Ben turned. At sight of his scarred face the woman shrank from him, and then the lad remembered the infection that was upon him.
"The woman shrank from him."
"Stand back from me!" he cried. "I have been ill—it is the smallpox, as they call it—and all my shipmates are dead of it; all except one, who is now aboard the brig, across the hill there, in the bay." He stepped back as he spoke, and put her to the windward of him, so that the infection might not reach her.
"A ship!" she cried in agitation, clasping her hands. "At last! at last! And you can rescue me. You can carry me across to Scotland, and I shall no longer pine and languish on this barren, heaven-forsaken rock!"
The boy marvelled at her words, not understanding her meaning. He even wondered if she were in her right senses.
"How do you name these islands, ma'am?" he asked, as if to test her sanity.
She looked about her nervously, as though half afraid that the very birds should overhear her.
"This where we now are is called Hirta," she answered. "The rock to the north is Borrera. The one to the west is Soa. They are the St. Kilda islands, and they lie out some fourscore miles west from the mainland of Scotland."
As Ben listened to her voice, and contemplated her delicate hands and her refined face, he knew almost by instinct that, in spite of her coarse, homespun clothing, she was not of the common sort, but a woman of good birth. He stood silently watching her, wondering how it happened that a gentlewoman should be in such a place.