When all was ready for the start, two or three last messages passed between the travellers and their friends upon the mountain. "_Heaven keep you and all those dear to you! Your memory will always be cherished by all here_," came from Leonard. To which Templemore replied:-- "_Long life and happiness to you and your dear wife and all your people._" "_God bless you, Jack!_" "_God bless you, Leonard!_" Thus they finally parted; and a few hours later the homeward-bound friends looked their last upon Roraima from the ridge near Daranato. The mountain was lighted with the red rays of the setting sun and towered up in glowing splendour. The greens of the wood at its base, varied and vivid in colouring, as they were, contrasted with the pinks, and purples, and reds of the precipitous walls above, that now looked again like a fairy fortress in the clouds, smiling, and fascinating in its light, aerial beauty. "What a pity the city does not show!" said Harry. "What a glorious sight it would make!" "At least you have conquered the secret the mysterious mountain has so long and so well concealed," Doctor Lorien observed to Templemore. The latter gazed on the mountain gloomily. His mind went back to the morning when he saw it first and the vague forebodings that had then come into his mind. "I don't know," he said doubtfully. "I have not brought away with me the most wonderful secret of all--the 'Plant of Life.' When I think how I was cheated out of that, by the mountain itself, as you may truly say--for its very rocks came crashing down to prevent my escape, or to kill me if I persisted; or at least, to insure my leaving nearly everything behind--when I think of this, it seems to me that Roraima has guarded most of its secrets pretty effectually, and I am almost persuaded there is something uncanny about it." Harry laughed at this; the more so that it came from Jack. "That's very fanciful--for you," he returned. "If it had been Leonard, now, I should not have been surprised." "I am afraid my ideas of what is precisely practical and what is fanciful have been a good deal modified," Jack confessed. "So would yours, if you had passed through my experiences." "Well, after all, perhaps you haven't lost much," Harry returned. "A small bundle of dried plants wouldn't have been of much use, and as to the seeds, if, as I understand you, they only thrive high up on the mountains, I don't see what you were going to do with them. Moreover, very likely they would have been eaten up by insects, or lost, or got wetted and spoiled, or something, before you got back or could have planted them in a likely spot." Then they continued their journey, staying that night in Daranato, where the great puma at first created a scare among the dusky inhabitants, but, showing friendliness towards all, she was soon the object of unbounded wonder and interest on every side.