’Why talk that sort of rot?  You know just as well as I do that the last thing we shall get is justice.’

Henkel flushed slightly, but he kept his temper.

‘What!  Do you not shoot spies in your own army?’

’We are not spies.  We went too far in the charge yesterday when we smashed up your people.  We could not get back.  We are prisoners of war and should be treated as such.’

‘That is your story,’ replied Henkel.  ’We have plenty of evidence to the contrary.  Any commanding officer would be justified in shooting you out of hand.’

‘The evidence against us,’ said Ken, ’is that of Kemp, late bathroom steward aboard the “Cardigan Castle,” a man who has a personal grudge against me because I caught him signalling to an enemy submarine.’

‘Again your unsupported statement,’ said Henkel.

‘It’s the truth,’ growled Roy from the background.

‘Your evidence in a case like this is valueless,’ said Henkel shortly.  He turned to Ken again.

‘Have you heard from your father since you last saw him?’ he asked suddenly.

The question took Ken unawares.

‘From my father?’ he said, with sudden eagerness.  ‘No.  Is he alive?’

There was a gleam of triumph in Henkel’s prominent eyes.

‘Yes,’ he answered.  ‘He is alive and—­under the circumstances—­well.’

‘I—­I thought’ began Ken and stopped.

‘You thought that he had been shot,’ said Henkel grimly.  ’That would indeed have been his fate but for my interference.  I used my influence to get his sentence altered to a term of imprisonment.’

Ken changed colour.  He found it desperately difficult to keep a cool head.  The news that his father was alive had filled him with burning excitement.  The two had always been the best of chums, more like an elder and younger brother than father and son.

‘Where is he?’ he asked sharply.

‘At present in Constantinople,’ replied Henkel, who was watching Ken keenly.  ‘But it is likely that he will presently be sent elsewhere.’

‘What—­into Asia Minor?’ said Ken in dismay.  Constantinople was bad enough, but nothing to the horrors of the Turkish prisons in Asia.

’Not so far as that.  He is to be moved, with others of the British and French, to Gallipoli.’

Ken’s cheeks went white.  His eyes were full of horror.

‘You are perhaps aware,’ continued Henkel, ’that the Turkish Government has decided upon this step as a response to the bombardment of unfortified places by your fleet.  If Turkish civilians are to be killed, it is only fair that enemy civilians should share their fate.’

‘Enver Bey seems to have learnt his German pretty thoroughly,’ put in Roy sarcastically.

Henkel’s eyes glared as he turned upon him.

‘Be silent!’ he ordered, with a fury he could hardly repress.

Roy merely smiled, and Henkel turned again to Ken.