Molly was delirious with excitement and Sally Rebecca, who had only just recovered from a long spell of sea-sickness, stood beside her, now and then glancing at Gran'pa's stern, sentinel-like figure standing for'ard in pensive majesty. Even Stringer showed some emotion as that little smudge of dark purple rose above the horizon's edge; and Dr. Croft behaved like a schoolboy and insisted on going up the rigging. After lunch, our excitement increased. Someone had seen a dark speck hovering over the island, and it was immediately rumored that one of our 'planes was coming out to meet us. Rumor was right. Against the background of the deep, tropical, blue sky we watched that latest example of man's mastery over Mother Earth. Defiant of the mighty tug of gravitation and the rude thrust of the wind, the great bird came gliding towards our boat, as straight and steady as an arrow. We approached one another with incredible swiftness--at the combined rate of probably 120 to 150 miles an hour--and, in less than ten minutes from the time we had first sighted it, the machine was looping, banking, swooping and curvetting round us like a thing distraught. With a deep-throated roar, it would shoot by us on the starboard, proceed half a mile ahead, sweep gracefully round, and then come rushing straight back again at double speed--only to commence vaulting over us when within twenty yards of the bows. Up and up it would go, in a great spluttering spiral. Then silence; and down again, in playful loops and dives and side-slips. It did our hearts good to watch it; but it made our necks ache abominably. . . . As I watched the old men, the crew, the captain, the doctor, the hypnotist, the interpreter, the ladies (Molly and Sally Rebecca), and Gran'pa, all staring heavenwards and entranced, I could not help feeling a justifiable pride in being the person who had found the incomparable and indomitable Oakley. It was very thoughtful and magnanimous of him to give us such a spectacular welcome. Had we been Cabinet Ministers, _en route_ to a naval review, we could not have been treated to a finer display of aerial courtesy and playfulness. It gave me great faith, too, in Oakley's initiative and daring, and intensified my almost painful eagerness to start out on our first flight into the African jungle. For nearly fifteen minutes, Oakley continued gambolling round our ship and then, with a sudden leap upwards, he passed over us and headed straight for the island. An hour later we landed, amidst a great hullabaloo of native excitement, shook hands with the Rev. William Watkins, who had come to welcome us ashore, and thereupon proceeded to his mission station, followed by the half-dozen hefty negroes who were carrying our personal belongings. "Well!" I said to Oakley. "You got here safely?"