He gave vent to an exaggerated grunt of horror, which set Geoff giggling, for it reminded him of his own feelings, of that cold shiver which had gone down his spine, of the extraordinary indescribable shudder which had shaken him from head to foot, and which, courageous though he hoped he had been, had set his limbs trembling. "Jolly nasty!" he said, sympathizing with his chum immediately. "I had the same sort of experience, and it isn't nice, particularly on a dark night, and when it comes so unexpectedly. But we've been wonderfully lucky when you come to think of it--though it's awfully unfortunate that we should have been captured--for this officer in charge of the party actually knows Major Douglas, and if it weren't war-time I believe he would himself see us to a place of safety." "And might even now look the other way if there was a chance of our escaping," suggested Phil. "No, decidedly no!" Geoff answered. "He's loyal to the core, this Turkish officer, unlike so many of them." "Then what's to be done?" asked Phil. "You don't mean to tell me that you are going to allow yourself to be taken as a prisoner, say, into the interior of the country, and give up all hope of joining the other fellows?" Geoff laughed, a gruff, determined sort of laugh, which sounded rather impressive in the darkness. There was a note of satire in it too, a note seldom indulged in by our hero. "Sorry that's the impression you've got of me after all these months," he told Philip curtly. "Sorry you think I'm so soft, so lacking in spirit, as to give up just because I am captured. What about that trip we proposed which was to carry us to Bagdad, and was to allow us to make a search for Major Douglas?" A sudden exclamation escaped from Philip's lips, and, diving at Geoff's arm, he gripped the wrist with a suddenness which was almost disconcerting: "And--and, why not?" he said in a hoarse whisper, "why not? Aren't we now away from the expedition, aren't we more in the heart of Mesopotamia than ever we were before? Just think for a moment, and suppose you had gone off on that expedition that you've been planning, that you've been dreaming about every day and night since that letter came from your guardian. Supposing you'd slipped away from the British camp and had got behind the enemy's lines: where's the difference?" Geoff brought his eloquence and enthusiasm to a somewhat sudden end by giving him a disagreeable reminder. "Difference! Difference!" he remarked caustically. "Only this, that whereas, in that case, we should be behind their lines, but free; in this, we are in the midst of their lines, not free, but captives."