It was hard for him to accept defeat, in this very first skirmish with his old enemy, Bill Broome, and harder still to lose his treasure that was to be the sinews of war in the campaign that had already opened. But Jim soon pulled himself together with rugged determination. "If I remember right, old Broome gave us a jolly good licking to start with, when he captured us in the canyon in the coast range," mused Jim to himself, "and we beat him in the end." But the reader is probably asking about the "Mysterious Mexican or Where Did He Go To." Well, friend, I will tell you in confidence that Mr. Mexican was in the train all the time. Perhaps the ingenious reader has already solved the problem of the Mexican's escape, but for those who do not care to be bothered, I will relate what happened, and where he was located. When he slipped through the door of the sleeping car, which his confederate, the negro, locked after him, he glided through several coaches, where the occupants were all soundly and some loudly asleep, until he came to the forward car which carried a number of emigrants, on their way to the coast. It must be remembered that the Mexican was a dwarf, no larger than a child. It was easy for him to reach one of the long brass brackets above one of the rear seats, intended for bundles often heavier than he was; here he curled up in his heavy coat, for all the world like one of the bundles belonging to an emigrant and thus escaped detection. CHAPTER VIII IN FRISCO "Well, Jim," said the chief engineer of the _Sea Eagle_, James Darlington's yacht, "Captain William Broome, able seaman, and all round pirate, has routed us horse and foot, taken your riches by proxy and the yacht away from me by his own personal efforts." "It does look like we were up against it," admitted Jim, "but we have a fighting chance, and I propose to keep on that old codger's trail." "Good for you, Jim," said his friend heartily, "but if I had a crew that had been worth a tinker's curse, the night that he attacked the yacht, I would have saved that for you! I verily believe that Broome owned several men in my crew, and the rest of them were half breeds and renegades, but the best that I could get together down in that forsaken port." "I don't blame you a bit, Chief," said Jim; "no man could have done more for me than you did. Have some more of the olives." "Thanks, I will." The two were seated in a well-known restaurant, by a window looking down on a busy thoroughfare. It was shortly after one o'clock in the afternoon but the lights were lit, as a dense fog peculiar to San Francisco had filled the atmosphere with an opaque gloom. There is a peculiar attractiveness about a first class metropolitan restaurant. It is a warm and pleasant refuge from the bleak heartlessness and merciless activity of a great city.