"My respects to your honor," replied the fellow, "but the ketch _Bowery_, moored off the pier-head, 'ud be glad to see your honor if convenient, and if not, maybe to-morrow?"
"What the devil does the man mean?" cried his lordship, but the seaman plucking up courage continued,--
"An old friend of your honor's for sure he is, my guv'ner, Abraham Burrow, what you had the acquaintance of in New York city."
"Well, and why can't he come ashore? I remember the man perfectly--I have every cause to"--a true remark, since Abraham Burrow then owed the speaker some two thousand pounds; and had shown no unprincipled desire to pay it.
"The fact is, my lordship," replied the seaman, whose vocabulary was American and strange, "the fact is he's tidy sick, on his beam ends, I guess with brounchitis; and he won't be detaining you not as long as a bosun's whistle if you go aboard, and be easin' of him."
Now, although this comparatively juvenile lover was in a mighty hurry to get to St. Peter's, there was yet a powerful financial motive to send him to the ship. He had done business with this Abraham Burrow in America; the man had--we won't say swindled--but been smart enough there to relieve him of a couple of thousand pounds. To hope for the recovery of such a sum seemed as childish as a sigh for the moon. Maclaren had not seen Burrow for twelve months, and did not know a moment before this meeting whether he was alive or dead. Yet here he was in a yacht off Ramsgate harbor, desiring to see his creditor, and to see him immediately. The latter reflected that such a visit would not occupy half an hour of his time, that it might lead to the recovery of some part of his money, that he could make his excuses to the pretty girl awaiting him--in short, he went with the seaman; and in a quarter of an hour he stepped on board an exceeding well-kept yacht, which lay beyond the buoy over against the East Pier; and all his trouble began.
The craft, as I have said, was ketch rigged, and must have been of seventy tons or more. There was a good square saloon aft, and a couple of tiny cabins, the one amidships, the other at the poop. When Lord Maclaren went aboard, three seamen and a boy were the occupants of the deck; but a King Charles spaniel barked at the top of the companion; and a steward came presently and asked the visitor to go below. He descended to the saloon at this; but the sick man, they told him, lay in the fore cabin; and thither he followed his very obsequious guide.