This water was almost solid, as substantial as the soft sand on a terrestrial sea-shore, and utterly oblivious to all else in his astonishment, he stood splashing and slapping the water with his feet and trying to sink. Then he tasted it, swallowed a mouthful, then another, and then went down again on his knees digging and wobbling his hands in an endeavour to bury his arms in the water flowing past, but he might almost have tried to push them through earth, for he got no further than the wrists despite his exertions. Meanwhile the watchers on board the _Regina_, on first seeing that the horses meant taking to the water, considered it a fine joke, but when the sight of its wonderful buoyancy followed, they were so surprised that the herd had passed out of sight into a wood on the next island almost before they had realised the situation. Quickly following, the _Regina_ hovered over Kelman, who, apparently forgetting all that had passed in the moment of surprised discovery, glanced upward and shouted,—“Look here, you fellows, this water is solid as sand; I’ve just had a drink and it’s beautiful. Come down, all of you!” “Where have the others gone?” shouted several from the outer deck. “The others? oh, ay! the others, to be sure!” he repeated, looking round in dismay, without the ghost of an idea where they were, and astonished to find himself alone. “The others? ay! yes, the others? ay, yes!” and again he looked down and round, and up and down again, as if he expected them to rise up out of the water, or fall from the sky; “the others! they’re not here!” The remarkable wisdom displayed in this statement set every one laughing, and then Kelman saw the situation himself, and laughed boisterously, standing all the time in the water, and then said—no longer abstractedly,—“I was so astonished and absorbed in this discovery that really for the moment I had quite forgotten everything else and how I came here. Help me up, you fellows, and don’t stand grinning there. How can we hunt for them if you grin the time away like that!” and amidst general laughter he was hauled up, dripping as he was, when the ship rose so that they could get a more extended horizon, but nowhere could the runaways be seen. This was serious, so Godfrey, Dalton, Field and Rutherford were put down on the next island, near the wood, armed in case of danger, and with instructions not to leave that island. The _Regina_ rose to scour the country and the four searchers entered the wood. All this, however, had taken some time, and it was fully fifteen minutes before the _Regina_ could start her own independent search.