“To strike terror in the heart of the Turk,” commenced the captain—but he switched off to the practical statement that he only knew that military strategy demanded it—and so ordered. To the soldier this latter was all-sufficient reason.
This conversation was in tone audible only to the closely knit group in hiding.
Now the captain was making ready to “repair” the guns above the water front. He took off his boots and his topcoat, transferring therefrom to the inside of his blouse a tool commonly known as a monkey-wrench, tightened his belt and pulled his cap down to his ears. Revolvers swelled both of his hip-pockets.
“If you hear any shooting,” he whispered, “just make a break for the biplanes, stand by until you see ’em coming, if I don’t get there first, and then pull out.”
With these words the veteran airman disappeared in the darkness with all the stealth of an Indian in moccasins.
“When the submarine crowd gets to work on the shore end of the cable there will be a stew in the operating room up here. The captain fears that in the excitement those defective guns might explode and hurt somebody. That’s the reason he is so anxious to get everything fixed to prevent accident.”
Josh’s explanation was taken no more seriously than he intended it to be. The boys knew well enough that the captain was taking his life in his hands to so upset the mechanism of the guns that they could not be used in throwing lead at the submarine, if discovered during the cable-cutting performance.
An hour passed, in which the anxious waiters, in the chill precincts of the ruins, would have promptly testified was six times sixty minutes.
Billy started to say as much, when Josh gave him a poke in the ribs in the way of mute advice to keep still.
There was some sort of commotion breaking out in the quarters of the cable operators, at the north end of the ruins.