S IN THE BALANCE. 715

November 23, 1918

XX. DOLORES DEMANDS A DECISION. 147
XXI. THE SLUMBERING SAVAGE. 150
XXII. THE FLIGHT OF THE FEU FOLLETTE. 153
XXIII. STUMPY FIRES THE MAGAZINE. 155
XXIV. MILO CROSSES THE BAR. 157
XXV. THE TOLL OF THE GODS. 159

The Pirate Woman

by Captain Dingle

Author of "The Coolie Ship," "Steward of the Westward," etc.

CHAPTER I.

THE CAVE OF TERRIBLE THINGS.

A great unrest brooded over mountain and forest; the blue Caribbean lay
hushed and glaring, as if held in leash by a power greater than that
which ordered its daily ebb and flow.

Men moved or stood beneath the trees on the cliffside in attitudes of
supreme awe or growing uneasiness, according to their kind: for among
them were numbered Spaniard and Briton, creole and mulatto, Carib and
octoroon, with coal-black negroes enough to outnumber all the rest--and
it was upon these last that profound awe sat oppressively.

Apart, followed by a hundred furtive eyes, Dolores, daughter of Red
Jabez, ranged back and forth before the mighty rock portals of the Cave
of Terrible Things, like some magnificent tigress hedged with foes.
Beyond those portals Red Jabez, Sultan of pirates, arbiter of life and
death over the motley community, lay at grips with the grim specter to
whom he had consigned scores far more readily than he now yielded up
his own red-stained soul. Red Jabez was dying a death as hard as his
lurid life had been.

Beyond those rock portals none save Jabez and Milo, the herculean
Abyssinian slave, had ever passed. Dolores, next in line, was in
ignorance as deep as her meanest slave, concerning what lay beyond the
great mass of rock which formed the door, and which Milo alone could
move. She knew, as did every one, that the great chamber of Red Jabez
held some vast mystery; she suspected, as did the rest, that it
concealed wealth beyond dreams; deep down in her soul she hoped that
inviolate chamber held for her the means of emancipation; but of this
hope, none knew save herself. For Queen of Night though the white men
called her, Sultana though she was named with fear and submission by the
blacks, though her power was second only to that of Red Jabez, and
barely less than his, a canker gnawed at the heart of Dolores, the
canker of a suspicion that her power was but a