He woke with an odd sensation of his bed dropping out from under him.  Coming out of a sound slumber he was at first a trifle bewildered, but instinctively he grasped a stanchion to keep himself from sliding across the floor as the vessel took another deep roll.  The smoking room was deserted.  He gained his feet and peered out of a window.  All about him ran the uneasy heave of the sea.  Try as he would his eyes could pick up no dim shore line.  And it was not particularly dark, only a dusky gloom spotted with white patches where a comber reared up and broke in foam.  He wondered at the ship’s position.  It did not conform to what he had been told of the Inside Passage.

And while he was wondering a ship’s officer in uniform walked through the saloon.  He cast a quick glance at Thompson and smiled slightly.

“This outside roll bother you?” he inquired pleasantly.

“Outside?” Thompson grasped at the word’s significance.  “Are we going down outside?”

“Sure,” the man responded.  “We always do.”

“I wonder,” Thompson began to sense what he had done, “I say—­isn’t this the Roanoke for Seattle?”

The mate’s smile deepened.  “Uh-uh,” he grinned.  “This is the Simoon, last boat of the season from outside northern points.  We had to put into Wrangel, which we rarely do.  The Roanoke berthed right across the wharf from us.  Got aboard us by mistake, did you?”

Thompson nodded.

“Well,” the officer continued, “sometimes the longest way round is the shortest way home.  We don’t touch this side the Golden Gate.  So you may as well see the purser when he gets up and have him assign you a berth.  It’s pretty near daylight now.”

He nodded and went on.  Thompson, holding fast, getting his first uncomfortable experience of the roll and recovery of a ship in a beam sea, made his way out on the after deck.  Holding on the rail he peered over the troubled water that was running in the open mouth of Dixon Entrance, beyond which lay the vast breadth of the Pacific, an unbroken stretch to the coast of Japan.

Again Chance was playing the deuce with his calculations.  For a few minutes he felt uncommonly irritated.  He had not started for San Francisco.  He did not want to go to San Francisco.  Still—­what was the odds?  San Francisco was as good as any other town.  He shrugged his shoulders, and feeling his way to a coiled hawser sat down in the bight of it to contend with the first, faint touch of seasickness.

CHAPTER XV

THE WORLD IS SMALL

For reasons of economy Thompson put himself up at a cheap rooming-house well out Market Street.  His window looked out upon that thoroughfare which is to San Francisco what the aorta is to the arterial system.  Gazing down from a height of four stories he could see a never-ending stir, hear the roar of vehicular traffic which swelled from a midnight murmur to a deep-mouthed roar in the daylight hours.  And on either side the traffic lane there swept a stream of people like the current of the Stikine River.