I didn't
greatly take to the chief-officer of that party, with his bright eyes,
brown face, and easy figure. I didn't much like his way when he first
happened to come where we were, with Miss Maryon on his arm. "O, Captain
Carton," she says, "here are two friends of mine!" He says, "Indeed?
These two Marines?"--meaning Charker and self. "Yes," says she, "I
showed these two friends of mine when they first came, all the wonders of
Silver-Store." He gave us a laughing look, and says he, "You are in
luck, men. I would be disrated and go before the mast to-morrow, to be
shown the way upward again by such a guide. You are in luck, men." When
we had saluted, and he and the lady had waltzed away, I said, "You are a
pretty follow, too, to talk of luck. You may go to the Devil!"
Mr. Commissioner Pordage and Mrs. Commissioner, showed among the company
on that occasion like the King and Queen of a much Greater Britain than
Great Britain. Only two other circumstances in that jovial night made
much separate impression on me. One was this. A man in our draft of
marines, named Tom Packer, a wild unsteady young fellow, but the son of a
respectable shipwright in Portsmouth Yard, and a good scholar who had
been well brought up, comes to me after a spell of dancing, and takes me
aside by the elbow, and says, swearing angrily:
"Gill Davis, I hope I may not be the death of Sergeant Drooce one day!"
Now, I knew Drooce had always borne particularly hard on this man, and I
knew this man to be of a very hot temper: so, I said:
"Tut, nonsense! don't talk so to me! If there's a man in the corps who
scorns the name of an assassin, that man and Tom Packer are one.
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