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.

He was not a stranger to cities, no rustic gazing open-mouthed at
throngs and tall buildings. His native city of Toronto was a fair-sized
place as American and Canadian cities go. But it was not a seaport. It
was insular rather than cosmopolitan; it took its character from its
locale rather than from a population gathered from the four quarters of
the globe. San Francisco--is San Francisco--a melting-pot of peoples,
blown through with airs from far countries, not wholly rid of the aura
of Drake and the conquistadores of Spain even in these latter days of
commercial expansion. And all of San Francisco's greatness and color and
wealth is crowded upon a peninsula, built u