But the latter part of the voyage was not so bad as the first. I was getting used to mistreatment, and was rapidly developing into a hardened seaman. The captain remained brutal, and so did most of the men, but there were several who grew kind toward me, among them the boatswain and the helmsman. So I began to experience some of that comradeship of the sea for which a sailor will endure many a hardship. Finally, after eighty days at sea without touching at a single port, we sailed into the harbour at Fremantle. I had always thought of Australia as a land of kangaroos, of black aborigines with bows and arrows, and of bushrangers. But Fremantle turned out to be as commonplace and bleak a port as you could hope to see. However, I met some sailors off a German ship, and the sound of my native language and association with my countrymen made me happy. They took me to the Hotel Royal. They went there to drink beer and I to share their company. But the proprietor had a daughter, and I transferred my interest to her. She was what you call a bonnie lassie, and she listened to my chatter. After I told her my story, she urged me to desert from my ship. She even talked to her father about me and got him to take me on as a dishwasher. That was all right. Dish-washing had been perhaps the most elegant of all the jobs assigned to me on the _Niobe_. But I could not abandon old Peter's sea chest. So the German sailors helped me to smuggle it off the ship. The _Niobe_ sailed presently. Luckily, the captain did not ask the police to find me, as he had a right to do. Maybe he considered himself lucky to get rid of me. IV SALVATION, KANGAROOS, AND FAKIRS IN AUSTRALIA About the only amusement I could find in Fremantle was listening to the Salvation Army band. They had a hall where they had preaching and where bums and sailors stood up and told lurid tales of their experiences. Then they all sang songs. It was the songs I liked. I couldn't tell much about the words, but the tunes were lively and the big drum fascinated me. This music was altogether different from the music back home in our churches at Dresden. But what interested me most of all was that this Salvation Army post had a gramophone. I had never seen one before. I had come to Australia expecting to find a wilderness of kangaroos and savages, and here was this marvellous product of civilization. "By Joe, Felix," I said to myself, "everything in the world is different from what you thought."