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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
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