I gave the Pinmore a willing farewell, hoping never to see her again. Strange how coincidence turns. I did see her again, a long time later, from the deck of my raider Seeadler.
V
WRESTLING CHAMPION OF SANKT PAULI
When a German sailor came back from a cruise with a bit of money burning holes in his pockets, Hamburg and the bright lights of Sankt Pauli were his goal. When I left the Pinmore, I had a thousand marks in my jeans. This was a new thrill, and I had it all changed into silver, so that I could feast my eyes on it. Proudly I strutted down Sankt Pauli water front, a full-fledged sailor, back from his first cruise around the world. I swaggered like a veteran old salt. But my thoughts were not of the gay amusement parlours of Sankt Pauli. There was another mission that had brought me to Hamburg.
I went to the old house at the Brauerknechtergraben and climbed the creaking stairs. The name Peter Breumer was still on the door. A broken old woman answered my knock and ushered me in. From the roof hung the flying fish. On the wall was the painting of the ship. The ragged parrot was in its cage.
"Peter? He is dead. I live here now. I am his sister."
"Peter dead?"
"Yes, three years ago. And that's you, his boy, whom he helped to go to sea. How often he said: 'Where may the boy be now?' But Peter is gone."
I went to his grave at Ohlsdorf. It was shabby. I got a big iron anchor and had a brass plate fixed on it with the engraving: "I did not forget you.—Your boy." Then I placed it on Peter's grave, a fitting monument for a sailor.
Since the raids of the Seeadler the grave of old Peter has become a kind of shrine where people visit, especially German children.