"Believe me from that day to this, beyond a curt acknowledgment and a bald statement that the subject was under consideration, I have heard nothing further of the matter. I was angry--disgusted because the powers that be had bluntly shut their eyes to an actual discovery that would give Great Britain the command of the air.
"Since airmanship did not appeal to me I resolved to make use of my discovery in another direction. By further experiments I found that my metal ’Restronium,’ I have been ambitious enough to call it, could be made capable of absorbing bright light, yet at close distance would act as a reflector. The result was that I devised a submarine, steel-clad, and cased with restronium. It was constructed by native workmen under the supervision of my comrades and myself.
"The craft was a success. It prompted me to attempt another on a more ambitious scale, but ere it was completed Karl von Harburg appeared on the scene.
"This fellow is as crafty as a rogue can possibly be. By his German co-colonists he was cordially hated. He had ability but was lazy. His factory did not do so well as the others; instead of working harder he sulked. In the Fatherland he had once held a high diplomatic position. He it was who a few years back tried to force a quarrel upon Holland in order that a pretext might be found for Germany to acquire a longer coast-line on the shores of the North Sea. He failed, and since failure is not tolerated in Teutonic diplomatic circles, he was disgraced. He came to Sumatra, ostensibly with the idea of working a concession, but in reality looking for an opportunity of recovering his lost prestige by smoothing the way for a German annexation of the Dutch East Indies. Again he failed--how and why I need not now mention; but rightly or wrongly he formed the idea that I had a say in the matter.
"He had his revenge. He stole the secret of my new alloy. He obtained possession of the plans of my latest submarine, the ’Aphrodite,’ and set himself to build a vessel that would be more powerful than mine. But he had not mastered one important idea--the secret of the defensive and offensive powers of my vessel.
"It was a case of war to the knife. His idea was to take his submarine--the ’Vorwartz’ he named her--into British waters and deliberately do as much destruction to British ships of war and merchantmen as he possibly could; this with the idea of giving the Fatherland an advantage in the coming naval war that has been so long anticipated and which has not yet, thank God, caused untold misery and disaster to two nations who could be rivals yet friends.