She was then at an altitude of from 7000 to 8000 feet and he put her head down as if he intended to drive her steel-pointed bow into the very heart of the city of Berlin. But when he had gotten her at about 400 feet he straightened her out and sent her at 150 knots. Without taking his eyes off his goal, which seemed to be the Palace of the Kaiser, he said in a cold and emotionless voice: “See what damage has been done and report to me quickly, and as there is a God in Heaven if a single one of my men has been killed I will hang the Kaiser after I have destroyed his city!” While the different officers were busily telephoning to every part of the ship carrying out this order, Lawrence stood paralysed waiting for the answers. He sincerely hoped that none of the men had been killed, but as one officer after another reported all well in his department, and as the number of departments yet to be heard from grew less and less, he could not control a distinct feeling of disappointment, for he had silently said “Amen!” to Edestone’s last sentiment. When all had been heard from, and it was found that none had been killed, and that the injuries to the ship were, so slight that they could be repaired within a week, Edestone said to the officer of the deck: “Take the wheel. When you are over the city and have made the Palace, circle it at eight knots. I wish them all to see me. After you have rounded the Palace, run at full speed for Kiel.” And without a word to Lawrence he turned and left the bridge. On his face was a look that showed that the demon within him was under perfect control, but he had no desire to hide the fact that it was still with him. Lawrence would no more have thought of following him than he would have thought of following a wounded Manchurian tiger into its cave. “I would have hated to hear that any one of our fine fellows had been killed,” he said with a nervous laugh, “but my, what a swell little afternoon hanging that would have been! Nathan Hale with the original cast wouldn’t have had a speculator in front of his doors. His front-row seats would be selling at box-office prices, while we would have sold out the house at ten thousand times the cost of the production before the first-nighters had even seen a press notice. There would not have been a piece of paper in the house except the Press and the Princes. By the sacred substance of John D. Rockefeller’s hair-tonic, I hate to think of the money we would have made with the movies! The Crown Prince giving the Papa Wilhelm kiss, while the trap man plays on the melodeon ‘It’s the Wrong Way to Tickle Mary,’ and the Ghost of the Hohenzollern, who ate up her two babies when she found they disturbed her gentleman friend, hovering over the scene like Schumann-Heink in the _Rheingold_,--I would not release that reel for less than a billion dollars down! “But why talk about pleasant things when we have such serious matters on our hands.”