d the deck, bade him
look downward. Terrified into the most servile obedience, the wretched
chief did as he was bidden, and in a few minutes, the mist growing
thinner and thinner, he once more caught sight of the earth at an
immense distance below, the gigantic ruins above which they were
hovering dwarfed to a mere sprinkling of boulders over the plain; the
trees, the clumps of bush, and the meandering streams stretching away to
the horizon in almost illimitable perspective, and to the eastward the
sea, with just one solitary sail upon it, barely visible above its
gleaming rim.

Ignorant savage though he was, Lualamba was quite intelligent enough to
appreciate the novel beauty of the scene upon which his eyes now rested;
and, forgetting for the moment all his terrors, he leaned upon the rail,
lost in wonder and admiration. And when, after a minute or two, he
became conscious that the ship was again nearing the earth, his delight
knew no bounds, for he felt that, as the hero of so unique an experience
as he was now passing through, he must henceforth be a person of much
greater consequence among his countrymen than he had ever been before.

Meanwhile the travellers had availed themselves of their recent ascent
to sharply scrutinise the face of the country immediately adjacent to
the ruins, and had at length discovered, on the summit of a distant
hill, an extensive village or settlement, strongly defended by a
circular stockade, which they shrewdly suspected to be the headquarters
of king M'Bongwele. The single street, which ran through the centre of
the village from end to end, was crowded with people all gazing skyward
at the unwonted apparition of the aerial ship; and, with the aid of
their telescopes, the travellers could see in the central square a small
group of persons (who they conjectured to be the king and his suite)
similarly engaged, surrounded and protected from the rabble by a phalanx
of armed men.

The ship swept rapidly onward until she hovered immediately over the
last-named party (just to impress upon the king a wholesome conviction
of the utter uselessness of his stockade as a protection against such a
foe as the _Flying Fish_), and then, making a majestic sweep, came
gently to earth immediately opposite the principal gate in the stockade.

"Now, go," said the professor, addressing Lualamba, "and inform king
M'Bongwele that we await him on the spot among the ruins where you found
us this morning.