found him
gone. The mob saw it, too, and seethed about her with hungry faces.

"Come on, lads!" they howled. "Milo's gone inside to open up the loot
for us." A grimy hand snatched at the girl's tunic, and in a flash the
entrance was choked with fiercely striving shapes.

With a gasping cry of fury Dolores struck aside the bold hand, and with
a panther-spring she was upon him. One slender, brown hand, strong as a
steel claw, gripped his throat; the other hand gripped a glittering
dagger that swept like the arrow of fate to his heart and dropped him a
log at her feet. Just for a breath the crowd paused in awe; then
hoarsely growling they packed forward again, and Dolores found herself
fighting desperately against men maddened into steel-armed wolves,
thirsty for her blood in payment for that split. She more than held her
own by sheer skill and suppleness for a space; but assailed from all
sides save the back she speedily felt her limbs growing heavy and
awkward, and a cutlas sang above her bent head when her foot had failed,
leaving her without guard or avoidance.

Then she knew that she had been permitted to win her spurs. For the
threatening cutlas was caught in mid air by a huge bare hand, wrenched
from its owner's grasp, and returned point first into the assailant's
breast. And Milo's deep voice rang in her ear:

"Step into the passage, Sultana, and swiftly. Have a care for the body
on the floor, but tarry not. To pause is to die!"

She felt herself drawn inside, the battle seemed to leave her isolated,
the passage was as still as a cloister after the turmoil outside, and
she stumbled along in the dim red glow, barely avoiding tripping over a
body on the floor which a glance showed her to be a corpse. This was the
man who had tried to crush back the rock door on Milo.

Dolores spurned the body with her foot, and abruptly turned back, in a
rage to think that she had permitted the giant slave to order her into
skulking security. She halted as swiftly as she had turned; for in the
aperture at the end of the passage the huge form of Milo stood, both
hands raised, and in them a cask was poised. A queer, spluttering sound
at first puzzled Dolores; then she made out a short, hanging fuse
depending from the cask, and it spluttered as it dwindled, flinging
sparks around the giant's bowed head until the point of fire seemed
ready to disappear in the bung-hole.

"Treasure for dogs!" roared Milo. "Divide it among thee!" Th