CHAPTER XVII.

Great was the mortification in the city upon learning the mistake they had made.

Where they had expected to receive praise and a handsome reward for having performed a meritorious action, they obtained only censure and reproaches for meddling in matters that did not concern them.

It was only a mistake however, and there was no help for it. And Billings, although greatly vexed and disappointed, saw no course left for him but to set off again, although he feared that the chances of success were greatly against him this time, on account of the time that had been lost.

The Indians, whose unfortunate blunder had been the cause of this delay, in order to make some amends for the wrong they had done him, now came forward, and offered to aid him in his search for the missing maiden.

They proffered him the use of their canoes to enable him to ascend the streams, and to furnish guides, and an escort to protect him while traveling through the country.

This offer, so much better than he had any reason to expect, was gladly accepted by Billings, and with two friends who had volunteered to accompany him, he once more started up the river, under the protection of his new friends.

War had broken out among the various tribes on the route which he must travel, making it unsafe for him and his two companions, even under such a guide and escort as his Indian friends could furnish them.

Thus he with his two a.s.sociates were detained so long in the Indian country, that by their friends at home they were given up as lost.

At last peace was restored, and they set out on their return.

The journey home was a long and tedious one, but nothing occurred worth narrating.

Upon reaching the Hudson, they employed an Indian to take them the remainder of the way in a canoe.

Upon reaching Manhattan Island, the first place they stopped at was the residence of Carl Rosenthrall, Billings intending that the father of h.e.l.lena should be the first to hear the sad story of his failure and disappointment.

It was evening when he arrived at the house and the lamps were lighted in the parlor.

With heavy heart and trembling hands he rapped at the door.

As the door opened he uttered a faint cry of surprise, which was answered by a similar one by the person who admitted him. It was h.e.l.lena herself!

The scene that followed we shall not attempt to describe.

CHAPTER XVIII.

At about the same time that Henry Billings, under the protection of his Indian friends, set out on his last expedition up the river, a single canoe with four persons in it, put out from under the shadow of Old Crow Nest, on its way down the stream.

The individual by whom the canoe was directed was an Indian, a man somewhat advanced in years. The others were a white girl, an Indian woman, and a negro boy.

In short, the party consisted of Fire Cloud, h.e.l.lena Rosenthrall, Lightfoot, and Black Bill, on their way to the city.

They had pa.s.sed the fleet of canoes in which Billings had embarked, but not knowing whether it belonged to a party of friendly Indians or otherwise.

Fire Cloud had avoided coming in contact with it for fear of being delayed, or of the party being made prisoners and carried back again.

Could they have but met, what a world of trouble would it not have saved to all parties interested!

As it was, h.e.l.lena arrived in safety, greatly to the delight of her father and friends, who had long mourned for her as for one they never expected to see again in this world.

The sum of h.e.l.lena's happiness would now have been complete, had it not been for the dark shadow cast over it by the absence of her lover.

And this shadow grew darker, and darker, as weeks, and months, rolled by without bringing any tidings of the missing one.

What might have been the effects of the melancholy into which she was fast sinking, it is hard to tell, had not the unexpected return of the one for whose loss she was grieving, restored her once more to her wonted health and spirits.

And here we might lay down our pen, and call our story finished, did we not think that justice to the reader, required that we should explain some things connected with the mysterious, cavern not yet accounted for.

How the Indian entered the cave on the night when h.e.l.lena fancied she had seen a ghost, and how she made her escape, has been explained, but we have not yet explained how the noises were produced which so alarmed the pirates.

It will be remembered that the sleeping place of Black Bill was a recess in the wall of the cavern.

Now in the wall, near the head of the negro's bed, there was a deep fissure or crevice. It happened that Bill while lying awake one night, to amuse himself, put his month to the crevice and spoke some words, when to his astonishment, what he had said, was repeated over and over, again.

Black Bill in his ignorance and simplicity, supposed that the echo, which came back, was an answer from some one on the other side of the wall.

Having made this discovery, he repeated the experiment a number of times, and always with the same result.

After awhile, he began to ask questions of the spirit, as he supposed it to be, that had spoken to him.

Among other things he asked if the devil was coming after master.

The echo replied, "The debil comin' after master," and repeated it a great many times.

Bill now became convinced that it was the devil himself that he had been talking to.

On the night when the pirates were so frightened by the fearful groan, Bill was lying awake, listening to the captain's story. When he came to the part where he describes the throwing the boy's father overboard, and speaks of the horrible groan, Bill put his mouth to the crevice, and imitated the groan, which had been too deeply fixed in his memory ever to be forgotten, giving full scope to his voice.

The effect astonished and frightened him as well as the pirates.

With the same success he imitated the Indian war-whoop, which he had learned while among the savages.

The next time that the pirates were so terribly frightened, the alarm was caused by Fire Cloud after his visit to the cave on the occasion that he had been taken for the devil by Bill, and an Indian ghost by h.e.l.lena.

Fire Cloud had remained in another chamber of the cavern connected with the secret pa.s.sage already described, and where the echo was even more wonderful than the one p.r.o.nounced from the opening through which the negro had spoken.

Here he could hear all that was pa.s.sing in the great chamber occupied by the pirates, and from this chamber the echoes were to those who did not understand their cause, perfectly frightful.

All these peculiarities of the cavern had been known to the ancient Indian priests or medicine men, and by them made use of to impose on their ignorant followers.