No one can explain away the orchid.

A queer people, these Pongo, with their white god and goddess and their Holy Flower.

But after all Africa is a land of queer people, and of queer gods too." And now the story shifts away to England.

(Don't be afraid, my adventurous reader, if ever I have one, it is coming back to Africa again in a very few pages.) Mr.Charles Scroope and I left Durban a day or two after my last conversation with Brother John.

At Cape Town we caught the mail, a wretched little boat you would think it now, which after a long and wearisome journey at length landed us safe at Plymouth.