"That won't do, my lad. Go along to your work," said the Captain.
And when Jason was gone the Captain thought within himself, "What does this mean? Is the lad planning the man's escape? And who is this English woman that she should be the next thought in his head?"
So the only result of Jason's appeal was that Michael Sunlocks was watched the closer, worked the harder, persecuted the more by petty tyrannies, and that an order was sent up to the farmhouse where Greeba lay in the dear dishonor of her early motherhood, requiring her to leave the neighborhood of Krisuvik as speedily as her condition allowed.
This was when the long dark days of winter were beginning to fall back before the sweet light of spring. And when the snow died off the mountains, and the cold garment of the jokulls was sucked full of holes like the honeycomb, and the world that had been white grew black, and the flowers began to show in the corries, and the sweet summer was coming, coming, coming, then Jason went down to the Captain of the Mines again.
"I've come, sir," he said, "to ask you to lock me up."
"Why?" said the Captain, "what have you been doing?"
"Nothing," said Jason, "but if you don't prevent me, I'll run away. This Free Command was bad enough to fear when the snow cut us off from all the world. But now that it is gone and the world is free, and the cuckoo is calling, he seems to be calling me, and I must go after him."
"Go," said the Captain, "and after you've tramped the deserts and swam the rivers, and slept on the ground, and starved on roots, we'll fetch you back, for you can never escape us, and lash you as we have lashed the others who have done likewise."
"If I go," said Jason, defiantly, "you shall never fetch me back, and if you catch me you shall never punish me."
"What? Do you threaten me?" cried the Captain.