The night was calm and windless, and the engine worked well, so that his mind was not harassed by any anxiety about the aeroplane. His body was less comfortable. The air was bitterly cold; he had put on his thick wadded coat and gloves, but his hands were numbed, and more than once he rubbed his nose to prevent it from freezing. He was glad to think that his journey was to be a short one. A little more than half an hour after he started, he discerned the lights of the settlement far away twinkling like glowworms at the bottom of a ditch. He waited a few minutes to make sure of his bearings, then began a gradual descent, looking about him warily as he sank lower in order to avoid grazing a jutting crag where the gorge narrowed. The lights became more distinct: he was able to separate those on his left, in the miners’ quarters, from those on the right, in the dwelling houses and the quarters of the garrison. Presently he could just distinguish, in the diffused glow, the river flowing between, and he steered directly for this, so as to pass over the drawbridge. Having shut off the engine for the descent, his approach had probably escaped notice hitherto; but he started it again as soon as he came within thirty or forty feet of the bridge; the sound was immediately heard, and within a minute the whole settlement was aroused. The miners poured from their huts; all the Sikhs of the garrison turned out; the servants left their outhouses, talking shrilly; and even the Babu, who, as he often did, had retired to rest at sundown, was wakened by the noise, and rolling out of bed, threw on a warm dressing-gown of European cut, and toddled out to welcome his master and tender any advice that the occasion seemed to call for. Meanwhile Bob had flown past, utterly bewildered, and not a little alarmed. He knew the gorge well, but never having before made a trip through it by night, he was in a state of nervous terror lest he should lose his bearings and come to grief. The darkness was intense, redeemed from solid black only by a very faint reflection from the water. It was quite impossible to see the landing platform as he sped past, but when he arrived at the first spot at which turning was possible, he had a dim hope that, flying in the opposite direction, he might be able to see the platform in the diffused light of the camp-fires, in spite of the bend of the gorge. But in this he was disappointed. Not only were most of the lights intercepted by the bulging cliff, but all of them, being below its level, gave no illumination at all for the surface on which the descent must be made.