ell the pitch that fed them. And, over all, an unseen sick man
gabbled his prayers in a halting monotone. A quick heat of wrath lit
in Scott as his thoughts traveled around the situation; for
Incarnacion 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, 'Carnacion?" 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 courage up, little girl, an'
we'll be married in Delagoa Bay."

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

He moved on to the Praca, where the stridency of the music still
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 knelt 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 accouterments 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 Scot