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 c