While she yet gazed eagerly on what she deemed a supernatural appearance, the rent in the veil of smoke suddenly closed, the flame sank down, and again all was gloom and darkness in the cavern.  The thick stifling vapour of the damp wood, augmenting as the flame diminished, was now so overpowering that the Turks were in imminent danger of suffocation.  In their extremity, making a violent effort, their pent up voices found vent in a cry of such startling wildness, that the Uzcoques, struck with terror, sprang back from the mouth of the cave, hurrying the maiden with them.  The cry was not repeated, for the Turks had lost all consciousness from the stifling effects of the smoke.

“Banish your fears, Uzcoques!” exclaimed Strasolda, staying the fugitives.  “The voice that to you is a sound of dismay, gives me hope and confidence.  I see the golden crescent rising in irresistible might, and shedding its rays over all the lands of the earth.  Happy they on whom it casts its mild and favouring beams, and truer far the safeguard it affords to those who serve it, than that which is found beneath the shadow of the cross.  Better the sharp cimeter and plighted word of the Moslem, than the fair promises of the lying Christian, who, in the hour of peril, abandons those by whose courage he has profited.  But enough!” cried she in an altered tone.  “Our first duty is to rescue my father from the hands of the Venetians.  Go not into Segna.  There are traitors there who might reveal what we most wish kept secret.  The Venetians know not the person of Dansowich, and that may save him if no time be lost in plotting his deliverance.  Let none even of our own people hear of his captivity.  Now to the castle!”

She led the way, and in silence and sadness the pirates followed the daughter of their captive chief.

The fire was quite out, the smoke had cleared away, the moon poured its silvery light into the cavern, and the stillness was unbroken, save by the ripple of the waves on the beach, when Ibrahim recovered from the state of insensibility into which he had been thrown by the suffocating influence of the smoke, and heard his companion snoring at his side.  For some time the young Turk lay, revolving in his mind the eventful scene he had witnessed, and the strange and startling circumstances that had come to his knowledge during the few preceding hours.  The capture of Dansowich was an event of much importance; nor was there less weight in the discovery Ibrahim had made of the dependence of the Uzcoques upon a higher power, which, in secret, aided and profited by their depredations.  Although Austria had been frequently accused of abetting the piracies of the Uzcoques, the charge had never been clearly proved, and to many appeared too improbable to obtain credence.  Ibrahim had hitherto been among the incredulous; but what he had this day seen and heard, removed every doubt, and fully convinced him of the justice of those imputations.