ified to such a comment from the
submarine commander. At any rate, he went back to his U-boat and the
undersea.

"That's the last they saw of him. The transport came on into Dover.

"England thought the affair was one of the adventures of the sea.
A chance thing, that happened by accident. But there was one man in
England who knew better."

"You?" I said.

The Baronet shrugged his shoulders.

"St. Alban," he answered.

He got up and began to walk about the terrace. I sat with the cup of
tea cooling before me. The big man walked slowly with his fingers linked
behind him. Finally he stopped. His voice was deep and reflective.

"'Man is altogether the sport of fortune!'... I read that in Herodotus,
in a form at Rugby. I never thought about it again. But it's God's
truth. St. Alban was at Rugby. I often wonder if he remembered it. My
word, he lived to verify it! Herodotus couldn't cite a case to equal
him. And the old Greek wasn't hemmed in by the truth. I maintain that
the man's case has no parallel.

"To have all the painstaking labor of years negatived by one enveloping,
vicious misfortune; to be beaten out of life by it, and at the same time
to gain that monument out yonder and one's niche as hero by the grim
device of an enemy's satire; by the acting of a scene that one
would never have taken part in if one had realized it, is beyond any
complication of tragedy known to the Greek.

"Look at the three strange phases of it: To be a mediocre Englishman
with no special talent; to die in horrible despair; and to leave behind
a glorious legend. And for all these three things to contradict one
another in the same life is unequaled in the legends of any people."

The Baronet went on in a deep level voice.

"There was a vicious vitality behind the whole desperate business. Every
visible impression of the thing was wrong. Every conception of it held
today by the English people is wrong!

"The German submarine didn't overhaul the hospital transport in the
Channel by accident. The Hun commander didn't fail to sink the transport
out of any humane motives. He didn't fail to shoot St. Alban because he
was moved by the heroism of the man. It was all grim calculation!

"He thought it was safe to let St. Alban go ahead. And he would have
been right if St. Alban had been the great egotist that he was.

"The commander of that submarine was Plutonburg of Prussia. He was the
right-hand man of old Von Tirpitz. He was the one