It is necessary here to make an announcement of a very painful nature, an announcement of a fact so lamentable and unfortunate that for a long while we tried to believe that it could not be. Captain Scruggs has several times in the last week been very much under the influence of strong liquor! More than once we have noticed that he exhibited a strange uncertainty in his gait, and for two days he has been unusually aggressive and sometimes silly in his arguments. Still, neither of us would acknowledge to the other that which we knew in our hearts was true, until last evening at supper his conduct compelled us to admit the shocking fact that the master of the ship in which we have but just commenced one of the longest and stormiest of voyages was plainly drunk. He had to steady himself against the mizzen-mast at the end of the dining-room before he could sit down, and during the meal he was for a time a drooling idiot. His chief amusement seemed to lie in spilling small quantities of maple syrup over the table-cloth, in which he then dabbled with his fingers, like a boy with his feet in a puddle. The syrup appeared to revive memories of his childhood, for he told us stories of his passion for this fluid when a youth. Said he: “Why, I used to go out in the woods, tap a maple-tree, and let two gallons of surrup run into me.” No one said a word. “Two gallons!” glaring fiercely at the mate, who, of course, didn’t offer any objection. Then he caught sight of a small wash-tub, and, turning on the mate again, cried out violently, “When I was a boy, I used to could drink that right down full er maple surrup. This ’ere hain’t surrup; h’its mucilage.” Here we excused ourselves and went on deck. Now, what is all this going to lead to? Pleasant thought, that of knocking about in a gale of wind off Cape Horn with a groggy skipper in charge! Indeed, when we first discovered his bibulous inclination, my wife was in despair, and the only consolation we have is to be found in the hope that the case of whiskey that we have seen is the only one on board. We can account now, too, for the innumerable times that the captain has popped into his little room, only to emerge in a few seconds, smelling furiously of Florida-water. Well, we’ll probably have fine, light weather through the northeast Trades, which we are now sure that we have taken; and at the rate at which the grog is vanishing at present, it will be gone before we reach the squally Doldrums, provided that the skipper has but one case.