Slowly, slowly, scarcely moving, yet edging forward all the time, Jack peered around the bulwark.
Presently he saw them. They were two in number, and one was the little fat doctor who looked after “Black George.” The other was a sodden-looking man of middle age, with a smudge of grease over one eye and his face generally dark with grime and coal dust. He was in his undershirt and carried a wrench in his right hand.
“We’ll soon have her fixed now, Doc,” this latter individual was saying, “nothing wrong but a couple of bolts shaken loose in the storm. Thought I’d better lay up and tighten things generally. That’s all. Well, so long, I have to keep them Chinks moving or we’ll never get the work finished.”
The engineer, Jack correctly surmised. He started to move on. The fat little doctor laid a detaining hand on his arm, and glanced around nervously. Jack hastily withdrew his head, only to advance it again cautiously a moment later. The doctor’s back was turned.
“Mr. MacFinney,” he said to the engineer. “You don’t know what’s happening to your engines while you’re away, do you?”
“Not with them Chinks around,” said the other, laughing a little. “They don’t know much about machinery.”
“The Chinamen,” said the doctor, darkly. “That’s just it.”
“What’s the matter with you, Marley?” said MacFinney, thrusting his face closer to the other’s. “Out with it, man. Have ye something on your mind? Or is it just the drink again?”
Doctor Marley drew his fat little form upright, as if to resent the rough remark. He was cursed with the habit of secret drinking, and it was on that account he had lost his practice and had fallen into the state of a creature to “Black George.” But resentment did not last. He was frightened. The next moment he laid a trembling hand on MacFinney’s arm.
“Mr. MacFinney,” he said, low and hurried, “I’m afraid the Chinese may have put your engines out of commission, or may be doing it now while you are absent. You know our Chinese cook is a strange fellow, hates the others, or at any rate has little to do with them. And he said something——”