We were two days past the Moon when our first trouble developed. Among our stores were one hundred and twenty quarts of spirits per man, enough to allow us each a liberal two ounces per day for a period of five years. Each night, before dinner, we had drunk to the President in a cocktail which contained a single ounce of spirits, the idea being to conserve our supply in the event of our journey being unduly protracted as well as to have enough in the event that it became desirable fittingly to celebrate any particular occasion. Toward the third meal hour of the thirteenth day of the voyage Orthis entered the messroom noticeably under the influence of liquor. History narrates that under the regime of prohibition drunkenness was common and that it grew to such proportions as to become a national menace, but with the repeal of the Prohibition Act, nearly a hundred years ago, the habit of drinking to excess abated, so that it became a matter of disgrace for any man to show his liquor, and in the service it was considered as reprehensible as cowardice in action. There was therefore but one thing for me to do. I ordered Orthis to his quarters. He was drunker than I had thought him, and he turned upon me like a tiger. “You damned cur,” he cried. “All my life you have stolen everything from me; the fruits of all my efforts you have garnered by chicanery and trickery, and even now, were we to reach Mars, it is you who would be lauded as the hero—not I whose labor and intellect have made possible this achievement. But by God we will not reach Mars. Not again shall you profit by my efforts. You have gone too far this time, and now you dare to order me about like a dog and an inferior—I, whose brains have made you what you are.” I held my temper, for I saw that the man was unaccountable for his words. “Go to your quarters, Orthis,” I repeated my command. “I will talk with you again in the morning.” West and Jay and Norton were present. They seemed momentarily paralyzed by the man’s condition and gross insubordination. Norton, however, was the first to recover. Jumping quickly to Orthis’ side he laid his hand upon his arm. “Come, sir,” he said, and to my surprise Orthis accompanied him quietly to their stateroom. During the voyage we had continued the fallacy of night and day, gauging them merely by our chronometers, since we moved always through utter darkness, surrounded only by a tiny nebula of light, produced by the sun’s rays impinging upon the radiation from our insulating generator. Before breakfast, therefore, on the following morning I sent for Orthis to come to my stateroom. He entered with a truculent swagger, and his first words indicated that if he had not continued drinking, he had at least been moved to no regrets for his unwarranted attack of the previous evening. “Well,” he said, “what in hell are you going to do about it?”