y close to its limit, now
that it had had a chance to cool off and was well supplied with water.
It was important that they should make speed, for in the stop for water
and the subsequent maneuvering to rid themselves of their unwelcome
passenger, the python, they had lost upwards of an hour's time.

Flying high, and depending entirely upon the compass for striking Aden,
they shot through the starlit tropical night like a meteor, showing no
lights except the two small ones on the dashboard in the cabin, by
means of which Tom could observe the instruments and the controlling
levers below. Thus they crossed the famous Nile, sweeping below
Khartum and across the plains of Kordofan, and when the first streaks
of daylight appeared ahead of them they were just entering the plateaus
of northern Abyssinia.

Paul and Bob now relieved Tom and John, and the latter young men took a
nap. It was their custom to work in pairs, the observer preparing food
for himself and the pilot during the course of flight. Sometimes the
observer took the throttle long enough to give his friend a chance to
eat, and sometimes the pilot retained his seat, allowing the automatic
arrangement to do the guiding for him while he munched his food.

Just before seven o'clock Paul and Bob saw two large bodies of water
ahead of them, one stretching to the right and the other to the left.
The chart told them that the northern body was the Red Sea and the
southern one the Gulf of Aden, which opens into the Indian Ocean.
Between these bodies lay a narrow belt of water, flanked on the western
or African side by rocky, wooded hills, and on the eastern side by low,
sandy shores dotted with palms. This was the Strait of Bab-el-Mandeb,
and the country beyond was Persia.

Aden could not be more than fifteen minutes' run east now, and so Bob
awakened his sleeping comrades while Paul guided the airplane across
the strait. They flew a little higher, later, following the general
contour of the terraced slopes of the mountains along the Arabian coast.

As the Sky-Bird came leisurely over the hills surrounding this British
seaport of Aden, they could see that the town nestled in the crater of
an extinct volcano, as they had read. All around the low, white
buildings spread the rugged hillsides, and in declivities they passed
over numbers of the great brick tanks or reservoirs which catch and
store the scanty rainfall of the region and thus furnish Aden with its
only