Since the Colonel himself was in too feeble a state of health to think of going across the ocean to look for his wronged boy, Amos proposed that he and Jack undertake the sacred duty. And so they started, well supplied with money, and bearing besides a letter to General Kitchener, who had been, at one time, while in Egypt, a great friend of Colonel Turner, a man whose system of tactics he admired highly.
Meeting the “man of destiny,” upon whom England was placing most of her faith in this terrible crisis, the boys had no difficulty in securing from him a paper that later on smoothed over many difficulties they chanced to encounter while in the fighting zone.
Dozens of times they had made petty officials stare when they saw what a strong endorsement these American lads carried. Often men high in military authority had virtually made a salute at sight of the letter actually penned by Kitchener of Khartoum, whose name was a sign manual wherever men wore the khaki of the British army, as well as the Territorials, as the men from Canada, Australia and New Zealand were called.
After encountering many perils, all of which have been entertainingly described in previous pages, the boys had actually hit upon a strong clue. They heard about the astonishingly daring work of an Allied aviator named Frank Bradford, who, besides other feats, had made a long flight up into the Rhine country and severely damaged some ammunition stores and works of the Germans, returning in safety through dangers without limit.
The more the two lads investigated and asked questions the more firmly Amos became convinced that this Frank Bradford, winning fame as the most skillful of all the Allied air pilots, could be no other than his long-missing brother. For some reason of his own, Frank had chosen to be known by only a portion of his real name; but the descriptions tallied with the remembrance Amos had of his brother.
They had followed the trail from Belgium over into Northern France, and had high hopes of coming upon the object of their long search there; but only met with still another disappointment. Aviators were sorely needed in the region of the Dardanelles, where the Allied fleet was trying to force a passage through the narrow channel that led to the Sea of Marmora, and Constantinople. This peninsula was being desperately defended by an army of Turks, officered by hundreds of expert Germans, and with scores of forts and batteries to hold the assailants in check.
Frank had just a short time before started for the East, and thither, as soon as they could get aboard a steamer at Boulogne, the two boys followed him. They touched at Italy, and from there managed to get to a seaport in Greece, where the real difficulties of the undertaking began to confront them.
Just when they were ready to give up all hope of finding a chance to take passage on any sort of boat, and were even contemplating trying to purchase a small naphtha launch of some sort, they learned that a large powerboat was starting for some Turkish port. The commander, who went under the name of Captain Zenos, agreed to take them somewhere near the scene of operations, when they could find some way of getting in touch with British Headquarters, and learning what they wished to know about Frank Bradford.
They had been for some time passing cautiously among the numerous islands of the famous Ægean Sea, and were heading for the Gallipoli Peninsula that lies between it and the heavily fortified Dardanelles Straits.
After using the glass which his chum had handed him, Amos declared that it began to look as though they might be heading for the island mentioned.