make up my mind that you had lighted the fires and that I should find you alongside them." The following morning witnessed the departure of the _Flying Fish_ from the open space in which was situated 'Msusa's village; and profound was the relief of that savage and his friends as, from the obscurity of the interior of their huts, they watched the enormous shining mass, and, by-and-by, saw it quietly rise into the air as of its own volition, and go gently driving out of sight over the tree-tops. Half an hour later, having located the other open space, in which had been witnessed the attack upon the gorilla by the leopard, the ship quietly descended into it; and the hunters, refreshed by a sound night's sleep, sallied forth and secured the skins of both animals, which proved to be quite uninjured by the depredations of other animals, none of which seemed to have approached them. Then the _Flying Fish_ again rose into the air and wended her way back to her original berth; and it was while she was thus passing from one spot to the other that the mystery was solved of the difficulty which the four lost men had experienced in their endeavours to find the river and thus make their way back to the ship. For, in order to satisfy themselves upon this point, the travellers rose to a height of five thousand feet into the air, from which altitude they not only got a sight of the drinking-place at which their adventure may be said to have begun, but were also enabled to trace the course of the river itself. And they thus discovered that about a mile to the eastward of the drinking-place the river made an S-like bend, some eighteen miles across; also that, instead of wandering steadily south-- as they believed they had been, while in pursuit of the wounded okapi-- they must have gradually trended away toward the east, until they had gone some miles beyond the double bend in the river; hence their failure to find the stream again.