"Pascherette!" echoed Tomlin, bewildered. "Does Jamaica hold such beauties?" He awkwardly brought forward a deck-chair, while Pearse stood by in speechless amazement. Venner, as better became the host, ordered a steward to bring a wrap for the astounding visitor, but the girl laughed provokingly and declined both.
"It is not for such as I, fine gentlemen," she said, and her sharp eyes were roving busily about the schooner, appraising values like a veritable pirate. "Keep thy courtesies for better than I."
"Better than you, girl?" Venner's tone was incredulous. He was taking mental stock of the priceless pearls about Pascherette's dainty throat. "To be found here?"
"If not here, where shall ye find such a one as my mistress?" Pascherette retorted saucily.
"Your mistress?"
"Without doubt. I am but a slave, my lady is the queen, Dolores."
"A queen--a white woman?" stammered Venner.
"Oh, Venner, let us look into this!" exclaimed Pearse with unconcealed curiosity.
"Just what we have prayed for!" Tomlin supplemented eagerly. "Anchor, Venner, like a good fellow. A jaunt ashore will brace us all up."
"Nonsense!" objected the owner, albeit with a good trace of inquisitiveness himself. "The breeze will come by evening; and who knows what this coast harbors? A bad name sticks to this shore."
Pascherette had wandered forward, and between sly glances aft and keen scrutiny shoreward, she flung seductive smiles broadcast at the grinning crew, prattling prettily to officer and man alike, as if she were indeed a stranger to the ways of shipboard. While she made her rounds the party aft entered into a warm dispute; their curiosity was whetted, but not sufficiently in Venner's case, to whom the safety of the yacht was paramount just then. They wrangled for half an hour, and the schooner drifted on until she was within a mile or so of the outflung false Point. Then they were again startled out of their self-possession--this time by a cry from the girl who leaned over the bulwarks a picture of ardent admiration for something in the water.
Double awnings and snowy hammock-cloths restricted the view shoreward from the quarter-deck chairs, and surprise as deep as that which greeted the girl surged through the disputing three at a great splashing over the side, accompanied by the boom of a voice that must come from a powerful, free-breathing chest.
"Room for Milo, servant of Dolores!" the hail rang out, and by the same means as Pascherette had used, up climbed Milo, to stand motionless before the white men, an astounding and awe-inspiring shape.
"Another slave of the mysterious queen?" demanded Venner, when recovered from his astonishment. "It gets interesting, gentlemen. And what is your errand, Goliath?" he inquired of Milo.