and now that with his own hand he had snatched
Natasha from a fate of unutterable misery, and so signally punished
her persecutors, it seemed to be only in the fitness of things that
he should love her, win her for his own, if won she was to be by any
man.

This, at any rate, was the line of thought which led the Princess and
Colston each to express their unqualified satisfaction with the state
of affairs arrived at in the compact that had been made between
Natasha and Arnold--"armed neutrality," as the former smilingly
described to the Princess while she was telling her of the strange
wooing of her now avowed lover. Natasha was no woman to be wooed and
won in the ordinary way, and it was fitting that she should be the
guerdon of such an achievement as no man had ever undertaken before,
since the world began.

The voyage across Africa progressed pleasantly and almost
uneventfully for the thirty-six hours after the crossing of the Red
Sea. After passing over the mountains of the coast, the _Ariel_ had
travelled at a uniform height of about 3000 feet over a magnificent
country of hill and valley, forest and prairie, occasionally being
obliged to rise another thousand feet or so to cross some of the
ridges of mountain chains which rose into peaks and mountain knots,
some of which touched the snow-line.

Several times the air-ship was sighted by the people of the various
countries over which she passed, and crowds swarmed out of the
villages and towns, gesticulating wildly, and firing guns and beating
drums to scare the flying demon away.

Once or twice they heard bullets singing through the air, but of
these they took little heed, beyond quickening the speed of the
air-ship for the time, knowing that there was not a chance in a
hundred thousand of the _Ariel_ being hit, and that even if she were
the bullet would glance harmlessly off her smooth hull of hardened
aluminium.

Once only they descended in a delightful little valley among the
mountains, which appeared to be totally uninhabited, and here they
renewed their store of fresh water, and laid in one of fruit, as well
as taking advantage of the opportunity to stretch their legs on
_terra firma_.

This was on the Saturday morning; and when they again rose into the
air to continue their voyage, they saw that they had crossed the
great mountain mass that divides the Sahara from the little-known
regions of Equatorial Africa, and that in front of them to the
south