Roy glanced back over his shoulder.  ‘She’s very small,’ he said, ’and she’s working upstream.  Hallo, there’s another just beyond her—­a pair of ‘em.’

‘Two, are there?  Then I tell you what they are—­trawlers.’

‘Trawlers!’ echoed Roy.  ’What—­catching herrings for the Admiral’s breakfast?’

‘No, you ass—­mines.  They’re mine-sweepers of course.’  Roy gave a low whistle.

‘I’d sooner catch herrings,’ he said.  ’But never mind.  So long as they’re British, that’s all that matters.’  And he set to pulling again with all the energy left him.

The trawlers were creeping along at very slow speed, and without a light of any sort showing.  There was not even the usual glow from the funnel top.  Lucky it was for Roy and Ken that they were going so slowly, for they were still some little distance from the nearest trawler when the ripples began to wash over the gunwale of the water-logged boat.

‘Help!’ shouted Roy hoarsely.  ‘Help!’

‘Pull on!’ said Ken, as he still baled frantically.  ’Pull on!  They can’t come round if they’ve got their sweeping cable out.’

Roy made a last effort, and whether it was Roy’s shout or the sound of the oars, some one aboard the trawler heard them.

‘Who are you?’ came a gruff voice, half-muffled, as though afraid of being overheard on shore.

‘Friends—­British,’ answered Ken.  ‘Our boat’s sinking.’

There came a sharp order echoed from the farther ship.  The trawlers both slackened speed.

‘Come alongside, if you can.  We can’t pull out to you,’ called the same voice that Ken had heard previously.

A few more strokes, then just as the boat was actually sinking under them, a rope came whizzing across.  Roy caught it and a moment later, wet and draggled, they were standing on the deck of the trawler.

‘Well, I’ll be everlastingly jiggered,’ exclaimed a gruff voice.  ’Where in all that’s wonderful did you fellers spring from?’ The speaker was a short, square man, but it was so dark that all they could see of his face was that it was round and clean-shaven.

‘Out of the Dardanelles last, and before that from Kilid Bahr,’ Ken answered.  ‘We’re escaped prisoners.’

‘Gosh, you’ve been in warm places, young fellers,’ said the other, ’but I kind o’ think it’s a case of out of the frying pan into the fire.’

‘Fire’s better than water, specially when it’s as cold as the Straits,’ said Roy with a shiver.

‘Well, maybe that’s so,’ replied the other.  ’Get you gone below, the both o’ you.  You’ll find a fire in the galley and the cook’ll give ye some hot cocoa.’

‘Thanks awfully,’ said Ken and Roy in one breath, and hurried off at once.

The cook, a lean, solemn-faced man named Lemuel Gill, showed no surprise whatever at the sudden apparition of two half-drowned strangers.  But if he asked no questions he was not stingy with the cocoa, and Roy and Ken put away a quart of it between them, and openly declared they had never tasted anything so good in all their lives.