Upon this might be recognised every variety of bottles, glasses, and cups.

Open boxes of sardines, piles of ship-biscuits, and segments of cheese filled the intervening spaces.

Freshly-drawn corks and glistening fragments of lead were strewed around, while a number of dark conical objects under the table told that not a few champagne bottles were already "down among the dead men." On each side of the table was a row of colonels, captains, subalterns, and doctors seated without regard to rank or age, according to the order in which they had "dropped in".

There were also some naval officers, and a sprinkling of strange, half-sailor-looking men, the skippers of transport brigs, steamboats, etcetera; for Twing for a thorough republican in his entertainments; besides, the _day_ levelled all distinctions.
At the head of the table was the major himself, who always carried a large pewter flask suspended from his shoulders by a green string, and without this flask no one ever saw Major Twing.

He could not have stuck to it more closely had it been his badge of rank.