Count Luckner, the Sea Devil

Count Felix Von Luckner, the most romantic and mysterious figure of the World War, with powerful hands tears a telephone book into four parts.
By LOWELL THOMAS
ILLUSTRATIONS FROM PHOTOGRAPHS
GARDEN CITY PUBLISHING COMPANY, INC, GARDEN CITY, NEW YORK
COPYRIGHT, 1927, BY DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES AT THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y.
CONTENTS
COUNT LUCKNER, THE SEA DEVIL

COUNT LUCKNER THE SEA DEVIL
It was on a flying field in Central Europe that I first saw the Sea Devil. We were on our way from London to Moscow by air, and had come as far as Stuttgart with stops at Paris and Basle. While waiting for the mechanics to tune up the big Fokker monoplane in which we were to cover the next stage to Berlin, we lunched in the little tea room on the edge of the flying field, kept by the widow of a German pilot killed in the war. Suddenly, through an open window, from off to the east in the direction of Munich and Ulm, we heard a familiar drone, and a moment later a silvery monoplane darted from a billowy cloud bank, the rays of the afternoon sun glistening now from one wing and now from the other. In a series of sliding swoops, with motor off and noiseless except for the whistle of the propeller, it dropped gently on to the turf and sped across the field.
Uniformed aërodrome attendants ran over, leaned their spidery metal ladder against the glistening duraluminum fuselage, and opened the cabin door. Two passengers descended, a giant of a man and a dainty slip of a woman. The former, who climbed down first, was tall, of massive frame, with huge shoulders, and altogether one of the most powerful-looking men I had ever seen. After him came the little blonde, who looked for all the world like a fairy who had arrived on a sunbeam. Putting her slipper to the top rung of the ladder she jumped into her escort's arms.