ed spot, let alone a large
city. But you're pretty certain of our whereabouts, ain't you?"

"Yes; I don't think I can be mistaken very much, and I must be out of
all reckoning wrong, if this is true. There is no town, that I know of,
on this coast, between the Portuguese settlements, which are something
like eight hundred miles to the north of where I suppose we now are, and
Cape Town, which is almost as far to the south."

"Well, just come and look for yourself, doctor," said Nick. "It won't
take you long. The place is not above two or three miles off at the
outside."

"Of course I will go--we'll all go, Nick--Lion and all I am sure I hope
with all my heart that you may be right. It will save us a very long
and dangerous journey if you are."

He caught up a fowling-piece which had belonged to his friend the
purser, and handed Frank the fourth gun, an ordinary seaman's carbine.
"Now then, Nick, lead the way."

Gilbert complied, and the whole party stepped out briskly, their
curiosity, as well as their interest, being strongly awakened. They
toiled through the heavy sand, which was only varied by heaps of
drift-wood flung up by the sea, and the rotten carcasses of mud fish,
which had been carried too far inland by the tide to be able to recover
their native element. The stench, under the burning sun, was almost
insupportable, and the three adventurers were greatly relieved, when,
after a walk of three-quarters of an hour, the desert of sand was
passed, and they ascended a rocky plateau, where some crags, twelve or
fifteen feet in height, afforded at least some shelter from the rapidly
increasing heat. "We are getting near the place now," observed Nick, as
they reached the last of a long chain of rocks, and came upon a wide and
apparently level plain, but so much enveloped in mist as to be very
imperfectly discerned.

"There it is, I declare," exclaimed Frank, who was the first of the
party to turn the corner of the limestone shelf. "There it all is--
houses, fortifications, and soldiers, just as Nick said!"

There, indeed, it was. At the distance, as it seemed, of scarcely more
than three hundred feet, were seen distinctly the battlemented walls of
a city of great size and strength. There were the gateways, the
flanking towers, and the embrasures; while behind them rose domes and
cupolas, and the sharp-peaked roofs of numberless houses, intermingled
with lofty trees. Under the walls ran a broad river,