After an infantry course came a torpedo course. A torpedo has a thousand complexities for the student to master. There were four kinds of torpedoes. One had a hundred and fifty screws. You had to memorize the names of all the parts and familiarize yourself with the apparatus so well that you could put it together without help.
"Luckner," I thought, "you will never learn all that. You are as stupid as when you were in the third grade."
I was afraid and felt pretty bad. I did not do so well with my studies.
One of my teachers was Lieutenant Commander Pochhammer, whose father was a professor of Italian literature. His especial subject was Dante. He gave lectures to the naval students on the Divine Comedy. Strange, I hated study, but I liked these lectures on Dante and I liked to study Dante. I did not understand much of it, but I found great pleasure in it. It was because of Beatrice, the Divine Maiden. I thought she must be the same as my fairy princess. Whenever Professor Pochhammer spoke of her in his lectures, or whenever I read about her in the pages of Dante, I was reminded of that fairy princess I knew must live on the green island the Niobe had sailed by, the fairy princess I had dreamed of aboard the Cæsarea, when old Smutje had whistled "My Heart Is Like a Beehive" and I had taken up the refrain. The fairy princess, of whom I had had visions many another time, had been a blessing to me before, and surely, in a singular way, she was a blessing to me now.
My interest in Dante and Beatrice, as propounded by Professor Pochhammer, made an excellent impression, not only on the professor himself, but also on his son Lieutenant Commander Pochhammer and my other teachers. For Dante's and Beatrice's sake they winked at some of my most glaring deficiencies. They built up my confidence. I passed the necessary examination. The Emperor ordered that my commission be antedated, so that I might have seniority rights of a longer service than I had actually rendered.
I was assigned to duty aboard the Preussen, and there, during my leisure time, built models of sailing ships.
One night, in a Hamburg café, I sat talking with a friend, a shipowner.
"When I crossed the harbour to-day," I said, "and saw the sailing ships. I remembered how I used to sit on a spar while the sun was setting and listen to a fellow playing a squealer. You know what a squealer is? An accordion. I wish I could be a sailor back on a ship again."
"Don't be foolish," my friend replied. "I have never yet heard of a certified engineer wanting to go back to the anvil."
"But," I insisted, "I want to be a sailor again if only for a few days, and you must help me."