This, it seemed, was the name that her mother had given to the girl when she was born in the hour of her black despair.
It was an extraordinary story that Mrs.Eversley had to tell, and yet a short one.
She _had_ escaped from Hassan-ben-Mohammed and the slave-traders, as the rescued slave told her husband at Zanzibar before he died, and, after days of wandering, been captured by some of the Pongo who were scouring the country upon dark business of their own, probably in search of captives.

They brought her across the lake to Pongo-land and, the former Mother of the Flower, an albino, having died at a great age, installed her in the office on this island, which from that day she had never left.

Hither she was led by the Kalubi of the time and some others who had "passed the god." This brute, however, she had never seen, although once she heard him roar, for it did not molest them or even appear upon their journey.
Shortly after her arrival on the island her daughter was born, on which occasion some of the women "servants of the Flower" nursed her.

From that moment both she and the child were treated with the utmost care and veneration, since the Mother of the Flower and the Flower itself being in some strange way looked upon as embodiments of the natural forces of fertility, this birth was held to be the best of omens for the dwindling Pongo race.

Also it was hoped that in due course the "Child of the Flower" would succeed the Mother in her office.