“Well—that’ll be a dollar ’n’ a half, seein’ it’s you.”
“You’ll get one nice, round little buck, Sam.”
“Git out! You, an’ the cap’n, an’ the dog, an’ a tussik! Why—”
Hal climbed into the car. He leaned forward, his face close to Sam’s. The seethe of rage seemed to have departed. Now Hal was all joviality. Swiftly the change had come upon him.
“Sam!” he admonished. “You know perfectly well seventy-five cents would be robbery, but I’ll give you a dollar. Put her into high.”
The driver sniffed Hal’s breath, and nodded acceptance.
“All right, seein’ as it’s you,” he answered. He added, in a whisper: “Ain’t got nothin’ on y’r hip, have ye?”
“Nothing but a bruise,” said Hal. “_Clk-clk!_”
The jitney struck its bone-shaking gait along the curving street of Endicutt. No one spoke. The old captain, spent in forces and possessed by bitter, strange hauntings, had sunk far down in the seat. His beard made a white cascade over the smart blue of his coat. His eyes, half-closed, seemed to be visioning the far-off days he had labored so long to forget. His face was gray with suffering, beneath its tan. His lips had set themselves in a grim, tight line.
As for Hal, he filled and lighted his pipe, then with a kind of bored tolerance eyed the quaint old houses, the gardens and trim hedges.
“Some burg!” he murmured. “Some live little burg to put in a whole summer! Well, anyhow, I started something. They ought to hand me a medal, for putting a little pep into this prehistoric graveyard.”
Then he relapsed into contemplative smoking.
Presently the town gave place to the open road along the shore, now bathed in a thousand lovely hues as sunset died. The slowly fading beauty of the seascape soothed what little fever still remained in Hal’s blood. With an appreciative eye he observed the harbor. The town itself might seem dreary, but in his soul the instinctive love of the sea awoke to the charms of that master-panorama which in all its infinite existence has never twice shown just the same blending of hues, of motion, of refluent ebb and fall.
Along the dimming islands, swells were breaking into great bouquets of foam. The murmurous, watery cry of the surf lulled Hal; its booming cadences against the rocky girdles of the coast seemed whispering alluring, mysterious things to him. In the offing a few faint specks of sail, melting in the purple haze, beckoned: “Come away, come away!”