.

The Captain, John Bloomsbury by name, but better known as 'High-Low
Jack' from his great love of that game--the only one he was ever known
to play--was a near relation of our old friend Colonel Bloomsbury of the
Baltimore Gun Club. Of a good Kentucky family, and educated at
Annapolis, he had passed his meridian without ever being heard of, when
suddenly the news that he had run the gauntlet in a little gunboat past
the terrible batteries of Island Number Ten, amidst a perfect storm of
shell, grape and canister discharged at less than a hundred yards
distance, burst on the American nation on the sixth of April, 1862, and
inscribed his name at once in deep characters on the list of the giants
of the Great War. But war had never been his vocation. With the return
of peace, he had sought and obtained employment on the Western Coast
Survey, where every thing he did he looked on as a labor of love. The
Sounding Expedition he had particularly coveted, and, once entered upon
it, he discharged his duties with characteristic energy.

He could not have had more favorable weather than the present for a
successful performance of the nice and delicate investigations of
sounding. His vessel had even been fortunate enough to have lain
altogether out of the track of the terrible wind storm already alluded
to, which, starting from somewhere southwest of the Sierra Madre, had
swept away every vestige of mist from the summits of the Rocky Mountains
and, by revealing the Moon in all her splendor, had enabled Belfast to
send the famous despatch announcing that he had seen the Projectile.
Every feature of the expedition was, in fact, advancing so favorably
that the Captain expected to be able, in a month or two, to submit to
the _P.C. Company_ a most satisfactory report of his labors.

Cyrus W. Field, the life and soul of the whole enterprise, flushed with
honors still in full bloom (the Atlantic Telegraph Cable having been
just laid), could congratulate himself with good reason on having found
a treasure in the Captain. High-Low Jack was the congenial spirit by
whose active and intelligent aid he promised himself the pleasure of
seeing before long the whole Pacific Ocean covered with a vast
reticulation of electric cables. The practical part, therefore, being in
such safe hands, Mr. Field could remain with a quiet conscience in
Washington, New York or London, seeing after the financial part of the
grand undertaking, worthy of the Ninete