A STORY OF BRASSAVOLA DIGBYANA 155 



The dry season was well advanced by this time, and all 

 flowers had withered. Nevertheless Sam jumped into a 

 canoe, swearing, and started up the river with a couple of 

 Indians. In three or four days he returned with a boat-load 

 of orchids, sent them to the warehouse, and vanished. They 

 proved to be a miscellaneous collection, all sorts and sizes ; 

 evidently the men had just gathered anything they came across. 



Mr. Ponder grew angry. It was an impudent trick, a 

 defiance of himself and the Guild, such as no true Carib 

 would be guilty of. Foreign travel had demoralised Sam. 

 Those honest fellows, his partners, would be not less in- 

 dignant, if the shameful proceeding could be laid before 

 them. But all had gone up the river — to their gold-field, 

 of course — and no one knew where that might be. Mr. 

 Ponder got more and more warm as he revolved the insult. 

 Business was slack. He decided to follow, and sent out 

 forthwith to engage a crew of Indians ; gold-diggers do not 

 mind the intrusion of Indians so much, for when these 

 savages have obtained a very little dust, they withdraw to 

 turn it into drink. And they never chatter. Moreover he 

 had to find the Caribs' camp, and they are sleuth-hounds. 



The search was not so hopeless as it might seem. Care- 

 fully reviewing the circumstances, Mr. Ponder felt sure that 

 his Caribs had discovered their placer whilst collecting the 

 felled trees — not before ; that is, in the rainy season. Men 

 would not wander far into the bush at that time. Probably, 

 therefore, the scene lay pretty close to one or other of the 

 spots where they had found mahogany. Of those spots he 

 had a minute description. 



The reasoning proved to be quite correct, but luck 

 interposed before it had been severely tested. On arrival at 

 one of the stations to be explored — after a week or ten days' 

 voyaging, as I imagine — he saw a canoe just pushing out 

 from beneath the wooded bank with two of the missing 



