nt of soldiers go on dress parade. It requires vim, dash, spirit.
The officers named have this quality in a very considerable degree, yet
not enough of it. But what they lack more is ingenuity, fertility in
expedients, and the expansive view which enables them to take advantage
promptly of circumstances. You never lose your head, Christy."

"I never knew the gentlemen named to lose their heads, and I have always
regarded them as model officers," replied the first lieutenant.

"And so they are: you are quite right, my dear boy; but it is possible
for them to be all you say, and yet, like the young man of great
possessions in the Scripture, to lack one thing. I should not dare to
exchange my second and third lieutenants for any others if I had the
opportunity."

"I confess that I do not understand you yet, Captain."

The commander rose from his seat, stretched himself, and then looked
about the deck. Taking his camp-stool in his hand he carried it over to
the port side of the quarter-deck, and planted it close to the bulwarks.
The second lieutenant was the officer of the deck, and was pacing the
planks on the starboard side, while the lookouts in the foretop and on
the top-gallant forecastle were attending closely to their duty,
doubtless with a vision of more prize money floating through their
brains.

The Bellevite, with the fires banked in the furnaces, was at anchor
off the entrance to Mobile Bay, about two miles east of Sand Island
Lighthouse, and the same distance south of the narrow neck of land on
the western extremity of which Fort Morgan is located. Her commander had
chosen this position for a purpose; for several weeks before, while the
Bellevite was absent on a special mission, a remarkably fast steamer
called the Trafalgar had run the blockade inward.

Captain Passford, Senior, through his agents in England, had some
information in regard to this vessel, which he had sent to Captain
Breaker. Unlike most of the blockade-runners built for this particular
service, she had been constructed in the most substantial manner for an
English millionaire, who had insisted that she should be built as strong
as the best of steel could make her, for he intended to make a voyage
around the world in her.

Unfortunately for the owner of the Trafalgar, who was a lineal
descendant of a titled commander in that great naval battle, he fell
from his horse in a fox chase, and was killed before the steamer was
fully completed