"You'll have to be twenty-eight to-night, my jumping Son—thirty-eight; you've got the chance of a lifetime. Squat down on the wash-stand."
"Jumping Moses!—you and I have to go in to-night and stick a light on a mark-buoy—a Turkish mark-buoy they've fixed in the wrong place, close inshore it is, under the old fort. What do you think of that?"
"What mark-buoy?" asked the Orphan. "How ripping!"
The Sub drew a few rough outlines on a piece of paper. "There's the fort, and that's the line of the low bit of land sweeping away to the right. It sticks out a bit farther along, and just off the 'stick out' place the mark-buoy should mark a shoal, but the Turks have shifted it farther in—just about there"—and he marked a cross on the paper—"to bother us. And we've got to find it to-night, and stick a red light on it. How's that for 'good'?"
"They'll see us, won't they?" the Orphan said, catching his breath again, for he knew that at least three search-lights swept the approach and the minefield—a big one on Yeni Kali itself, "Glaring Gertrude", and two this side of the mine-field, from somewhere down by the water's edge—"Peeping Tom" and "Squinting Susan"; two much less powerful lights these were.
"I bet they'll see us. If they don't before, they will after we've fixed up that red light. The trawlers are going to sweep through behind us, and that light's to guide 'em," and the Sub smote the table with his great clenched fist. "What price that for a good night's work? Better than boarding ships in the North Sea, eh?"
"Right in under the fort we'll have to go?" asked the Orphan, his breath still rather short; "and right in under all those guns along the beach?"
"Right in, my jumping Orphan! Rifle range! pistol range! biscuit range! The Swiftsure's coming in to have a bang at "Peeping Tom" and his pal. My jumping O.! what a job!"
"When d'we shove off?" asked the Orphan, his eyes blazing.
"Seven o'clock—seven sharp. You bring the grub—shark sandwiches—and a couple bottles of beer. You're not rattled, my young Orphan?" he said, springing up and clutching the midshipman's shoulders.