A brief description of the contrivance reveals the mechanical ingenuity and practical efficiency of Fay’s bomb. A rod attached to the rudder, at every swing the rudder gave, turned up, by one notch, the first of the bevelled wheels within the bomb. After a certain number of revolutions of that wheel, it in turn gave one revolution to the next; and so on through the series. The last wheel was connected with the threaded cap around the upper end of the square bolt, and made this cap slowly unscrew, until at length the bolt dropped clear of it and yielded to the waiting pressure of the strong steel spring above. This pressure drove it downward and brought the sharp points at its lower end down on the caps of the two rifle cartridges fixed below it—like the blow of a rifle’s hammer. The detonation from the explosion of these cartridges would set off a small charge of impregnated chlorate of potash, which in turn would fire the small charge of the more sluggish but stronger dynamite, and that in turn would explode the still more sluggish but tremendously more powerful trinitrotoluol.
The whole operation, once the spring was free, would take place in a flash; and instantly its deadly work would be accomplished.
Picture the scene that Fay had in his mind as he toiled his six laborious months upon this dark invention. He saw himself, in imagination, fixing his infernal box upon the rudder post of a ship loading at a dock in New York harbour. As the cargo weighed the ship down, the box would disappear beneath the water. At length the ship starts on its voyage, and, as the rudder swings her into the stream, the first beat in the slow, sure knell of death for ship and crew is clicked out by its very turning. Out upon the sea the shift of wind and blow of wave require a constant correction with the rudder to hold the true course forward. At every swing the helmsman unconsciously taps out another of the lurking beats of death. Somewhere in mid-ocean, perhaps at black midnight, in a driving storm, the patient mechanism hid below has turned the last of its calculated revolutions. The neckpiece from the bolt slips loose, the spring drives downward, there is a flash, a deafening explosion, and five minutes later a few mangled bodies and a chaos of floating wreckage are all that is left above the water’s surface.
This is the hideous dream Fay dreamed in the methodical 180 days of his planning and experimenting in New York. This is the dream to realize which he was able to enlist the coöperation of half a dozen other Germans. This is the dream his superiors in Germany viewed with favour, and financed. This is the dream the sinister Von Papen encouraged and which he finally dismissed only because he believed it too good to be true. This is the dream Fay himself on the witness stand said he had thought of as “a good joke on the British.”
In this picture of infernal imaginings the true character of German plottings in this country stands revealed. Ingenuity of conception characterized them, method and patience and painstaking made them perfect. Flawless logic, flawless mechanism. But on the human side, only the blackest passions and an utter disregard of human life; no thought of honour, no trace of human pity. It happened in the case of Fay that the agent himself was ruthless and deserved far more than what the limit of existing law was able to give him when he was convicted of his crimes. But through all the plots Von Papen, Von Bernstorff, and the Imperial German Government in Berlin were consistent. Their hand was at the helm of all, and the same ruthless grasping after domination of the world at any price led to the same barbarous code of conduct in them all.
[CHAPTER IV]
The Inside Story of the Captain of the “Eitel Friedrich”
Out of the black picture of the German depravity in fighting this war have emerged four or five dramatic episodes that have stirred the imagination of the world and appealed to the romantic and chivalric instincts even of Germany’s enemies. The cruise of the Emden will always remain one of the glorious traditions of the sea. The knightly spirit of those German aviators who flew low over the bier of their fallen foe of the French cavalry of the clouds, and strewed flowers upon it, was in the spirit of the best that war produces. America was the scene of two such episodes. The first unexpected appearance of the U-53 upon our shores, rising unheralded from the unsuspected waters, thrilled the sporting instinct of our people. But perhaps the most dramatic incident was the arrival of the Prinz Eitel Friedrich.