Nor let thy notes of joy be first:

round-and-round- the-rugged-rocks and who's the-king-of-the-castle with their opposite numbers in Berlin. Great fun for all concernedexcept, of course, for the thousand or so sailors who've been drowned in the course of the game, the ten thousand or so Tommies and Anzacs and Indians who suffered and died on these same islandsand died without knowing why." Jensen's hands were white-knuckled on the wheel, his mouth tight-drawn and bitter. Mallory was surprised, shocked almost, by the vehemence, the depth of feeling; it was so completely out of character. . . . Or perhaps it was in character, perhaps Jensen knew a very great deal indeed about what went on on the inside. "Twelve hundred men, you said, sir?" Mallory asked quietly. "You said there were twelve hundred men on Kheros?" Jensen flickered a glance at him, looked away again. "Yes. Twelve hundred men." Jensen sighed. "You're right, laddie, of course, you're right. I'm just talking off the top of my head. Of course we can't leave them there. The Navy will do its damnedest. What's two or three more destroyerssorry, boy, sorry, there I go again. . . . Now listen, and listen carefully. "Taking 'em off will have to be a night operation. There isn't a ghost of a chance in the daytimenot with two-three hundred Stukas just begging for a glimpse of a Royal Naval destroyer. It'll have to be destroyers transports and tenders are too slow by half. And they can't possibly go northabout the northern tip of the Leradesthey'd never get back to safety before daylight. It's too long a trip by hours." "But the Lerades is a pretty long string of Islands," Mallory ventured. "Couldn't the destroyers go through" "Between a couple of them? Impossible." Jensen shook his head. "Mined to hell and back again. Every single channel. You couldn't take a dinghy through." "And the Maidos-Navarone channel. Stiff with mines also, I suppose?" "No, that's a clear channel. Deep wateryou can't moor mines in deep water." "So that's the route you've got to take, isn't it, sir? I mean, they're Turkish territorial waters on the other side and we" "We'd go through Turkish territorial waters to-morrow, and in broad daylight, if it would do any good," Jensen said flatly. "The Turks know it and so do the Germans. But all other things being equal, the Western channel is the one we're taking. It's a clearer channel, a shorter routeand it doesn't involve any unnecessary international complications." powe shoot 550 cannon digital camera "All other things being equal?" "The guns of Navarone." Jensen paused for a long time, then repeated the words, slowly, expressionlessly, as one would repeat the name of some feared and ancient enemy. "The guns of Navarone. They make everything equaL They cover the northern entrances to both channels. We could take the twelve hundred men off Kheros to-nightif we could silence the guns of Navarone." Mallory sat silent, said nothing. He's coming to it now, he thought. "These guns are no ordinary guns," Jensen went on quietly. "Our naval experts say they're about nine-inch rifle barrels. I think myself they're more likely a version of the 210 mm. 'crunch' guns that the Germans are using in Italyour soldiers up there hate and fear those guns more than anything on earth. A dreadful weaponshell extremely slow in flight and damnably accurate. Anyway," he went on grimly, "whatever they were they were good enough to dispose of the Sybaris in five minutes flat." Mallory nodded slowly. "The Sybaris? I think I heard" "An eight-inch cruiser we sent up there about four months ago to try conclusions with the Hun. Just a formality, a routine exercise, we thought. The Sybaris was blasted out of the water. There were seventeen survivors." "Good God!" Mallory was shocked. "I didn't know" "Two months ago we mounted a large-scale amphibious attack on Navarone." Jensen hadn't even heard the interruption. "Commandos, Royal Marine Commandos and Jellicoe's Special Boat Service. Less than an even chance, we knewNavarone's practically solid cliff all the way round. But then these were very special men, probably the finest assault troops in the world today." Jensen paused for almost a minute, then went on very quietly. "They were cut to ribbons. They were massacred almost to a man. "Finally, twice in the past ten days-we've seen this attack on Kheros coming for a long time nowwe sent in parachute saboteurs: Special Boat Service men." He shrugged his shoulders helplessly. "They just vanished." "Just like that?" "Just like that. And then to-nightthe last desperate fling of the gambler and what have you."