DOLORES DEMANDS A DECISION.
Milo let loose his infernal blast, and the smashing report was followed
by a hush as of death. Then through the blinding and choking powder-reek
came the groans and shrieks of the mutilated wretches whose evil fate
had placed them in the path of the horribly despatched treasure. The eye
could not penetrate the smoke that filled the narrow rock passage;
Stumpy and his men were blackened and smeared with smoke and sweat,
demoniacal to the ultimate degree; and these were the men Milo hurled
forth now to make the _débâcle_ complete.
"Out upon them!" he cried, urging Stumpy to the ledge. "Leave not one of
these dogs alive, Stumpy, and thy fortune is made. Thy Sultana will
reward thee magnificently. Out with ye!"
Stumpy hitched his poor clubfoot along in brave haste, and flourished
his cutlas in a hand that dripped red. For once in his stormy life the
crippled pirate felt something of the glow that pervaded the heart of
devoted Milo: for a moment he felt he was redeeming himself by enlisting
his undoubted courage in a worthy cause.
"At 'em, lads!" he roared, leaping down through the smoke. "Dolores,
Dolores! Give 'em hell, bullies!"
He stumbled and fell, his crippled foot playing him false. He sprang up
with a curse of pain, bit hard on his lip, and plunged into the huddled
remnants of the attackers, his roaring bullies at his heels. His
onslaught was the one thing needed to put terror into the hearts of the
survivors of Milo's blast. Coming through the leek like so many devils,
Stumpy and his crew put their foes to flight and followed eagerly,
hungrily; the forest rang and echoed with the clash of action and the
smashing of underbrush in panicky flight.
Now Milo, his duty to his Sultana performed, thought of Pascherette. The
little octoroon lay where she had fallen, a pitiful little huddled heap;
never once had her pain-dulled eyes left the giant, or the place where
he might appear. And now she saw him coming toward her, not as a
ministering angel, but like a figure of wrath, swinging his great
broad-ax in one hand as easily as another man might swing a cutlas. She
shivered as he stood over her, accusing.
"Milo!" she panted, gazing up at his magnificent height in plaintive
supplication.
"Serpent!" he replied, and the utter contempt in his voice went to her
heart like a sword-thrust. "Hast a God to pray to before I send thy
false soul adrift?"
"I have but one God, Milo; to Him I should not pray."
She fixed her burning gaze upon him, and in her pained eyes blazed all
the tremendous love that actuated her small being.
"A God thou canst not pray to, traitor? Art afraid, then?"
"Not afraid, Milo," she whispered, and her eyelids drooped. "I cannot
pray to one who looks down upon me as thou dost."
"I?" The giant's expression changed to frowning displeasure rather than
anger. "I?" he repeated.
"Thee, my heart. Thou'rt my god, my all. For thee I have done this
thing. For thee, who even now canst not see where lies the falsity.
Milo"--her weak voice sank to a low murmur--"I beg thy forgiveness. My
love for thee caused me to sin. My life is to pay the supreme price. Let
me die at least in thy forgiveness."
"Forgive? Forgive thee, who worked for the destruction of the being I
worship? Rather shall I speed thy soul!"
Pascherette struggled to a kneeling position, crossed her tiny hands on
her panting breast, and looked full into his eyes as a wounded hart
looks at the hunter. Her lip quivered, her small, gold-tinted face, once
so piquant and full of allure, had taken on a gray hue from her pain,
but there was no hiding the great, overwhelming love for the giant that
gleamed in her eyes.
"Milo," she said, and the word was a caress, "Milo, if thou must, strike
swiftly. Yet again I ask, forgive."
The giant slowly lowered his great ax, and his honest heart answered the
pitiful plea. His deep chest swelled and throbbed; into his face crept
the look that had been there on that day when he told Pascherette he
loved her--loved her, yet worshiped Dolores as his gods. Letting the ax
fall to his elbow by the thong at the haft, he stooped and tenderly
picked up the girl, carrying her as a child carries a doll; yet his face
was averted from Pascherette's passionate lips that sought to kiss him.
"Not yet can I forgive thee," he said. "Be content that I shall not kill
thee, girl. Perhaps, if thy acts have failed in their end, I may forgive
thee; not yet."
He carried her around to the great rock, and through the passage into
the great chamber, bursting in upon a situation of growing intensity.
Dolores sat on a corner of the table, with all her seductive lures in
her beautiful face, smiling invitingly at Rupert Venner. Craik Tomlin
glared at both, yet his gaze seemed hard to restrain from wandering
around the gorgeous chamber, whose wealth he saw now for the first time.
Venner, too, had been seized by the jewel-hunger, although neither he,
nor Tomlin, guessed at the immensely greater wealth that had been
revealed to Pearse. As for Pearse, he sat glowering in his chair,
nervous and smoldering; ready at a hint to draw steel without caring
what the object. He simply saw rivalry where fifteen minutes before he
had thought his own course clear.
Milo appeared to them; carrying his sobbing burden, and the interruption
brought a blaze of fury to Dolores's face. She went pale, and her hands
clenched and opened nervously.
"Well, slave?" she cried, and Milo started. Never had she used that tone
to him.
"Sultana, I thought thou wert alone," he replied, haltingly. "I have
brought Pascherette to thee for forgiveness."
"I forgive? Pish! What care I for thy chit? Take her where ye will, and
trouble me not with such trash. Out, now! Let me not see her face again,
and I care not what ye do with her. But haste. I have work for thee and
a score of slaves. Bring them here quickly!"
Silently Milo bore Pascherette to the small room beyond the great
chamber, which had been her resting-place while not in attendance on
Dolores. And there, still shaking his head to her plea, though with
deepening trouble in his eyes, he left her, crying herself into a fitful
slumber.
Then with slaves dragged from the corners where they had cowered during
the fight, he entered the great chamber, and at Dolores's command set
them to carrying out the closed treasure-chests that stood in their old
places around the walls.
And the sight of the great chests actually going out brought fiery
jealousy back to the eyes of the three yachtsmen. Now Dolores
half-closed her own inscrutable eyes, and watched them, catlike,
cunning. Pearse sprang from the great chair and began pacing the floor
in a heat. Venner alone seemed to retain any vestige of control over
his feelings; and he rapidly lost his color and began to peer about him.
One chest went out, and the cries of the slaves could be heard as they
lowered it over the cliff. They returned for another, and now Dolores
leaped to her feet and followed them, flinging over her shoulder a smile
of invitation. Pearse answered instantly; the others paused. Then she
laughed like a siren and held out her hands to the hesitant ones, and
said softly and pleasantly:
"Have no fears, timid ones. Thy minds are indeed hard to fathom. I but
want to show thee how I am repaying thee for thy sufferings here. Come."
They followed her, and together they entered the rocky tunnel. At the
end of it the yellow sunlight blazed like a fire, in the circular
aperture was framed a picture of wonderful beauty. The blue sky, flecked
with fleecy cloudlets, filled the upper half of the circle; then the
sparkling sea of deeper blue lifted its dazzling whitecaps to the kiss
of the trades and formed a gem-like background for the brazen sands, the
glowing green-and-purple of the Point, and the dainty ivory-and-gold of
the white schooner.
It was all mellowed and diminished as seen through a glass at great
distance; and on the shore the men toiling to load a great
treasure-chest into a long-boat looked like tiny manikins posed about a
delicate model of marine life. The second chest yet stood on the
cliff-edge, slaves about it lashing double slings and tackles that led
from a boulder for lowering it down.
Dolores stepped back, permitting the three men to take in the view
without restriction. And she watched them again, her face enigmatic if
they glanced at her, breaking into an expression of nearing triumph when
they looked away, and left her free to scrutinize them. She saw John
Pearse step a pace behind the others, and his fingers clutched absently
at his rapier-hilt while the veins on his neck stood out and throbbed
like live things.
"One more chest, perhaps two, and I shall see who will be my man!" she
whispered to herself.
Then she left them without a word, and returned to the great chamber,
where she snatched up an immense rope of pearls and resumed her seat on
the edge of the table. There she sat, giving them no glance, when the
three men came back, hastily, uneasily, one behind the other, with
Tomlin bringing up the rear, scowling at Venner's back malevolently.
Idly now Dolores rolled her pearls on the table, and one by one she
crushed them with her dagger-hilt--crushed in one moment the wealth of
many a petty princeling, and still crushed gem after gem without so much
as a flicker of interest on her cool face. The three men glared at her,
and at each other, and the stress they were under could be felt like an
impending electric storm. Tomlin's teeth gritted together harshly, his
lips were dripping saliva, and he could stand it no longer. He stepped
suddenly before Dolores, seized her hands, and cried:
"Woman, you are mad! Do you know what those things are? They are pearls,
woman, pearls! Stop this crazy destruction, and in God's name let us go
before you madden us."
Dolores turned her cool gaze upon him, drew her hand away easily yet
without apparent effort, and crushed another pearl between her gleaming
teeth.
"Pearls?" she repeated, tossing away the shattered gem. "Pearls, yes,
friend. What of it? Do ye value these trifles, then? Pish! I have such
things as these, aye, one for every hair on thy hot head. But let ye
go--ha! That is in thy hands, my friend, thine and thy companions."
"Yes, we know your price!" gasped Venner hoarsely, staring full into her
eyes. "But what is to prevent us now, when we have you alone, and that
great giant is away, from binding you fast and sailing away with the
treasure you have already put in my vessel?"
"What can prevent?" she echoed, simulating surprise that such a question
should occur to any one. "Nothing shall prevent, my friend, if any of ye
think to try it. Have I not said my treasure is for the man who wins it.
Am I not waiting for the man able to take it, that I may go with him,
too? Here--" She suddenly flung down the pearls at Tomlin's feet,
glided close to Venner, and thrust her red lips up to him, her violet
eyes like brimming pools behind her drooping lashes. "Here, tie me, my
Rupert. Here are my hands; there my feet. Bind me well, and go if thou
canst. What, wilt thou not? There, I knew thee better than thou knowest
thyself."
She stepped back with a low laugh, and her arm brushed his cheek,
sending the hot blood surging to his temples. John Pearse crouched
toward Venner, as if waiting for him to lay a finger on Dolores at his
peril. She smiled at all three, and stepped over to the side of the
chamber, where she carelessly pointed out sacred vessels and altar
furnishings, gems of art and jewel-crusted lamps.
"Here, also, is a reason why ye will not go, my friends. Your eyes,
accustomed to these things in the great world outside, dare not ignore
their worth. And I tell ye that all the treasure now going to the vessel
could not purchase the thousandth part of my real treasure, which I will
not show, until I know my man." She glanced at Pearse as she spoke, and
saw rising greed in his eyes. He had seen the real treasure; he was ripe
for her hand. Milo and his slaves returned for another chest, and
Dolores waited until they had gone; then she glided swiftly toward the
passage, and turned at the door.
"I shall return in fifteen minutes, gentlemen," she said. "Then my man
must be ready, or I will drop the great rock at the entrance, and leave
ye all three caged here until ye die. For go I will, mated or mateless,
with all my treasure, ere the sun sinks into the western sea." And as
she left them she flashed a look of appeal at John Pearse.