here is
the pirate who should call me queen! There"--with a gesture toward
Rubens's great canvas--"are men that I would command. Here, I must stay,
why? Because a dead man willed it so. May I wither eternally if I make
not my own laws. Milo!"

She clapped her hands, and in a moment the giant was before her,
reverent awe in every line of his huge body.

"Sultana?"

"Are my beasts well fed?"

"They eat like crocodiles, guzzle like swine, Sultana."

"See that the liquor flows freely, Milo. And a word in thy ear. We shall
go from here as quickly as the fates will send a ship. Let no sail pass
henceforth."

"Lady, that may not be--"

"Silence! Give me no may not! When I, Dolores, will to go, who shall
stay me?"

"Death lies beyond the horizon for thee as for all of us, Sultana.
Pirate the Red Chief was last of the band; every man who calls thee
queen is under sentence of death; the pillage of a hundred ships lies
here. Here is safety. The Red Chief's law--"

"Peace! I am the law! Seek me that ship--and quickly. Shall I live among
such carrion, when the world is peopled with such as those?" she cried
with a sweeping gesture toward a life-size "Three Graces," by Correggio,
epitomizing feminine grace indeed.

"Thou art fairer, Sultana," replied the giant simply; and the girl
flushed warmly for all her moody dissatisfaction. She smiled kindly upon
the slave, and said more softly: "Thy devotion pleases me, Milo. Yet is
my will unchanged. Seek me that ship. I will go from here. Stay, if thou
wilt, or art afraid."

"Lady," returned the giant, "when the Red Chief, thy father, took me
from the slave ship he gave me liberty--liberty to serve him. He has
gone; my care is now the queen, his daughter. Going or staying, Milo
remains thy bodyguard. Pardon if I offended thee; thy father desired
what I have told thee. But the ship. This evening, at sundown, a sail
leaped in sight beyond the Tongue."

"This evening! And ye said no word of it?" cried Dolores, blazing with
fresh anger. She leaned forward in her chair as if crouching for a
spring.

"It passed as swiftly as it appeared, Sultana. No other eye save mine
saw it; the men know nothing--"

"It is well, Milo. I had forgotten thy eyes were twice as keen as any
other man's. Keep that condor's vision of thine bent to seaward, and
tell no man of what comes into view. Bring me the news; I shall know how
to keep my rascals in hand. Now go and send to me a woman to serve me