ies, each latter one being more _bizarre_ than the
preceding.

Whether a man be mad or not, Christmas will come round again. Now,
Jack, from time immemorial, thinks that he has a right undeniable to get
drunk on that auspicious day. In harbour, that right is not discussed
by his officers, but is usually exercised _sub silentio_ under their
eyes, with everything but silence on the part of the exercisers. Even
at sea, without the ship be in sight of the enemy, or it blows hard
enough to blow the ship's coppers overboard, our friends think it hard,
very hard, to have their cups scored next morning upon their back; and,
indeed, to keep all a frigate's crew from intoxication on a
Christmas-day would be something like undertaking the labour of
Sisyphus, for, as fast as one man could be frightened or flogged into
sobriety, another would become glorious.

It was for this very reason that Captain Reud, the Christmas-day after
he had received his wound, undertook the task; and, as the weather was
fine, he hoped to find it not quite so hard as rolling a stone up a
steep hill, and invariably seeing it bound down again before it attains
the coveted summit. Immediately after breakfast, he had the word
passed, fore and aft, that no man should be drunk that day, and that six
dozen (not of wine) would be the reward of any who should dare, in the
least, to infringe that order. What is drunkenness? What it is we can
readily pronounce, when we see a man under its revolting phases. What
is not drunkenness is more hard to say. Is it not difficult to
ascertain the nice line that separates excitement from incipient
delirium? Not at all, to a man like Captain Reud. To understand a
disease thoroughly, a physician will tell you that you will be much
assisted by the having suffered from it yourself. Upon this
self-evident principle, our Aesculapius with the epaulettes was the
first man drunk in the ship. After dinner that day, he had heightened
his testing powers with an unusual, even to him, share of claret.

Well, at the usual time, we beat to quarters; that is always done just
before the hammocks are piped down; and it is then that the sobriety of
the crew, as they stand to their guns, is narrowly looked into by the
respective officers; for then the grog has been served out for the day,
and it is supposed to have been all consumed. The captain, of course,
came on the quarter-deck to quarters, making tack and half tack, till he
f