A spirit of high emulation existed among the young commanders by whom Preble now found himself supported. Hull was the oldest in years, and he had hardly reached the prime of life; while Stewart, Smith, Somers and Decatur were all under six-and-twenty. With the exception of the commodore, no commanding officer was married, and most of them were bound together by the ties of intimate friendships. In a word, their lives, as yet, had been prosperous; the past left little to complain of, the future was full of hope; and there had been little opportunity for that spirit of selfishness which is so apt to generate quarrels, to get possession of minds so free and temperaments so ardent. This is the proper place to allude to a private adventure of Somers’, about the existence of which there would seem to be no doubt, though like so much that belonged to this interesting man its details are involved in obscurity. While at Syracuse, where the American vessels made their principal rendezvous, he was walking in the vicinity of the town in company with two brother officers, when five men carrying swords, who were afterwards ascertained to be soldiers of the garrison, made an attack on the party, with an intent to rob. One of the gentlemen was provided with a dirk, but Somers and the other were totally unarmed. The officer with the dirk used the weapon so vigorously as soon to bring down one assailant, while Somers grappled with another. In the struggle Somers seized the blade of his antagonist’s sword, and was severely cut in the hand by the efforts of the robber to recover it, but the latter did not succeed, the weapon being wrested from him and plunged into his own body. This decided the matter, the three remaining robbers taking to flight. The dead bodies were carried into the town and recognized. This adventure is believed to have occurred while the Nautilus was absent on her last visit to Sicily, though it may have been of older date; possibly as old as the time when Somers was in the Boston. We think the latter improbable, however, as the circumstance seems to be unknown to his nearest relatives in this country, which would hardly have been the case had it taken place previously to his last visit to America. Our information comes from an intimate friend, who received the facts from Somers himself, but who was not at Syracuse at the moment the attempt to rob occurred.