The Pirate Woman by A E Dingle Chapter 7 Page 8

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 had become a place of desolation. All the magnificence of unrestricted cost was there; and all the beauty of artistic selection; and over all was the mark of the beast — blood and torn hangings, corpses and splintered panels, chaos and sulfur smoke as the pillage started. Dolores sought out through the smoke a breathing man in the uniform of the