It was steering blind, but, as a rule, the sailor's instinct guided him right.

Farther on, the river got wide and in thick weather one saw no lights: Davies must keep mid-channel and trust his reckoning while he rushed her along.

For a thousand miles the old boat's track was haunted by dangers against which one could not guard, and Cartwright thought she carried his last chance to mend his broken fortunes.
If she were wrecked, the reckoning he had long put off must be fronted, for when his embarrassments were known his antagonists would combine and try to pull him down.

One must pay for one's extravagance, but to pay would break him, and if he were broken, Mortimer would sneer and Grace treat him with humiliating pity.

He would be their mother's pensioner, and to lose his independence was hard.