from his face.

Presently they stopped, and Dolores stood up alertly. There was but a
moment's delay, while Pascherette bound her hair more securely; then,
with a flirting hand-wave, the little octoroon darted from Milo,
wriggled through the bushes, and ran lightly down to the sea. In another
moment her small, black head was moving rapidly toward the schooner, her
golden skin flashing warmly in the sun as her arms swept over and over
in an adept stroke that carried her forward with the speed of a fish.

CHAPTER VI.

THE PARTY FROM THE YACHT.

The schooner yacht Feu Follette swam sluggishly along shore, her lofty
canvas flapping in the faint air. On her spotless quarter-deck, Rupert
Venner, wealthy idler and owner of the vessel, lounged in a deck-chair a
picture of the utter finality of boredom. His guests, Craik Tomlin and
John Pearse, made perfunctory pretense of admiring the lovely coast
scenery along the port hand; but their air was that of men surfeited
with sights, tired of the languorous calm, _blase_ of life.

The schooner's appointments typified money in abundance. From forecastle
capstan to binnacle she glowed and glittered with massive brass and
ornate gilding; along the waist six burnished-bronze cannon stood on
heavily carved carriages, lashings and breechings as white as a shark's
tooth; over the quarter-deck double awnings gave ample clearance to the
swing of the main boom--the outer of dazzling white canvas, the inner of
richest, striped silk-and-cotton mixture. The open doors of the
deckhouse companion revealed an interior of ivory paneling touched with
gold, and hung with heavy velvet punkahs. The walls were embellished
with exactly the right number of art gems to establish the artistic
perception of the owner and to whet the expectation for more yet unseen.
But, with all this, the Feu Follette housed a discontented master and
discontented guests.

"Oh, for a breeze!" grumbled Pearse, breaking in on the frowning
silence. "How much longer are we to drift around these stagnant seas,
Venner?"

"The very next slant of wind shall wing us homeward," replied Venner
dreamily. "I, too, am sick of the cruise and its deadly monotony."

Again silence, marred only by creak of gear and flap of idle sails. The
schooner barely moved now, though the western sky held promise of a
breeze later on. Then came a cry from one of the negro crew forward,
and its tenor stirred the party into mild interest.

"