Flying high, and depending entirely upon the compass for striking Aden, they shot through the starlit tropical night like a meteor, showing no lights except the two small ones on the dashboard in the cabin, by means of which Tom could observe the instruments and the controlling levers below.  Thus they crossed the famous Nile, sweeping below Khartum and across the plains of Kordofan, and when the first streaks of daylight appeared ahead of them they were just entering the plateaus of northern Abyssinia.