IN THE HANDS OF THE TURKS.
The "Sikorsky," being out of commission until further orders, the boys
had the liberty of free lances, and, by favor of the British military
authorities at Tenedos, accompanied an aerial fleet dispatched to the
north, to work for a time with the forces of General Hamilton, recently
landed on the northern side of the Gulf of Saros and also opening at
various points on the Gallipoli peninsula. In spite of serious
opposition from the Turks in strong entrenchments protected by barbed
wire, the khaki-clad troops were continuing to advance toward the
interior when the aviation aids arrived at the scene of action.
The flying contingent included the veterans, Captain Johnson and his
inseparable, Josh Freeman, to whom, without doubt, Billy and Henri owed
their chance of getting places in the expedition.
"We may have to operate separately, young man," advised the captain,
"and take assignments as they come, and I want to urge that you have a
care about overleaping orders. I know you of old, and know that you
sometimes forget that there is a limit."
"Here's a lecture on caution from a man who never dodged dangerous duty
in his life," laughed Billy; "we have acquired a whole lot of wisdom,
professor, since we joined the war college over here."
"But still I have my eye on you," persisted the captain, with an attempt
to hide a broad smile by a turn of the head.
If it so happened that the boys really did overshoot the mark early in
the advance movement, the fault was none of their promoting, and the
authority for the mishap was close behind them when it befell.
Billy was piloting no less a personage than "Daring Dan" Macauley, and
Henri had behind him Marcus Jones Canby, also a hairbreadth member of
the famous Seventh Corps, when they struck the snag that tumbled them
within the Turkish lines.
The war-planes carrying our boys and soldier observers started from Enos
at break of day to reconnoiter the territory along the Gulf of Saros,
and get as near as possible to the line of defenses above the
Dardanelles, on the Marmora sea coast.
It was first acquaintance day with the pilots and their companions. The
two behind and the pair in front had no knowledge of just how they would
balance when it came to a weighing in of their metal on the scales of
emergency.
If, however, the young aviators expected restraint in the matter of
taking risks, they were entertaining an error in their minds.
Macauley and Canby were as free-handed in the acceptance of danger as
any two men living, of which fact the wheelmen were very soon aware.
So the journey proceeded further and further afield without a word of
protest from the officers, until all of a sudden the aircraft were in
rapid ascent to clear a fortress crowning an elevation five hundred feet
above sea level.
Rising above the battery, the aviators looked down and out upon the Sea
of Marmora. It proved that the garrison here was on the alert, acutely
so, for the reason that the British invasion of the peninsula to the
near west had sent a note of alarm up and down the coast.
Before Henri could get the war-plane he was guiding wholly out of range,
a sharpshooter on one of the four towers of the Seddil-Bahr fort opened
up with a Mauser magazine rifle, and to the ill fortune of the airmen
sent a bullet where it would do most harm in the propeller section of
the craft.
The young pilot comprehended in a mental flash that a downshoot of the
wings of the war-plane was the only thing to do, and he made it a long
slide, so long, indeed, that the garrison waiting for the capture never
made it.
But the landing on Marmora Island offered no other than the same
result--the aviators had fallen into a web too wide for avoidance.
Billy never hesitated a minute in volplaning in the trail of the
crippled machine, and the two warplanes alighted almost at the same
time.
The young aviators jumped at the job of attempting repair, but failed to
finish before they and their companions were surrounded by Turks.
Macauley and Canby instinctively reached for their revolvers, but it
would have availed nothing to resist, and would mean certain death from
the muzzles of a score of rifles covering them.
"Hands down, Mac.," was Canby's cool and quiet address to his comrade;
"we are up against it, and no use of making a bark."
The captive airmen were marched off to Marmora town between a double
file of soldiers, while other islanders brought up the rear, dragging
the war-planes.
One of the Turkish officers spoke French, indicated by the few questions
he asked in that language, principally as to what had caused the
downfall of the aeroplane. The uniforms worn by Macauley and Canby
presented all the evidence required showing that they belonged to the
peninsula invaders.
That it was proposed to take the prisoners away from the island
forthwith was impressed by the incoming, upon signal, of a small
steamboat, and the immediate ushering aboard of the airmen, who soon
learned that the destination was Islam's capital city.
"Going right to headquarters," remarked "Daring Dan," as the four leaned
over the steamer rail watching the swirl of the tide, "and no cards with
us to send on to the sultan."
"I hope the beds are well aired at the jail," drawled Canby, catching
the humor of his comrade.
Billy and Henri were wondering just what the Turks were really going to
do with them.
It was not until the following morning that the young aviators saw the
marble minarets of Constantinople sparkling in the sunlight, and little
reckoned then that they were soon to pass the "high door" or "Sublime
porte," the principal entrance of the sultan's palace, which rose in
grandeur on the extreme point of the promontory where the ancient city
stands. Just then the boys were more inclined to the belief that locks
and bars were to form the only vision coming to them for many a day.
"Here's where the 'blood brotherhood' won't count," sighed Henri,
reminded of their Cossack relation by happening to touch the amulet in
his blouse pocket.
"Might trade these flints for crescents," suggested Billy, "only I'm
afraid we couldn't bluff the Turks with that sort of game."
While the boys were speaking the steamboat was puffing into the Golden
Horn, an inlet of the sea, at the north of the promontory.
Once on the central quay of the harbor the prisoners were marched
through an exceedingly crooked and tortuous street to the forbidding
front of a gloomy-looking and huge pile of bygone architecture, and a
few minutes later were the sole occupants of an immense and dimly
lighted apartment, stone-walled and furnished only with a few wooden
benches, upon two of which the disconsolate quartette seated themselves
and waited in dreary anticipation for the next deal of fate.