The house overlooked the starlit bay, nearly ringed with a sparse
fence of palms, and on its roof, a little scarlet figure on the white
rugs, Incarnacion sat waiting till Scott should come. Below her, the
reeking city was hushed to a murmur, through which there sounded from
the Praca a far throb of drums and pipe-music; and overhead the sky
was a dome of velvet, spangled with a glory of bold stars. Save to the
east, where the blank white walls of the house overlooked the water,
there was on all sides a shadowy prospect of parapets, for in Superban
the houses are close together and folk live intimately upon their
roofs. As she sat, Incarnacion could hear a voice that quavered and
choked as some stricken man labored with his prayers against the
plague that was laying the city waste. Through all Superban such
petitions went up, while daily and nightly the tale of deaths mounted
and the corpses multiplied faster than the graves.
Incarnacion lit herself a cigarette, tucked her feet under her, and
wondered why Scott did not come. But her chief quality was serenity;
she did not give herself over to worry, content to let all problems
solve themselves, as most problems will. She was a wee girl,
preserving on the threshold of sun-ripened womanhood the soft and
pathetic graces of a docile child. Her scarlet dress left her warm
arms bare and did not trespass on the slender throat; she had all the
charm of intrinsic femininity which comes to fruit so early in the
climate of Mozambique and fades so soon. It was this, no doubt, that
had taken Scott and held him; gaunt, harsh, direct in his purposes as
he was quick in his strength, with Incarnacion he found scope for the
tenderness that lurked beneath his rude forcefulness.
He came at last. She heard his step on the stair, cast her cigarette
from her, and sprang to meet him with a little laugh of delight. He
took her in his arms, lifting her from her little bare feet to kiss
her.
"O-oh, Jock, you break me," she gasped, as he set her down. "You are
strong like a bull. What you bin away so long?"
He smiled at her gravely as he let himself down on her rugs and put a
long arm round her. "Did you want me, 'Carnacion?" he asked.
"Me? No," she answered, laughing; "I don' want you, Jock. You go away
twenty--thirty--days; I don' care. Ah, Jock!"
He pressed her close and kissed the crown of her dark head gently. His
strong, keen-featured face was very tender, for this small woman of
the old tropics was all but all the world to him. "You're a little
rip," he said, as he released her. "Make me a cigarette, 'Carnacion.
I've found the boat."
She looked up quickly, while her deft fingers fluttered about the dry
tobacco and the paper. "You find him, Jock?" she asked.
He nodded. "Yes, I've found it," he answered. "She's in a creek, about
six miles down the bay. A big boat, too, with a pretty little cabin
for you to twiddle your thumbs in, 'Carnacion. She's pretty clean,
too; I reckon the old chap must have been getting ready to clear out
in her when he dropped. It's a wonder nobody found her before."
Incarnacion sealed the cigarette carefully, pinched the loose ends
away, kissed it, and put it in his mouth. "Then," she said
thoughtfully, "you take me away to-morrow, Jock?"
He frowned; he was shielding the lighted match in both hands, and it
showed up his drawn brows as he bent to light the cigarette. "I don't
know," he said. "You see, 'Carnacion, there's a good many things I
can't do, and sail a boat is one of 'em. I haven't got a notion how to
set about it, even. I don't know the top end of a sail from the
bottom."
"You make a Kafir do it?" suggested Incarnacion.
He smiled, a brief smile of friendship. "That would do first-rate," he
explained; "only, you see, there's no Kafirs, kiddy. Every nigger that
had ever seen a boat was snapped up a week ago, when the big flit was
happening. That dead-scared crowd that cleared out then took every
single sailorman to ferry 'em down the coast--white, black, and
piebald. And the plain truth of it is, 'Carnacion, I've been up and
down this old rabbit-warren of a city since sun-down, looking for a
sailor, an' the only one I could hear of I found--in the dead-house."
He spat at the parapet upon the memory of that face, where the plague
had done its worst.
"So," remarked Incarnacion gaily. "Then we stop, Jock; we stop here,
eh?"
"There'll be something broken first," retorted Scott. "It's all
bloomin' rot, Incarnacion; you can't have a town this size without a
man in it that can handle a boat--a seaport, too. It isn't sense. It
don't stand to reason."
"There was the Capitan Smeeth," suggested Incarnacion helpfully.
"Just so," said Scott; "there was. He's dead."
Incarnacion crossed herself in silence, and they sat for a while
without speaking. From the Praca the music was still to be heard; some
procession to the great church was in progress, to pray for a
remission of the scourge. Over the line of roofs there was a dull glow
of the watch-fires in the streets; where they sat, Scott and the girl
could smell the pitch that fed them. And, over all, an unseen sick man
gabbled his prayers in a halting monotone. A quick heat of wrath lit
in Scott as his thoughts traveled around the situation; for
Incarnacion sat with her head bowed, playing with her toes, and the
ever-ready terror lest the plague should reach her moved in his heart.
He had been away from Superban when the plague arrived, and though he
had come in on the first word of the news, he had been too late to
find a place for her on the ships that fled down the coast from the
pest. And now that he had found a boat, there was no one to sail her;
in all that terror-ridden city, he could find no man to hold the
tiller and tend the sheet.
"You're feeling all right, eh, 'Carnacion?" he asked sharply.
She turned to him, smiling at once. "All right," she assured him. "An'
you, Jock--you all right, too?"
"Fit as can be," he answered, fingering her hair where it was smooth
and short behind her ear.
"You see," she said. "It is the plague, but the plague don't come for
us, Jock."
"That's right," he said. "You keep your courage up, little girl, an'
we'll be married in Delagoa Bay."
He rose to his feet. "Kiss me good night, 'Carnacion," he said. "I'm
busy these days, an' I can't stop any longer."
She kissed him obediently, giving her fresh lips frankly and eagerly;
and Scott came out to the narrow lane below with the flavor of them
yet on his mouth and new resolution to pursue his quest for a sailor.
He moved on to the Praca, where the stridency of the music still
persisted. Great fires burned at every entrance to the square, so that
between them a man walked in the midst of leaping shadows, as though
his feet were dogged by ghosts. The tall houses around the place were
blind with shuttered windows; from their balconies none watched the
crowd before the great doors of the church. Here a priest stood in a
cart, with a great cross in his hand. His high voice, toneless and
flat, echoed vainly over the heads of the throng, where some knelt in
a passion of prayer, but most stood talking aloud. Through the doors
the lights on the altar were to be seen in the inner gloom, sparkling
from the brass and golden accouterments of the church. Scott
shouldered a road through the crowd, scanning faces expertly. To a big
brown man with empty blue eyes he put the question:
"Can you sail a boat?"
The man stared at him. "Have you got one?" he asked.
"Can you?" repeated Scott. "Do you know anything about sailing a
boat?"
"No," said the other; "but----"
Scott pushed on and left him. In the church, his heart leaped at sight
of a man in the clothes of a Portuguese man-o'-war's-man, asleep by a
pillar--a little swarthy weed of a man. He woke him with a kick, only
to learn, after further kicks, that the man was a stoker and knew as
little about boats as himself. At the door of a confessional lay
another man in the same uniform. A kick failed to wake him, and Scott
bent to shake him. But the hand he stretched out recoiled; the plague
had been before him.
In that time men knew no difference between day and night, for death
knew none, and the traffic of the close, twisted streets never lulled.
The blatant cafés were ablaze with lamps, and in them the tables were
crowded and the fiddles raved and jeered. In one Scott found a chair
to rest in, and sat awhile with liquor before him. He had carried his
search from the shore to the bush, through all the town, and to no
end. Now, mingled with his resolution there was something of
desperation. He sat heavily in thought, his glass in his hand; and
while he brooded, unheeding, the café roared and clattered about him.
To his right, a group of white-clad officers chatted over a languid
game of cards; at his left, a forlorn man sang dolorously to himself.
Others were behind. From these last, as he sat, a word reached him
which woke him from his preoccupation like a thrust of a knife. He sat
without moving, straining his ears.
"De ole captain, he die," said some one; "but hees boat, she lie on de
mud now."
"An' ye know where she is?" demanded another voice, a deeper one.
"Yais," the first speaker replied. He had a voice that purred in
undertones, the true voice of a conspirator.
There was a sound of a fist on the table. "Good for you," said the
deeper voice. "We'll get away by noon, then."
Scott carried his glass to his lips and drained it; then he rose
deliberately in his place and commenced to thread his way out between
the tables. He had to pause to pay the waiter for his drink when he
was a yard or two away; he gave the man an English sovereign, and
thus, while change was procured, he could stand and look at the owners
of the voices. They paid him no attention; he was unsuspected. One of
the men he knew, a tall Italian with a heavy, brutal face, a
knife-fighter of notoriety and a bully. The other was a square, humpy
man, half of whose face was jaw. Not men to put in the company of
little Incarnacion, either of them; Scott's experience of the Coast
spared him any doubts about that. It would be easy, of course, to
settle the matter at once--simply to step up and let his knife into
the Italian, under the neck, where he sat. At that season and in that
place it was an almost obvious remedy; but it would not be less than a
week before he could get clear of the jail, and in that time any one
might find the boat.
He grasped his change and went out. There was only one thing to do: he
must go to the creek where the boat was, and lie in wait for them
there. "Nobody'll miss 'em," he said to himself; "and there's
crocodiles in that creek, all handy."
He struck across the Praca again, between the fires, and down an alley
that would lead him to the beach. The voice of the priest in the cart
seemed to pursue him till he outdistanced it, and he pressed on
briskly. His way was between tall, dark houses; the path lay at their
feet, narrow and tortuous, like some remote cañon. Here was no light,
save when, at the turn of the way, a star swam into view overhead,
pale and cold, and bright as a lantern. Indistinct figures passed him
sometimes; when one came into sight, he would move close to the wall
with a hand on his knife, and the two would edge by one another
watchfully and in silence.
He was almost clear and could smell the sea, when he came round a
corner and met some four or five white figures in the middle of the
way, sheeted like ghosts and walking in silence. There was not a space
to avoid them, and he stopped dead for them to approach and speak--or,
if that was the way of it, to attack. Some of the others stopped too,
but one came on. Scott marked that he walked with a shuffle of his
feet, and made out, by the starlight, that his sheet clung about him
as though it were wet. And, at the same time, he noticed some faint
odor, too vague to put a name to, but sickly and suggestive of
hospitals.
"Go with God," said the figure, when it was close to him. The words
were Portuguese, but the inflection was foreign.
"Are you English?" demanded Scott sharply.
The other had halted a man's length from him. "Ay," he said, "I'm
English."
"Well," said Scott, making to move on, but pointing to where the other
white figures were waiting in a group near by, "what are those chaps
waiting for?"
"They'll not hurt you," answered the other. He mumbled a little when
he spoke, like a man with a full mouth.
"Anyhow," said Scott, "they'd better pass on; I prefer it that way.
Superban's not London, you know."
There came a laugh from the sheet that covered the man's head, short
and harsh. "If it was," he said, "you'd not be meeting us, me lad."
"Who are you?" demanded Scott. Some quality in the man--his manner of
speech, the tone of his laugh, or that faint, unidentifiable
taint--made him uneasy.
"Me?" said the man. "Well, I'll tell you. I'm Captain John Crowder, I
am--what's left of me, and that's a sick soul inside a dead body. And
them"--he made a motion toward the waiting ghosts--"them's my crew
these days. We're the chaps that fetches the dead, we are."
Scott peered at him eagerly, and stepped forward.
The other avoided him by stepping back. "Not too near," he said. "It
ain't sense."
"Captain, you said?" asked Scott. "Er--not a ship-captain, you mean?"
"Ay, I'm a ship-captain right enough," was the answer; "and in my
day----"
Scott interrupted excitedly. "See here," he said. "I've got a boat,
and I want a man to sail her to Delagoa Bay. I'll pay; I'll pay you a
level hundred to start by nine in the morning, cash down on the deck
the minute you're outside the bar. What d'you say to it?"
The sheeted man seemed to stare at him before he answered. "You're on
the run, then?" he mumbled at last. "You're dodging the plague, eh?"
"Yes," said Scott. "A level hundred, an' you can have the boat as
well."
"Man, you must be badly scared," said the other. "What's frightened
you? Are you feared you'll die?"
"Go to blazes," retorted Scott. "Will you come or won't you?"
The man laughed again, the same short cackle of mirth.
"Listen," urged Scott, wiping his forehead. "I've got a--er--I've got
a girl. You say I'm scared. Well, I am scared; every time I think of
her in this plague-rotten place, I go cold to the bone. Is it more
money you want? You can have it. But there's no time to lose; I'm not
the only one that knows about the boat."
"A girl." The other repeated the word, and then stood silent.
"Curse it!" cried Scott, "can't you say the word? Will you come, man?"
"It wouldn't do," said the sheeted man slowly. "You're fond of her,
eh? Ay, but it wouldn't do. Any other man 'u'd suit ye better, me
lad."
"There's no other man," said Scott angrily. "In all this blasted town
there's no man but you. I've been through it like a terrier under a
rick. And I'll tell you what." He took a step nearer; in his pocket
his hand was on his knife. "You can have a hundred and fifty," he
said, "and the boat, if you'll come. An' if you won't, by the Holy
Iron, I'll cut your bloomin' throat here where you stand."
The other did not flinch from him. "Ay, an' you'll do that?" he said.
"I like to hear you talk. Lad, do you know what fashion o' men it is
that serve the dead-carts? Do ye know?" he demanded, seeming to clear
his voice with an effort of the obstacle that hampered his speech.
"What d'you mean?" cried Scott.
"Look at me," bade the man, and drew back the sheet from his face. The
starlight showed him clear.
Scott looked, while his heart slowed down within him, and bowed his
head.
"And shall I steer your girl to Delagoa Bay?" the other asked.
"Yes," said Scott, after a pause. "There's nobody else, leper or not."
"Ah, well," said the leper, with a sigh, "so be it."
Scott fought with himself for mastery of the horror that rose in him
like a tide of fever, and when the leper had put back the sheet and
stood again a figure of the grave, he told him of the boat and how
others knew of it besides himself. In quick, panting sentences he bade
him get forthwith to the creek where the boat lay, directing him to it
through the paths of the night with the sure precision of a man
trained to the trek. He himself would go and fetch Incarnacion and
beat up some provisions, and thus they might get afloat before the
Italian and his mate came on the scene.
"It's every step of six miles," Scott explained. "Are you sure you can
walk it?"
The leper nodded under his hood. "I'll do it," he said. "And if
there's to be a fight, I'm not so far gone but what--" He broke off
with a short spurt of laughter. "It'll be something to feel
deck-planks under me again," he said.
"Then let's be gone," cried Scott.
"Wait." The captain that had been stayed him. "There's just this,
matey. Have a shawl or the like on your girl's shoulders. They wear
'em, you know. An' then, when you come in sight o' me, you can rig it
over her head an' all. For it's--it's truth, no woman should set eyes
on the like o' me."
"I'll do it," said Scott. "You're a man, Captain, anyhow."
"I was," said the other, and turned away.
Scott had a dozen things to do in no more than a pair of hours. They
were not to be done, but he did them. A couple of donkeys were
procured without difficulty; he knew of a stable with a flimsy door. A
revolver, his own small odds and ends, all his money, and such food as
he could lay hands on--by rousing reluctant storekeepers with outcries
and expediting commerce with violence--were got together. Then
Incarnacion must be fetched. She came at once, smiling drowsily, with
a flush of sleep on her little ardent face and all her belongings in a
bundle no bigger than a hat-box. But, with all his urgency, the
eastern sky was stained with dawn before he was clear of the town,
bludgeoning the donkeys before him, with the gear on one and
Incarnacion laughing and crooning on the other.
The beach stretched in a yellow bow on either hand, fringed with bush
and palms, receding to where the ultimate jaws of the bay stood black
and thin against the sunrise. Once upon it, they could be seen by
whoever should look from the town, and there was peremptory occasion
for haste. Scott had counted on forcing the journey into a little over
an hour, but he was not prepared for the eccentricities of a pack
adjusted on a donkey's back by an amateur. There is no art in the
world more arbitrary than that of tying a package on a beast. It must
be done just so, with just such a hitch and such an adjustment of the
burden, or one's rope might as well be of sand. These refinements were
outside Scott's knowledge, and he had not gone far before he saw his
bags and bundles clear themselves and tumble apart. There was a halt
while he picked them up and lashed them on the ass anew. Again and
again it happened, till his patience was raw; and all the time the
steady sun swarmed up the sky and day grew into full being.
Incarnacion sat serenely in her place while these troubles occupied
him, smoking her cigarette and looking about her. He was involved in
an effort to jam the pack and the donkey securely in one overwhelming
intricacy of knots when she called to him.
"Jock," she said.
"Yes, what's up?" he grunted, hauling remorselessly on a line with a
knee against the ass's circumference.
"A man," she said placidly. "He come along, too, behin' us."
"Eh? Where?" he demanded, putting a last knot to the tedious
structure.
Incarnacion pointed to the bush. "I see him poke out hees head two
times," she explained.
Scott passed his hand behind him to his revolver, and stared with
narrow eyes along the green frontier at the bush. He could see
nothing.
"A big man, 'Carnacion?" he asked. "Mustaches? Black hair?"