Grauble flung out his hand with a gesture of disdain. "That is an easy word for you to pronounce," he sneered. "You have hope to live by, you are on the upward climb, you aspire to marry into the Royal House and sire children to inherit your wealth. But I was born of the Royal House, my father squandered his wealth. My sisters were beautiful and they have married well. My brother was servile; he has attached himself to the retinue of a wealthy Baroness. But I was made of better stuff than that. I would play the hero. I would face danger and gladly die to give Berlin more life and uphold the House of Hohenzollern in its fat and idle existence; and for me they have taken hope away! "Oh, yes, I was proclaimed a hero. The young ladies of this house of idleness dance with me, but they dare not take me seriously; what one of them would court the certainty of widowhood without a fortune? So why should I not tire of their shallow trifling? I find among the girls of the Free Level more honest love, for they, as I, have no hope. They love but for the passing hour, and pass on as I pass on, I to death, they to decaying beauty and an old age of servile slavery." Surely, I exulted, here is the rebellious and daring soul that Zimmern and Hellar have sought in vain. Even as they had hoped, I seemed to have discovered a man of the submarine service who was amenable to revolutionary ideas. Could I not get him to consider the myriad life of Berlin in all its barren futility, to grasp at the hope of succour from a free and merciful world, and then, with his aid, find a way out of Berlin, a way to carry the message of Germany's need of help to the Great God of Humanity that dwelt without in the warmth and joy of the sun? 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?"