Half an hour later a brilliant star suddenly appeared in the dense darkness ahead. It shone steadily for nearly a minute, disappeared, and almost instantly appeared again. "Hurrah!" ejaculated the lieutenant joyously, "there is the ship's light. Now we _know_ that we are right. Another hour's tramp will, if all be well, take us alongside. How I wish I had a pipe of tobacco!" "Don't mention it!" fervently ejaculated the professor, who was an ardent lover of the weed. "However, in another hour, as you say--ah!" The professor's "ah!" was so very expressive of anticipated pleasure that his companions with one accord burst into a hearty laugh, which, however, was abruptly cut short by a low savage growl and a sudden rustling in the grass close by. "What was that?" was the simultaneous inquiry as the party came abruptly to a dead halt. "Push on, push on!" urged the professor. "It is some nocturnal animal prowling in search of prey. At this moment he is more frightened than we are; but if we wait here until he has regained his courage he will perhaps spring on one of us." The march was accordingly resumed, with perhaps some little precipitation; and at length Mildmay's companions began to be conscious of the presence of certain shapeless blotches of blackness rising up against the sky ahead of them and occasionally obscuring for a few seconds the now brilliant light which gleamed from the top of the _Flying Fish's_ pilot-house. These shapeless blotches of blackness increased in size with almost startling rapidity; and in a few minutes the travellers, still following the footpath, found themselves in the midst of them, winding in and out between great blocks of masonry which suddenly rose up in front of them in the darkness, and stumbling over loose boulders and fragments of stone. At length they found themselves in the clear open space occupied by the _Flying Fish_; and in another quarter of an hour the party passed into the black tunnel formed by the bilge-keel and the side of the ship, and began to feel with their feet for the open trap-door. This was soon reached; the party entered the opening, closed the flap, and, with a murmured "Thank God, we are safe at last!" began to feel for the button which was to open the door giving access to the interior proper of the ship. Another second and this door swung open, and the party found themselves at the foot of the cylindrical staircase, in the full blaze of the electric lamps. "Now," said the baronet, "ten minutes in which to strip, rub down, and don dry garments, and then we will be off to the rescue of those poor women, after which I think we must give our friend M'Bongwele a salutary lesson on the evil and impolicy of treachery."