work ye mischief, have them open the other two chests. Quickly,
for I am faint."

Venner went to the chests himself and flung back the lids, which were
bolted on the outside and not locked. He stared for a moment,
unbelievingly, then nodded to Pearse. Pearse stared, too, in amazement,
and one after the other the sailors were called to see. They saw two
great strong-boxes filled to the brim with iron chains, broken cutlases,
rusty bilboes, and rock; a fool's treasure in truth.

"'Twas a trick to set my rascals at odds," Dolores told them when they
returned to her. "To thee, Pearse, I showed my treasure, and I fear that
blast has buried it beneath a mountain. Milo was to take it out. I
cannot believe it can have been taken away ere that powder blew it to
fragments. It was still in the powder store."

"Yes, I know," said Pearse quietly. "It was that which precipitated the
fight between us three that killed poor Tomlin."

"Well, if thou still art hungry for treasure, my friends, there is my
store buried where thou knowest, and I shrewdly fear but few of my
people are left. But I am slipping. Stand aside, that I may close my
eyes on the place I called home."

Dolores ceased speaking and lay, scarcely stirred by her faint
respiration, gazing over the schooner's stern at the sinking sun. The
golden disk was turning to red and across its darkened face the cliff
and Point stood out in sharp silhouette, which grew larger as the great
glowing sun was distorted and enlarged by the refraction near the
horizon. The breeze had changed, and now blew with gentle strength out
of the west, a fair wind for their homeward course, and the strands of
Dolores's glorious hair blew about her face like tendrils about an
orchid of unearthly beauty.

Presently she stirred again, and now she summoned all her remaining
vitality to raise herself on an elbow. Pearse and Venner leaned closer,
sensing the end in the tremendous brilliancy of her wide, dry eyes.

She spoke softly, yet with a thrilling note of yearning that choked her
hearers with harsh sobs.

"Father, I come," she whispered. "If I have failed in obeying thy
commands, I ask forgiveness, for I am but a woman. A woman with
instincts and yearnings, born of the mother I never knew. Thy very
treasures that were to appease me put the yearning more strongly in my
brain. Thy teachings showed me a world of beasts and savagery; thy
treasures gave me dreams of a world peopled by such as I wou