'Pity we can't take the gun back with us,' said Ken regretfully.
'Why shouldn't we? I'll sling it on my back. It don't weigh more than sixty pounds.'
Ken shook his head.
'It's too far, old chap. We're all of a mile from our own lines. No, I'll take the breech block off, and if you can find a good-sized stone we'll smash the rest of it enough to make it useless.'
Roy at once hove up a rock the size of his head, and raising it high in air brought it down with a shattering crash on the gun. The stout steel barrel twisted under the tremendous shock, the water jacket burst.
'That suit you?' he said.
Ken glanced at the ruins, and smiled.
'Take Krupps all their time to make that serviceable again,' he remarked, and the words were hardly out of his mouth before there came a sudden rush of feet, and Kemp, accompanied by no fewer than eight sturdy-looking Turks, came scrambling over the ridge from the right.
'Don't kill them,' shouted Kemp in Turkish. 'Don't kill them. Take them alive. Ten marks apiece to you if you take them alive.'
The men were on them instantly. There was no time to shoot. Stooping swiftly, Roy swung up the broken barrel of the quick-firer, and with a shout sprang at the Turks, whirling the weighty length of steel around his head.