Chapter 27 - Page 2

Commodore, or else have anticipated Mad Jack's
order, and thundered forth "Hard down the helm!"

To show how little real sway at times have the severest restrictive
laws, and how spontaneous is the instinct of discretion in some minds,
it must here be added, that though Mad Jack, under a hot impulse, had
countermanded an order of his superior officer before his very face,
yet that severe Article of War, to which he thus rendered himself
obnoxious, was never enforced against him. Nor, so far as any of the
crew ever knew, did the Captain even venture to reprimand him for his
temerity.

It has been said that Mad Jack himself was a lover of strong
drink. So he was. But here we only see the virtue of being placed
in a station constantly demanding a cool head and steady nerves,
and the misfortune of filling a post that does _not_ at all times
demand these qualities. So exact and methodical in most things
was the discipline of the frigate, that, to a certain extent,
Captain Claret was exempted from personal interposition in many
of its current events, and thereby, perhaps, was he lulled into
security, under the enticing lee of his decanter.

But as for Mad Jack, he must stand his regular watches, and pace
the quarter-deck at night, and keep a sharp eye to windward.
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. And the renown of such heroes, by outliving
themselves, descends as a heritage to their subordinate survivors. One
large brain and one large heart have virtue sufficient to magnetise a
whole fleet or an army. And if all the men who, since