"Lor', Geoff, you didn't tell me, you didn't say a word about it!" gasped, rather than whispered, the excited Philip, as he crawled back to our hero's side, having sprawled along the deck of the steamer and peeped into the cabin wherein were those three Turkish officers, the possession of one of whom the two young British officers so eagerly coveted. "What d'you mean by it?" "Mean by it! By what? Shut up, you idiot, or that sentry will hear us!" "Hang the sentry!" came the whispered answer, as Philip lay down beside his chum and close under the rail of the vessel. "But, I say, what a joke! Just fancy our guessing so exactly. He's as old as they make 'em, the chap who commands this ship--an old, fat, and bloated bounder--and, Christopher! he's bald and as toothless as a baby." The fellow actually cackled, till Geoff pounced upon him and closed his mouth with his hand. "Shut up, you fool!" he exclaimed, in a fierce whisper. "You'll have every man aboard the ship upon us and will wreck our chances. I begin to wish that I hadn't brought you with me; but I thought that at least you had some sort of sense." Philip sniggered. He knew that Geoff didn't really mean to be so fierce as he made out, or even so vindictive, and, after all, there seemed little chance of the sentry suspecting their presence or overhearing them. For, in the first place, though farther away amidst the marshes, an almost complete silence covered the waste of waters--broken only by the faint whisper of the evening breeze as it rustled amongst the reeds of the thousands of muddy islands--out here, in the centre of the stream, there was the swish and swirl of water as it flowed past the steel sides of the vessel, the lap of the current, and the whistle of the breeze as it swayed the cordage to and fro and hummed a gentle tune round the funnel, the steam whistle, and the other contrivances hampering the deck of the steamer. And, secondly, there was the sentry himself, a mere doll he seemed, an automaton--as Geoff had thought--a man who marched barefooted, to and fro, to and fro, backwards and forwards from one rail of the vessel to the other, never appearing to turn his head, never shifting the rifle which rested across one shoulder, apparently deaf to sounds, and oblivious to all that was taking place about him. Not that much could be said to be within his vision, for, be it remembered, darkness lay over the Euphrates and the adjacent marshes--darkness made a little less intense by that crescent of the moon which floated in the heavens, by the million brilliant stars with which they were peppered, and, to a lesser degree, in one particular part, by the feeble rays which struggled through the skylight of the cabin and fell gently on the deck of the vessel.