“Ahoy, there! Hal! Come here—I want to see you!”
The old man’s cry dropped with disagreeable surprise into Hal’s sinister reflections. Hal looked up, and swore to himself. He sensed the meaning of that summons.
“There’s another damned scene coming,” thought Hal. “Why the hell can’t he let me alone now? Why can’t everybody let me alone?”
Nothing could now have been more inopportune than an interview with his grandfather. Hal—his rage burned out to ashes—had come down from Geyser Rock, and had turned homeward in evil humor. And as he had gone he had already begun to lay out tentative plans for what he meant to do.
“It’s all bull, what Laura handed me!” he had been thinking when the captain’s summons had intruded. “Am I going to let her throw me that way? I guess _not_! I’ll land her yet; but not here, not here! I can’t stick here. The way I’m in wrong with the college, and now this new rough-house with Laura, will certainly put the crimp in me. What I’ve got to do is clear out. And I won’t go alone, at that. If I only had a twenty-five footer! I could get her aboard of it some way. The main thing’s a boat. The rest is easy. I could let them whistle, all of them. The open sea—that’s the thing! That’s a man’s way to do things—not go sniveling ’round here in white flannels all summer, letting a girl hand it to me that way!
“God, if I could only raise five hundred bucks! I could get Jim Gordon’s _Kittiwink_ for that, and provision it, too. Make a break for Cuba, or Honduras; why, damn it, I could go round the world—go East—get away from all this preaching and rough-house—live like a man, by God!”
The captain’s hail shattered Hal’s dreams.
“Devil take the old man!” snarled Hal to himself as he scowled up at the figure on the hilltop. “What’s he want _now_? And devil take all women! They’re like dogs. Beat a dog and a woman, and you can’t go wrong. I’ll play this game to win yet, and make good! Hello, up there?” he shouted in reply to the captain. “What d’you want of me?”
“I want to talk with you, Hal,” the old man’s voice came echoing down. “Come here, sir!”
Another moment Hal hesitated. Then, realizing that he could not yet raise the banner of open rebellion, he turned and lagged toward the road that led up the south side of the hill.