the name.

"'And how did you come here?'

"'On my feet,' she answered laconically.

"We reached the packs, and undoing one of them, I extracted a handful of
beads. 'Now,' I said, 'a gift for a gift. Hand over the mealies.'

"She took the beads without even looking at them, which struck me as
curious, and setting the basket of mealies on the ground, emptied it.

"At the bottom of the basket were some curiously-shaped green leaves,
rather like the leaves of the gutta-percha tree in shape, only somewhat
thicker and of a more fleshy substance. As though by hazard, the girl
picked one of these leaves out of the basket and smelt it. Then she
handed it to me. I took the leaf, and supposing that she wished me to
smell it also, was about to oblige her by doing so, when my eye fell
upon some curious red scratches on the green surface of the leaf.

"'Ah,' said the girl (whose name, by the way, was Maiwa), speaking
beneath her breath, 'read the signs, white man.'

"Without answering her I continued to stare at the leaf. It had been
scratched or rather written upon with a sharp tool, such as a nail, and
wherever this instrument had touched it, the acid juice oozing through
the outer skin had turned a rusty blood colour. Presently I found the
beginning of the scrawl, and read this in English, and covering the
surface of the leaf and of two others that were in the basket.