It was beginning to rain when we left the hotel, with occasional peals of thunder; but we welcomed the change in the weather as a factor aiding the surprise attack we had intended. At the Galata end of the Lower Bridge, which was deserted as usual after dark, we dismissed our taxi, and held a final brief council of war in a patch of shadows next the bridge abutment. King, Hugh, Watkins and I were to embark on the Curlew, while Nikka and Wasso Mikali tramped to the Khan of the Georgians and rallied Mikali's six young men. Then they were to go to Sokaki Masyeri, and wait for a pistol-shot, which would be the signal that we had passed through the drain and were at grips with the enemy. Hugh and Nikka compared watches and agreed that we should be in Tokalji's house not later than half-past ten.  
The rain let up as we shook hands and wished each other luck, but by the time the Curlew was chugging down the Golden Horn it had set in again with tripled violence, lashed on by a northeast gale. At intervals broad splotches of lightning bathed the city to our right in a ghastly greenish glow. And when we emerged into the Bosphorus we found a fairly high sea running, but the launch sturdily thrust her bow into the waves and rode buoyantly over them. We cautiously felt our way along, lights out, motor running at half-speed, taking bearings whenever the jagged lightning streaks illuminated the waters.
 
I was worried by the frequency of the lightning displays, but fortunately, as we sighted the round tower on the walls, which was our first landmark for Tokalji's house, there was a lull in the storm. We were also favored in having the old sea-walls act as a lee for us as we worked in closer to shore. The waves moderated, and the fish-hook curve of the ruined jetty broke their remaining force. When Watkins had made fast bow and stern lines to a couple of masses of battered masonry the Curlew floated almost as easily as at her moorings by the Man-o-war Dock. But the difficulties of navigation in the darkness and the necessity for extreme care had slowed our progress, and we were some minutes behind our schedule.
 
The rocks of the jetty, too, were awash, and it was as much as your life was worth to slip, for a fall might mean a broken head or limb. At one point, indeed, several of us lost the jetty altogether and were obliged to swim half-a-dozen strokes to the beach. Watkins, who insisted on arming himself with a crowbar, would have drowned if Hugh had not hauled him in by the scuff of the neck. It was impossible to see anything, except once when a lightning flash streaked the sky and struck with a stunning report in Scutari across the Straits. And then we were so afraid of being discovered that we froze stiff as close to the rocks as possible.
 
The beach, like the jetty, was under water. The waves lapped up to the foot of the walls, and we stumbled desperately over submerged rocks and bowlders. Watkins, just ahead of me in line, tripped, and very nearly knocked my brains out with his infernal crowbar. I begged him to drop it, but he doggedly refused.
 
"I'm no knife-fighter, Mister Jack, sir," he said, "and I'm intending to give the persons that 'it me a taste of their own stew like."
 
We identified the opening of the sewer by the hollow, booming sound with which, every now and then, an unusually high wave would roll over its lip. It sounded like the beating of a watery bass-drum. The rain was driving down again, and the wind blew overhead with a shrill vehemence that was deafening.
 
"We'll never be able to get through that 'ell-'ole tonight, Mister Jack, sir," screamed Watkins in my ear. "We'll be drowned along with the rats."
 
I was somewhat of Watty's opinion, myself, but managed to placate him. Hugh, without any hesitation, yelled: "One at a time!" and slipped into the sewer mouth between two waves. King followed him, and Watty and I brought up the rear. We were cheered to find the place less terrifying than we had imagined it. The water was thigh-deep, instead of knee-deep, as it had been when we escaped from the dungeon, but once you had fumbled your way by torch-light over the jagged moraine that blocked the first thirty feet, the footing became safer and the water shallowed.
 
Just the same, I never think of the place without shuddering. It was deathly silent, except for the ceaseless seepage of moisture, the occasional muffled boom of a wave spattering over its mouth and the squeaking of the gigantic black rats that swam ahead of us or wriggled into cracks in the serried courses of the masonry. Our electric torches shone feebly on the mossy walls, with their sickening fungus growths, their bright green, pendent weeds. Amorphous plants hung from the roof. The atmosphere was slimy, noisome, unclean. And always there was the "drip-drip-drip" of water.
 
We breathed more comfortably when our torches revealed overhead the bars of the stone grating in the floor of the dungeon.
 
"All quiet above," whispered Hugh, after listening intently. "Dark as hell, too. I say, how much farther do you suppose this drain goes?"
 
He trained his torch into the thick murk of the immense tube which extended beyond the grating as far as our eyes could penetrate.
 
"I'm inclined to believe it continues into the city, ably as far as the site of the Forum of Theodosius," King replied, his scholar's interest awake. "That was a region of palaces which would have required such a work of engineering. It should be well worth exploring."
 
"Never mind that now," urged Hugh. "We have another task on hand."
 
He pried up the grating with Watty's crowbar, the butt of which we rested on the ledge in which the grating fitted. This secured a space sufficiently wide for us to squeeze through, and after all of us had climbed up we eased the grating back into its bed, so that there was no trace remaining of our entrance.
 
The dungeon was the same barren cube of dusty stone that we had left by virtue of Watkins's aid. The ropes that had bound us were still on the floor where we had cast them. The door we had broken leaned against the wall. Obviously, Tokalji and his people had never even suspected how we had escaped, apparently, did not even know of the existence of the sewer.[1]
 
 
 
[1] Tokalji expressed great surprise when we told him about the sewer. He refused to enter it, and seemed to regard it as a danger to his house. Nikka thought that he would try to fill it in, but I believe Kara, who feared nothing, pointed out to him its usefulness for illicit purposes, and he changed his mind. J.N.
 
 
 
It is strange, and I fancy the only answer is Nikka's: that the modern non-Christian inhabitants of Constantinople look with superstitious fear upon the vast underground structures—baths, cisterns, conduits and sewers—left by the ancient Roumis, as the builders are usually called, do not want to see them or hear of them, never enter it if by chance one is discovered, and cover them up whenever they can.
 
It was five minutes to eleven when we gained the dungeon, and we knew that Nikka must be at a loss to account for our failure to signal him. He might suppose us to be casualties of the storm, and in desperation, attack alone on his own account. So we wasted no time, beyond shaking the water from our clothes.
 
The lower passage and cellars were deserted, but as we climbed the stairs leading to the central hall opening on the little atrium between the Garden of the Cedars and the large chamber which Tokalji occupied we heard a distant murmur of voices in disagreement. Investigation proved the hall to be unoccupied, and we were presently grouped on its uneven floor, with only a curtain separating us from the drama going on in the atrium. The rain was ............