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.