‘But ze mines!’ objected the Frenchman.

’There again we are fairly safe.  The launch is of such shallow draught that she will easily pass over the mine-fields.  Floating mines we must of course risk, but there are not likely to be many about, for the Turks only send them down when an attack is expected.  One other point is in our favour.  This launch is fast.  With any luck, we shall be through the Straits and in safety long before daylight.’

The Frenchman nodded.

‘Vair well, Monsieur le Capitaine.  For me, I am satisfied.’

‘I think we all are,’ said an elderly Englishman named Symons.

The captain looked round, but no one offered any objection.

‘Then it is decided,’ he said quietly, and proceeded to issue his orders as briskly as he had done, years before, on his own quarter-deck.

The Turks were transferred to the empty boat, and taken in tow by the submarine.  Johnston went back to G2, but Williams remained as engineer in charge of the launch.  The dead Turks were put overboard, and the traces of the fight quickly removed.

Then Strang bade them farewell and good luck, the engines began to move, the screw churned the water, and the prize, heading westwards, sped rapidly towards the mouth of the Straits.

Williams, who was the sort of man who could tackle anything in the way of machinery, from a sewing machine to a Dreadnought’s turbines, soon got the hang of the launch’s engines.

‘They’re a bit of all right,’ he said to Ken and Roy, who had volunteered as stokers and oilers.  ’Blowed if I thought them Turks had anything as good.  But I reckon this here craft come from Germany.’

‘She certainly can leg it,’ observed Ken, as he noticed how the whole fabric of the little craft quivered under the drive of the rapidly revolving screw.

‘Ay, and I reckon we’ll need all she’s got afore we’re through,’ replied Williams dryly, as he squirted oil into a bearing.

‘We ought to be all right if the fog holds,’ said Ken.

’Ay, if it does.  I’ll allow it’s thick enough up here, but there ain’t no saying what it’ll be down in them straits.  Fogs is uncertain things at best and you never can tell when you’ll run out o’ one into clear weather.’

Williams’s warning made Ken feel distinctly uneasy, and every few minutes he kept looking out to see what the weather was doing.  But so far from clearing, the mist seemed to thicken, until it was as gray and wet as the Channel on a late autumn day.  Night, too, was closing down, and soon it was so dark that one end of the vessel could not be seen from the other.

The distance to the mouth of the Straits was about thirty miles, and the Straits themselves have a length of thirty-five.  The launch was good for fifteen knots, and though it would not be possible to go at full speed through the Narrows, they hoped, barring accidents, to do the journey in about five hours.