We branched off the main street of St. Pauli and went up a side street. It was pitch dark, and the streets were not well lighted. At the end of this street we came to some steps at the bottom of which was a foot-bridge that led to the water's edge. In the distance on the other side of the water was what looked like a great city of lights. We both held our breath when we saw this place--it looked like New York when you cross on the ferry. And ferry-boats were shooting all over the water. Great iron beams with regular rows of lights on their sides made them look like sky scrapers. "It's New York! It's home!" cried my excited companion. Great crowds of workmen--hundreds, thousands of them--were coming up the foot-bridge. They had come over on the ferry. I had my geography all mixed up and I said, "That is Altona over there. Let's go down and take a ride on the ferry and pretend that we are landing in New York." [Illustration: _The Sailors' School for the Merchant Marine._] We hurried down the narrow foot-bridge. The men that were hurrying up bumped into us. At the foot of the bridge was a ticket place. An elderly man in a blue uniform was standing beside it. We rushed over to him and asked, "Are we allowed to go over to Altona on the ferry." [Illustration: _Vegetable Market._] He looked at us and then laughed and answered us in English: "That is not Altona. That is the great Hamburg docks. Where do you want to go?" We told him that we did not know where we wanted to go, but that it looked so much like New York that we wanted to ride over. It was a bitter cold winter night between Christmas and New Year's, and if he thought that we were either crazy or spies he never let on. "Have you passports?" he asked. We showed our papers, and he told us that if we promised to stay on the boat and to come back to him he would let us go. We promised, and he wrote our names, our Hamburg, Berlin and American addresses, our age and religion in a book, and he told us to buy a ticket. The round trip cost five pfennigs, and the old man escorted us to the ferry and talked to us until the boat was ready to start. He said that night and day 15,000 men were employed on the docks, and that besides all the men coming over on the boats many more came over through a tunnel that ran under the water. He said that they were building many boats, and that the "Bismarck" would be the largest boat afloat--55,000 tons--and that the "Tirpitz" would be 32,000 tons, and that so far during the war there had been made a total tonnage of new boats of 740,000 tons and that 100,000 tons were under construction. Then he told us about the school for sailor boys at Finkenwerder where boys were being trained as sailors, not for war but for the merchant marine after the war. I said that I thought this was certainly very enterprising. [Illustration: _Goulash Cannon Factory._]