It was a very different line of coal-passers that marched from the _Elbe_ to the _Seemann's Amt_ in Bremerhaven to be paid off, from the one that had formed in front of the Hebrew's store in Hoboken. Our hard and miserable task was behind us, money was "in sight," and the majority of the men were at home again. We received seventeen marks and fifty pfennigs apiece for the trip, four dollars and a fraction in American currency. We bade one another good-by over some _krugs_ of beer, and singly and in groups went our different ways. I waved a final _adios_ to the _Elbe_, and joined two firemen, who spoke English and had offered to see me off for Berlin, my next destination. I learned in their company something that life in sailor's quarters and homes later on has confirmed in every particular--_i.e._, seafaring men, when bidding one another good-by after a voyage together, should each take absolutely different directions on separating, eschewing all group gatherings and "one last drink" sociability. But one might as well preach theosophy to baboons, as to try to teach this doctrine to men who "go down to the sea in ships." Indeed, it is a thankless job to attempt to teach the latter anything until they have squandered a part of their money, only too frequently all of it, on a drunk. It was thus in Bremerhaven in my day, and I make no doubt that it is the same to-day wherever there are ports and paid-off seafaring men--in Calcutta, Singapore, 'Frisco, New York, or where you will. And why not? Is the coal-passer's life to be spent entirely in the bunkers? What is more natural than that when ashore he should try to forget some of the hard knocks, sweat and dust in the stoke-room, in a carousal in the open? What, indeed, has all the turmoil below been suffered for if not to allow such indulgence on land? The moralist, the economist, the Sabbatarian doubtless have their individual answers to these queries. All I know about the questions and my relation to them at the time of leaving the _Elbe_ in Bremerhaven is that, my ticket for Berlin secured and two spare marks slyly hidden away in case of an emergency, prudence, temperance and economy were utterly disregarded. I sang, laughed and feasted with my friends to the limit of my financial and physical capacity, and I cannot recall having enjoyed a more righteous "good" time on a dollar and a half in all my life. So, hard though the voyage had been, I blessed the _Elbe_ for the pleasure she had guided me to. Poor old ship! I was in Rome when she went down in the North Sea. I was reading the "bulletins" in front of the English book-store in the Piazza di Spagne. Suddenly my eyes spied the dispatch about the _Elbe_. "Down!" I muttered aloud, and people standing near looked at me as if, perhaps, I had lost a friend in the mishap. I had, indeed. In dire time of need, perhaps at _the_ turning point in my life, one road leading I knew not where, the other, as it proved and as I hoped, to a home and decent