In the course of time, however, he had come to know everything. The news of Captain Horn's great discovery of treasure on the coast of Peru had gone forth to the public, and Banker's soul had writhed in disappointed rage as he thought that he and his fellows had lived and rioted like fools for months, and months, and months, but a short distance from all these vast hoards of gold. This knowledge almost maddened him as he brooded over it by night and by day. When he had been set free from the French prison to which his knavery had consigned him, Banker gave himself up body and soul to the consideration of the treasure which Captain Horn had brought to France from Peru. He considered it from every possible point of view, and when at last he heard of the final disposition which it had been determined to make of the gold, he considered it from the point of his own cupidity and innate rascality. He it was who devised the plan of sending out a swift steamer to overhaul the merchantman which was to carry the gold to Peru, and who, after consultation with the many miscreants whom he was obliged to take into his confidence and to depend upon for assistance, decided that it would be well to fit out two ships, so that if one should fail in her errand, the other might succeed. The steamers from Genoa and Toulon were fitted out and manned under the direction of Banker, but with the one which sailed from Marseilles he had nothing to do. This expedition was organized by men who had quarrelled with him and his associates, and it was through the dissension of the opposing parties in this intended piracy that the detectives came to know of it. Banker had sailed from Genoa, but the Toulon vessel had got ahead of him. It had sighted the _Dunkery Beacon_ before she reached Kingston; it had cruised in the Caribbean Sea until she came sailing down towards Tobago Island; it had followed her out into the Atlantic, and when the proper time came it had taken her--hull, engine, gold, and everything which belonged to her, except her captain and her crew, and had steamed away with her. Banker did not command the _Vittorio_, for he was not a seaman, but he commanded her captain, and through him everybody on board. He directed her course and her policy. He was her leading spirit and her blackest devil. It had been no part of Banker's intentions to cruise about the South Atlantic and search for a steamer with black and white stripes running up and down her funnel. His plan of action was to be the same as that of the other pirate, and the _Vittorio_ therefore steamed for Kingston as soon as she could manage to clear from Genoa. His calculations were very good ones, but there was a flaw in them, for he did not know that the _Dunkery Beacon_ sailed three days before her regular time. Consequently, the _Vittorio_ was the last of the four steamers which reached Jamaica on business connected with the Incas' treasure.