CHAPTER VIII.
All Captain Flint's efforts to unravel the mysteries of the cave wereunsuccessful; and he was reluctantly obliged to give up the attempt,at least for the present; but, in order to quiet the minds of thecrew, he told them that he had discovered the cause, and that it wasjust 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 affairseemed to be almost forgotten.
And here we may as well go back a little in our narrative, and restorethe chain where it was broken off a few chapters back.
When Captain Flint had purchased the schooner which he commanded, itwas with the professed object of using her as a vessel to trade withthe Indians up the rivers, and along the shore, and with the variousseaports upon the coast.
To this trade it is true, he did to some extent apply himself, butonly so far as it might serve as a cloak to his secret and moredishonorable and dishonest practices.
Had Flint been disposed to confine himself to the calling he pretendedto follow, he might have made a handsome fortune in a short time, butthat would not have suited the corrupt and desperate character of theman.
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 therest Carl Rosenthrall, that Captain Flint had added to his regularbusiness, that of smuggling.
This knowledge, however, being confined to those who shared theprofits 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 thereport that a desperate pirate had appeared on the coast.
Several vessels which had been expected to arrive with rich cargoeshad not made their appearance, although the time for their arrival hadlong passed. There was every reason to fear that they had beencaptured by this desperate stranger who had sunk them, killing all onboard.
The captain of some vessels which had arrived in safety reportedhaving been followed by a suspicious looking craft.
They said she was a schooner about the size of one commanded byCaptain Flint, but rather longer, having higher masts and carryingmore sail.
No one appeared to be more excited on the subject of the pirate, thanCaptain Flint. He declared that he had seen the mysterious vessel, hadbeen chased by her, and had only escaped by his superior sailing.
Several vessels had been fitted out expressly for the purpose ofcapturing this daring stranger, but all to no purpose; nothing couldbe seen of her.
For a long time she would seem to absent herself from the coast, andvessels would come and go in safety. Then all of a sudden, she wouldappear again and several vessels would be missing, and never heardfrom more.
The last occurrence of this kind is the one which we have alreadygiven an account of the capturing and sinking of the vessel in whichyoung Billings had taken passage for Europe.
We have already seen how Hellena Rosenthrall's having accidentallydiscovered her lover's ring on the finger of Captain Flint, hadexcited suspicions of the merchant's daughter, and what happened toher in consequence.
Captain Flint having made it the interest of Rosenthrall to keep hissuspicions to himself if he still adhered to them, endeavored toconvince him that his daughter was mistaken, and that the ring howevermuch it might resemble the one belonging to her lover, was one whichhad been given to him by his own mother at her death, and had beenworn by her as long as he could remember.
This explanation satisfied, or seemed to satisfy the merchant, and thetwo men appeared to be as good friends as ever again.
The sudden and strange disappearance of the daughter of a person of somuch consequence as Carl Rosenthrall, would cause no little excitementin 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 thegirl had been carried off by the Indian Fire Cloud, in order to avengehimself for the insult he had received years before. As we have seen,Captain Flint encouraged this opinion, and promised that in anexpedition he was about fitting out for the Indian country, he wouldmake the recovery of the young woman one of his special objects.
Flint knew all the while where Fire Cloud was to be found, and fearingthat he might come to the city ignorant as he was of the suspicion hewas laboring under, and thereby expose the double game he was playing,he determined to visit the Indian in secret, under pretence of puttinghim 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 suspectedcarrying off the young woman.
"He hated her father," he said, "for he was a cheat, and had a crookedtongue. But the paleface maiden was his friend, and for her sake hewould find her if she was among his people, and would restore her toher friends."
"If you enter the city of the palefaces, they will hang you up like adog 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 maidenshall accompany him," replied the Indian.
This was the sort of an answer that Flint wished, and expected, and henow saw that there was no danger to be apprehended from that quarter.
But if Captain Flint felt himself relieved from danger in thisquarter, things looked rather squally in another. If he knew how todisguise his vessel by putting on a false bow so as to make her looklonger, and lengthen the masts so as to make her carry more sail, hewas not the only one who understood these tricks. And one old sailorwhose bark had been chased by the strange schooner, declared that shevery much resembled Captain Flint's schooner disguised in this way.
And then it was observed that the strange craft was never seen whenthe captain's vessel was lying in port, or when she was known to be upthe river where he was trading among the Indians.
Another suspicious circumstance was, that shortly after the strangedisappearance of a merchant vessel, Flint's schooner came into portwith her rigging considerably damaged, as if she had suffered fromsome unusual cause. Flint accounted for it by saying that he had beenfired into by the pirate, and had just escaped with the skin of histeeth.
These suspicions were at first spoken cautiously, and in whispersonly, by a very few.
They came to the ears of Flint himself at last, who seeing the dangerimmediately set about taking measures to counteract it by meeting andrepelling, what he pretended to consider base slanders invented by hisenemies for the purpose of effecting his ruin.
He threatened to prosecute the slanderers, and if they wished to seehow much of a pirate he was, let them fit out a vessel such as hewould describe, arm her, and man her according to his directions, givehim command of her, and if he didn't bring that blasted pirate intoport he'd never return to it himself. He'd like no better fun than tomeet her on equal terms, in an open sea.
This bragadocia had the desired effect for awhile; besides, althoughit could hardly be said that Flint had any real friends, yet therewere so many influential men who were concerned with him in some ofhis contraband transactions. These dreaded the exposure to themselves,should Flint's real character be discovered, which caused them toanswer for him in the place of friends.
These men would no doubt be the first to crush him, could they only doso without involving themselves in his ruin.
But all this helped to convince Flint that his time in this part ofthe country was pretty near up, and if he meant to continue in hispresent line of business, he must look out for some new field ofoperations.
More than ever satisfied on this point, Captain Flint anxiouslyawaited the arrival of the vessel, the capture of which was to be thefinishing stroke of his operations in this part of the world.