Count Luckner, the Sea Devil

by Lowell Thomas; Graf von Felix Luckner

The gramophone was O.K., I found, and that made the Salvation Army O.K. with me. I became enthusiastic, somehow, or other, with the songs and excitement. I actually "got religion." I joined up, and they gave me a job putting moth balls in clothing donated by charitable people. At any rate, I no longer had to wash dishes, and here was an army in which I might become a lieutenant. I remembered how my father had wanted me to become a lieutenant in the German Army. Why not become a lieutenant in the Salvation Army instead? I used to daydream and build castles in the air like this while placing those moth balls in the piles of old clothes.

Since I was converted and saved and stood on holy ground, I felt I should tell the whole truth. So, one night at a meeting, I got up and testified and told my fellow soldiers of the Salvation Army that my right name was Count Felix von Luckner. That made a sensation. They immediately used me for advertisement. 'Halleluiah! We have saved a German count from perdition," they announced. "Before he came here he drank whisky like a fish. Now he is a teetotaller."

Well, by Joe, people came from all over town to see the reformed count.

They put me in a uniform and sent me out to sell the War Cry. I sold a lot. People didn't mind buying the War Cry from a count. I thought I could become a captain. It was no trouble to leave whisky alone, because I had never tasted it in my life. But I did like lemonade and ginger ale, especially ginger ale, which I thought contained alcohol because they offered it to me in the bars where I sold the War Cry and because it tasted so delicious. I thought I was putting something over. They got on to it in the saloons and had their joke with me.

"Count, have a ginger ale," they would call whenever they saw me, and I would wink and drink it down. I thought they were laughing because I had put one over, and I laughed too.

I got tired of it. I got tired of everything except the sea. I was a sailor, I reasoned, and the only lieutenant I could ever be was a naval lieutenant and the only kind of captain a ship captain. The Salvation Army people were very good to me. They said I was too young to be a sailor, but that they would get me a job somewhere near the sea. So they found me a job in a lighthouse. It was almost like being at sea, they told me. All day I could look out and see fair weather or storms with ships sailing at peace or rolling and heaving.

I became assistant to the lighthouse keeper of the Cape Leeuwin Beacon, which is south of Fremantle and the biggest light on the southwest Australian coast. "Assistant"—what a fine title! And "beacon," a word that meant everything to the ships driven by the fury of the storm. Wasn't I a sailor who knew all about that from experience? Well, they put me to cleaning the "windows"—that is, the lenses. The thousands of prisms of the reflector astonished me not a little. Each day I wound up the weights for the revolving apparatus. The rest of the time, when I was not sleeping, I kept watch. There were three other lighthouse keepers, who lived in little houses on the cliff. They passed the days playing cards and fishing. They had pushed all of their duties on to me. For doing their work I got ninepence a day!

The daughter of one of the lighthouse keepers was named Eva. She was pretty and very charming. One day I kissed her. It was an innocent kiss, but we were in a bad place, a room with a locked door, but which was open on the side of the sea and looked down on the beach. One of the men was fishing there and saw us. He hurried to Eva's father. Soon there was a cursing and knocking at the locked door. We were terrified. The threats and banging grew more violent. I threw the door open, dashed out and away, frightened half out of my wits.

I left behind me all my belongings. That was how I lost the sea chest that old Peter had given me. It was too bad. Late that night I sneaked back and made off with one of the horses. It was worth about thirty shillings, which I figured was about the value of the luggage I had to abandon.

I rode to Port Augusta, and for a time worked in a sawmill. The work was frightfully hard. The pay seemed good, thirty shillings a day, but the cost of living was so high—one had even to pay for water—that it left only a few shillings out of a day's pay. The work was lucrative only for Chinese coolies, with their low standards of living. I was able to save sixty shillings and then couldn't stand it any longer.