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. She had not always ploughed the ocean at the behests of Mr. Noddy Kinahan, her present owner. As a matter of fact, she dated back to the early sixties. She had been built on the Clyde, in days when people were not in such a hurry as they are now, for steady and reliable cross-channel service between Scotland and Ireland; and the crinolined young lady who had blushingly performed the christening ceremony as the brand-new steamer slipped down the ways had named her the Gareloch.