I lay in my bunk and thought it over. I had been Count Felix von Luckner, of a titled, landowning family, descendant of a long line of military officers and of an illustrious Marshal of France. Now I was a mere cleaner of the pig sties and the latrines, fed like a pig on scraps left by others, cursed and beaten and considered by the captain to be carrion not worth saving from the sea. I said to myself: "You put yourself in this fix, by Joe, and you've got to take your humiliation and punishment like a man." So this was the life at sea? Certainly, it was not what I had expected. I wondered if I had made a mistake. Well, mistake or no mistake, I had promised my father to wear the Emperor's uniform with honour, and I would not go home until I wore the Emperor's naval uniform with honour. But how far away from me now seemed epaulettes and gold braid. The _Niobe_ did not put in at a single port on our way out. After we passed through the English Channel, until we reached Western Australia, we saw nothing save sky and sea, the sky light or dark, the sea in quiet or in storm. In fact, we only came in sight of land once. This was when we sighted an island somewhere off the African coast. I could see palms, rows of palms, and white houses with red roofs and green shutters. I stood at the rail and gazed. What joy it must be to walk and breathe on that green island. It seemed an abode of all happy things. I was sure that living there must be a fairy princess. I was very much of a boy, and I had been reared on German stories. I was wretched, and yonder was a land so fair. It must be the haunt of a fairy princess. I stood with my elbows on the rail and my chin on my hands and dreamed of her. Singular that I should have then thought of a fairy princess. A few years later, I visited that same isle. By then I had become a naval officer of the Kaiser. I wandered all through its palm groves, remembering how once I had sailed past it, the miserable cabin boy of the _Niobe_, and had had visions of a fairy. This time I did indeed find a fairy princess there, and promptly lost my heart to her. We became engaged, and a little later she became the guardian angel of the raider in which I sailed the seas. She was a visitor on the isle, and her name was Irma. But my fairy princess was only a wild fancy as I stood at the rail of the _Niobe_. The dreamy bit of land with its graceful palms and pretty houses grew small in the distance as the wind bellied out the mainsail and swept us on toward Cape Verde. Finally, I was left gazing at a speck that vanished on the horizon. And still I remained motionless and in my trance, until a howl cracked my ears and a kick nearly split me in two. "Get along there, you loafer," roared the captain.