Part 2

Next they put me in a private school in the country, thinking that association with other boys would fill me with ambition to learn. Instead, I learned how to fight. Although only ten years old, I was a husky young devil, fond of sports, and ready for anything that would provide a thrill. My father thought the teacher was too soft for me, so he sent me off to another school, where the teacher was a strong man and something of a ruffian himself. By Joe, how that man used to pound me! My father also gave me many lickings, and I considered he was entitled to do so. But this other man? Well, I stood it from him just once. Then, when the second beating came, I ran away. For eight days nobody knew where I was. I lived in the fields like an animal, eating apples and other fruits. Then they found me. My poor father was ready to give me up as hopeless, but I still had a true friend, my grandmother. She told my father he had been far too stern with me, and said to him: "Give me the boy, Henry. A little kindness may still make a good lad of him."

"You are welcome to try," responded my father, "but you will only spoil him the more."

Well, Grandmother had the right idea. She made a bargain with me. There were thirty-four boys in my class at school, and in my studies I always stood thirty-fourth.

"My lad," she said, "study conscientiously and I will give you fifty pennies every time you advance a place. I will continue doing this until you are at the head of the class!"

I couldn't figure right then how much I stood to make. I never was much at arithmetic. But I guessed it would be considerable, and I considered Grandmother a good fairy.

I studied with all my might. The next examination came, and others were ahead, but not I. I was in despair. My grandmother encouraged me, and I studied still harder. Another examination came, and I moved up four seats! She gave me two hundred pennies, and I felt like a millionaire. But at the following examination I dropped back two seats. She was not discouraged with me and said she hardly expected me to go ahead without a few rebuffs. I was afraid she would demand a rebate for the places I had lost, but she did not. I now saw myself clear of all financial difficulties. By going ahead with an occasional dropping back, my income would be endless.

I turned into quite a despicable swindler, but it was not out of pure avarice. I had formed the idea of breeding rabbits and had set my eye on a fine rabbit sire that would cost me several marks. To get the sum needed I would have to be promoted several seats which, I reasoned, could be easily done, especially with occasional slidings back. But I had bad luck and got no more promotions. What was to be done? I needed the money. So I told Grandmother that I had been promoted two places. I got the pennies. Another week I told her I had gone ahead three places; another week one; and still another week four. The intricacies of finance and greed led me to a series of fake promotions that soon landed me at the head of the class. I had the cheek to put on that I had gained that honour.

Of course, Grandmother was happy and very proud of the success of her policy of kindness with me. One day, she happened to meet my school superintendent and could not resist expressing her elation.

"And what do you think of our Felix? Here he has progressed to the first place in his class by that simple method of mine of giving him fifty pennies for every form he moves up. I tell you, there is nothing like kindness. It takes a grandmother to handle a boy."

In utter astonishment, the superintendent replied:

"What, Felix in first place? That's some misunderstanding. So far as I know, Felix is in thirty-fourth place."

My grandmother rushed home and began to overwhelm me with reproaches. It happened that she had two bulldogs, one thirteen and the other fourteen years old. They suffered from asthma. The wheezing dogs started a commotion in the next room. That diverted her attention from me, and she bustled out to see what was the matter. When she returned, her flare of temper had subsided, and she merely said laconically and finally that she was through with me. "In you there is a devil," she cried.

She did not tell my father of the adventure, for fear it would make her ridiculous. All he knew was that, when Easter came, I was promoted on probation, with the accompanying suggestion that it would be best if I left school. So he sent me to a school in Halle, a city of Prussian Saxony, and engaged a private tutor to coach me in addition.

The end of my school days now came speedily. My father, perhaps taking a leaf out of my grandmother's book, resorted to a promise. If I were promoted, I would be allowed to visit my cousin, who lived on an estate in the country, a thing that I wanted very much to do. When the examinations came, my father was away. He had left me with the tutor, who was to permit me to depart for my cousin's estate if I gained the promotion. As usual I flunked the examination, and came home angry and sullen. The tutor met me, eagerly asking whether I had been promoted. I bit my lips and lied impudently. I said I had been promoted, but that the superintendent was away and had not been able to sign my report, which would be mailed later. The tutor, delighted that his coaching had been so successful, gave me immediate permission to leave for my cousin's.

I took my father's big boots, his water boots, his little coat, his trousers, his sport shoes. I was big for my thirteen and a half years, and they would fit me. My brother and I each had a savings bank. I had eighty marks in mine. He had one hundred and ten marks in his. I took my savings and forty marks of his. I would repay him later.

I was away. Where? If I had a devil in me, surely it must be a sea devil, because I now dreamed of nothing but the sea. I had promised my father to wear the Emperor's uniform with honour. I would not return home until I wore the Emperor's naval uniform, and with honour. I was firm in my decision about this.

I was all excited when I stepped off the train in Hamburg. Here was the great seaport town, and here was I, a lad going to sea. In the railroad station I saw a large sign advertising the Concordia Hotel with the prices of accommodations listed, from fifty to seventy-five pfennigs a cot. That seemed a little high to me, but never mind. A porter took my baggage. I was well dressed, and he treated me with a good deal of respect. When I directed him to the Concordia, he looked at me.

"So you are one of those fellows driving out to sea?" He changed instantly from polite German to common, vulgar, Low German in addressing me.

I had stumbled on the sailors' favourite hotel, but sailors didn't seem to be held in much respect by porters.

When I got to the Concordia, I soon discovered that sailors do not frequent palatial hostelries. It was a "rear house," situated in a back yard. Here in America you would call it a "sailors' flop." I asked the clerk for a cot, for seventy-five pfennigs. He showed me into a room where there were six cots. I remonstrated that, when I paid the highest rate, I didn't want to sleep in a room with five other people. He laughed and replied that if I was not satisfied with five companions he would give me a fifty-pfennig room with forty-nine companions. I chose the five.

My first evening I spent along the famous Hamburg water front, Sankt Pauli, known to sailors the world over. There was the gigantic "Vanity Fair," or White City with all its lights and excitement. Here I saw all manner of seafaring folk, from Malays to West Indians. In front of some of the amusement halls stood African Negroes in weird costumes.

At the shipyards, where I offered my services as a cabin boy, I was told that, since I was only thirteen and a half years old, they would have to have a written permission from my father before they could engage me. So I decided I had better address myself directly to captains aboard their ships. When I went to the part of the harbour where sailing ships rode at anchor, I found it an immense basin with a forest of masts, and the vessels moored at considerable distance offshore.

While gazing longingly at them and wondering what to do next, I came upon an old man and got into conversation with him. He was a salt-bitten tar. For thirty-five years he had sailed before the mast. Now, in his old age, he operated a little ferryboat. So I asked him to row me out to one of the ships. The old tar handled his jolly-boat with amazing skill. Never before had I seen anyone scull. As I gazed up at the lofty masts all around us, old Peter told me that sailors had to climb these in storms when it was impossible for a greenhorn to hold on.

I went aboard several ships, but the captains also insisted on my showing them permission from my father. After I had been turned down, old Peter saw that my spirits were at low ebb. When I admitted to him that I had run away from home, it seemed to touch the sympathy of the old wanderer. But when I told him my father was a landowner and a count, he looked at me in awe.

"A count? Why, that ranks next to a king!"

He could hardly get over it--a count's son running away to become a sailor before the mast! The tragedy of it made him take such an interest in me that we instantly became warm friends, and he asked me to come and share his humble quarters. From then on, for a week, I spent most of my time with old Peter Boemer.

"For thirty-five years, for my whole life," he pleaded in his broad Hamburg dialect, "I was a sailor. What have I now? All I am is captain of this little rowboat, carrying people for a few pfennings a trip. Go back to the Count, your father, and when he gives you a licking for this, thank him for every lick."

I must go home. He was certain of that. He must persuade me to go home. But the idea of notifying my parents never occurred to him. That would be squealing, and squealing is not a virtue among sailors. I saw him every day for a week, and notwithstanding all of his unanswerable arguments, still I refused to go home. At last he saw that it was hopeless to plead with me any longer, so he agreed to help me get on a ship without having any papers.

He got me a post as cabin boy aboard the _Niobe_, a craft the memory of which grows more vivid with the passing of the years. Then he insisted upon seeing to it that I was properly outfitted for the sea. Under his direction, I expended the last of my money for warm underclothing, oilskins, a sheath knife, tobacco, and a pipe. I was very proud of the pipe. He took me to his room high up in a dingy house on a dingy street. Suspended from the ceiling was a stuffed flying fish. On a wall hung the painting of a ship on sail canvas. I was filled with admiration when Peter told me he had painted it himself. In a cage was a parrot, as old and dishevelled as Peter. He had brought it from Brazil, and it spoke only Portuguese. On the bureau were Chinese curios and other souvenirs of long voyages.

"And this is my sea chest," he said, as he hauled forth an ancient weather-beaten but staunch box, and emptied out of it various examples of his own weaving and knitting.

"Every sailor needs a sea chest," he continued. "It is watertight and will float. For thirty-five years it travelled with me around the world. It is yours now, by Joe, and I hope it will serve you as well as it served me."

That old sea chest was destined to serve me well as long as I had it. I lost it when I ran away from the lighthouse at Cape Leeuwin, Australia.

He put me aboard the _Niobe_, that never-to-be-forgotten argosy, showed me to my bunk, and fixed my mattress and bolster.

"You are born a count"--he shook his head--"and you become a sailor. Count and sailor don't go together. It is like a Paris shoe on a Russian peasant's foot. You are Count Felix von Luckner no longer. You must change your name."

Then and there I rechristened myself, took the name of my mother's family, and called myself Phelax Luedige. Under that name I sailed the seas for seven years.

My last gift from old Peter was a motto. Putting his hands on my shoulders he said:

"My boy, always remember, one hand for yourself, and one for the ship."

By this he meant that, when aloft, I must hold on with one hand and work with the other. But the motto had a wider meaning than that. In every channel, sea, or backwater of life--one hand for yourself and one for the ship.

I stood at the rail while the tug towed the _Niobe_ out of the harbour. Old Peter, with his marvellously skilful stroke, sculled alongside the slowly moving vessel all the way out past the piers of Sankt Pauli.

"My boy, God speed you," he shouted. "This is as far as I can go. I will never see you again. It's hard on old Peter to see you go away."

I wanted to shout something in return, but tears were streaming down my cheeks.

Peter had carefully packed my sea chest, and when I opened it I found his picture right under the lid. Across the bottom he had scrawled, "Don't forget your old Peter."

The low coast gradually melted into the haze. Years were to pass before I should return to my homeland and to the friend who had helped me get to sea.

III

SAVED BY AN ALBATROSS

The Russian full-rigged ship _Niobe_, bound for Fremantle, Australia, was an old craft, dirty and mean. I have seen many another like her, but she was a classic. Her captain, too, was something of a classic. When old Peter spoke to him about taking me, although I had no permission from my parents, he replied:

"I will take him provided he doesn't want any pay!"

I didn't want any pay, but should have preferred a more agreeable-looking shipmaster. He had a sour, sallow face with a long goatee, half Mephisto, half Napoleon III. He hated Germans.

I knew no Russian. The others knew no German, except the captain. He knew it brokenly, just enough to abuse me. The helmsman spoke a little English. I had learned a few words of English in school. I never did learn Russian. That language has always been a puzzle to me. During the long trip of eighty days on the _Niobe_ I was among people whose talk between themselves, and nearly all of whose speech addressed to me, I couldn't understand.

I discovered the helmsman's knowledge of English the first day out. I was delighted to find that here was at least one sailor with whom I could converse. He asked me questions. What was my father?

"A farmer," I replied.

"Well, then," quoth he, "it will be just the right thing if I appoint you chief inspector."

That sounded important, and I walked a little stiffly as he led me down the deck. We came to a pig pen where there were half a dozen large and particularly filthy porkers. The chief inspector's office was that of cleaning the pig sty.

"And besides," the helmsman added cordially, "I will appoint you superintendent of the starboard and larboard pharmacies." I promptly discovered that in the language of the sea a pharmacy was a latrine.

In cleaning the sty, I was not allowed to let the pigs out. I had to go in there with them, and it was very narrow quarters. The unspeakably dirty animals rubbed against me constantly while I laboured with pail and brush. The sewage was so deep that it filled my shoes. I had only two pairs of trousers. Soap and water were not to be wasted. I grew filthier than the pigs. And then there were the "clinics."

Everyone kicked me because I looked like a pig and smelled like one. They called me "Pig." For food I had to go around and eat what the sailors left on their plates. They said that was the way pigs were fed. For breakfast, instead of coffee and rolls, there was vodka with stale bread to soak in it. I got the leavings of this. The salted meat, of which I got the scraps, was so strong that I could scarcely force it down my throat. I often thought of that bill of fare from the Fuerst Bismarck, which had lingered in my thoughts. I had made a mistake there, by Joe.

I was afraid of the masts. I dreaded the thought of going aloft. But I said to myself that I must get used to it. So I climbed desperately every day, a little higher, a little higher, always practising. Finally, one day, I got to the crow's nest, halfway to the top. I thought that was fine. I felt so proud I called down for the others to see where I was.

"Any old sea cook can get that far," the helmsman shouted back scornfully.

That hurt me and made me all the more determined to learn how to go aloft as the sailors did. I kept trying, and I watched the other apprentices skipping nimbly high up in the rigging.

We had a storm rounding the Cape of Good Hope, followed by a heavy swell. All the sails had been reefed except the storm sail, and we were ready to set the main topsail. Eager to show how much I had learned about going aloft, I climbed up to help unfurl the canvas. I forgot old Peter's advice: one hand for the ship, the other for yourself. The sail, filled with a sudden gust of wind, blew out like a balloon. I fell. I grabbed hold of the gasket, the rope that holds the sail to the yard, but it burned through my hands. I dropped ninety feet on to the braces, the ropes that hold the yard. If I had struck the deck, I would have been killed. At that moment the ship heaved with a swelling wave, and I was thrown out into the sea.

The _Niobe_ was tearing along with a speed of eight knots. I came up astern. The wash in her wake swirled me around, but I could see a sailor throwing me a life preserver. I couldn't find it. The waves were too high. I sank, and when I came up I saw the ship a long, long distance away, it seemed. I threw off my heavy oilskins and sea boots, although there seemed little use trying to save myself by swimming. Even if they did put out a lifeboat, they would never be able to find me in that heavy sea.

Above me hovered several albatross, those huge white birds that seem to think everything floating is for them to eat. They swooped down upon me. I was ready to sink, but still had enough strength to fight at them, waving with one hand and then another. A great white form swooped down. A bird's talons seized a human hand. And I in turn clutched at it. A drowning man grasps a straw, even a bird. The albatross beat the air with its wings, frantically trying to rise. I still kept my grip on its claw. The huge bird was keeping me afloat. Then the albatross began to strike at my hand with its beak. It hurt and wounded me badly. I have the scars on my hand to this day. Still I held on.

"Phelax," I said to myself, "you will never get back to your ship, but maybe another ship will find you if you don't let go."

The other albatross were flying above, circling around, watching the strange proceedings.

It seemed to me as though my hand had been torn away by the repeated striking of that beak. Then, all at once, a swell lifted me high above the other waves, and I saw a lifeboat coming. I let go of the albatross, and he was glad to get away, by Joe. He shot up into the air to join his companions. That bird had saved my life, and so had his friends. The sailors could never have found me had they not seen those birds hovering above me. They knew that I must be swimming there.

In the boat I said to myself that I supposed the captain would be happy to see me back again. When we came alongside, he stood up there above, pointing down at me.

"You, you ----! Come up here! I wish to ---- you had stayed out there and that we were rid of you! Look, my sails are blown away, blown away."

In the commotion caused by my going overboard, he had lost two sails. I sat down there in the little boat with the blood flowing out of my hand and trembling. The sea was high, and the lifeboat danced up and down while the sailors made vain efforts to swing it over the davits. In a wild toss the boat rose as high as the ship's gunwales. I was so excited that I made a crazy jump, hit the deck, and was knocked unconscious.

A moment later, the boat was smashed against the ship's side. The sailors were pitched into the water, nine of them. For a while, it seemed that some of them would drown, and it was only after a struggle that the last of them managed to catch a rope and clamber on deck.

I lay stunned. The captain leaned over me and shouted in my face.

"You German dogs like to guzzle. Wake up and take some of this!"

He put the neck of a vodka bottle in my mouth and let the liquid fire trickle down my throat. Next day I was too sick to stand on my feet. The captain ordered me out of my bunk and to work. I tried but couldn't get up. Then he beat me, saying I was a drunken loafer.

Later I learned that when I had fallen overboard the quartermaster immediately called for volunteers to man the lifeboat. The captain, who had never dreamed of sending help to me, shouted to him, shaking a harpoon:

"If you lower the boat, you will get this harpoon in your belly."