CHAPTER XXV.
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.