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. CHAPTER IX.