Hence, at sea, Mad Jack tried to make a point of keeping sober, though in very fine weather he was sometimes betrayed into a glass too many.

But with Cape Horn before him, he took the temperance pledge outright, till that perilous promontory should be far astern.
The leading incident of the gale irresistibly invites the question, Are there incompetent officers in the American navy ?--that is, incompetent to the due performance of whatever duties may devolve upon them.

But in that gallant marine, which, during the late war, gained so much of what is called _glory_, can there possibly be to-day incompetent officers?
As in the camp ashore, so on the quarter-deck at sea--the trumpets of one victory drown the muffled drums of a thousand defeats.

And, in degree, this holds true of those events of war which are neuter in their character, neither making renown nor disgrace.

Besides, as a long array of ciphers, led by but one solitary numeral, swell, by mere force of aggregation, into an immense arithmetical sum, even so, in some brilliant actions, do a crowd of officers, each inefficient in himself, aggregate renown when banded together, and led by a numeral Nelson or a Wellington.