'Did you want me, 'Carnaçion?' 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 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, 'Carnaçion. 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.

6

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, 'Carnaçion. 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."

ends

Incarnaçion sealed the cigarette carefully, pinched the loose 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, 'Carnaçion, 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 Incarnaçion.

He smiled, a brief smile of friendship.

'That would do first-rate,' he explained; 'only, you see, there's no kafir, 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, 'Carnaçion, I've been up and down this old rabbit-warren of a city since sundown 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 Incarnaçion gaily. Then we stop, Jock-we stop here, eh? '

'There'll be something broken first,' retorted Scott.

'It's all bloomin' rot, Incarnaçion; 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 Incarnaçion helpfully.

'Just so,' said Scott. There was. He's dead.'

Incarnaçion crossed herself in silence, and they sat for a while without speaking. From the Praça 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 roof 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, the unseen sick man gabbled his prayers in a halting monotone. A quick heat of wrath lit in Scott as his thoughts travelled round the situation, for Incarnaçion 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, Carnaçion?' 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 pecker up, little girl, an' we 'll be married in Delagoa Bay.'

He rose to his feet. 'Kiss me good-night, 'Carnaçion.' 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 flavour of them yet on his mouth and new resolution to pursue his quest for a sailor.

He moved on to the Praça, where still the stridency of the music 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 kneeled 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 accoutrements 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?'

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'-warsman, 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 of 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, the café roared and clattered about him, he unheeding. To his right a group of white-clad officers chattered 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 someone. on de mud now.'

VOL. XXVIII.-NO. 163, N.S.

'But hees boat, she lie

8

one.

'An' ye know where she is?' demanded another voice, a deeper

'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 Incarnaçion, 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 almost an obvious remedy; but it would not be less than a week before he could get clear of the gaol, and in that time anyone might find the boat. He grasped his change and went out. There was but 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 Praça 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 out-distanced 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 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 odour, 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.

way. Superban's not London, you know.'

I prefer it that

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 towards 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 dayday—'

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?'