured “Holy Flower.”  She had been left with a supply of food because she was too weak to travel.  So, perhaps, that flower grows again in some unknown place in Africa, but its worshippers will have to provide themselves with another god of the forest, another Mother of the Flower, and another high-priest to fill the office of the late Motombo.

These Pongo prisoners, having now no home, and not knowing where their people had gone except that it was “towards the north,” asked for leave to settle among the Mazitu, which was granted them.  Their story confirmed me in my opinion that Pongo-land is not really an island, but is connected on the further side with the continent by some ridge or swamp.  If we had been obliged to stop much longer among the Mazitu, I would have satisfied myself as to this matter by going to look.  But that chance never came to me until some years later when, under curious circumstances, I was again destined to visit this part of Africa.