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At about 11.30 that night the wide roof of St. Pancras echoed to the disciplined tramp of Dawson's detachment, which marched straight to coaches reserved by order from Headquarters. "Marines don't talk," said Dawson, "but I am not taking risks. I don't want to sully the virtue of my old Sea Pongos by mixing them up with raw land Tommies."
We saw many such, whirled perpetually by the current at the bottom of the funnels, and contributing to enlarge them in every direction. The pongos of the river Amazon are easily destroyed, because the rocky dikes are not granite, but a conglomerate, or red sandstone with large fragments.
How they manage it and measure the distance so well, God only knows. Then an old 'possum would sing out, or a black-furred flying squirrel pongos, the blacks call 'em would come sailing down from the top of an ironbark tree, with all his stern sails spread, as the sailors say, and into the branches of another, looking as big as an eagle-hawk.
The Abbe Prevost and Buffon between them, however, did a good deal more disfigurement to Battell's sober account than 'cutting off an article. Thus Battell's statement that the Pongos "cannot speake, and have no understanding more than a beast," is rendered by Buffon "qu'il ne peut parler 'quoiqu'il ait plus d'entendement que les autres animaux'"; and again, Purchas' affirmation, "He told me in conference with him, that one of these Pongos tooke a negro boy of his which lived a moneth with them," stands in the French version, "un pongo lui enleva un petit negre qui passa un 'an' entier dans la societe de ces animaux."
The Maam and the Missie are still asleep in that tent, or at least the Maam is, for the Missie is helping Dogeetah, her father, to nurse Baas Stephen, who has an ugly wound. The Pongos have gone and I think will not return, for they have had enough of the white man's guns.
If we could not get a boat we must remain in that foodless forest until we starved. Or if we returned to the island of the Flower, there ere long we should certainly be attacked and destroyed by Komba and the Pongos when they came to look for our bodies. "I'll try it, Hans," I said. "Yes, Baas, I thought you would.
In one hut of a distant village, however, they came across an old and dying woman who informed them with her last breath that the Pongos, frightened by the iron tubes that vomited death and in obedience to some prophecy, "had all gone back whence they came in the beginning," taking with them the recaptured "Holy Flower." She had been left with a supply of food because she was too weak to travel.
They eat no flesh, but feed on nuts and other fruits; they cannot speak, nor have they any understanding beyond instinct. "When the people of the country travel through the woods, they make fires in the night, and in the morning, when they are gone, the Pongos will come and sit round it till it goes out, for they do not possess sagacity enough to lay more wood on.
The Pongos who were about equal in numbers to our people, came on furiously, for they were mad at the death of their god with his priest, the Motombo, of which I think news had reached them and at the carrying off of the Mother of the Flower.
For myself, bongos intrigue me even less than pongos, while dongos frankly bore me. "When do you expect him?" "He will get my wire tonight. I'm hoping we shall see the dear old fellow tomorrow afternoon some time. How surprised old Eddie will be to hear that I'm engaged. He's such a confirmed bachelor himself.
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