15 talk to us.

He was a tall, resolute fellow, who had once been a brakeman on a railroad, and he kept us all pretty straight; from his fiat there was no appeal.
But it was not thus when the turn came to others among us.

Then it was _look out for squalls_.

The business of dining became a bore, and digestion was seriously impaired by the unamiable discourse we had over our _salt horse_.
I sometimes thought that the junks of lean pork--which were boiled in their own bristles, and looked gaunt and grim, like pickled chins of half-famished, unwashed Cossacks--had something to do with creating the bristling bitterness at times prevailing in our mess.

The men tore off the tough hide from their pork, as if they were Indians scalping Christians.
Some cursed the cook for a rogue, who kept from us our butter and cheese, in order to make away with it himself in an underhand manner; selling it at a premium to other messes, and thus accumulating a princely fortune at our expense.