“Do it,” interrupted the baronet. “Most certainly we will, my dear sir, and I am exceedingly obliged to you for the proposal. The adventure will doubtless possess a piquant flavouring of danger about it, but I presume that will scarcely be regarded by any of us as a drawback?” glancing across the table to the colonel and Mildmay.
“Scarcely,” echoed Lethbridge lazily, as he held his glass of wine up critically to the light.
“Did you say ‘danger?’” laughed Mildmay. “This craft of yours is so confoundedly safe, Sir Reginald, that upon my word I have almost forgotten what danger is; so if you really think you can find a place where we may once more come within hail of it, pray take us there without loss of time. For my part, I am becoming positively effeminate, and unless I can speedily have a chance of getting my head broken I shall be utterly ruined for ‘the service’ when I go back to it.”
“So be it,” said the baronet. “Ancient Ophir is our next destination; and we will start to-morrow morning. You, professor, I know will not shrink from danger when the solving of so interesting a question is concerned.”
“Ah, ah! try me,” laughed the professor joyously—“try me, my friend, and you shall see.”
Accordingly, on the following morning after breakfast a general adjournment was made to the pilot-house, where, with map and chart spread out before them, and the professor’s treasured volume beside them for reference, the probable site of ancient Ophir was at length definitely located; when the course and distance were ascertained, and a start made.
Being anxious to see as much as possible of the country during their passage over it, a low rate of speed—averaging about twenty miles per hour—was maintained; the day’s journey beginning at six o’clock in the morning, and terminating at the same hour in the evening, when a halt was called and the ship brought to earth for the night.
On the fourth day of this part of their journey, shortly after effecting their morning’s start, they came within sight of an immense lake; and a slight deviation from their prescribed course was made in order that a thorough examination of it might be effected. A long range of hills, which had been sighted on the previous day, lay on their left hand; and, on clearing the southern spurs of these, they found that another large body of water lay beyond or to the eastward of them; a river connecting the two lakes, afterwards identified by them as lakes Albert Nyanza and Tanganyika. Rising in the air to a height of about ten thousand feet, they slowly traversed the latter from its northern extremity, reaching its widest part—which they estimated to be about sixty miles across—at mid-day.
And here a most exciting scene presented itself. An hour previously a dark mass had been sighted near the western shore of the lake, which mass had at first been taken for an island; but, on a nearer approach, the supposed island had resolved itself into an immense fleet of canoes, in number about three hundred, manned by from four to twenty men in each, rapidly making its way toward the western shore. So large a concourse of craft, coupled with the fact that the crews were elaborately “got up” with paint, feathers, and skins, and were well provided with bows and arrows, spears, shields, and clubs—to say nothing of a few very antiquated-looking muskets which the travellers’ glasses revealed here and there—seemed to point to the conclusion that a hostile expedition was afoot, or, rather, afloat; and the explorers resolved upon a temporary pause in order to watch the course of events.
The natives were so intent upon their paddling that—facing forward as they all were, with the Flying Fish somewhat in their rear and nearly a mile above them—not one of them seemed to have detected the near vicinity of the aerial ship; and the fleet diligently pursued its course landward, the short broad-bladed paddles moving to the time of a deep, sonorous, but somewhat monotonous song, which, issuing as it did from the throats of probably quite two thousand warriors, was distinctly audible on board the Flying Fish, and really had quite an impressive effect.