There are 50 ways to leave your employer. Actor James MacArthur came up with the fifty-first.

MacArthur was exploring South America when he got a message to return for his twelfth season on the Hawaii Five-O television series.

"I'm not coming back," he replied. "I'm going into the Peruvian jungle and I'm taking a river boat and if you can catch me, go ahead."

That was in 1978. Since then MacArthur has been doing more acting, considerably more traveling, and leading what he calls the life of a carefree bachelor. Charlie, his 22-year-old son, is a ski instructor in Aspen. Mary, his 17-year-old daughter, is a high school junior in Beverly Hills. MacArthur keeps two bags packed in the condominium on Oahu where he has lived for 15 years.

"I can go anywhere in the world, no matter what the climate, with just what I carry in those two bags," he says.

As star of The Scheme of Things, a peripatetic series on The Disney Channel (Monday-Friday afternoons; Sunday afternoon), MacArthur has it both ways. He gets to act and see all kinds of places. During one typical month he visited the outer banks of North Carolina, the Gulf of Mexico, the Florida Everglades, St. Croix in the Virgin Islands, Boston, New York, and San Francisco.

But even when he is not on location, MacArthur is seldom home. He has business interests that include a 200-acre farm outside St. Louis and a ski lodge in Crested Butte.

"Every so often I have to look after my soy beans and corn," he says. "When the snow falls I go to my condo in Colorado. Most of the time, though, I'm working."

MacArthur comes by his craft naturally. He is the son of actress Helen Hayes and the late playwright Charles MacArthur. He grew up in Nyack, New York, in the stimulating company of celebrities who were also family friends.

MacArthur's ties with the Disney organization go back to his university days. Walt Disney saw him in his first picture, The Young Stranger, and made him an offer he couldn't refuse: a studio contract.

MacArthur left Harvard and went on to star in Disney's Light in the Forest, Third Man on the Mountain, Swiss Family Robinson, and Kidnapped.