It was short but terrible.  We threw everything we could overboard, including the ballast stones at the bottom of the canoe and the heavy hide of the gorilla.  This, as it proved, was fortunate, since the thing sank but slowly and the foremost Pongo boats halted a minute to recover so precious a relic, checking the others behind them, a circumstance that helped us by twenty or thirty yards.

“Over with the plant!” I said.

But Stephen, looking quite old from exhaustion and with the sweat streaming from him as he laboured at his unaccustomed paddle, gasped: 

“For Heaven’s sake, no, after all we have gone through to get it.”

So I didn’t insist; indeed there was neither time nor breath for argument.

Now we were in the reeds, for thanks to the flag which guided us, we had struck the big hippopotamus lane exactly, and the Pongos, paddling like demons, were about thirty yards behind.  Thankful was I that those interesting people had never learned the use of bows and arrows, and that their spears were too heavy to throw.  By now, or rather some time before, old Babemba and the Mazitu had seen us, as had our Zulu hunters.  Crowds of them were wading through the shallows towards us, yelling encouragements as they came.  The Zulus, too, opened a rather wild fire, with the result that one of the bullets struck our canoe and another touched the brim of my hat.  A third, however, killed a Pongo, which caused some confusion in the ranks of Tusculum.

But we were done and they came on remorselessly.  When their leading boat was not more than ten yards from us and we were perhaps two hundred from the shore, I drove my paddle downwards and finding that the water was less than four feet deep, shouted: 

“Overboard, all, and wade.  It’s our last chance!”

We scrambled out of that canoe the prow of which, as I left it the last, I pushed round across the water-lane to obstruct those of the Pongo.  Now I think all would have gone well had it not been for Stephen, who after he had floundered forward a few paces in the mud, bethought him of his beloved orchid.  Not only did he return to try to rescue it, he also actually persuaded his friend Mavovo to accompany him.  They got back to the boat and began to lift the plant out when the Pongo fell upon them, striking at them with their spears over the width of our canoe.  Mavovo struck back with the weapon he had taken from the Pongo sentry at the cave mouth, and killed or wounded one of them.  Then some one hurled a ballast stone at him which caught him on the side of the head and knocked him down into the water, whence he rose and reeled back, almost senseless, till some of our people got hold of him and dragged him to the shore.