s mess was principally composed of the headmost men of the gun-deck;
and, out of a pardonable self-conceit, they called themselves the
"_Forty-two-pounder Club;_" meaning that they were, one and all,
fellows of large intellectual and corporeal calibre. Their mess-cloth
was well located. On their starboard hand was Mess No. 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. In very
warm weather this Shanks would sit at the foot of the mess-cloth,
fanning himself with the front flap of his frock or shirt, which he
inelegantly wore over his trousers. Jack Chase, the President of the
Club, frequently remonstrated against this breach of good manners; but
the _steady-cook_ had somehow contracted the habit, and it proved
incurable.

For a time, Jack Chase, out of a polite nervousness touching myself, as
a newly-elected member of the club, would frequently endeavour to
excuse to me the vulgarity of Shanks. One day he wound up his remarks
by the philosophic reflection--"But, White-Jacket, my dear fellow, what
ca