'Could we try for the other side?' suggested Roy.

'Out of the question,' said Ken. 'We're opposite Sari Siglar Bay. The Straits are nearly three miles wide here.'

Roy gave a short laugh. 'Looks as if we should have to swim for it after all,' he said. 'Well, the only thing is to keep going until she sinks under us. Then we must scramble ashore and take our chances.'

He pulled on again, and Ken betook himself to his everlasting task of baling. He was mortally tired and desperately sleepy. His eyes almost closed as he dipped and dipped in the salt water which, in spite of all his efforts, grew steadily deeper in the bottom of the boat. The lower she sank, the more quickly the water spurted in. Each minute that passed brought the inevitable end closer.

Once he glanced up to see, if possible, where they were. To the right tall black cliffs towered against the night sky, to the left the stars twinkled in the ripples of the deep and wide Straits.

Roy pulled like a machine, but the weight of water made his efforts almost useless. The boat sogged slowly forward like a dead thing.

'She won't last another five minutes,' said Ken.

'And there's no landing place, old chap. We're right up against it.'

'Tell you what there is, though,' said Ken keenly. 'There's a craft of some sort out there. Don't you hear her engines?'

Roy stopped pulling a moment. In the silence a faint chug, chug reached their ears.

'What do you think she is—one of our warships?' he asked in a whisper.

'Haven't a notion. But she's probably British or French. The Turks haven't got much in the way of craft—at least not this side of Gallipoli.'

'Then I vote for trying to make her,' said Roy. 'Right you are,' Ken answered, and began baling harder than ever Roy, pulling on his left-hand oar, got the boat round, and made a last spurt in the direction of the sound.

It seemed a very forlorn hope. They could not even see the craft—whatever she was—and their boat manifestly had but a short time to live. If she sank out in mid-straits there was no earthly chance of reaching the shore. Drowning was certain.

Three minutes passed. The water in the boat was nearly knee deep. Pull as he might, Roy could hardly keep her moving. Ken raised his head and peered out through the gloom.

'I see her,' he said with sudden eagerness. He pointed as he spoke to a dim shape not more than a couple of hundred yards away.

Roy glanced back over his shoulder. 'She's very small,' he said, 'and she's working upstream. Hallo, there's another just beyond her—a pair of 'em.'

'Two, are there? Then I tell you what they are—trawlers.'

'Trawlers!' echoed Roy. 'What—catching herrings for the Admiral's breakfast?'

'No, you ass—mines. They're mine-sweepers of course.' Roy gave a low whistle.

'I'd sooner catch herrings,' he said. 'But never mind. So long as they're British, that's all that matters.' And he set to pulling again with all the energy left him.

The trawlers were creeping along at very slow speed, and without a light of any sort showing. There was not even the usual glow from the funnel top. Lucky it was for Roy and Ken that they were going so slowly, for they were still some little distance from the nearest trawler when the ripples began to wash over the gunwale of the water-logged boat.

'Help!' shouted Roy hoarsely. 'Help!'

'Pull on!' said Ken, as he still baled frantically. 'Pull on! They can't come round if they've got their sweeping cable out.'

Roy made a last effort, and whether it was Roy's shout or the sound of the oars, some one aboard the trawler heard them.

'Who are you?' came a gruff voice, half-muffled, as though afraid of being overheard on shore.

'Friends—British,' answered Ken. 'Our boat's sinking.'

There came a sharp order echoed from the farther ship. The trawlers both slackened speed.

'Come alongside, if you can. We can't pull out to you,' called the same voice that Ken had heard previously.

A few more strokes, then just as the boat was actually sinking under them, a rope came whizzing across. Roy caught it and a moment later, wet and draggled, they were standing on the deck of the trawler.

'Well, I'll be everlastingly jiggered,' exclaimed a gruff voice. 'Where in all that's wonderful did you fellers spring from?' The speaker was a short, square man, but it was so dark that all they could see of his face was that it was round and clean-shaven.

'Out of the Dardanelles last, and before that from Kilid Bahr,' Ken answered. 'We're escaped prisoners.'

'Gosh, you've been in warm places, young fellers,' said the other, 'but I kind o' think it's a case of out of the frying pan into the fire.'

'Fire's better than water, specially when it's as cold as the Straits,' said Roy with a shiver.

'Well, maybe that's so,' replied the other. 'Get you gone below, the both o' you. You'll find a fire in the galley and the cook'll give ye some hot cocoa.'

'Thanks awfully,' said Ken and Roy in one breath, and hurried off at once.

The cook, a lean, solemn-faced man named Lemuel Gill, showed no surprise whatever at the sudden apparition of two half-drowned strangers. But if he asked no questions he was not stingy with the cocoa, and Roy and Ken put away a quart of it between them, and openly declared they had never tasted anything so good in all their lives.

Their praise seemed to please Gill, for he proceeded to cut some gigantic sandwiches out of stale bread and excellent cold boiled pork, and to these also the hungry youngsters did justice.

'What ship is this?' asked Ken, when the first pangs of hunger had been satisfied.

'"Maid o' Sker." Mine—sweeper. Skipper, Seth Grimball,' was the brief answer. Then, after a pause, 'Where did you blokes come from?'

Ken told him, or rather began to, for before he had finished, the steady beat of the engines suddenly slackened.

'Cotched one, I reckon,' remarked Gill briefly, and hurried on deck followed by the two boys.

The 'Maid of Sker' was the ordinary type of North Sea trawler, and so far as Ken and Roy could see, her fellow, whose name Gill told them was the 'Swan of Avon,' was her double. They were moving exactly parallel, at a distance of about a cable (220 yards) apart. Between them towed a thin steel hawser set to a depth just sufficient to catch the mooring cables of the mines which were plentifully strewn in the channel.

'Caught one, you say?' whispered Ken in Gill's ear. 'A mine, you mean?'

'Ay. Look at the cable. She's foul of it all right.'

Certainly the cable was sagging in a curious fashion.

'What do you do with them?' asked Roy.

But Gill had already run aft to assist. Low-voiced orders were heard, and the 'Maid of Sker' began to forge slowly ahead.

'I think they're going to tow it out of the channel,' Ken said to Roy. 'That's what I believe they do.'

'But I thought the beastly things exploded when you touched 'em,' said Roy.

'Some do. That's the sort with steel whiskers on them. The others are what they call tilting mines. They blow up when their balance is upset.'

'And which is this?'

'I don't know any more than you, and I don't suppose the skipper does, either. All these mines swim some way under the surface.'

'What's the betting on her going off?' said the irrepressible Roy.

'She won't,' said Ken confidently. 'These chaps know how to handle her. She—'

He stopped short, and involuntarily flung up his hands before his eyes. A cone of blinding white light had sprouted suddenly from the Asiatic shore, and in its cold brilliance the outlines of the two trawlers, the people on their decks, the cable towing between them, and a wide patch of rippling water stood out as clearly as in the broadest daylight. It was a searchlight from Kephez Point at the southern angle of Sari Siglar Bay.

'Haul up there. Haul on that cable. Sharp now!' bellowed Captain Grimball, and his men sprang to obey. He himself dashed into the little deckhouse and was out again in an instant with a rifle in his hand.

In the dazzling glare a great bulbous mass of dark-coloured metal heaved slowly up out of the water midway between the two trawlers. It was hardly in sight before Grimball had flung his rifle to his shoulder and fired.

Followed instantly an explosion so terrific that Ken distinctly felt the deck of the trawler lift under his feet. A cloud of thick black smoke shot high into the air, and as it rose a very waterspout descended upon the little ship.

Roy and Ken staggered back, half deafened by the appalling concussion.

'Got that one, anyway,' they heard Grimball exclaim, as he dashed back to the bridge and rang the engine bell for full steam. 'Got him all right. Next question is whether the blighters will get us.'

Both trawlers seemed actuated by the same impulse. Both at the same time surged ahead, while the sweeping cable was either cut or cast loose.

But the searchlight's brilliant beam followed relentlessly, and as the two smart little craft cleared from the area of the black smoke cloud, there came the ringing report of a 6-inch gun followed by the familiar whirr of a heavy shell.

'Rotten shot!' snapped Grimball, as the shell, sailing well over the mast top, plunged into the sea two hundred yards or more beyond.

'Hard aport!' he shouted, and the 'Maid' came spinning round almost as smartly as a sailing dinghy. Next minute she and her consort were legging it southwards at the very top of their speed.

For a moment they were clear of the dazzling radiance of the searchlight, but only for a moment. Then the long pencil of glaring whiteness found them again, and now the guns began to bark in earnest.

The 'Maid' seemed to know her peril. She squattered down into the water, and the foaming wake lengthened, trailing far behind her. Forgetful of their own danger, Roy and Ken watched breathless while the trawlers ran the gauntlet of the forts.

A shell struck the water right under the bows of the 'Maid,' flinging up a fountain which rose as high as the mainmast, and deluging the decks for a second time.

'Mighty wet job this,' said Roy, shaking himself like a great dog. 'Rotten luck we can't shoot back, eh, Ken?'

'Can't even do much running,' said Ken. 'Twelve knots is about our top speed. 'Pon my soul, these chaps have got pluck.'

'The "Swan's" drawing ahead,' said Roy.

Almost as the words left his lips there came a shattering crash and a sheet of flame leapt up from the other trawler. A shell had pitched full upon her armoured wheel-house, and exploding had not only blown it away, with the steersman, but opened up the whole deck. The poor little trawler, with her steering gear smashed, swung round to starboard, and it was only by the smartest seamanship that the 'Maid' avoided running her down.

'She's done,' said Roy, as he ran forward. 'She's sinking!'

He was right. The big shell had knocked her all to pieces. Grimball saw this too, and in response to his rapid order, the 'Maid's' engines stopped, and four stalwart fellows ran to the dinghy which lay in chocks on her deck.

In a trice they had flung her over the low rail into the sea; two sprang in and pulled hard for the rapidly sinking 'Swan.'

All the time the guns ashore were rapping and roaring. The sea was thick with spouts of foam as shells big and little struck the surface.

'This infernal searchlight!' growled Roy. 'They're rotten shots, but they're getting the range now.'

They were. Just as the dinghy drew alongside the 'Swan,' another 6-inch plunged straight into her, amidships. It must have exploded in the engine-room. The 'Swan' and all in her vanished from the face of the waters, and when the smoke cloud lifted, the dinghy, upside down, with one man clinging to it, was all that was left.

'A rope. Give us a rope!' shouted Roy. Some one ran forward, but even as they did so a smaller shell caught the funnel of the 'Maid' and carried two thirds of it away. With it went the man with the rope.

At the same moment the survivor who was clinging to the dinghy let go his hold. Stunned by the concussion of the previous shell, he was sinking into the depths.

'I can't stand that,' cried Roy, and with one spring was overboard and striking out hard for the drowning man.

The racket and roar were appalling. Some field batteries behind Kephez had joined in, and the whole night echoed with the quick crashes of the guns, while the air was full of the train-like rattle of flying shells.

But in all the confusion Ken kept his head. Catching sight of a coil of line on the deck close by the forward hatch, he sprang for it, made one end fast to a bollard, and with a shout flung the other towards Roy.

It fell short, but Roy saw it and with a great effort reached it.

'Hang on!' roared Ken at the top of his voice. 'I'll pull you in.'

He had hardly began to haul when the end came. A shell bigger than any yet took the 'Maid of Sker' amidships. There was a fearful explosion, Ken felt himself hurled forward, and next moment the chill waters of the Dardanelles closed over his head.