ill 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