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,