Within his mysterious stronghold, "The Cave of Terrible Things," on the Maroon coast of Jamaica, washed by the waters of the Caribbean Sea, Red Jabez, Sultan of Pirates, had just died.
Dolores, his daughter, "a splendidly lithe, glowing creature of beauty and passion," "a royal woman conscious of mental and physical perfection," succeeded her father as tyrant over the motley crew of Spaniard and Briton, Creole and mulatto, Carib and octoroon, and coal-black negroes.
Milo, the giant Abyssinian, who knew no fear and no law save the will of this capricious creature, served Dolores as body-guard and chief.
Pascherette, "a gleaming, gold-tinted creature, a miniature model of Aphrodite," beloved of Milo, was her maid and attendant.
Moved to mutiny by Rufe, the Spaniard, the pirates had risen in revolt to loot the rich treasure of the dead Sultan's cave; but supported by Milo, Dolores had cowed them, no less by her dagger than her threats.
But discontent rode the soul of the Sultana. She longed for other lands, other people. With Milo's aid she determined to capture the first sail that passed her shore, and escape.
When Rupert Venner and his guests, Craik Tomlin and John Pearce, aboard the Venner yacht, Feu Follette, passed that way, they were easily induced to go ashore.
In the midst of a reception accorded them by Dolores, the party beheld Yellow Rufe and a band of mulattoes and blacks making for the schooner, from whose rail shots crackled.
Venner raised a cry of treachery and called, "Come, fellows!" But the woman held him as much by her eyes as by her promise: "I shall preserve thy ship, and give thee back an eye for an eye, if thy men are harmed."
Then she sprang down the cliff like a deer.