woman; she
saw Sancho, too, but instinctively knew that after Milo's treatment of
him he could not be dangerous; ignoring the man, she drew her knife as
she ran, and with a brief, panting, "That for thee, witch!" struck the
old woman down at Sancho's stumbling feet.

Now she gave all her energies to subduing the fire; and, swiftly
rallying every man or woman in the camp she drove them with blows and
shrill invective to beating the blaze with sodden boughs and wet sand.
She set men with poles to batter down the doors to the cells; but the
doors had been built to oppose that kind of entry. Frantically she drove
the fire-fighters to another place, while she heaped up fresh fire
against the doors in the hope of burning down what could not be burst.
And it was the last up-blazing shaft of fire as the doors fell that
Dolores saw in the moment she brought the schooner to anchor.
Pascherette was emerging, singed and blackened, with dark rage in her
glittering eyes at having found the cells empty, when Dolores and her
crew arrived on the scene with Venner and Tomlin and Pearse in their
midst.

"What! Pascherette again?" cried Dolores, glaring at the girl with red
suspicion in her face. "Is this thy work? Speak!"

Pascherette stared in surprise at the three strangers, and her painfully
scorched lips strove to answer. Her throat was dry, and at first words
refused to come. But in the pause, when fifty faces glowered at the
girl, something stumbled across the open in the firelight, and Milo's
sharp vision distinguished it. He went up to Pascherette, with deep
concern in his devoted eyes, and laid a strong arm about her trembling
shoulders. She relaxed toward him, and managed to whisper to him. He
flung out his free hand toward the open space, and cried to Dolores:

"There is the traitor, Sultana! This is the avenger."

Dolores looked; every eye was turned where Milo pointed; and the brutal
laughter of some of the hardiest pirates mingled with the groans of the
three yachtsmen, whose escape from a horrible death by fire could not
reconcile them to the staggering vengeance that had overtaken the wretch
who had attempted that death. Bathed in an infernal glow, grotesque as a
creature of a diseased brain, the unhuman Sancho staggered across the
glade and into the darkness of the forest, bearing in his handless arms
a ghastly burden in which the hilt of Pascherette's dagger glittered and
flashed as the firelight touched it.

"Bac