The _Flying Fish_ and her inmates remained in the country for rather more than three months from that date; quite long enough to satisfy the party that they had really acted wisely, and for the benefit of the nation, in deposing M'Bongwele; and long enough to enable them to make several most surprising and interesting discoveries among the ruins-- discoveries which it is not necessary to describe or particularise here, since the professor has prepared, and is now revising for the press, an elaborate and exhaustive treatise upon the subject. CHAPTER TWENTY TWO. AN ADVENTURE ON THE TOP OF MOUNT EVEREST. Leaving the country at last--to the very great regret of the inhabitants, who found that every little service rendered to the white strangers was munificently rewarded by a present of beads, buttons, party-coloured cloth, or perhaps a small hand mirror--the travellers made the best of their way to Bombay, at which place Mrs Scott and her nieces were anxious to be landed, and there they bade their fair guests a reluctant adieu. Thence, starting under cover of night and rising to a height of about ten thousand feet above the ground surface, the travellers made their way across the Indian peninsula in a north- easterly direction, travelling at a speed of about one hundred miles per hour, and arriving about eight o'clock the next morning at the foot of Mount Everest, the summit of which--towering into the sky to the enormous altitude of twenty-nine thousand feet above the sea-level, and believed to be the most lofty spot of earth on the surface of our globe--they intended attempting to reach. Here, on a magnificent grassy plateau surrounded by trees, and with not a single sign of human life at hand, the _Flying Fish_ was brought to earth and temporarily secured whilst the party took breakfast. "Now," said the professor as they rose from the breakfast-table, "in seeking to plant our feet upon the topmost peak of Mount Everest we are about to enter upon a task of no ordinary difficulty and danger, and it is desirable that no avoidable risks should be run. The danger arises from two causes--the excessive cold, and the highly rarefied state of the atmosphere at so enormous an elevation. The first can be guarded against by suitable clothing; the second can only be overcome by the assumption of our diving dresses. The latter, no doubt, seems to you a strange precaution; but it is a fact, that on the top of Mount Everest the air is too thin to support life, at all events in comfort, and for any but the briefest possible time; so we must take up our air with us. Let us therefore go and make these necessary changes of costume before we attempt moving the ship from her present position."