“Soft,” he had said to his roommate, “that’s what they are. No experiences worth having.”
“But this girl over there beyond the log wall,” he said to himself now, “she’s different. Got spunk. Stands up and defies them, she does, when she knows they are beasts, as all kidnapers are. Tells ’em she’ll freeze here all winter rather than do the thing they want her to do. Nerve, that’s what!”
He was conscious of an invisible bond that bound his life to that of the girl. “In the end we may fight it out together.”
The hour was late. Once again the drowsy warmth of this narrow cell settled down upon him.
“Football,” he mused. “A tough business. Thousands screaming their lungs out, ten, twenty, thirty, forty thousand people losing their heads while you must keep yours. Wish this were the end, wish it were all over. Wish—”
Once again, in the twinkling of an eye, his mood changed.
“For all that,” he muttered beneath his breath, “I’ve got to get away!” Leaping to his feet, he stood there, hard, straight, square, with purpose written in every line of his well formed body. “To-morrow’s game, that is nothing. But Saturday’s game, that is everything. It is the end. Final, that’s what it is. Defeat or victory, that’s what it means. The championship or nothing. And Prang, the Grand Old Man, says it depends on us!
“That means me!” There came a stoop to his shoulders as if a load had fallen upon them. “For the Grand Old Man, for the school that gave me a chance, for my mother, for clean sport all over the world, I must escape. I must play. I must win. I must! Must! Must!”
Yet, even as these words formed themselves into thought he seemed to hear others. “On a narrow island within a bay. Icy water. Another larger island. Fifteen, seventy-five, a hundred miles from shore. Superior never gives up her dead.” Of a sudden the boy cursed the school days when he had neglected his study of geography. He saw it all now. Geography was travel. And how could one find travel dull?
“But travel!” Again that silent, mirthless laugh. “Who expects to travel as I have?”