always, always faithful to that sobriety wherein there is power, and
truth, and peace.

As to my sea-sobriety, that is quite properly certified under the
sign-manual of several trustworthy shipmasters of some standing in their
time. I seem to hear your polite murmur that "Surely this might have
been taken for granted." Well, no. It might not have been. That august
academical body the Marine Department of the Board of Trade takes
nothing for granted in the granting of its learned degrees. By its
regulations issued under the first Merchant Shipping Act, the very word
_sober_ must be written, or a whole sackful, a ton, a mountain of the
most enthusiastic appreciation will avail you nothing. The door of the
examination rooms shall remain closed to your tears and entreaties.
The most fanatical advocate of temperance could not be more pitilessly
fierce in his rectitude than the Marine Department of the Board of
Trade. As I have been face to face at various times with all the
examiners of the Port of London, in my generation, there can be no doubt
as to the force and the continuity of my abstemiousness. Three of them
were examiners in seamanship, and it was my fate to be delivered into
the hands of each of them at proper intervals of sea service. The first
of all, tall, spare, with a perfectly white head and moustache, a quiet,
kindly manner, and an air of benign intelligence, must, I am forced
to conclude, have been unfavourably impressed by something in my
appearance. His old thin hands loosely clasped resting on his crossed
legs, he began by an elementary question in a mild voice, and went on,
went on. . . . It lasted for hours, for hours. Had I been a strange
microbe with potentialities of deadly mischief to the Merchant Service I
could not have been submitted to a more microscopic examination. Greatly
reassured by his apparent benevolence, I had been at first very alert in
my answers. But at length the feeling of my brain getting addled crept