“You are perfectly right, Elphinstone,” concurred Lethbridge, gravely. “The presence of the ladies and little Ida necessarily imposes certain limitations upon our movements; and it is quite easy to imagine a dozen or more undertakings that we might quite justifiably undertake, if we were alone, that are not permissible under present circumstances. A way out of the difficulty that you have indicated would, of course, be for one of us men who understand the working of the ship to remain with the ladies; and it will afford me the greatest possible pleasure to do so.”
“No, no, certainly not; by no manner of means, old chap,” struck in Mildmay, with quite unwonted eagerness. “If anybody is to remain aboard this ship I, obviously, am the man to do so. For, in the first place, I am such a confoundedly lazy beggar that it would be no pleasure to me to go toiling and groping my way mile after mile through the thick undergrowth of a forest like that, purely upon the off-chance of stumbling up against something interesting enough to shoot or look at; while you would enjoy nothing better.”
“Excuse me, gentlemen,” interposed Sir Reginald; “but a moment’s reflection, I think, will serve to convince you that, as your host, I am the man who—”
“No, no,” interrupted Mildmay, “that plea won’t do at all, my dear fellow; it is altogether too thin! You, like Lethbridge and the professor—to say nothing of Colonel Sziszkinski—would be in your element prowling through that forest; while, as for me—well, I should not go from choice, in any case. So there you are!”
“Do you really mean that, Mildmay?” demanded Sir Reginald.
“Yes, upon my honour, I do,” assented the skipper. “I must confess,” he continued, “that I have a very strong predilection for a clear horizon and an unimpeded view of the sky overhead, whether I happen to be ashore or afloat. Besides, it is not as though you needed me, you know; in that case it would be very different, of course. But—well, I think I have fully made out my contention that, if it is necessary for either of us to remain aboard, I am the man.”
“Very well; then that is settled,” agreed Sir Reginald. “Now, the question that next suggests itself is this: Are we to leave the ship here, and endeavour to penetrate the forest from this point; or should we take the ship into the heart of the forest, and use her as our headquarters from which to make short day excursions? There is something to be said in favour of either plan. For example, in considering the first plan I mentioned, we all noticed a number of native villages as we came along. Two or three of these are only a few miles distant; and it might be possible for us to engage any number of those fellows to serve as bearers, to carry our impedimenta for us, cut a path through the undergrowth, and so on. Under such conditions we should certainly see far more of the forest than we can possibly hope to do by adopting the other plan. Plan number two, on the other hand, appears to offer us the better chance to reach the heart of the forest. Now, what say you, gentlemen? Which plan appeals to you the more strongly? Or has either of you an alternative to suggest?”
“Let us try the second plan; and if that proves unsatisfactory we can always fall back upon the first,” said the professor. And so it was arranged.
Accordingly, on the following morning, the first streaks of dawn saw von Schalckenberg astir, and on his way to the pilot-house, where he first of all manipulated the lever that controlled the grip-anchors, drawing it back, and thus causing the anchors to relinquish their hold upon the ground. Then he turned a sufficient stream of vapour into the air-chambers to create a partial vacuum and cause the ship to rise in the air to a height of about two hundred feet above the tops of the most lofty trees; and finally to set the engines going ahead at a speed of about fifty miles an hour, in accordance with an arrangement between himself and Sir Reginald, made the last thing before turning in on the previous night. Then, the morning being perfectly calm, he set the course due south, and returned below to get his bath and dress.
For the first three hours or so of this comparatively rapid flight the forest was found to be by no means dense. The trees grew more or less in clumps, with plenty of open spaces between, many of which were occupied by native villages, the inhabitants of which turned out en masse to gaze in awe at the wonderful sight of the huge ship rushing through the air overhead, and to greet her appearance with weird, blood-curdling cries and the beating of their great war drums. Then they crossed the Aruwimi River—an important tributary of the great Congo, shortly afterward sighting the snow-crowned summit of Ruwenzori, glistening in the sun. And here the villages abruptly ceased, and the forest growth rapidly thickened, until, with the arrival of noon, they found themselves floating over a mass of foliage so dense that it was impossible to see anything of the ground beneath. They had by this time traversed some two hundred and fifty miles of forest, and they came to the conclusion that they were now near enough to the heart of it for all practical purposes. They therefore slowed the ship down to a speed of ten knots, and rose to a height of two thousand feet, with the object of searching for some opening in the great mass of multi-tinted green beneath them large enough to receive the ship and allow her to come to earth. This they eventually found some ten miles farther south, on the banks of an almost dry stream, flowing in a westerly direction. Four mountain peaks were then in sight to the eastward, at an estimated distance of between forty and fifty miles.