Left to themselves, the two boys sought a place where they could make themselves comfortable. The camp stools looked inviting, but cautious Jack shook his head when Amos proposed occupying them.
“I think we can find a safer place than that,” he remarked. “Just as like as not some Turkish spies have had a look-in at this camp, and marked the position of the General’s headquarters. If they have any guns along they’ll be apt to hurl a few shells around here, and it wouldn’t pay us to take the chances.”
“Whew! I never thought of that,” admitted Amos, always ready to agree with his chum.
Wandering around the almost deserted camp, they presently selected a location where they might see something of what was going on. They could easily understand that the position taken
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 by the Territorials had been made as impregnable as the conditions allowed. No doubt there were trenches and barricades behind which the troops could work their many rapid-fire guns, and their repeating rifles as well. Being born marksmen, they would take frightful toll of the Turks when they advanced to the attack in their customary solid formations, urged on by German officers, who from the rear would threaten to sabre or shoot anyone daring to turn back.
All seemed silent save for the sound of the sea fretting along the shore. Amos could hardly believe that right then and there hundreds upon hundreds of Allied troops were getting in position to man the defences of the camp; and that some thousands of ferocious Mussulman fighters were creeping along not so very far away with the avowed intention of rushing the works after the manner of reckless fighters, careless of their lives.
Amos had not forgotten the main reason for his being there in the camp of the gallant New Zealanders. As he sat there and glanced this
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 way and that, trying to make things out in the uncertain light, he was wondering just where the little level plateau lay from which the bold aviator took his flights, and landed again after he had sufficiently harassed the enemy.
It surely was somewhere close by, for unless well within the lines he could never have come and gone with safety. A thousand thoughts were racing through the agitated mind of Amos Turner, though the main theme lay in his fervent hope that here at last he might meet the brother for whom he had been searching so long.
He believed he would know the best or the worst by the time day dawned once more. If Frank was there they must inevitably meet; the General had promised to do anything that lay in his power to help. If again doomed to disappointment the shock would prove most cruel.
Amos and Jack occasionally exchanged a few sentences, but for the most part they lay there on the ground, simply waiting to see what would happen.
An hour, perhaps two of them, had passed
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 since the boys reached camp. Indeed, Amos had actually dozed several times, so that he was utterly unable to keep track of time. He scanned the heavens and believed it must be getting well on toward midnight. Would the Turks attack soon, or had they for some reason given up the plan? Amos even wondered whether the General might not believe they had been mistaken in their warning, and accordingly act less cordially toward the boys.
It was while he was ruefully contemplating some such dire possibility as this that the first shot was fired some little distance away. Instantly a transformation that was certainly wonderful took place. Several searchlights flashed into being, and criss-crossed in a hasty manner as the manipulators sought to show up the advancing enemy.
“They’ve got everything fixed, you see!” Jack exclaimed, as both of them jumped to their feet in their eagerness to see all they could.
Loud shouts were now heard. They evidently sprang from the advancing Turks, filled with
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 fanatical zeal, and determined to sweep everything before them, as they had undoubtedly been assured by their German officers could be easily done.
Amos held his breath. He knew what was bound to follow, and the thought of the hail storm of missiles that would presently be hurled upon the attacking party filled him with dismay; for he had seen the terrible results of such work at close quarters before then, and would never forget it as long as he lived.
That first shot must have been fired by some advanced vidette, who, satisfied with having thus given the alarm, had hastily retreated along lines previously laid out for his guidance.
You have often heard the sudden, sharp crash of thunder immediately after a most brilliant flash of lightning—well, to Jack’s mind that was about what the sudden discharge of a gun close by sounded like, it came with such startling abruptness.
Immediately afterwards other sounds chimed in—the whirring rattle of quick-firers, the volleys
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 of those in the trenches, and the stentorious shouts of the excited men from the other side of the world who were filled with the enthusiasm of battle.
The advancing Turks also made themselves heard, for they shouted at the top of their voices, even as red Indians had been wont to whoop when attacking some log cabin in an Ohio clearing, or a wagon-train on its way across the plains.
The clamor grew in volume. The Turks were firing as they came on, though those they sought to slay were doubly screened both by darkness and the barricades behind which they stood or crouched, each man acting mostly on his own initiative. The searchlights were destined to turn the scales of battle against the charging Turks, Jack imagined. Those powerful streams of light playing along the enemy’s lines betrayed their every move, and afforded the Allies a splendid opportunity to spray their columns with the fluid of death that leaped from the muzzles of those quick-firers.
Nor was this all.
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In the midst of the terrible noise there came a dull boom from out on ............