Allan and the Holy Flower | Page 6

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."
"That might be useful," I said, reflectively, "but go on."
"I learned that on the western boundary of the Mazitu territory were
great swamps; that beyond these swamps was a lake called Kirua, and
beyond that a large and fertile land supposed to be an island, with a
mountain in its centre. This land is known as Pongo, and so are the
people who live there."
"That is a native name for the gorilla, isn't it?" I asked. "At least so a
fellow who had been on the West Coast told me."
"Indeed, then that's strange, as you will see. Now these Pongo are
supposed to be great magicians, and the god they worship is said to be
a gorilla, which, if you are right, accounts for their name. Or rather," he
went on, "they have two gods. The other is that flower you see there.
Whether the flower with the monkey's head on it was the first god and
suggested the worship of the beast itself, or /vice versa/, I don't know.
Indeed I know very little, just what I was told by the Mazitu and a man
who called himself a Pongo chief, no more."

"What did they say?"
"The Mazitu said that the Pongo people are devils who came by the
secret channels through the reeds in canoes and stole their children and
women, whom they sacrificed to their gods. Sometimes, too, they made
raids upon them at night, 'howling like hyenas.' The men they killed
and the women and children they took away. The Mazitu want to attack
them but cannot do so, because they are not water people and have no
canoes, and therefore are unable to reach the island, if it is an island.
Also they told me about the wonderful flower which grows in the place
where the ape-god lives, and is worshipped like the god. They had the
story of it from some of their people who had been enslaved and
escaped."
"Did you try to get to the island?" I asked.
"Yes, Allan. That is, I went to the edge of the reeds which lie at the end
of a long slope of plain, where the lake begins. Here I stopped for some
time catching butterflies and collecting plants. One night when I was
camped there by myself, for none of my men would remain so near the
Pongo country after sunset, I woke up with a sense that I was no longer
alone. I crept out of my tent and by the light of the moon, which was
setting, for dawn drew near, I saw a man who leant upon the handle of
a very wide-bladed spear which was taller than himself, a big man over
six feet two high, I should say, and broad in proportion. He wore a long,
white cloak reaching from his shoulders almost to the ground. On his
head was a tight-fitting cap with lappets, also white. In his ears were
rings of copper or gold, and on his wrists bracelets of the same metal.
His skin was intensely black, but the features were not at all negroid.
They were prominent and finely-cut, the nose being sharp and the lips
quite thin; indeed of