2005/04/17

What's crashing is the harddrive

I am pretty sure the problem comes from the harddrive. I might have to buy a new one. :(

Enough, hah? Let's enjoy some music.

2005/04/16

My powerbook seems get sick.

After a retardness appearance, I reboot the system. And this time, the boot up process becomes extremely slow, but barely working. Then I might do something wrong, I turned the computer off, and restart it again, it sounds even worse. This might be the problem of the harddrive, since it keeps hopeless and endless murmuring. Also, this can be the problem of something really too hot inside the computer, anyway, I will let it cool down and check it tomorrow.

台湾问题的外解

最近大陆的bbs都相继倒闭,于是有事没事的就去台湾的bbs看看。找了半天也找不出一个有共同兴趣的。技术版面也不够smth的热烈,民主政治版面也没有ytht的激烈。于是只好走进政治版潜水,发现台湾的台独势力相当的强壮,后生仔无知的被陈水扁这样一个政治流氓耍弄于掌股之间。没有办法中国人的劣根性,窝里横。和平解决台湾问题简直就是一个空谈。

现在,大家都是叫得比谁都欢,都不敢轻举妄动。毕竟大家都是一个经济发展的好时机,不希望大好前途毁于一旦。同时,也是个军备的好时机,管它以后会不会真的打,至少腰杆硬了好说话,就算这些先进的武器拿来没有用,对付日本人也是需要的,况且中国至今都没有一条像样的航母,如何能抵抗近在咫尺的日本?但从另一方面看,大陆等不起。等到经济低潮期的时候,或者更远的经济水平相当的时候,恐怕就为时已晚了,就算国民党的儿孙们也未必能反对台独了。一边打也不是,不打也不是;另一边独也不是,统也不是。

那么既然茅盾两方面都不能有一个好的抉择。那么外部的干扰恐怕是一个解决的办法。那就是日本军国主义的再次横行。民共才有合作的可能。当然,日本尽管狼子野心不小,但是没有十成把握,决计不会主动出击的。那么,就只能主动的刺激日本,让日本越轨。这样才有双方合作的可能。上一回国共合作就是日本人打过来了才解决的。

2005/04/09

Count Luckner, The Sea Devil II

By Lowell Thomas
input by biajee

II
FELIX RUNS OFF TO SEA

Take a windjammer out as a cruiser? Sneak through the blockade and go buccaneering on the high seas?

"By Joe!" I thought, "that's something."

It was a romantic thing all right in this day and age, when the sailing ship is getting to be something of a relic of the fine old times, the heroic age of the sea. But it wasn't because I had read a lot of sea stories and had become fascinated with the old world of rigging and canvas. I had been there myself, had been there good and proper.

The reason I was assigned to the command of the Seeadler was because I was the only officer in the German Navy who had had actual experience with sail. I was born Graf Felix von Luckner and was now a lieutenant commander, in the Imperial Service, but I had spent seven years of my early life as a common jack-tar before the mast. The fo'c'sle was a familiar to me as charts are to an admiral. That was why this windjammer cruise of war meant so deuced much to me, why it hit so close and was so personal.

I cannot make that part of it clear without telling you something of my early life at sea, a thing or two about the old days when sailing before the mast was all they say--and more. It's a yarn about ship-wreck, storm, and cantankerous captains. So, sit yourself down there, by Joe, while I light my pipe and weigh anchor.

My first mental picture of life at sea dates away back to the time when I was a little fellow living in quiet, charming old Dresden. I saw a bill of fare from the liner, Fuerst Bismarck. By Joe, there were fine delicacies on it. I read it until my jaws began to move. So that was how people feasted at sea? Ah, then, how wonderful it must be to be a sailor. Perhaps, some day, I might become the captain of a great steamer where they had meals like that. The more I thought of it, the better I liked the idea, and from then on I had my mind set on going to sea. I read of the voyages of the wily Odysseus and of Sindbad the Sailor. On the river near our home I built a boat of an old box and christened it the Pirate.

"Oceans, straits, and gulfs are all very fine, but of what concern are they to a Von Luckner?" asked my father. "You are to be a cavalryman."

You see, my great-grandfather had started the cavalry tradition among us Von Luckners. They had tried to make a monk of him, and had put him in a monastery. But he didn't like that job, and among his fellows at the monastery he was called "Luckner libertinus." When he was thirteen years old, he ran away and joined the army of the Turks, in a war against the Austrians. In those days, the cavalrymen all had boys to feed and look after the horses, carry munitions, and clean rifles. So, while still a mere lad, my great-grandfather became a professional soldier, a soldier of fortune. After he had learned a lot about the Turks, he left them and joined the Austrians. That was when he was fifteen years old. Later on, he joined the Prussian Army, as a lieutenant of cavalry, under Frederick the Great.

Finally, he formed his own regiment, which became famous throughout all Europe as "Count Luckner's Hussars." They had their own specially designed brown uniforms, and as mercenaries they fought in any war that came along. In those days, it was the custom for soldiers to fight for whoever could afford to pay them. The King of Hanover was in the habit of buying regiments, and my great-grandfather sold him his on the condition that it was still to be known as "Count Luckner's Hussars." The King broke his word. So my warlike ancestor went to the King's castle, boldly charged him with treachery, then took that the King had given him and threw them into the open fire.

"Henceforth I will fight against you," he shouted.

Shortly after this, he joined forces with the King of France, and then, during the French Revolution, he continued to serve the new French government as the commander of the Army of the Rhine. When the Marseillaise was written, it was dedicated to him because he happened to be the commanding general in the region where this immortal song was composed. After winning a number of important victories in Belgium, he was made a Marshal of France.

When the campaign was over, he led his army to the outskirts of Paris, and then, accompanied only by his aides, he went into the city to demand the back pay that was due to his soldiers. But instead of getting it, he was treacherously seized and sent to the guillotine. You see, it was cheaper to kill him than pay him. Although always a Royalist at heart, he was above all a soldier, and fought faithfully and valiantly for any monarch of government willing to hire his famous regiment. All our histories tell of him and his gallant deeds.

From then on, all Luckners became cavalrymen. It seemed to be in the blood. My grandfather, an officer, was accidentally killed while on a hunting expedition. My father fought in all the wars from 1848 down to the World War. In 1914, when he was ninety, he wanted to join up again. He insisted that he was still able to do patrol duty, because his eyesight was unimpaired and he was still a horseman. When he general staff refused his request on the ground that he was too old, he was very angry.

"It is because I am so old that they should take me," he said. "Let me serve as an example to the younger soldiers. I have fought in many wars, and will be living proof to them that the surest way to live a long and healthy life is to be a soldier."

Ships, harbours, the seven seas had nothing to do with a Von Luckner. My father scoffed at my talk of becoming a sailor, so I never spoke to him any further about it. He tried to tell me what a fine cavalryman I would make, and asked me to promise that I would wear the Emperor's uniform with honour.

Now, in Germany, unless you had a good education, there was no hope of your ever becoming an officer. And the courses were stiff. Instead of studying, I preferred to read your American Indian stories, especially those of James Fenimore Cooper. I knew the names of many of your famous Indian chiefs, and as a youngster I dreamed of voyaging to America to hunt buffalo.

My father hired a tutor to cram me with book knowledge, but after six months that worthy went to him in despair and said:

"It is no use; the boy doesn't learn. There is a devil in him."

Next they put me in a private school in the country, thinking that association with other boys would fill me with ambition to learn. Instead, I learned how to fight. Although only ten years old, I was a husky young devil, fond of sports, and ready for anything that would provide a thrill. My father thought the teacher was too soft for me, so he sent me off to another school, where the teacher was a strong man and something of a ruffian himself. By Joe, how that man used to pound me! My father also gave me many lickings, and I considered he was entitled to do so. But this other man? Well, I stood it from him just once. Then, when the second beating came, I ran away. For eight days nobody knew where I was. I lived in the fields like an animal, eating apples and other fruits. Then they found me. My poor father was ready to give me up as hopeless, but I still had a true friend, my grandmother. She told my father he had been far too stern with me, and said to him:

"Give me the boy, Henry. A little kindness may still make a good lad of him."

"You are welcome to try," responded my father, "but you will only spoil him the more."

Well, Grandmother had the right idea. She made a bargain with me. There were thirty-four boys in my class at school, and in my studies I always stood thirty-fourth.

"My lad," she said, "study conscientiously and I will give you fifty pennies every time you advance a place. I will continue doing this until you are at the head of the class!"

I couldn't figure right then how much I stood to make. I never was much at arithmetic. But I guessed it would be considerable, and I considered Grandmother a good fairy.

I studied with all my might. The next examination came, and others were ahead, but not I. I was in despair. My grandmother encouraged me, and I studied still harder. Another examination came, and I moved up four seats! She gave me two hundred pennies, and I felt like a millionaire. But at the following examination I dropped back two seats. She was not discouraged with me and said she hardly expected me to go ahead without a few rebuffs. I was afraid she would demand a rebate for the places I had lost, but she did not. I now saw myself clear of all financial difficulties. By going ahead with an occasional dropping back, my income would be endless.

I turned into quite a despicable swindler, but it was not out of pure avarice. I had formed the idea of breeding rabbits and had set my eye on a fine rabbit sire that would cost me several marks. To get the sum needed I would have to be promoted several seats which, I reasoned, could be easily done, especially with occasional slidings back. But I had bad luck and got no more promotions. What was to be done? I needed the money. So I told Grandmother that I had been promoted two places. I got the pennies. Another week I told her I had gone ahead three places; another week one; and still another week four. The intricacies of finance and greed led me to a series of fake promotions that soon landed me the head of the class. I had the cheek to put on that I had gained that honour.

Of course, Grandmother was happy and very proud of the success of her policy of kindness with me. One day, she happened to meet my school superintendent and could not resist expressing her elation.

"And what do you think of our Felix? Here he has progressed to the first place in his class by that simple method of mine of giving him fifty pennies for every form he moves up. I tell you, there is nothing like kindness. It takes a grandmother to handle a boy."

In utter astonishment, the superintendent replied:

"What, Felix in first place? That's some misunderstanding. So far as I know, Felix is in thirty-fourth place."

My grandmother rushed home and began to overwhelm me with reproaches. It happened that she had two bulldogs, one thirteen and the other fourteen years old. They suffered from asthma. The wheezing dogs started a commotion in the next room. That diverted her attention from me, and she bustled out to see what was the matter. When she returned, her flare of temper had subsided, and she merely said laconically and finally that she was through with me. "In you there is a devil," she cried.

She did not tell my father of the adventure, for fear it would make her ridiculous. All he knew was that, when Easter came, I was promoted on probation, with the accompanying suggestion that it would be best if I left school. So he sent me to a school in Halle, a city of Prussian Saxony, and engaged a private tutor to coach me in addition.

The end of my school days now came speedily. My father, perhaps taking a leaf out of my grandmother's book, resorted to a promise. If I were promoted, I would be allowed to visit my cousin, who lived on an estate in the country, a thing that I wanted very much to do. When the examinations came, my father was away. He had left me with the tutor, who was to permit me to depart for my cousin's estate if I gained the promotion. As usual I flunked the examination, and cane home angry and sullen. The tutor met me, eagerly asking whether I had been promoted. I bit my lips and lied impudently. I said I had been promoted, but that the superintendent was away and had not been able to sign my report, which would be mailed later. The tutor, delighted that his coaching had been so successful, gave me immediate permission to leave for my cousin's.

I took my father's big boots, his water boots, his little coat, his trousers, his sport shoes. I was big for my thirteen and a half years, and they would fit me. My brother and I each had a savings bank. I had eighty marks in mine. He had one hundred and ten marks in his. I took my savings and forty marks of his. I would repay him later.

I was away. Where? If I had a devil in me, surely it must be a sea devil, because I now dreamed of nothing but the sea. I had promised my father to wear the Emperor's uniform with honour. I would not return home until I wore the Emperor's naval uniform, and with honour. I was firm in my decision about this.

I was all excited when a stepped off the train in Hamburg. Here was the great seaport town, and here was I, a lad going to sea. In the railroad station I saw a large sign advertising the Concordia Hotel with the prices of accommodations listed, from fifty to seventy-five pfennigs a cot. That seemed a little high to me but never mind. A porter took my baggage. I was well dressed, and he treated me with a good deal of respect. When I directed him to the Concordia, he looked at me.

"So you are one of those fellows driving out to sea?" he changed instantly from polite German to common, vulgar, Low German in addressing me.

I had stumbled on the sailors' favourite hotel, but sailors didn't seem to be held in much respect by porters.

When I got to the Concordia, I soon discovered that sailors do not frequent palatial hostelries. It was a "rear house," situated in a back yard. Here in America you would call it a "sailors' flop." I asked the clerk for a cot, for seventy-five pfennigs. He showed me into a room where there were six cots. I remonstrated that, when I paid the highest rate, I didn't want to sleep in a room with five other people. He laughed and replied that if I was not satisfied with five companions he would give me a fifty-pfennig room with forty-nine companions. I chose the five.

My first evening I spent along the famous Hamburg water front, Sankt Pauli, known to sailors the world over. There was the gigantic "Vanity Fair," of White City with all its lights and excitement. Here I saw all manner of seafaring folk, from Malays to West Indians. In front of some of the amusement halls stood African Negroes in weird costumes.

At the shipyards, where I offered my services as a cabin boy, I was told that, since I was only thirteen and a half years old, they would have to have a written permission from my father before they could engage me. So I decided I had better address myself directly to captains aboard their ships. When I went to the part of the harbour where sailing ships rode at anchor, I found it an immense basin with a forest of masts, and the vessels moored at considerable distance offshore.

While gazing longingly at them and wondering what to do next, I came upon an old man and got into conversation with him. He was a salt-bitten tar. For thirty-five years he had sailed before the mast. Now, in his old age, he operated a little ferryboat. So I asked him to row me out to one of the ships. The old tar handled his jolly-boat with amazing skill. Never before had I seen anyone scull. As I gazed up at the lofty masts all around us, old Peter told me that sailors had to climb these in storms when it was impossible for a greenhorn to hold on.

I went aboard several ships, but the captains also insisted on my showing them permission from my father. After I had been turned down, old Peter saw that my spirits were at low ebb. When I admitted to him that I had run away from home, it seemed to touch the sympathy of the old wanderer. But when I told him my father was a landowner and a count, he looked at me in awe.

"A count? Why, that ranks next to a king!"

He could hardly get over it--a count's son running away to become a sailor before the mast! The tragedy of it made him take such an interest in me that we instantly became warm friends, and he asked me to come and share his humble quarters. From then on, for a week, I spent most of my time with old Peter Boemer.

"For thirty-five years, for my whole life," he pleaded in his broad Hamburg dialect, "I was a sailor. What have I now? All I am is captain of this little rowboat, carrying people for a few pfennings[1] a trip. Go back to the Count, your father, and when he gives you a licking for this, thank him for every lick."

I must go home. He was certain of that. He must persuade me to go home. But the idea of notifying my parents never occurred to him. That would be squealing, and squealing is not a virtue among sailors. I saw him every day for a week, and notwithstanding all of his unanswerable arguments, still I refused to go home. At last he saw that it was hopeless to plead with me any longer, he agreed to help me get on a ship without having any papers.

He got me a post as cabin boy aboard the Niobe, a craft the memory of which grows more vivid with the passing of the years. Then he insisted upon seeing to it that I was properly outfitted for the sea. Under his direction, I expended the last of my money for warm underclothing, oilskins, a sheath knife, tobacco, and a pipe. I was very proud of the pipe. He took me to his room high up in a dingy house on a dingy street. Suspended from the ceiling was a stuffed flying fish. On a wall hung the painting of a ship on sail canvas. I was filled with admiration when Peter told me he had painted it himself. In a cage was a parrot, as old and dishevelled as Peter. He had brought it from Brazil, and it spoke only Portuguese. On the bureau were Chinese curios and other souvenirs of long voyages.

"And this is my sea chest," he said, as he hauled forth an ancient weather-beaten but staunch box, and emptied out of it various examples of his own weaving and knitting.

"Every sailor needs a sea chest," he continued. "It is watertight and will float. For thirty-five years it travelled with me around the world. It is yours now, by Joe, and I hope it will serve you as well as it served me."

That old sea chest was destined to serve me well as long as I had it. I lost it when I ran away from the lighthouse at Cape Leeuwin, Australia.

He put me aboard the Niobe, that never-to-be-forgotten argosy, showed me to my bunk, and fixed my mattress and bolster.

"You are born a count"--he shook his head--"and you become a sailor. Count and sailor don't go together. It is like a Paris shoe on a Russian peasant's foot. You are Count Felix von Luckner no longer. You must change your name."

Then and there I rechristened myself, took the name of my mother's family, and called myself Phelax Luedige. Under that name I sailed the seas for seven years.

My last gift from ole Peter was a motto. Putting his hands on my shoulders he said:

"My boy, always remember, one hand for yourself, and one for the ship."

By this he meant that, when aloft, I must hold on with one hand and work with the other. But the motto had a wider meaning than that. In every channel, sea, or backwater of life--one hand for yourself and one for the ship.

I stood at the rail while the tug towed the Niobe out of the harbour. Old Peter, with his marvellously skilful stroke, sculled alongside the slowly moving vessel all the way out past the piers of Sankt Pauli.

"My boy, God speed you," he shouted. "This is as far as I can go. I will never see you again. It's hard on old Peter to see you go away."

I wanted to shout something in return, but tears were streaming down my cheeks.

Peter had carefully packed my sea chest, and when I opened it I found his picture right under the lid. Across the bottom he had scrawled, "Don't forget your old Peter."

The low coast gradually melted into the haze. Years were to pass before I should return to my homeland and to the friend who had helped me get to sea.

-------
[1]typo in the original book.

2005/04/08

Count Luckner, The Sea Devil I

By Lowell Thomas
input by biajee

I
WE MEET A FLYING BUCCANEER

It was on a flying field in Central Europe that I first saw the "Sea Devil." We were on our way from London to Moscow by air, and had come as far as Stuttgart with stops at Paris and Basle. While waiting for the mechanics to tune up the Fokker monoplane in which we were to cover the next stage to Berlin, we lunched in the little tea room on the edge of the flying field, kept by the widow of a German pilot killed in the war. Suddenly, through an open window, from off to the east in the direction of Munich and Ulm, we heard a familiar drone, and a moment later a silvery monoplane darted from a billowy cloud bank, the rays of the afternoon sun glistening now from one wing and now from the other. In a series of sliding swoops, with motor off and noiseless except for the whistle of the propeller, it dropped gently on to the turf and sped across the field.

Uniformed aërodrome attendants ran over, leaned their spidery metal ladder against the glistening duraluminum fuselage, and opened the cabin door. Two passengers descended, a giant of a man and a dainty slip of a woman. The former, who climbed down first, was tall, of massive frame, with huge shoulders, and altogether one of the most powerful-looking men I had ever seen. After him came the little blonde, who looked for all the world like a fairy who had arrived on a sunbeam. Putting her slipper to the top rung of the ladder she jumped into her escort's arms.

What a voice that man had! It boomed across the flying field like a foghorn or the skipper of a Yankee whaler ordering his men aloft.

As they came toward us, he walked with a rolling seaman's gait. In his mouth was a nautical-looking pipe, and his jovial weather-beaten countenance suggested one who goes down to the sea. He wore a naval cap cocked over one eye, and a rakish light brown chinchilla coat, called a "British Warm."

Every pilot and mechanic on the field stopped work and saluted the couple. The mariner who had dropped from the sky saluted in all directions after the cheery but somewhat perfunctory manner of the Prince of Wales. One could see that he was accustomed to doing it, and presumably was someone of more than local fame. He even saluted us, as they passed into the little restaurant, although he had never set eyes on us before and we had not saluted him. But the newcomer seemed to take the whole world, including strangers, into the compass of his rollicking friendliness. We were still sitting on the veranda when they came out and drove off for Lake Constance. He called, or rather bellowed, "Wiedersehen, wiedersehen," to everybody, as he squeezed into the door, and the frame of the limousine bent under his weight. The man simply radiated personality, and turning to the commandant of the Stuttgart Flug Platz, who stood near me, I said:
"Who is that?"
"That? Why that's the Sea Devil."
"And who may the Sea Devil be?"
"Why, the Sea Devil is Count Luckner, who commanded the raider Seeadler. The young lady is his countess."

I remembered the Seeadler vaguely as a sailing ship that had broken through the British blockade and played havoc with Allied shipping in the Atlantic and Pacific during the latter part of the war. Certainly, this Sea Devil looked the part of a rollicking buccaneer. I thought the age of pirates had vanished with the passing of Captain Kidd and the Barbary Corsairs, but here was one of the good old "Yo-ho, and bottle of rum" type.

My wife and I continued our aërial jaunt across Europe, via Berlin, Königsberg, and Smolensk, to the capital of the Bolsheviks, but later on, while flying back and forth across Germany on our way from Constantinople to Copenhagen and from Finland to Spain, whenever we dropped down out of the sky in Germany we heard more of this Sea Devil. That first encounter with this modern buccaneer had aroused my curiosity, and each new yarn that I heard made me keen to see more of him. Incidentally, we found that he and his dainty countess were doing almost as much flying as we were, although entirely within the borders of Germany and Austria. Cities were declaring half holidays in his honour, and apparently this Sea Devil was more of a popular hero than even the great Von Hindenburg. As for the youth of Germany, they fairly idolized him, and crowds of boys met him at every aërodrome.

There were other German sea-raiders during the World War that most of us remember far more vividly than we recollect the Seeadler. They were the Emden, the Moewe and the Wolf. But these three were either modern warships or fast auxiliary cruisers, while this giant count with the foghorn voice and the sea legs had run the blockade in a prehistoric old-fashioned sailing ship. That, together with an almost unbelievably adventurous personal story, made romance complete. Added to which we discovered that he had the unique and enviable reputation of disrupting Allied shipping without ever having taken a human life or so much as drowning a ship's cat.

Upon returning home from his buccaneering cruise the Count of course received a score of decorations, and his own government signally honoured him in a way that has rarely happened in German history. He was presented with a cross that places him outside the scope of German law. Like the kings of old, he "can do no wrong"-at any rate, not in his own country. He was even called to Rome and decorated by the Pope as "a great humanitarian."

When we encountered him at Stuttgart, he was on a sort of triumphal tour of German, exhorting the youth to prove worthy of their inheritance, and in cheery seaman's language he was telling the boys and girls to keep up their courage, "stay with the pumps, and not abandon the ship." They in turn seemed to look upon him as a modern Drake or John Paul Jones.

Upon our return from Moscow, we learned more and more of this Count Felix von Luckner: that he was a member of an old and famous military family, a descendant of a Marshal of France, who had run away to sea as a boy, and then served for seven years before the mast, roaming the wide world o'er under an assumed name as a common jack-tar, suffering the beatings, starvation, shipwreck, and other hardships that the sea visits upon its children. We heard how during his turns ashore he had even joined the Salvation Army in Australia, had become a kangaroo hunter, a prize-fighter, a wrestler, a beach-comber and a Mexican soldier, standing on guard before the door of Porfirio Diaz's presidential palace. Long since given up as dead, he had been listed by the Almanach de Gotha as missing.

Then, one day, after he had fought his way up from a common seaman to the rank of an officer of the German Navy, he returned to his family. A series of life-saving exploits had brought him fame, with the result that he became the protégé of the Kaiser. As an officer aboard the Kron Prinz the finest ship in the Imperial Navy, he had survived the Battle of Jutland.

Then came his golden chance. Shortly after Jutland, he was commissioned to perform the audacious feat of taking a sailing ship through the British blockade in order to raid Allied shipping.

The Seeadler maintained a destructive career for months, ranging the South Atlantic and Pacific, dodging cruisers and sinking merchant vessels. She scuttled twenty-five million dollars' worth of shipping, and wrought incalculable damage by delaying hundreds of cargo vessels from venturing out of port, and raising the rates of marine insurance. After a cruise as full of excitement and thrills as the voyages of Captain Kidd and Sir Francis Drake, the Count's raider was wrecked on the coral reefs of a South Sea isle. From then on, the Sea Devil and his crew adventured from atoll to atoll in the far-off Southern ocean, passing from one surf-beaten shore to another in open boats or in ships they contrived to capture.

We were sitting in the lobby of the Hotel Adlon in Berlin, one evening, when again I saw that magnificent nautical figure. A mutual friend introduced us, and that evening my wife and I listened to great stories of the sea, told with a manner of inimitable vigour, sailor-like jollity, and dramatic inflection. After that, we met often, sometimes on board his trim schooner the Vaterland, on which he was setting out to sail round the world, and again at my home near New York, where the Sea Devil and his countess came. On these occasions, I got the complete story of his life and his buccaneering experiences on the most adventurous cruise of our time.

The Count is a born actor; in fact, I verily believe him to be the finest actor I have ever seen. If he had not run away to sea, what a career he might have had on the stage! But his inborn flair for pantomime was only to be heightened by life at sea. Sailors are vigorously expressive men, full of mimicry, and blustery actors of parts. You seldom see a sailor with the phlegmatic stolidity that you find in lumpish landlubbers. When the Count tells you he raised a marlinespike, he jumps to the fireplace, seizes a pair of tong, and illustrates with it. When he tells how he knocked a man cold in Fiji for spitting in a sailor's face, he acts out the whole affair.

As a sailor, he had spent long years before the mast under the Union Jack and the Stars and Stripes. So he told his tale to me in racy sailor's English. He has one amusing peculiarity of speech. Nearly every other word is the expletive, "By Joe!" In explaining this, he remarked that the language of the sea consists principally of a blistering string of oaths. He said these oaths had become so much a part of him after seven years before the mast that for a long time using sulphury profanities. Of course, this caused him much embarrassment and trouble when he returned from his long voyages and attempted to qualify as a naval officer. It caused particular consternation when, after his years at sea, he returned to the bosom of his stately and highly respectable family. In fact, he had to submit himself to a long and rigorous course of self-discipline to extract the blazing nautical oaths from his common speech. He achieved this in his English diction by a resort to the expression, "By Joe." Whenever one of these hair-raising oceanic apostrophes came leaping on to his tongue, he had trained himself so well that it automatically changed itself into "By Joe." this habit still clings to him as a salty reminder of fo'c'sle days.

At the time when Count Luckner was raiding the seas, I had been thrown in contact with the most picturesque adventurer that the World War had brought forth-Lawrence of Arabia. Here, in the Sea Devil, was his naval counterpart. They were the two great adventurers of the two respective sides during the World War. While colonel Lawrence, mounted on a ship of the desert, led raids across the sands of Araby, Felix von Luckner scoured the seas in a windjammer. Lawrence led Bedouins on fleet Arabian horses and racing camels, romantic people travelling in the most romantic way known to land. The Sea Devil commanded sailors before the mast on a sailing ship, romantic people travelling in the most romantic way known to the sea. In each, adventure climbed close to its highest summit.

Lawrence was a man slight and frail, diffident, silent, and soft-spoken, who might have been taken offhand for the most bashful of youths, a most erudite scholar, and archæologist whom the war caught practising his profession among the antiquities of Assyria and Babylon. War and its forays must seem the last degree removed from this studious and utterly cerebral spirit. One could find no greater contrast to him than in this brawny sea rover with the booming voice and blustery manner, who raided the seas from Skagerrak and Iceland to Fiji and the Marquesas.

The ex-Kaiser, the ex-Crown Prince, Hindenburg, Ludendorff, Von Tirpitz, and sundry others of our late enemies, have given us their personal accounts of a tale to tell like Count Felix von Luckner. With me the story lies close as a companion piece to the story of Lawrence of Arabia, and I pass it on to you in the words of the Sea Devil and, I hope, with something of the tang of the sea.[1]


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[1]The reader will notice that in Count von Luckner's narrative, the precise chronological order of events is occasionally not observed. The map used as lining paper in this book shows the route of the Seeadler and the names and dates of ships sunk, and other events in their chronological sequence.