rs as best I could by simply raising the ship
some three hundred feet in the air, and keeping a bright look-out in
every direction all day. And when I saw those four columns of smoke
rise up from among the trees, it didn't take me above two seconds to
make up my mind that you had lighted the fires and that I should find
you alongside them."

The following morning witnessed the departure of the _Flying Fish_ from
the open space in which was situated 'Msusa's village; and profound was
the relief of that savage and his friends as, from the obscurity of the
interior of their huts, they watched the enormous shining mass, and,
by-and-by, saw it quietly rise into the air as of its own volition, and
go gently driving out of sight over the tree-tops. Half an hour later,
having located the other open space, in which had been witnessed the
attack upon the gorilla by the leopard, the ship quietly descended into
it; and the hunters, refreshed by a sound night's sleep, sallied forth
and secured the skins of both animals, which proved to be quite
uninjured by the depredations of other animals, none of which seemed to
have approached them. Then the _Flying Fish_ again rose into the air
and wended her way back to her original berth; and it was while she was
thus passing from one spot to the other that the mystery was solved of
the difficulty which the four lost men had experienced in their
endeavours to find the river and thus make their way back to the ship.
For, in order to satisfy themselves upon this point, the travellers rose
to a height of five thousand feet into the air, from which altitude they
not only got a sight of the drinking-place at which their adventure may
be said to have begun, but were also enabled to trace the course of the
river itself. And they thus discovered that about a mile to the
eastward of the drinking-place the river made an S-like bend, some
eighteen miles across; also that, instead of wandering steadily south--
as they believed they had been, while in pursuit of the wounded okapi--
they must have gradually trended away toward the east, until they had
gone some miles beyond the double bend in the river; hence their failure
to find the stream again.

That same night, as keen as ever to get an okapi, the four hunters again
sallied out for their previous ambush, determined to make the utmost of
the waxing moon that nightly rode the sky; and, upon arriving at the
drinking-place, found--to von Schalckenber