ait a jiffy. I
must get his belt off.'

Neither of the Turks was in condition to put up any resistance, and in a
very few moments they were stripped of overcoats, shakos, and haversacks.
They were then tied and carefully gagged.

Roy pulled on the overcoat of the bigger man.

'I've seen better fits,' he remarked. 'But it will do in this light. Now
for that boat.'

'One minute!' said Ken, 'let's just see what they were guarding.'

He slipped along the trench, Roy after him, and a few yards farther on it
sloped downwards, then widened into a deepish semicircular excavation. In
the middle of this was a great lump of something which, as they came
nearer, resolved itself into a gun of some sort. It was very thick, very
short, it stood on a concrete platform, and its squat muzzle pointed
almost straight up into the air.

'It's a howitzer,' said Ken.

'Rummiest looking howitzer I ever saw,' Roy answered. 'Looks as if it came
out of the Ark.'

'Came out of the Crimea, I expect. They used this kind of thing sixty
years ago. It's a muzzle loader, you see.'

'And shoots real cannon balls,' said Roy, pointing to a pyramid of huge
iron globes, each about fourteen inches in diameter.

'I wonder where the powder is,' said Ken with sudden eagerness.

'What's up now?' demanded Roy.

'I've got it,' said Ken quickly, as he began pulling a tarpaulin off a
pile of canvas bags. 'A rare lot of it too!'

'You're not thinking by any chance of lobbing shot into Maidos, are you?'
asked Roy sarcastically.

'Not that,' said Ken. 'Hardly that. But what about setting off this little
lot? My notion is this. If we could put a slow match to the powder and
then clear out and get down to the mouth of the water-course before it
goes off, I believe those loafers down on the beach would all come running
up here to see what had happened. That would give us our chance to collar
a boat and clear.'

Roy gave a low chuckle.

'Not a bad notion, old son. Not half a bad idea. Yes, it certainly would
wake some of 'em up. But what about the slow match? We've got no fuse.'

Ken held out an old-fashioned candle lantern.

'I bagged this from the sentry. There's just half an inch of candle in it.
We've nothing to do but lay a train of loose powder up to it.'

Roy chuckled again.

'You're a bad 'un to beat, Ken. Yes, that ought to work. Let's get at it.'

The powder was just as old-fashioned as the rest of the outfit. Common
black stuff, large gr