CHAPTER VIII.

All Captain Flint's efforts to unravel the mysteries of the cave were unsuccessful; and he was reluctantly obliged to give up the attempt, at least for the present; but, in order to quiet the minds of the crew, he told them that he had discovered the cause, and that it was just what he had supposed it to be.

As everything remained quiet in the cave for a long time after this, and the minds of the men were occupied with more important matters, the excitement caused by it wore off; and, in a while, the affair seemed to be almost forgotten.

And here we may as well go back a little in our narrative, and restore the chain where it was broken off a few chapters back.

When Captain Flint had purchased the schooner which he commanded, it was with the professed object of using her as a vessel to trade with the Indians up the rivers, and along the shore, and with the various seaports upon the coast.

To this trade it is true, he did to some extent apply himself, but only so far as it might serve as a cloak to his secret and more dishonorable and dishonest practices.

Had Flint been disposed to confine himself to the calling he pretended to follow, he might have made a handsome fortune in a short time, but that would not have suited the corrupt and desperate character of the man.

He was like one of those wild animals which having once tasted blood, have ever afterward an insatiable craving for it.

It soon became known to a few of the merchants in the city, among the rest Carl Rosenthrall, that Captain Flint had added to his regular business, that of smuggling.

This knowledge, however, being confined to those who shared the profits with him, was not likely to be used to his disadvantage.

After a while the whole country was put into a state of alarm by the report that a desperate pirate had appeared on the coast.

Several vessels which had been expected to arrive with rich cargoes had not made their appearance, although the time for their arrival had long passed. There was every reason to fear that they had been captured by this desperate stranger who had sunk them, killing all on board.

The captain of some vessels which had arrived in safety reported having been followed by a suspicious looking craft.

They said she was a schooner about the size of one commanded by Captain Flint, but rather longer, having higher masts and carrying more sail.

No one appeared to be more excited on the subject of the pirate, than Captain Flint. He declared that he had seen the mysterious vessel, had been chased by her, and had only escaped by his superior sailing.

Several vessels had been fitted out expressly for the purpose of capturing this daring stranger, but all to no purpose; nothing could be seen of her.

For a long time she would seem to absent herself from the coast, and vessels would come and go in safety. Then all of a sudden, she would appear again and several vessels would be missing, and never heard from more.

The last occurrence of this kind is the one which we have already given an account of the capturing and sinking of the vessel in which young Billings had taken passage for Europe.

We have already seen how Hellena Rosenthrall's having accidentally discovered her lover's ring on the finger of Captain Flint, had excited suspicions of the merchant's daughter, and what happened to her in consequence.

Captain Flint having made it the interest of Rosenthrall to keep his suspicions to himself if he still adhered to them, endeavored to convince him that his daughter was mistaken, and that the ring however much it might resemble the one belonging to her lover, was one which had been given to him by his own mother at her death, and had been worn by her as long as he could remember.

This explanation satisfied, or seemed to satisfy the merchant, and the two men appeared to be as good friends as ever again.

The sudden and strange disappearance of the daughter of a person of so much consequence as Carl Rosenthrall, would cause no little excitement in a place no larger than New York was at the time of which we write.

Most of the people agreed in the opinion with the merchant that the girl had been carried off by the Indian Fire Cloud, in order to avenge himself for the insult he had received years before. As we have seen, Captain Flint encouraged this opinion, and promised that in an expedition he was about fitting out for the Indian country, he would make the recovery of the young woman one of his special objects.

Flint knew all the while where Fire Cloud was to be found, and fearing that he might come to the city ignorant as he was of the suspicion he was laboring under, and thereby expose the double game he was playing, he determined to visit the Indian in secret, under pretence of putting him on his guard, but in reality for the purpose of saving himself.

He sought out the old chief accordingly, and warned him of his danger.

Fire Cloud was greatly enraged to think that he should be suspected carrying off the young woman.

"He hated her father," he said, "for he was a cheat, and had a crooked tongue. But the paleface maiden was his friend, and for her sake he would find her if she was among his people, and would restore her to her friends."

"If you enter the city of the palefaces, they will hang you up like a dog without listening to anything you have to say in your defence," said Flint.

"The next time Fire Cloud enters the city of the palefaces, the maiden shall accompany him," replied the Indian.

This was the sort of an answer that Flint wished, and expected, and he now saw that there was no danger to be apprehended from that quarter.

But if Captain Flint felt himself relieved from danger in this quarter, things looked rather squally in another. If he knew how to disguise his vessel by putting on a false bow so as to make her look longer, and lengthen the masts so as to make her carry more sail, he was not the only one who understood these tricks. And one old sailor whose bark had been chased by the strange schooner, declared that she very much resembled Captain Flint's schooner disguised in this way.

And then it was observed that the strange craft was never seen when the captain's vessel was lying in port, or when she was known to be up the river where he was trading among the Indians.

Another suspicious circumstance was, that shortly after the strange disappearance of a merchant vessel, Flint's schooner came into port with her rigging considerably damaged, as if she had suffered from some unusual cause. Flint accounted for it by saying that he had been fired into by the pirate, and had just escaped with the skin of his teeth.

These suspicions were at first spoken cautiously, and in whispers only, by a very few.

They came to the ears of Flint himself at last, who seeing the danger immediately set about taking measures to counteract it by meeting and repelling, what he pretended to consider base slanders invented by his enemies for the purpose of effecting his ruin.

He threatened to prosecute the slanderers, and if they wished to see how much of a pirate he was, let them fit out a vessel such as he would describe, arm her, and man her according to his directions, give him command of her, and if he didn't bring that blasted pirate into port he'd never return to it himself. He'd like no better fun than to meet her on equal terms, in an open sea.

This bragadocia had the desired effect for awhile; besides, although it could hardly be said that Flint had any real friends, yet there were so many influential men who were concerned with him in some of his contraband transactions. These dreaded the exposure to themselves, should Flint's real character be discovered, which caused them to answer for him in the place of friends.

These men would no doubt be the first to crush him, could they only do so without involving themselves in his ruin.

But all this helped to convince Flint that his time in this part of the country was pretty near up, and if he meant to continue in his present line of business, he must look out for some new field of operations.

More than ever satisfied on this point, Captain Flint anxiously awaited the arrival of the vessel, the capture of which was to be the finishing stroke of his operations in this part of the world.