Hermann Körner flung up his arms, tumbled backward, and lay upon the grating very still.
Dropping his weapon, Max stepped over him and made his way to the periscope. Trembling from head to foot, he yet controlled himself sufficiently to bend over the instrument to adjust its disturbed focus. Reflected in the mirror he saw the image of an immense Atlantic liner with four red funnels, and many decks crowded with people. Her whole vast fabric was heeling over. She seemed to have been struck by the torpedo somewhere amidships.
"How awful!" he exclaimed.
He turned to look once again at the commander lying dead at his feet.
"God forgive me," he repeated. "But it is less than you deserve."
CHAPTER XXXIII.
MAX RENOUNCES THE FATHERLAND.
Max Hilliger was now alone in the submarine's conning-tower and in charge of its controls. He was shaking violently as he began to realise the horror of what he had done.
He had deliberately fired a bullet into the heart of his superior officer, who had also been his companion and his friend. It was a terrible thing to have done; yet he believed that the act was justified. He only regretted that he had not committed it sooner, before Hermann Körner had had time to give the fatal command for the discharging of the torpedo.
Had he done so, had he fired his shot at the right instant, how many hundreds of precious lives he might have saved! He would have had no haunting regrets in taking one man's life, if by taking it he had been able to prevent a far greater crime.