My personal adventures can possess little interest after the all-important transactions I have had to describe. But in case there should be a reader here and there who is good enough to feel any curiosity as to my fate, I will briefly tell what followed on my arrest.
My revolver was taken from me and I was conducted under a strict guard back to Kiel.
Off the mouth of the Canal we were boarded by a despatch-boat flying the German naval ensign, and a police officer with three men took me off the submarine.
The first proceeding of my new captor was to handcuff me. He then warned me,
“If you speak a single word to me or any one else till you are in the imperial presence, my orders are to shoot you through the head.”
I nodded. I had as little wish to speak as the Emperor could have to let me. My thoughts were busy with the memory of the woman of whose tragic death I had been the unwitting cause, and with the measures that remained to be taken to extenuate, so far as extenuation was possible, the fatal action of the Baltic fleet.
As for myself, I can say truly that I had become almost indifferent to what was in store for me. My feeling toward the unfortunate Princess had not been such as that which makes a man desire a woman for his wife; it had not deserved the name of love, perhaps; and it was certainly free from any taint of a less noble passion.
Nevertheless it had been a powerful sentiment, colored and strengthened by my knowledge of her love for me.
Sophia had loved me. She had saved my life. And I had taken hers in return.
Must I accuse myself of weakness for feeling as if happiness for me were over, and the best fate I could wish would be to lie there beside my victim on the lonely Dogger sands?