schooner and coming fast with sail and sweeps, while her crew stared over the low bulwarks in puzzlement as to the reason for the hasty exodus from the strange craft.

“Here, Milo, is fresh fare of trouble. Hast brought my own flag?”

“Here, Sultana,” replied Milo, taking a carefully folded silken banner from a pocket in his leathern tunic.

“Hoist it, then, at the main! Perhaps Hanglip and Caliban, Stumpy and the rest of my brave jackals, will forego their expected meal at sight of it. And send forth a shout for slaves; this vessel must be cleansed and her people’s wounds attended to.”

Up at the schooner’s lofty main-truck the Sultana’s private flag fluttered out; the mark and sign of Dolores’s