Fire Cloud

Fire Cloud is a Fiction Sea Story Book. The book says that Whether or not, the story which we are about to relate is absolutely true in every particular, we are not prepared to say. All we know about it is, that old Ben Miller who told it to our uncle Zeph, believed it to be true, as did uncle Zeph himself. And from all we can learn, uncle Zeph was a man of good judgment, and one not easily imposed upon. And uncle Zeph said that he had known old people in his younger days, who stated that they had actually seen the cave where many of the scenes which we are about to relate occurred, although of late years, no traces of any kind could be discovered in the locality where it is supposed to have been situated. His opinion was, that as great rocks were continually rolling down the side of the mountain at the foot of which the entrance to the cave was, some one or more of these huge boulders had fallen into the opening and completely closed it up. But that such a cave did exist, he was perfectly satisfied, and that it would in all probability be again discovered at some future day, by persons making excavations in the side of the mountain. And lucky he thought would be the man who should make the discovery, for unheard of treasures he had no doubt would be found stowed away in the chinks and crevices of the rocks. So much by way of introduction; as we have no intention to describe the cave until the proper time comes, we shall leave that part of the subject for the present, while we introduce the reader to a few of the principal personages of our narrative. At a distance of some fifteen or twenty miles from the City of New York, on the Hudson river in the shadow of the rocks known as the Palisades, something near two hundred years ago, lay a small vessel at anchor.