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Updated: June 12, 2025
And a moment later, "They are firing at the periscope..." "Down with it," said von Sperrgebiet. "We must go blind if we are to get through." His face was white and his lip curled back in a perpetual snarl like a wolf at bay. As he spoke there was a splutter and the lights went out. The voice of the Engineer sounded through the low doorway from the engine-room.
"Now," said von Sperrgebiet. "Turn on the gramophone, one of you, if you can find it." There was a pause while someone fumbled in the darkness, and a click. Then a metallic tune blared forth bravely from the unseen instrument. "That's right," said von Sperrgebiet in a low voice, speaking for the last time. "'Deutschland unter Alles!" His laugh was like the bark of a sick dog.
"The approaching ship looks like a liner, Herr Kapitan!" "What of that?" said von Sperrgebiet gruffly. The Second-in-Command looked back over his shoulder at his Commanding Officer: his face was livid with excitement. "It means women, Herr Kapitan," he said. "Children perhaps...." Von Sperrgebiet shrugged his shoulders. "They are English," he replied.
The mysterious forces that were at work in Germany, industriously remoulding, brutalising and distorting the mind of Oberleutnant von Sperrgebiet, together with millions of others, had not been blind to the prejudicial effects of conscience to an evil cause.
All these things von Sperrgebiet despised in the English. But he also hated them for something he had never even admitted to himself. Crudely put, it was because he knew that he could never beat an Englishman. There was nothing in his spirit that could outlast the terrible, emotionless determination in the English character to win. Von Sperrgebiet's reflections came to an end with his cigarette.
He had met the man who boasted such an achievement, and for a long time he carried with him the recollection of that man's eyes as they met his above a beer mug. They had drunk uproariously together, and von Sperrgebiet heard all about it first hand, and even fingered enviously the Iron Cross upon the breast of the teller of the tale.
They had sighted a sailing ship in tow of a tug at the entrance to the Channel; von Sperrgebiet was proud of his mastery of the English tongue, and it was this small vanity that led him to adopt tactics which differed somewhat from his normal caution. He submerged until within a couple of hundred yards of the approaching tow and then rose to the surface, dripping, like some uncouth sea-monster.
Finally he returned to his Captain's elbow, moistening his marred lip with the tip of his tongue; his face wore an unhealthy pallor and glistened in the glow of the electric lights. "Is it an English ship, Herr Kapitan?" he asked again in his high, unnatural voice. "Yes," snapped von Sperrgebiet. "Why?" "I have a request to make," replied the Second-in-Command. "A favour, Herr Kapitan.
The helmsman was standing, staring at the compass like a man in a trance. "Herr Kapitan," he said, as von Sperrgebiet approached, "it is bewitched." Indeed, he had grounds for consternation. The compass card was spinning round like a kitten chasing its tail, first in one direction, then in another. "Damn the compass!" said von Sperrgebiet.
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