The Turks couldn’t very well hear me talking at from four to five miles, yet such was the consciousness of the danger of our adventure and41 such the hypnotism of the scene that when I spoke to the comrade next to me, it was in a whisper.

“I wonder,” I said, “what that old green eye of a moon is looking at back of those dark, old cliffs? I wonder if he sees the big guns drowsing and the garrisons asleep or——”

“What he’s seeing,” said the man at my side in a grumble, “is the heathen blighters getting ready to bang hell out of us!”

“Cheerful beggar you are,” I whispered back the more gloomily because I was one of those who had argued and felt certain that we were not to take the Turks by surprise.

And now the men had assembled on the decks as soft-footedly as they might. They had gathered in the darkness into orderly row. . . Read More