The tide of hope surged high within me. I was tempted to divulge at once my long cherished plan of escape from Berlin. "Why," I asked, thinking to further sound his sincerity, "if you feel like this, have you never considered running your craft to the surface during the sea passage and beaching her on a foreign shore? There at least is life and hope and experience."
"By the Statue of God!" cried Grauble, his body shaking and his voice quavering, "why do you, in all your hope and comfort here, speak of that to me? Do you think I have never been tempted to do that very thing? And yet you call me a coward. Have I not breathed foul air for days, fearful to poke up our air tube in deserted waters lest by the millionth chance it might lead to a capture? And yet you speak of deliberate surrender! Even though I destroyed my charts, the capture of a German submarine in those seas would set the forces of the outer world searching for the passage. If they found and blocked the passage I should be guilty of the destruction of three hundred million lives--Great God! God of Hohenzollern! God of the World! could this thing be?"
"Captain," I said, placing my hand on the shoulder of the palsied man, "you and I have great secrets and the burden of great sorrows in common. It is well that we have found each other. It is well that we have spoken of these things that shake our souls. You have confessed much to me and I have much that I shall confess to you. I must see you again before you leave."
Grauble gave me his hand. "You are a strange man," he said. "I have met none before like you. I do not know at what aims you are driving. If you plotted my disgrace by leading me into these confessions, you have found me easy prey. But do not credit yourself too much. I have often vowed I would go to Admiral von Kufner, and say these things to him. But the formal exterior of that petty pompous man I cannot penetrate. If I have confessed to you, it is merely because you are a man without that protecting shield of bristling authority and cold formality. You seemed merely a man of flesh and blood, despite your decorations, and so I have talked. What is to be made of it by you or by me I do not know, but I am not afraid of you."
"I shall leave you now," I said, "for I have pressing duties, but I shall see you soon again. So calm yourself and get hold of your reason. I shall want you to think clearly when I talk with you again. Perhaps I can yet show you a gleam of hope beyond this mathematical law of averages that rattles the dice of death."
CHAPTER XI
IN WHICH THE TALKING DELEGATE IS ANSWERED BY THE ROYAL VOICE AND I LEARN THAT LABOUR KNOWS NOT GOD
~1~
I had delayed in speaking to Grauble of our revolutionary plans, because I wished first to arrange a meeting with Zimmern and Hellar and secure the weight of their calmer minds in initiating Grauble into our plans of sending a message to the World State authorities. I was prevented from doing this immediately by difficulties in the Protium Works. Meanwhile unbeknown to me the sailing date of Grauble's vessel was advanced, and he departed to the Arctic.