He landed absolutely straight on the man’s shoulders, and down he went flat on his face, with Ken on top of him.  His forehead struck the opposite wall of the trench, and though Ken wasted no time at all in getting hold of his throat, this was quite unnecessary.  The wretched Turk was limp as a wet dish-rag and quite insensible.

‘Good business, Ken!’ said Roy, and glancing round Ken saw his chum kneeling on the chest of the second man, one big hand compressing his wind-pipe.  ’Good business!  We’ve got them both, and no fuss about it.  Confound it!  These fellows don’t run to handkerchiefs.  Wait 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.’