Strang gave a low whistle.

’’Pon my soul, it’s an idea.  Especially as, being an enemy ship, she wouldn’t be so likely to be searched.’

‘It would be very nice for us if it could be managed,’ said Captain Carrington with a smile.  ’But I suppose it is quite out of the question, Mr Strang?’

‘It all depends on what she is, sir,’ replied Strang, as he put up his binoculars and focused them on the indistinct patch on the misty horizon.

Presently he put them down.

‘She’s nothing but a launch,’ he said quickly.  ’Armed, of course, but probably only a 6-pounder.  I’m hanged if I don’t try it.’

‘Very good,’ said Captain Carrington, speaking as calmly as ever.  ’I will go back into the boat, and tell my friends.  By the bye, how would it do to use us as bait for the trap?  If you were merely to submerge, and lie close by with only your periscopes showing, it seems to me that you might manage to take them unawares.’

‘I’ve got a better plan than that, sir,’ broke in Ken quickly.  ’Put Horan and myself in the boat.  Give us some pistols.  We’ll sham shipwrecked.  Most of us can hide in the bottom of the boat.  The launch won’t have much of a crew.  With a rush we might overpower them.’

The boldness of Ken’s suggestion made both men gasp.  Strang was the first to speak.

‘It’s a big risk, but it might work.  Are you willing, Captain Carrington?’

A grim smile parted the lips of Ken’s father.

‘Willing!  It would make me young again.’

Strang’s decision was taken like a flash.

’It goes, then.  And I’ll lend you a couple of my men as well.  Williams and Johnston.  Hefty chaps in a scrimmage, and both equal to engines of any kind.  But we must be smart.  This must be done before the Turks get any notion of what is up.’

He dashed back to the conning tower, and orders flew like hail.  The men were equally quick to obey.  Williams and Johnston came tumbling up, and Roy hard at their heels.

‘What’s up?’ demanded Roy eagerly of Ken, and when Ken had quickly explained, the big New Zealander’s face fairly glowed with delight.

‘Fine, oh fine!’ he cried.  ’I began to think we were never going to get another chance.  ‘It’s the greatest scheme you ever thought of, Ken.’

Two more bluejackets rushed up, with armfuls of cutlasses.

‘Commander says these are the jokers for a scrimmage,’ one told Ken, as they hurriedly passed them across to the people in the boat.

‘He’s right,’ said Roy, ‘but we shall want a pistol or two as well.’

‘Plenty here, Horan,’ said Williams, the torpedo coxswain, holding up a couple of the big regulation Navy revolvers.  ’It’s all right.  We’ve got all we want.  Come along in, you two soldiers.’

Ken and Roy tumbled aboard the boat, other three of the ex-prisoners, who were too old or infirm to be any use as fighters, were hastily transferred to the submarine.