Next morning, with two saddle animals, one pack animal and one Boer to ride another horse and lead the pack horse, the two Americans started back for Port Natal. They followed over the route they had traced out two days before to the ranch, then took a road traveled by the stockmen, and on the second night from the mine came to a house on the main road to Port Natal, which was six or seven miles nearer their destination than the point where they had left the road and taken the trail for the mine. They hired a Boer to go up and bring back their wagons. They came next morning. The best rig was selected, and the two friends started for the seashore. In eight days they were back at Port Natal, having made the round trip in twenty-eight or twenty-nine days. On arriving at the seashore they found that no steamer was in port bound North, but there was a fine steamer in the roadstead that was to sail next day for Melbourne, Australia. Sedgwick's plan had been to go back to London, take his wife and go thence, via New York, to San Francisco. But no ship was awaiting him, and the agent of the Northern Line did not know when a ship would sail. It would have to come first, and might return soon, or might lie in port fifteen or twenty days. So, talking the matter over with Jordan, both concluded that the best thing was to try the voyage via Australia. Again Sedgwick begged Jordan to go, yet he kindly, but firmly refused, saying, "I must hev my way this time, Jim." Accordingly, Sedgwick engaged passage to Melbourne, then wrote his wife what they had found; that he had decided it was best to go by Australia to San Francisco; that, if prosperous, he hoped to reach that port in forty-eight or fifty days; that he would be detained there probably sixty days, and would then return to Africa via England, hoping to be with her in one hundred and twenty days, and to be able to remain with her for a month. Jordan found six English miners and engaged them to go with him, bought as full an outfit as possible, through a trader ordered more, including a portable saw-mill from England, made an arrangement with Sedgwick how to send and receive news, and the two tired men lay down to take their last night's rest together for, as they calculated, at least six or seven months, perhaps a full year. It was a memorable night to both, and the confidences they exchanged and the sacred trusts they each assumed, they never forgot.