The Admiral knew only one narrow line of conduct to pursue in any and all cases where there was a fight, and that was to shoulder his way straight in without an inquiry as to the rights or the merits of it, and take the part of the weaker side.—­And this was the reason why he was always sure to be present at the trial of any universally execrated criminal to oppress and intimidate the jury with a vindictive pantomime of what he would do to them if he ever caught them out of the box.  And this was why harried cats and outlawed dogs that knew him confidently took sanctuary under his chair in time of trouble.  In the beginning he was the most frantic and bloodthirsty Union man that drew breath in the shadow of the Flag; but the instant the Southerners began to go down before the sweep of the Northern armies, he ran up the Confederate colors and from that time till the end was a rampant and inexorable secessionist.

He hated intemperance with a more uncompromising animosity than any individual I have ever met, of either sex; and he was never tired of storming against it and beseeching friends and strangers alike to be wary and drink with moderation.  And yet if any creature had been guileless enough to intimate that his absorbing nine gallons of “straight” whiskey during our voyage was any fraction short of rigid or inflexible abstemiousness, in that self-same moment the old man would have spun him to the uttermost parts of the earth in the whirlwind of his wrath.  Mind, I am not saying his whisky ever affected his head or his legs, for it did not, in even the slightest degree.  He was a capacious container, but he did not hold enough for that.  He took a level tumblerful of whisky every morning before he put his clothes on—­“to sweeten his bilgewater,” he said.—­He took another after he got the most of his clothes on, “to settle his mind and give him his bearings.”  He then shaved, and put on a clean shirt; after which he recited the Lord’s Prayer in a fervent, thundering bass that shook the ship to her kelson and suspended all conversation in the main cabin.  Then, at this stage, being invariably “by the head,” or “by the stern,” or “listed to port or starboard,” he took one more to “put him on an even keel so that he would mind his hellum and not miss stays and go about, every time he came up in the wind.”—­And now, his state-room door swung open and the sun of his benignant face beamed redly out upon men and women and children, and he roared his “Shipmets a’hoy!” in a way that was calculated to wake the dead and precipitate the final resurrection; and forth he strode, a picture to look at and a presence to enforce attention.  Stalwart and portly; not a gray hair; broadbrimmed slouch hat; semi-sailor toggery of blue navy flannel—­roomy and ample; a stately expanse of shirt-front and a liberal amount of black silk neck-cloth tied with a sailor knot; large chain and imposing seals impending from his fob; awe-inspiring feet, and “a hand