‘So will half the Turkish Army, most probably,’ said Roy recklessly.  ’Not that I care.  The only thing I mind is handcuffs.  I’m going to slay the first chap who suggests them.’

Ken was not listening.  He was staring out towards the Straits, trying to get the lie of the land.  The coast itself he knew well, for he had been up and down the Dardanelles a number of times.  But of the land he was ignorant, and it is no joke to find one’s way by night over such a country as the Gallipoli Peninsula.

‘Come on, then,’ he said presently, and turned due south down the hill-side.

Not a yard of their journey had been without its risks, but now they had to be more careful than ever.  The whole shore of the Straits was, they knew, a network of forts and hidden defences.  There was no saying when they might blunder upon something of the kind.

Half-way down the hill, Ken, who was leading, pulled up.

‘Look out!’ he muttered.  ’There’s a pit of some sort just in front of us.  Wait, I’ll see what it is.’

He dropped on hands and knees and crawled forward.  He was away for only a few moments.

‘Nothing but a shell hole,’ he explained, ’but it’s a regular crater.  Must have been done by one of our twelve-inch guns.  Two dead Turks alongside it.’

‘Rum place for a shell to fall,’ Roy answered, straining his eyes through the gloom.

‘It means there’s a fort somewhere near,’ said Ken.  ’Our people don’t waste shells on empty hill-sides, I can tell you.’

‘Wish it wasn’t so infernally dark,’ growled Roy.

‘I’m jolly glad it is,’ answered Ken emphatically.  ’Put it any way you like, it helps us more than the enemy.’

They saw nothing of the fort, if there was one, and after crossing some very broken ground came down into a narrow valley, in the centre of which was the bed of a water-course, now dry.

‘That’s better,’ whispered Ken, as he dropped down into it.  ’This ought to bring us out on the beach.’

The bottom was sun-baked mud and dry stones which, together, formed about as unpleasant a combination for walking over as could well be imagined, especially since it was absolutely necessary to move without a sound.  Both were deeply grateful when at last the torrent bed widened, and they heard the lap of ripples on a beach.

‘I feel like those old Greek Johnnies,’ said Roy, ’the ones who’d been wandering for a year over there in Asia, and who chucked their helmets into the air and yelled when they saw the sea.’

‘Well, don’t try any tricks of that sort here, old man,’ Ken answered dryly.  ‘Wait a jiffy.  I’m going forward to get a squint at the beach.’

He crept away, bent double, and was gone for so long that Roy began to get uneasy.  But at last he saw Ken stealing back.

‘What luck?’ he whispered.

‘None,’ Ken answered in a tone of bitter disappointment.