Even in its dried state it was a wondrous thing, measuring twenty-four inches from the tip of one wing or petal to the tip of the other, by twenty inches from the top of the back sheath to the bottom of the pouch.  The measurement of the back sheath itself I forget, but it must have been quite a foot across.  In colour it was, or had been, bright golden, but the back sheath was white, barred with lines of black, and in the exact centre of the pouch was a single black spot shaped like the head of a great ape.  There were the overhanging brows, the deep recessed eyes, the surly mouth, the massive jaws—­everything.

Although at that time I had never seen a gorilla in the flesh, I had seen a coloured picture of the brute, and if that picture had been photographed on the flower the likeness could not have been more perfect.

“What is it?” I asked, amazed.

“Sir,” said Brother John, sometimes he used this formal term when excited, “it is the most marvellous Cypripedium in the whole earth, and, sir, I have discovered it.  A healthy root of that plant will be worth £20,000.”

“That’s better than gold mining,” I said.  “Well, have you got the root?”

Brother John shook his head sadly as he answered: 

“No such luck.”

“How’s that as you have the flower?”

“I’ll tell you, Allan.  For a year past and more I have been collecting in the district back of Kilwa and found some wonderful things, yes, wonderful.  At last, about three hundred miles inland, I came to a tribe, or rather, a people, that no white man had ever visited.  They are called the Mazitu, a numerous and warlike people of bastard Zulu blood.”

“I have heard of them,” I interrupted.  “They broke north before the days of Senzangakona, two hundred years or more ago.”

“Well, I could make myself understood among them because they still talk a corrupt Zulu, as do all the tribes in those parts.  At first they wanted to kill me, but let me go because they thought that I was mad.  Everyone thinks that I am mad, Allan; it is a kind of public delusion, whereas I think that I am sane and that most other people are mad.”

“A private delusion,” I suggested hurriedly, as I did not wish to discuss Brother John’s sanity.  “Well, go on about the Mazitu.”

“Later they discovered that I had skill in medicine, and their king, Bausi, came to me to be treated for a great external tumour.  I risked an operation and cured him.  It was anxious work, for if he had died I should have died too, though that would not have troubled me very much,” and he sighed.  “Of course, from that moment I was supposed to be a great magician.  Also Bausi made a blood brotherhood with me, transfusing some of his blood into my veins and some of mine into his.  I only hope he has not inoculated me with his tumours, which are congenital.  So I became Bausi and Bausi became me.  In other words, I was as much chief of the Mazitu as he was, and shall remain so all my life.”