“Lawrence is my name.”
“Mr. Lawrence, if you’ll be down at Godwin’s Wharf to-morrow, at nine o’clock, with your baggage and bedding and servant, we will lie off a bit, and any sampan will put you aboard in five minutes. Ask for the Wandering Star;” and with a nod between the clerk and myself, he turned his back and stumped out.
“He is not very keen about passengers, eh?” remarked the clerk with a laugh. “I wonder why?”
“I suppose because she is a dirty old cargo-boat. But any port in a storm, or rather, any ship, in this crisis, for me!”
“Ah,” said the clerk, rubbing his chin reflectively, “I’ve a sort of idea—though perhaps I dreamt it—that there is something rum, or out of the way, about this Wandering Star.”
“Well, whatever it is, I’ll risk it,” I answered with a laugh, as I followed the captain’s example, and took my departure.
Punctually at nine o’clock next morning I embarked in a sampan, and was rowed down the swift Irrawaddy.
“That cannot be my steamer,” I protested, as the boatman made for a long, low, raking craft, a craft of considerable pretensions! She looked like one of the smaller vessels of the P. and O. fleet.
But sure enough the boatman was right, for as we passed under her stern, I read in yellow letters the name—Wandering Star.
A closer inspection showed her to be simply what her commander had stated—a tramp; she was dirty, rusty, and travel-stained. When I clambered aboard, I found no snowy decks, or shining brasses, but piles of cargo, bustling coolies, and busy blue-clad lascars. I was immediately accosted by the captain, who presented me to the chief officer, and to a fellow-traveller, a sallow, lanky youth of nineteen, going to join his friends in the Straits.