driving the beaten crew, and the men she had picked out were shorn of
all indecision as Milo leaped on board with a bull-throated shout and
gained her side.

"Sancho! Rufe! Have done with this play!" she cried, placing herself in
front of the blood-hungry horde. "Dogs, fall back! Have ye no memory
that ye forget how Dolores strikes?"

Milo had picked up a handspike, and with it across his breast he bore
back the scowling rascals, smiling the while himself with quiet
contempt. But one, hardier than the rest, ran to the skylight, dashed in
the glass with his boot, and cried with outflung arm:

"A plague upon her and her strokes. See yonder, lads--her cunning
trick--our sloop comes back empty-handed, as she well knew it would--and
here lies to your hands work that the Red Chief had reveled in. Down
with her and the big bull! Below is loot fit for bold fellows."

Without moving from where he stood, Milo pivoted around, the heavy
handspike--six feet of true ash--rigid as a bar of iron, took the
overbold pirate at the base of the skull and spilled his brains into the
breach he had made. Growling with fury, a man from Sancho's crew sprang
to avenge the stroke with steel, and his blade creased down Milo's
sturdy ribs before the giant had recovered from his own swing. And with
the hissing slit of ripping skin Milo's debt was paid for him. Dolores,
agile as a panther, reached the pirate with her cutlas pointed, and the
steel hilt rang against his breast-bone.

But in the momentary pause in her vigilance, a score of Rufe's ruffians
burst past her and poured below into the saloon, where renewed sounds of
combat told of the ferreting out of the beaten crew.

"Milo, follow me!" cried Dolores, springing down the stairs herself,
careless whether her wavering half-dozen followed or stayed. Her whole
soul was sickened with the fear that this vessel, the long-wished-for
means of her release from what had become a hateful bondage, was in
danger of destruction at the red hands of Rufe's undisciplined dogs. And
swiftly approaching on the freshening evening breeze her sloop grew
momentarily clearer to the eye; it was easy to fancy she could hear the
howls of disappointed rage pealing up from her deck; it needed no second
sight to determine the side those humiliated pirates would take, when
they hove alongside another prey which promised at least a taste of
coveted loot.

In the brief time since the pirates' entry the schooner's saloon