I lived quietly. My face lost its tan and roughness. Month after month I had to buy smaller collars. I tried especially to keep my hands clean. By and by they lost their tarry wrinkles and calluses. I studied from morning till night. To reduce something to a common denominator is no joke. The whole Schultze family helped me and shared in my worries.
Examination day came, with all the professors in full dress. My handwriting was still clumsy. With my hard, big hands I used the bulkiest penholder I could find. It was as thick as a cane, an instrument designed for victims of apoplectic stroke who would have to grasp it with both hands.
Early one morning, a good citizen of Lübeck went out to water his garden and saw a navigation student lying among his tomatoes.
"What are you doing there?"
The wretch, not knowing what to answer, merely asked in turn:
"What are you watering?"
For two days I had been celebrating the fact that I had passed the examination.
Again I was tempted to rush straightway to my parents. Professor Schultze had investigated quietly on his own account and found that my father and mother were alive and well and that my brother, like myself, had turned his mind to the sea. He was an ensign in the navy. Once more I denied myself, and remembered my vow not to go home save as a naval officer.
I got a post as petty officer aboard the Hamburg-South American liner Petropolis. I bought white kid gloves and white shoes, and can still see myself buying my first pair of cuff links. As I promenaded the deck of the Petropolis in my new uniform, I felt myself a god, only my cuffs kept bothering me and saluting seemed queer. I read all the learned books I could find, but there was much I could not understand.
After three quarters of a year aboard the Petropolis, I was eligible to enter the navy as a one-year service volunteer, for naval training and study. That was a method of training mercantile marine officers for naval service in case of war, of creating a class of reserve officers. After I had served my year as a volunteer and had mastered my studies, I would be entitled to wear a lieutenant's uniform. I would walk out a naval officer in the Imperial Service.