wheel here!" Dolores commanded. "Six of you bring back
the sloop. The rest attend me! Bring the schooner to her course,
northwest, Hanglip; and, Spotted Dog, rig me a whip at the foregaff-end.
Yellow Rufe, pray or curse while ye may. Thy course is run. There is
nothing left to say. Ten minutes remain to thee."

The doomed pirate stood in silence while the preparations were being
made; but when Spotted Dog brought down the end of the rope he had rove
through the block at the end of the gaff, and stood grinning
anticipatively before Dolores, Rufe's tongue came loose, and he burst
into a torrent of futile, raving blasphemy.

"Take the rope end forward, and pass it around the bows, so that the
rope passes beneath the keel," Dolores ordered, and every eager villain
in the band knew now what fate awaited Rufe. The schooner, not being
square-rigged, was badly fitted for the operation of keel-hauling; but
Dolores's inventive brain had devised a refinement of even that
refinement of torture. She waited for the rope end, and when Spotted Dog
brought it aft, on the weather side, passing clear from the gaff to
leeward, under the keel and up to windward, she stood aside so that the
yachtsmen could witness all.

"Tie his hands, Milo!" she said. It was carried out, in spite of Rufe's
fierce fight against it. "Now place the noose about his throat tightly."
That, too, was done, and now the rope led from Rufe's neck, over the
weather rail, under the schooner, and up to the gaff. Three men stood by
the hauling part of the rope, and at a gesture from the girl six others
joined them. On every face was a little doubt, for none saw exactly what
was coming, least of all Rufe.

"Now release him!" said Dolores quietly, and Rufe was left standing
alone, his hands tied, but his feet unfettered. He glared around as if
he saw a slim chance yet for life; the hope died the next moment, for
Dolores signed to the men at the rope, they began hauling, and the
terror leaped into Rufe's eyes afresh.

For a moment Venner and his friends saw what they imagined to be a piece
of grim jesting; but they, as well as Rufe, speedily saw there was no
jest in this. For as the rope tightened, and other roaring ruffians ran
joyously to take a pull at it, Rufe was drawn irresistibly toward the
weather rail with a choking drag on his throat. He seized the rail, and
strained with his every sinew to fight that deadly peril; the rope only
tightened more; it was either