At the head of the mess-table sat a gray-headed captain, who had been
frost-bitten in Canada, wounded in the Peninsula, and saved by an iron
constitution from the regimental doctor and yellow fever on Brimstone
Hill, St Kitts; and, despite his varied adventures and ailments, had
contrived to accumulate an immense rotundity in his person, and
quantity and vividness of colour in his countenance. At the foot, was
a tall young gentleman, with high cheekbones and a Celtic nose, who
had lately joined from Tipperary. The colonel sat in the centre of one
side of the table, stiff in attitude, sententious in discourse,
invulnerable in vanity; a fierce-looking navy captain, and the meek
mayor of the town, supported him to the right and left. A few diners
out, fathers of families, and men who played a good game of billiards,
and preferred the society of ensigns, were the remainder of the
guests; the other gentlemen in red were variations on the fat captain
and the Tipperary lieutenant.

The mess-room was long and narrow, with a profusion of small windows
on both sides, causing the light to fall on every one's face. There
were two doors at each end of the room, and one at the side, which
last, as it led nowhere, and made a draught like a blow-pipe, had been
lately stopped up with a different coloured plaster from the rest of
the wall. But indeed there was such a curious variety of draughts,
that one was scarcely missed; every door and window in the room sent
in its current of air, to search under the table, flare the candles,
bear in in triumph the smell of burnt fat from the kitchen, and poke
into the tender places of rheumatic patients; while, in spite of all
these, the room was so close and redolent of dinner, that fish, flesh,
and fowl were breathed in every breath. A scant and well-worn carpet
covered the space on which the dinner-table stood; and portable
curtains of insufficient number and enormous size ornamented a few
favoured windows, waved in the erratic draughts, and tripped up
incautious attendants, diffusing all the while the stale odour of
tobacco smoke through the other varied smells. At one end of the room
was a round table with a faded red cloth, strewn with newspapers, the
corners of which had generally been abstracted for the purpose of
lighting cigars,--the "Army List," the king's regulations, and the
_Racing Calendar_. At the other end, a large screen, battered at the
edges from frequent packings, diverted the