CHAPTER XV.
A SALT-JUNK CLUB IN A MAN-OF-WAR, WITH A NOTICE TO QUIT.
It was about the period of the Cologne-water excitement that my self-conceit was not a little wounded, and my sense of delicacy altogether shocked, by a polite hint received from the cook of the mess to which I happened to belong.

To understand the matter, it is needful to enter into preliminaries.
The common seamen in a large frigate are divided into some thirty or forty messes, put down on the purser's books as _Mess_ No.

1, _Mess_ No.

2, _Mess_ No.

3, etc.