He let go
of the orchid because he must and tried to retreat. Too late! Half a
dozen or more of the Pongo pushed themselves between the stern or bow
of our canoe and the reeds, and waded forward to kill him. I could not
help, for to tell the truth at the moment I was stuck in a mud-hole
made by the hoof of a hippopotamus, while the Zulu hunters and the
Mazitu were as yet too far off. Surely he must have died had it not
been for the courage of the girl Hope, who, while wading shorewards a
little in front of me, had turned and seen his plight. Back she came,
literally bounding through the water like a leopard whose cubs are in
danger.
Reaching Stephen before the Pongo she thrust herself between him and
them and proceeded to address them with the utmost vigour in their own
language, which of course she had learned from those of the albinos
who were not mutes.
What she said I could not exactly catch because of the shouts of the
advancing Mazitu. I gathered, however, that she was anathematizing
them in the words of some old and potent curse that was only used by
the guardians of the Holy Flower, which consigned them, body and
spirit, to a dreadful doom.
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