t 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
Tan