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.