Meanwhile the travellers had availed themselves of their recent ascent to sharply scrutinise the face of the country immediately adjacent to the ruins, and had at length discovered, on the summit of a distant hill, an extensive village or settlement, strongly defended by a circular stockade, which they shrewdly suspected to be the headquarters of king M'Bongwele. The single street, which ran through the centre of the village from end to end, was crowded with people all gazing skyward at the unwonted apparition of the aerial ship; and, with the aid of their telescopes, the travellers could see in the central square a small group of persons (who they conjectured to be the king and his suite) similarly engaged, surrounded and protected from the rabble by a phalanx of armed men. The ship swept rapidly onward until she hovered immediately over the last-named party (just to impress upon the king a wholesome conviction of the utter uselessness of his stockade as a protection against such a foe as the _Flying Fish_), and then, making a majestic sweep, came gently to earth immediately opposite the principal gate in the stockade. "Now, go," said the professor, addressing Lualamba, "and inform king M'Bongwele that we await him on the spot among the ruins where you found us this morning." The bewildered chief, scarcely able to realise the fact that he had actually been brought safely back to _terra firma_, lost no time in availing himself of the permission given him to depart, and, scrambling down the ship's side and the rope-ladder, he reached the ground and bounded off like a startled deer toward the gate, which was hastily thrown open to admit him, and as hastily closed and barred again the moment he had passed through. The _Flying Fish_ then rose once more into the air and leisurely made her way back to the ruins, passing, _en route_, the force which had been sent out to capture her, and which was now making the best of its way back to the village to report the result of the expedition.