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. 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.