Not a yard of their journey had been without its risks, but now they had to be more careful than ever. The whole shore of the Straits was, they knew, a network of forts and hidden defences. There was no saying when they might blunder upon something of the kind.
Half-way down the hill, Ken, who was leading, pulled up.
'Look out!' he muttered. 'There's a pit of some sort just in front of us. Wait, I'll see what it is.'
He dropped on hands and knees and crawled forward. He was away for only a few moments.
'Nothing but a shell hole,' he explained, 'but it's a regular crater. Must have been done by one of our twelve-inch guns. Two dead Turks alongside it.'
'Rum place for a shell to fall,' Roy answered, straining his eyes through the gloom.
'It means there's a fort somewhere near,' said Ken. 'Our people don't waste shells on empty hill-sides, I can tell you.'
'Wish it wasn't so infernally dark,' growled Roy.
'I'm jolly glad it is,' answered Ken emphatically. 'Put it any way you like, it helps us more than the enemy.'
They saw nothing of the fort, if there was one, and after crossing some very broken ground came down into a narrow valley, in the centre of which was the bed of a water-course, now dry.