“Indeed! and Mr. Hatch?”
“Mr. Hatch has only one wife, and he finds that quite enough; besides, he proposes to explain his system in a meeting that he will hold one of these evenings.”
“The saloon will be filled.”
“Yes,” said Pitferge, “if the gambling does not attract too many of the audience; you know that they play in a room at the bows? There is an Englishman there with an evil, disagreeable face, who seems to take the lead among them, he is a bad man, with a detestable reputation. Have you noticed him?”
From the Doctor’s description, I had no doubt but that he was the same man who that morning had made himself conspicuous by his foolish wagers with regard to the waif. My opinion of him was not wrong. Dean Pitferge told me his name was Harry Drake, and that he was the son of a merchant at Calcutta, a gambler, a dissolute character, a duellist, and now that he was almost ruined, he was most likely going to America to try a life of adventures. “Such people,” added the Doctor, “always find followers willing to flatter them, and this fellow has already formed his circle of scamps, of which he is the centre. Among them I have noticed a little short man, with a round face, a turned-up nose, wearing gold spectacles, and having the appearance of a German Jew; he calls himself a doctor, on the way to Quebec; but I take him for a low actor and one of Drake’s admirers.”
At this moment Dean Pitferge, who easily skipped from one subject to another, nudged my elbow. I turned my head towards the saloon door: a young man about twenty-eight, and a girl of seventeen, were coming in arm in arm.
“A newly-married pair?” asked I.
“No,” replied the Doctor, in a softened tone, “an engaged couple, who are only waiting for their arrival in New York to get married, they have just made the tour of Europe, of course with their family’s consent, and they know now that they are made for one another. Nice young people; it is a pleasure to look at them. I often see them leaning over the railings of the engine-rooms, counting the turns of the wheels, which do not go half fast enough for their liking. Ah! sir, if our boilers were heated like those two youthful hearts, see how our speed would increase!”
I OFTEN SEE THEM LEANING OVER THE RAILINGS OF THE ENGINE-ROOM.