re of the business, and I
was unable to tell them.

"Wait and see!" said I, but that only exasperated them, and some
began to raise their voices in anger. So I felt urged to invent a
reason, hoping to explain it away afterward should I be wrong. But
as it turned out I guessed at least a little part of Ranjoor Singh's
great plan and so achieved great credit that was useful later,
although at the time I felt myself losing favor with them.

"Ranjoor Singh will bribe the captain of the ship to steam away
before that regiment of Kurds can come on board," said I. "So we
shall have the ship at our mercy, provided we make no mistakes."

That did not satisfy them, but it gave them something new to think
about, and they settled down to wait in silence, as many as could
crowding their backs against the deck-house and the rest suffering
in the rain. I would rather have heard them whispering, because I
judged the silence to be due to low spirits. I knew of nothing more
to say to encourage them, and after a time their depression began to
affect me also. Rather than watch them, I watched the water, and
more than once I saw something I did not recognize, that
nevertheless caused my skin to tingle and my breath to come in
jerks. Sikh eyes are keen.

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 sti