About two o'clock in
the afternoon
But all hands set to work to clear the deck , and the locusts were thrown over except a few hundred kept by Tapage for his larder . And he served them up in so succulent a fashion that Frycollin forgot for the moment his perpetual trances and said , `` these are as good as prawns . '' The aeronef was then eleven hundred miles from the Wargla oasis and almost on the northern frontier of the Sudan . About two o'clock in the afternoon a city appeared in the bend of a large river . The river was the Niger . The city was Timbuktu . If , up to then , this African Mecca had only been visited by the travelers of the ancient world Batouta , Khazan , Imbert , Mungo Park , Adams , Laing , Caillé , Barth , Lenz , on that day by a most singular chance the two Americans could boast of having seen , heard , and smelt it , on their return to America -- if they ever got back there .