utter 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.