The booking facilities at Wrangel are primitive, to say the least. When

Thompson inquired about southbound passage, he was told to go down and

board the first steamer at the pierhead, and that it would leave at

eleven that night. So he took all his meager belongings, which he could

easily carry in a blanket roll and a sailor's ditty-bag, and went down

half an hour before sailing time. There seemed no one to bar his

passage, and he passed up the gangplank aboard a two-funnelled,

clean-decked steamer, and made his way to a smoking room aft.

There were a few men lounging about, men of the type he was accustomed

to seeing in Wrangel, miners, prospectors and the like, clad in

mackinaws and heavy laced boots. Thompson, habitually diffident, asked

no questions, struck up no conversations after the free and easy manner

of the North. He laid down his bag and roll, sat awhile listening to the

shift of feet and the clatter of cargo winches on deck and pierhead.

Then, growing drowsy, he stretched himself on a cushioned seat with his

bag for a pillow and fell asleep.

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."




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