The course of the stream which they were now following was, approximately, north-north-east, for a distance of about twenty-two miles, which was traversed in a trifle over four hours. Here the river suddenly bent sharply round in a south-easterly direction; the mangroves disappeared, being replaced by a thick fringe of reeds, the banks of the river gradually increased in height, and were covered to the water's edge with a thick tangle of bushes, amid which towered the outposts of a forest of magnificent trees that could be seen stretching away for miles ahead. The fugitives considered that they were now well beyond all likelihood of pursuit, and the thick beds of reeds which fringed the river at frequent intervals afforded them excellent opportunities for concealment; but the wind continued favourable, and the moon afforded them ample light; they therefore determined to press forward so long as the conditions continued favourable, one of them remaining on watch and steering the boat while the other slept. In this fashion they sped up the stream hour after hour, all through the night, the width of the waterway remaining about the same, but the character of the country ever-changing, the banks in places rising to a height of quite a hundred feet, here in the form of a gentle, tree-clad slope, and there towering precipitously, a rocky face, with overhanging bushes and great clumps of fern springing from every fissure. At length the moon sank beneath the tree-tops on the western bank, and the light became so uncertain that the voyagers were seriously debating the advisability of seeking a suitable spot in which to tie up the boat, when a sudden chilliness in the wind warned them that the dawn was at hand, and a few minutes later the sky to the eastward paled, so that the tops of the trees stood out against the pallor black as though drawn in Indian ink, the stars dimmed and blinked out, one after another, the eastern pallor became suffused with delicate primrose that rapidly warmed into clear amber, a beam of golden light flashed through the branches of the trees on the eastern bank of the river, and in a moment the whole scene changed as if by magic, a thousand lovely tints of green, blue, orange, crimson, and white, leapt into view as daylight flooded the landscape, revealing great masses of flowering shrubs and enormous festoons of queer-shaped and gorgeously coloured orchids; colibris that flashed like living gems darted hither and thither; flocks of gaily plumaged parrots winged their way, screaming discordantly, across the stream; brilliantly painted kingfishers darted like streams of living fire from bough to bough, or perched staring intently down into the water from some overhanging branch; enormous butterflies of exquisite colours, and dragon-flies with transparent rose-tinted wings flitted inconsequently over the surface of the water and were leaped at by fish as brilliantly tinted as themselves--and it was day in the South