Even in his rapid progress he was run down, thrust aside, and passed, by two more gentlemen, stark mad, as it appeared, with fierce excitement.
'Where is it ?' cried Martin, breathlessly, to a negro whom he encountered in the passage.
'In a eatin room, sa.

Kernell, sa, him kep a seat 'side himself, sa.' 'A seat!' cried Martin.
'For a dinnar, sa.' Martin started at him for a moment, and burst into a hearty laugh; to which the negro, out of his natural good humour and desire to please, so heartily responded, that his teeth shone like a gleam of light.

'You're the pleasantest fellow I have seen yet,' said Martin clapping him on the back, 'and give me a better appetite than bitters.' With this sentiment he walked into the dining-room and slipped into a chair next the colonel, which that gentleman (by this time nearly through his dinner) had turned down in reserve for him, with its back against the table.
It was a numerous company--eighteen or twenty perhaps.

Of these some five or six were ladies, who sat wedged together in a little phalanx by themselves.

All the knives and forks were working away at a rate that was quite alarming; very few words were spoken; and everybody seemed to eat his utmost in self-defence, as if a famine were expected to set in before breakfast time to-morrow morning, and it had become high time to assert the first law of nature.