Their confessions caused the arrest of Paul Daeche, who had furnished them with explosives, Dr. Kienzle, Breitung, and Engelbert Bronkhorst. Fay received a sentence of eight years in the penitentiary, but after America went to war, Atlanta became too confining for his adventurous spirit, and he escaped the prison, and is believed to have crossed the Mexican border to safety. Scholz was sentenced to four years, and Daeche to three. Kienzle, Breitung and Bronkhorst were not tried, their apparent ignorance of Fay's designs outweighing in the jury's mind their obvious German sympathies. Kienzle, upon the declaration of war of April 6, 1917, became an enemy alien, and was interned.
So Lieutenant Fay never qualified in active service as a destroying agent. Yet he was profligate in his intentions. He offered two men $500,000 if they could intrigue among the shippers in order that a ship laden with copper for England might wander from the path of convoy into German hands, and he even entertained the fantastic hope, with his chart and his motor-boat and his bombs, of stealing out of the harbor to the cordon of British cruisers who hung outside the three-mile limit and attaching his bombs to their rudders, that the German merchantmen might escape into the open sea.
On October 26 the _Rio Lages_ caught fire at sea; fire broke out in the hold of the _Euterpe_ on November 3; three days later there was fire aboard the _Rochambeau_ at sea; the next day an explosion occurred aboard the _Ancona_. And so the list runs on:
Dec. 4--_Tynningham_, two fires on ship. Dec. 24--_Alston_, dynamite found in cargo. Dec. 26--_Inchmoor_, fire in hold.
Jan. 19--_Sygna_, fire at sea. Jan. 19--_Ryndam_, bomb explosion at sea. Jan. 22--_Rosebank_, two bombs in cargo. Feb. 16--_Dalton_, fire at sea. Feb. 21--_Tennyson_, bomb explosion at sea. Feb. 26--_Livingston Court_, fire in Gravesend Bay.
April saw the round-up of the group who had been working under the Hamburg-American captains, and although numerous fires occurred during May, 1916, in almost every case they were traced to natural accidents. The number mounted more slowly as the year advanced. With the entrance of America into the war, and the tightening of the police cordon along the waterfront, the chance of planting bombs was still further reduced, but waterfront fires kept recurring, and until the day of ultimate judgment in Berlin, when each of Germany's arsonists in America comes to claim his reward, none will know the total of loss at their hands. It was enormous in the damage it inflicted upon cargo, but it is improbable that it had any perceptible effect upon the whole export of shells for Flanders and France.