Hughie had solved the problem to his satisfaction by the time he crossed Brooklyn Bridge.
For the rest of the way home he thought of other things. A bachelor, however ungregarious, is at heart a sentimental animal, and during his walk Hughie was contemplating with his mind's eye the picture that he had left behind him as he said good-night,—the picture of "a snug little kingdom up ten pair of stairs," tenanted by a little community of two, self-contained and self-sufficient, dauntless in the face of grim want and utter friendlessness,—and, despite his own health and wealth, he experienced a sudden feeling of envy for the crippled and impecunious Dennis Maclear.
"I suppose," he mused to himself, "it doesn't really matter how rotten a time you have in this world so long as you have it in the right company." Then he added, apparently as a sort of corollary: "By gad, when I get home next week, I'll stay there!"
But, however carefully (or carelessly) we handle the tiller on life's voyage, it is the little casual currents and unexpected side winds that really set our course for us. As Hughie rolled into bed that night he reflected, rather regretfully, that the incident of that evening was closed for ever. He had definitely cut himself off from the Maclears, at any rate, for the very simple reason that he had just posted to them a hundred one-dollar notes, as a temporary loan until their "ship came in," carefully omitting to mention that his own was due to go out in twenty-four hours, and giving no address for purposes of repayment.
But for all that, the incident had definitely altered his course for him, or at any rate was destined to send him round by an alternative route.
CHAPTER VII
THE ALTERNATIVE ROUTE
Her most ardent admirers—and they had never been very numerous—could hardly have described the Orinoco as a rapid or up-to-date vessel. She could average a fair eight knots in ordinary weather (except when the Chief Engineer was not sober; and then she had been known to do as much as eleven), and she had faced with tolerable credit seven strenuous years of North Atlantic weather, winter and summer alike. But she was no flier.