“Better keep an eye on that light off the long pier. She's running in pretty close, I think.”
“All right; good-night.”
Number Six disappeared in the dark of the road, bound for bed; and Halloran pulled his sweater up around his neck and fell to pacing the veranda. The surf was booming on the beach below; the rain was cutting in toward the land. Out beyond the breakers were lights—a line of them along the horizon.
The time had come to look ahead. In another six months his college course would be completed; his playtime would be over; realities lay beyond—downright realities that surround a man, that show clear through him, that bear him down and under unless he be made of stronger stuff than they. Wits were needed, and judgment; the determination that goes against things, not with them. There would be no making up of cuts, out there in the world, no special examinations; a man must look higher than the faculty there. Mistakes would be hard to rectify, perhaps could never be rectified, where a man was already nearer thirty than twenty. He decided not to make that next call.