2, embracing sundry rare jokers and high livers, who waxed gay and epicurean over their salt fare, and were known as the "_Society for the Destruction of Beef and Pork_." On the larboard hand was Mess No.

31, made up entirely of fore-top-men, a dashing, blaze-away set of men-of-war's-men, who called themselves the "_Cape Horn Snorters and Neversink Invincibles_." Opposite, was one of the marine messes, mustering the aristocracy of the marine corps--the two corporals, the drummer and fifer, and some six or eight rather gentlemanly privates, native-born Americans, who had served in the Seminole campaigns of Florida; and they now enlivened their salt fare with stories of wild ambushes in the Everglades; and one of them related a surprising tale of his hand-to-hand encounter with Osceola, the Indian chief, whom he fought one morning from daybreak till breakfast time.

This slashing private also boasted that he could take a chip from between your teeth at twenty paces; he offered to bet any amount on it; and as he could get no one to hold the chip, his boast remained for ever good.
Besides many other attractions which the _Forty-two-pounder Club_ furnished, it had this one special advantage, that, owing to there being so many _petty officers_ in it, all the members of the mess were exempt from doing duty as cooks and stewards.

A fellow called _a steady-cook_, attended to that business during the entire cruise.

He was a long, lank, pallid varlet, going by the name of Shanks.