The moon swung slowly across the dark blue dome above, and still Chenobi kept his vigil, moving back and forth with the regularity of an automaton. Yet it could not be that he feared danger. What danger could threaten in this peaceful spot? No, it was not the fear of possible peril that kept the king from his slumbers. His mind was busy with other things. A daring thought had come to him, and, as he pondered it, the more feasible it appeared. It was nothing less than this: that he should forsake his old haunts and cast in his lot with his new friends. For hours he revolved this idea in his brain, until the moon disappeared below the crater rim; then he aroused the sleepers, and beneath the quickly paling sky the explorers had their first breakfast above ground since passing the great ice barrier. Anxiously they awaited the coming of dawn, eager to commence the last stage of their journey--the ascent of the crater wall. With a suddenness peculiar to the tropics the sun rose. A fiery arrow flickered across the sky, followed by a blaze of golden glory, before which the stars rapidly paled and died. The day had come! Rising, the king led the way across the crater, passing the tiny spring whence he had obtained the water the previous night. This, the explorers noted, overflowed its basin and trickled through a little crevice in the crater wall out into the open, to become, perhaps, a rushing river on the other side of the cliffs. Moving to a spot where the ascent promised to be easier than at any other point, Chenobi began to climb. The creepers and low-growing shrubs made progress very easy. Within an hour the summit was reached, and the party stood in the full glare of the sun on the rim of the great crater. This same rim proved to be a rugged ledge some twenty feet in width, from which the outer cliffs descended for the first hundred feet or so as sheer as a wall and about as devoid of foothold. Below, the morning mists still veiled the base of the cone and the country which lay beyond it; but, as the sun gained power, the banks of vapour slowly dispersed, exposing to view the waving forests of a large island. Eagerly Mervyn peered downward; then a glad shout pealed from his lips: “I thought so! Look, Seymour! _The island of Ayuti!_” “Great Scott! so it is!” gasped the baronet in amazement. CHAPTER XXV. SEYMOUR’S FALL. FOR some time the adventurers stood gazing downward from their lofty perch in silence. Beyond the belt of forest they could see a strip of sandy beach, and beyond this again, the sea, its shimmering surface reflecting the rays of the sun like a gigantic mirror. No dwelling was visible save in one place, where, in a forest clearing, a white house stood, plainly discernible in the clear morning air against the dark green of the foliage.