When we struck soundings off the English Channel, the word was given to the boatswain to bend the cables and get the anchors over the bows. The wind was blowing hard from the northward, with violent squalls and a short head sea, and Captain Mott showed no disposition to reduce the canvas in order to lighten our labors, but carried sail and drove the vessel as if he was running from a pirate. The brig frequently plunged her knight-heads under water, deluging every man on the forecastle with sheets of salt water. In the mean time the captain, and also the mate, dry-shod on the quarter-deck, grinned, and winked at each other, at witnessing our involuntary ablutions, with the mercury at the freezing point, while subjected to this severe course of hydropathic treatment, and doing work which, under ordinary circumstances, could have been accomplished in a few hours. Reefing a topsail in a gale is an evolution simple in itself; and when the sail is placed by the skill of the officer of the deck in a proper condition, the work aloft can be accomplished in five minutes, even by a bungling crew. But Captain Mott seemed to take pleasure in placing obstacles in the way of the ready performance of any important duty, and held the crew accountable for any extraordinary delay. Thus in reefing topsails, the men were sometimes half an hour on the yard, endeavoring in vain to do a work which his own obstinacy or ignorance rendered impracticable, and he, all the while, cursing and swearing at the crew for their inefficiency, in a style which would have done credit to the leader of a press-gang. The men, generally, were good seamen, and able and willing to do their work, and with proper treatment would have proved first rate sailors; but it is an old and true saying that bad officers make a bad crew. When a man's best efforts are rewarded with abuse, it is unreasonable to expect that he will perform his various duties with alacrity and cheerfulness. It was customary, at that period, for rum to be served out to the crew, and the minimum allowance, in nearly all American vessels, was a glass of rum at dinner, with an extra glass during exposure to inclement weather, or when engaged in unusually fatiguing labors. This extra glass was generally served out by the steward at the companion-way, and the men were summoned to partake of this indulgence by a call to "splice the main brace."