Note (return) — Chapter VIII · MR MARTIN KELLY RETURNS TO DUNMORE

Martin, however, made no complaints, and felt no misery. He made great play at the eternal half-boiled leg of mutton, floating in a bloody sea of grease and gravy, which always comes on the table three hours after the departure from Porto Bello. He, and others equally gifted with the dura ilia messorum [18], swallowed huge collops [19] of the raw animal, and vast heaps of yellow turnips, till the pity with which a stranger would at first be inclined to contemplate the consumer of such unsavoury food, is transferred to the victim who has to provide the meal at two shillings a head. Neither love nor drink—and Martin had, on the previous day, been much troubled with both—had affected his appetite; and he ate out his money with the true persevering prudence of a Connaught man, who firmly determines not to be done.