It was easy enough to run the business, as only bottled beer was handled. The food was brought from a near-by restaurant, each portion in a pail, at sixty pfennigs a portion. All Ulhorn and I had to do was to circulate among the guests and see that they drank plenty of beer by drinking with them. In the evening a blind man came and played the accordion.

Business boomed. The sailors came, and felt at home. We had to get in an extra supply of beer. When we reckoned our accounts, however, we were astonished to find that we had a deficit. We chalked on a blackboard each bottle of beer that was drunk. That was all right so long as we stayed sober. Then, when we began to feel good, we allowed some of our guests to assist in the bookkeeping. They chalked up their own accounts, but instead of increasing their scores with every bottle of beer they drank, they reduced them. After a short while at this, we quit with less money than when we started. I decided that the saloon business was not the career for me.

After sundry other voyages, I shipped on the Lisbon, bound for the Mediterranean. By now, a little sense had been knocked into my head. I had saved 3,600 marks, which interest brought up to 3,800—enough to see me through a period of special training that would enable me to become a mate. This preparation called for a period of steamship service and a course at a navigation school. The Lisbon was a steamer, the first on which I had served. My voyage on her marked a turning point in my life.

IX
THE RUNAWAY COMES HOME

In the Café Niederegger in Lübeck I sat and drank my glass of beer, a trifle self-conscious. I had registered in Professor Schultze's School for Navigation, and felt that as a navigation student it was required of me to affect better ways than I had followed when I was a common sailor. I bought a decent wardrobe. I wore linen collars now, and neckties that you tie, and a scarf pin that you thrust into the necktie, instead of the eternally enduring celluloid collar which you share on board with a friend who wants to go ashore, and the indestructible tin necktie, made in America, with the scarfpin, a tiny revolver, riveted to it. I was conscious likewise that I must frequent better cafés than the saloons I had frolicked in as a sailor. That was what had brought me to the Café Niederegger, famous for its almond paste. The tables were covered with spotless white cloths, the waiters wore frock coats, and on a table, as a final mark of elegance, lay a handsomely bound book, the Almanach de Gotha.

Overcome with curiosity, I took up the volume and turned to the L's. Yes, there were the Von Luckners, and there was Count Felix von Luckner with the note attached—"missing." That was as I had thought. At home they had given me up for lost, dead.

"Phelax," I thought, "perhaps it is you who will be missing before long. Perhaps before many months are gone Count Felix von Luckner will go home—as a naval officer in the Imperial Service."

For the present, I ordered another glass of Pilsener and drank to my demise.

At Professor Schultze's school, I was faced with that old and almost forgotten enemy of mine—study. I was past twenty now and more ignorant than the average ten-year-old child. The professor was tolerant and wise enough to expect almost anything, but I astounded him. When he examined me in fractional arithmetic I did not know what a fifth was. A half and a quarter I understood from the clock, but a fifth was a quantity unknown to me. And I was to acquire grammatical German, something of a general education, and the large amount of higher mathematics and astronomy necessary in the science of navigation. I should not have blamed the professor if he had despaired and turned me away. I told him my history, begging him to keep my identity secret, and he vowed, by Joe, that he would make a learned navigator of me.