"I know him," he answered, and drove the donkeys on, thwacking the
pack-ass cautiously for the sake of the load.
It was an anxious passage then, on the open beach. The men who
followed had the cover of the shrubs; theirs was the advantage to
choose the moment of collision. They could shoot at him from their
concealment and flick his brains out comfortably before he could set
eyes on them; or they could shoot the donkeys down, or put a bullet
into Incarnacion where she rode, quiet and regardless of all. He
flogged the beasts on to a trot with a hail of blows, and ran up into
the bush to take an observation.
His foot was barely off the sand of the beach when a shot sounded, and
the wind of the bullet made his eyes smart. Invention was automatic in
his mind. At the noise, he fell forthwith on his face, crashing across
a bush, so that his head was up and his pistol in reach of his hand.
Thus he lay, not moving, but searching through half-closed eyes the
maze of green before him. He heard the rustle of grass, and prepared
for action, every nerve taut; and there came into sight the big
Italian, smiling broadly, a Winchester in his hand.
In Scott's brain some nucleus of motion gave the signal. With a single
movement, his knee crooked under him and he swung the heavy revolver
forward. A howl answered the shot, and he saw the Italian blunder
against a palm, drop his rifle, and scamper out of sight. Firing
again, Scott dashed forward and picked up the Winchester, while from
in front of him the Italian or his companion sent bullet after bullet
about his ears. It was enough of a victory to carry on with, for
Incarnacion would have heard the shots and might come back to him; so
he turned and ran again, and caught her just as she was dismounting.
It was a race now. He silenced the girl's questions sharply, and
thumped the donkeys to a canter, running doggedly behind them with his
stick busy. In the bush, too, there was the noise of hurry; he heard
the crash of feet running, and twice they shot at him. Then
Incarnacion gasped, and held up her cloak to show him a hole through
it; but she was not touched. He swore, but did not cease to flog and
run. The strain told on him; his legs were water, and the sweat stood
on his face in great gouts; and, to embitter the labor, suddenly there
was a shout from ahead. The men had passed him, and he saw the Italian
show himself with a gesture of derision, and disappear again before he
could aim.
"They'll kill the leper," he thought, "and they'll get the boat. But
they'll not get out. I'll be on my belly in the bush then, with this."
And he patted the stock of the Winchester.
"You bin shoot a man, Jock?" asked Incarnacion, as the desperate pace
flagged.
"Not yet," he answered grimly; "but there's time yet, 'Carnacion."
Already he could see, through the slim palms, the straight mast of the
boat against the sky, with its gear about it, not a mile away. He
cocked his ear for the shot that should announce its capture and the
end of the leper.
"Ai, hear that!" exclaimed Incarnacion.
It was a sound of screams--cries of men in stress, traveling thinly
over the distance. Scott checked at it as a horse checks at a snake in
the road, for the cries had a note of wild terror that daunted him.
"You frightened, Jockie?" crooned Incarnacion. "See," she said,
lifting her hand over him, "I make the cross on you."
"It's the confounded mysteriousness that gets me," said Scott, wiping
his forehead. "Here, get on, you beasts. We'll have to take a look at
'em, anyhow."
He strode on between the animals, the rifle in the crook of his arm,
ready for use, and all his senses alert and vivacious. Day was broad
above them now and bitter with the forenoon heat. At their side the
bay was rippled with a capricious breeze, and in all the far prospect
of earth and sea none moved save themselves, detached in a haunting
significance of solitude.
"Ah!" He stopped short and jerked the rifle forward. In the bush ahead
there was a movement; for an instant he saw something white flash
among the palms, and then the Italian burst forth and came toward
them, running all at large, with head down and jolting elbows. He ran
like a man hunted by crazy fears, and did not see Scott till he was
within twenty yards.
"Halt, there, Dago," ordered Scott, and brought the butt to his
shoulder.
The Italian gasped and blundered to his knees, turning on Scott a
glazed and twitching face.
"For peety, for peety!" he quavered.
"Draw that shawl over your face, 'Carnacion," said Scott, without
turning his head. "Can you see now?"
"No," she answered.
He fired, and the Italian sprawled forward on his face, plowing up the
sand with clutching hands.
"Keep the shawl over your eyes, 'Carnacion," directed Scott, and soon
they came round a palm-bunch and were on the bank of the creek, where
a fifteen-ton cutter lay on the mud. A plank lay between her deck and
the shore, and, as they came to it, the captain hailed them from the
cockpit.
"Come aboard," he said. "All's ready."
Scott picked Incarnacion up in his arms, wound another fold of the
shawl about her face, and carried her aboard. He set her down on the
settee in the cabin, released her head, and kissed her fervently. "Now
make yourself comfy here, little 'un," he said; "for here you stay
till we make Delagoa."
He helped her to dispose herself in the cabin, showed her its
arrangements, and saw her curious delight in the little space-saving
contrivances. Then he went out, closing the door behind him. It did
not occur to him to render her any explanations; what Scott did was
always sufficient for Incarnacion.
Again on deck, he found the swathed leper busy, and started when he
saw, along the banks of the creek, a gang of shrouded figures at work
with a hawser.
"My crew," said the captain. "They're to haul us off the mud."
"Then," said Scott, "it was them----"
The leper laughed. "Ay, they ran from us," he said. "They ran from the
lazaretto-hands. The one we caught, we put him overside for the
crocodiles; an' you got the other."
"They chased him?" asked Scott, trembling with the thought.
"Ay," said the leper; "they uncovered their faces and they chased. Ye
heard the squealing?"
He broke off to oversee his gang. "Make fast on that stump!" he
called. In spite of the disease that blurred his speech, there was the
authority of the quarter-deck in his voice. "Now, all hands tally on
and walk her down." And the silent lepers in their grave-clothes
ranged themselves on the rope like the ghosts of drowned seamen.
When the mainsail filled and the cutter heeled to the breeze, pointing
fair for the bar, the leper looked back. Scott followed his glance. On
the spit by the mouth of the creek stood the white figures in a little
group, lonely and voiceless, and over them the palms floated against
the sky like tethered birds.
"There was some that was almost Christians," said the captain;
"they'll miss me, they will." And after a pause he added: "And I'll be
missing them, too; for they was my mates."
There were six days of sailing ere the captain made his landfall, and
they stood off till evening. Then he put in to where the sea shelved
easily on a beach four or five miles south of the town, and it was
time to part.
"You can wade ashore," said the leper.
Scott opened the doors of the little cabin. On the settee Incarnacion
lay asleep, her dark hair tumbled about her warm face. He was about to
wake her, but stayed his hand and drew back. "You can look," he said
to the leper in a whisper.
The shrouded man bent and looked in; Scott marked that he held his
breath. For a full minute he stared in silence, his shoulders blocking
the little door; then he drew back.
"Ay," he murmured, "it's like that they are, lad; and it's grand to be
a man--it's grand to be a man!"
Scott closed the doors gently. "If ever there was a man," he began,
but choked and stopped. "What will you do now?" he asked.
"Oh, I'll just be gettin' back," said the leper. "You see, there's
them lads--my crew. It was me made a crew of 'em in that lazaretto.
They was just stinking heathen till I come. An' I sort of miss 'em, I
do."
"Will you shake hands?" said Scott, torn by a storm of emotions.
The leper shook his head. "You've the girl to think of," he said. "But
good luck to the pair of ye. Ye'll make a fine team."
Half an hour later Scott and Incarnacion stood together on the beach
and watched the cutter's lights as she stood on a bowline to seaward.
"Kiss your hand to it, darling," said Scott.
"I bin done it," answered Incarnacion.
[Illustration: The Audrey Arms Oxbridge Middlesex