I have often tried to remember just how many hours we steamed from Stamboul, yet I have no idea to this day beyond that the voyage was ended before dawn.  It was all unexpected—­we were too excited, and too fearful for our skins to recall the passage of hours.  It was darker than I have ever known night to be, and the short waves that made our ship pitch unevenly were growing steeper every minute, when Ranjoor Singh came at last to the head of the ladder and shouted for me.  I went to him up the steps, holding to each rail for dear life.

“Take twenty men,” he ordered, “and uncover the forward hatch.  Throw the hatch coverings overboard.  The hold is full of cartridges.  Bring up some boxes and break them open.  Distribute two hundred rounds to every man, and throw the empty boxes overboard.  Then get up twenty more boxes and place them close together, in readiness to take with us when we leave the ship.  Let me know when that is all done.”

So I took twenty men and we obeyed him.  Two hundred rounds of cartridges a man made a heavy extra load and the troopers grumbled.

“Can we swim with these?” they demanded.

“Who knows until he has tried?” said I.

“How far may we have to march with such an extra weight?” said they.

“Who knows!” said I, counting out two hundred more to another man.  “But the man,” I said, “who lacks one cartridge of the full count when I come to inspect shall be put to the test whether he can swim at all!”

Some of them had begun to throw half of their two hundred into the water, but after I said that they discontinued, and I noticed that those who had so done came back for more cartridges, pretending that my count had been short.  So I served them out more and said nothing.  There were hundreds of thousands of rounds in the hold of the ship, and I judged we could afford to overlook the waste.

At last we set the extra twenty boxes in one place together, slipping and falling in the process because the deck was wet and the ship unsteady; and then I went and reported to Ranjoor Singh.

“Very good,” said he.  “Make the men fall in along the deck, and bid them be ready for whatever may befall!”

“Are we near land, sahib?” said I.

“Very near!” said he.

I ran to obey him, peering into the blackness to discover land, but I could see nothing more than the white tops of waves, and clouds that seemed to meet the sea within a rope’s length of us.  Once or twice I thought I heard surf, but the noise of the rain and of the engines and of the waves pounding against the ship confused my ears, so that I could not be certain.

When the men were all fallen in I went and leaned over the bulwark to try to see better; and as I did that we ran in under a cliff, for the darkness grew suddenly much darker.  Then I surely heard surf.  Then another sound startled me, and a shock nearly threw me off my feet.  I faced about, to find twenty or thirty men sprawling their length upon the deck, and when I had urged and helped them up the engines had stopped turning, and steam was roaring savagely through the funnel.  The motion of the ship was different now; the front part seemed almost still, but the behind part rose and fell jerkily.