their grandmother, near the quays in Amsterdam, where the masts of ships
and the smell of tar interfered with their lessons. Bread and treacle
for breakfast, black beans for lunch, a fine thick stew and plenty more
bread for supper--that and the Dutch school where he stood near the top
of his class are what Tommy remembers best of his boyhood. His
grandmother took in washing, and had a hard time keeping the little
family going. She was a fine, brusque old lady and as Tommy went off to
school in the mornings she used to frown at him from the upstairs window
because his hands were in his pockets. For as everybody knows, only
slouchy good-for-nothings walk to school with pocketed hands.

Tommy did so well in his lessons that he was one of the star pupils
given the privilege of learning an extra language in the evenings. He
chose English because most of the sailors he met talked English, and his
great ambition was to be a seaman. His uncle was a quartermaster in the
Dutch navy, and his father was at sea; and Tommy's chance soon came.

After school hours he used to sell postcards, cologne, soap, chocolates,
and other knicknacks to the sailors, to earn a little cash to help his
grandmother. One afternoon in the spring of 1909 he was down on the
docks with his little packet of wares, when a school friend came running
to him.

"Drevis, Drevis!" he shouted, "they want a mess-room boy on the _Queen
Eleanor_!"

It didn't take Drevis long to get aboard the _Queen Eleanor_, a British
tramp out of Glasgow, bound for Hamburg and Vladivostok. He accosted the
chief engineer, his blue eyes shining eagerly.

"Yes," says the chief, "I need a mess-room steward right away--we sail
at four o'clock."

"Try me!" pipes Drevis. (Bless us, the boy was barely thirteen!)

The chief roars with laughter.

"Too small!" he says.

Drevis insisted that he was just the boy for mess-room steward.

"Well," says the chief, "go home and put on a pair of long pants and
come back again. Then we'll see how you look!"

Tommy ran home rejoicing. His Uncle Hendrick was a small man, and Tommy
grabbed a pair of his trousers. Thus fortified, he hastened back to the
_Queen Eleanor_. The chief cackled, but he took him on at two pounds
five a month.

Tommy didn't last long as mess-room boy. He broke so many cups the
engineers had to drink out of dippers, and they degraded him to cabin
boy at a pound a month. Even as cabin boy he was no instant success. He