It was perhaps two hours before midnight when the long spell of firing along the water-front began and I knew that my eyes and the dark had not deceived me.  All the search-lights suddenly swept together to one point and shone on the top-side of a submarine—­or at least on the water thrown up by its top-side.  Only two masts and a thing like a tower were visible, and the plunging shells threw water over those obscuring them every second.  There was a great explosion, whether before or after the beginning of the gun-fire I do not remember, and a ship anchored out on the water no great distance from us heeled over and began to sink.  One search-light was turned on the sinking ship, so that I could see hundreds of men on her running to and fro and jumping; but all the rest of the water was now left in darkness.

The guards who had been set to prevent our landing all ran to another wharf to watch the gun-fire and the sinking ship, and it was at the moment when their backs were turned that two Turkish seamen came down from the bridge and loosed the ropes that held us to the shore.  Then our ship began to move out slowly into the darkness without showing lights or sounding whistle.  There was still no sign of Ranjoor Singh, nor had I time to look for him; I was busy making the men be still, urging, coaxing, cursing—­even striking them.

“Are we off to Gallipoli?” they asked.

“We are off to where a true man may remember the salt!” said I, knowing no more than they.

I know of nothing more confusing to a landsman, sahib, than a crowded harbor at night.  The many search-lights all quivering and shifting in the one direction only made confusion worse and we had not been moving two minutes when I no longer knew north from south or east from west.  I looked up, to try to judge by the stars.  I had actually forgotten it was raining.  The rain came down in sheets and overhead the sky began at little more than arm’s length!  Judge, then, my excitement.

We passed very close to several small steamers that may have been war-ships, but I think they were merchant ships converted into gunboats to hunt submarines.  I think, too, that in the darkness they mistook us for another of the same sort, for, although we almost collided with two of them, they neither fired on us nor challenged.  We steamed straight past them, beginning to gain speed as the last one fell away behind.

Does the sahib remember whether the passage from Stamboul into the Sea of Marmora runs south or east or west?  Neither could I remember, although at another time I could have drawn a map of it, having studied such things.  But memory plays us strange tricks, and cavalrymen were never intended to maneuver in a ship!  Ranjoor Singh, up in the wheel-house, had a map—­a good map, that he had stolen from the German officers—­but I did not know that until later.  I stood with both hands holding the rails of the bridge ladder wondering whether gunfire or submarine would sink us and urging the men to keep their heads below the bulwark lest a search-light find us and the number of heads cause suspicion.