so Captain Koenig
tells us,

in less than two months a telegram called me to Berlin to an
important conference. Here I looked at sketches, plans, and
working drawings until my eyes swam. Four more months passed
which I utilized to the full. I then went to Kiel and saw a
remarkable framework of steel slowly take shape upon the stocks
across the way at Gaarden. Rotund, snug, and harmless the thing
lay there. Inside it were hidden all the countless, complicated,
and powerful features of those sketches and working drawings. I
cannot boast that the reality as executed in steel and brass was
any easier to grasp than the endless network of lines and circles
which had bewildered me when inspecting the blueprints.

Those of you who have seen illustrations and photographs of the
interior of the "central station" or the "turret" of a submarine,
will understand what I mean. And should you have entered a
submarine itself and felt yourself hopelessly confused by the
bewildering chaos of wheels, vents, screws, cocks, pipes,
conduits--above, below, and all about--not to speak of the
mysterious levers and weird mechanisms, each of which has some
important function to fulfill, you may find some consolation in
the thought that my own brains performed a devils' dance at the
sight.

But after this monster, with its tangle of tubes and pipes, had
been duly christened, and its huge grey-green body had slid
majestically into the water, it suddenly became a ship. It swam
in its element as though born to it--as though it had never known
another.

For the first time I trod the tiny deck and mounted the turret to
the navigation platform. From here I glanced down and was
surprised to see beneath me a long, slender craft--with gracious
lines and dainty contours. Only the sides, where the green body
vaulted massively above the water, gave an indication of the huge
size of the hull. I felt pride and rapture as my eye took in this
picture. The fabric swayed slightly beneath my feet--an
impressive combination of power and delicacy.

And now I know that what had at first seemed to me nothing more
than the product of some mad phantasy on the part of the
technicians was in reality a ship. It was a ship in which oceans
might be crossed, a real ship, to which the h