The Pirate Woman by A E Dingle Chapter 8 Page 6

little demon stepped back to the crowd, and paced to and fro with feverish gestures, scowling blackly at every turn that brought him face to face with Dolores. The packed mob milled and murmured, some afraid, many of Caliban’s mind yet not daring to openly support him. Venner and his friends sensed the thrill of it, for their brief experience of the pirate queen left them in slight doubt as to the outcome of Caliban’s speech. Dolores herself stood motionless for a full minute after the hunchback ceased his defiance, and under her lowered, heavily lashed eyelids the dark eyes seemed to slumber; only in her lips was any trace of the alertness that governed her brain, and those scarlet petals, which seemed to have been plucked from a love flower in the garden of passion, slowly, almost imperceptibly parted, until the dazzling teeth gleamed through