ed thousand chances still that might prevent our
joining our friends the British in Gallipoli. Nor was I sure in my
own mind that Ranjoor Singh intended we should try. I was sure only
of his good faith, and content to wait developments.

Though the lights of the city were few and very far between, so many
search-lights played back and forth above the water that there
seemed a hundred of them. I judged it impossible for the smallest
boat to pass unseen and I wondered whether it was difficult or easy
to shoot with great guns by aid of search-lights, remembering what
strange tricks light can play with a gunner's eyes. Mist, too, kept
rising off the water to add confusion.

While I reflected in that manner, thinking that the shadow of every
wave and the side of every boat might be a submarine, Ranjoor Singh
came down from the bridge and stood beside me.

"I have seen what I have seen!" said he. "Listen! Obey! And give me
no back answers!"

"Sahib," said I, "I am thy man!" But he answered nothing to that.

"Pick the four most dependable men," he said, "and bid them enter
that cabin and gag and bind Tugendheim. Bid them make no noise and
see to it that he makes none, but let them do him no injury, for we
shall need him presently! When that is done, come back to me here!"

So I left him at once, he standing as I had done, staring at the
water, although I thought perhaps there was more purpose in his gaze
than there had been in mine.

I chose four men and led them aside, they greatly wondering.

"There is work to be done," said I, "that calls for true ones!"

"Such men be we!" said all four together.

"That is why I picked you from among the rest!" said I, and they
were well pleased at that. Then I gave them their orders.

"Who bids us do this?" they demanded.

"I!" said I. "Bind and gag Tugendheim, and we have Ranjoor Singh
committed. He gave the order, and I bid you obey it! How can he be
false to us and true to the Germans, with a gagged German prisoner
on his hands?"

They saw the point of that. "But what if we are discovered too
soon?" said they.

"What if we are sunk before dawn by a British submarine!" said I.
"We will swim when we find ourselves in water! For the present, bind
and gag Tugendheim!"

So they went and stalked Tugendheim, the German, who had been
drinking from a little pocket flask. He was drowsing in a chair in
the cabin, with his hands deep down in his overcoat pockets and his
helmet o