Their next exploit was more cleverly contrived. It was the destruction of the French steamer. A Bulgarian, describing himself as a merchant, and possessing the requisite _teskeré_ for travelling in Turkey duly viséd, took second-class passage for Constantinople aboard the _Guadalquivir_, and went aboard with his luggage a few hours before the ship sailed. He inspected the steamer, pretending mere curiosity, and learned that the state rooms amidships were allotted only to passengers holding first-class tickets; whereupon he paid the difference in fare and shifted a heavy bag into a cabin nearer the engine-room. A few minutes before the ship weighed anchor the Bulgarian hailed a small boat and went ashore, ostensibly to speak to a friend on the quay, leaving all his baggage behind. But he did not return, and the ship sailed without him. She was hardly in motion, however, before a terrible explosion amidships wrecked the engine-room, cut the steering gear off from the wheel-house, and set the vessel afire. The concussion was of such violence that it is said to have shaken the houses on the quay, nearly two miles away. The engineer and several firemen were severely injured, but no one was killed. Another vessel in the harbour went to the assistance of the _Guadalquivir_, rescued the crew and passengers, and towed the ship back into port. There was a suspicion of foul play, but the cause of the explosion was not definitely fixed until that night. Crowds soon collected to watch the ship burn, and grew until at evening the whole town was on the quay--little suspecting that this was the day for the long-promised dynamiting. The plot was well planned. An ‘infernal machine’ placed under a viaduct which carried the gas main over a little gulley, exploded promptly at eight o’clock, and this was the signal for the general attack. Before the lights of the city had finished flickering, a carriage dashed up to each of the principal open-air cafés along the water-front, and several drew up before the bank. In each of them were two or more desperate men, who in some cases jumped out and threaded their way to the midst of the wondering crowds, before hurling their deadly missiles. They made for the places where their bombs would do damage among the foreign element and the most prominent citizens, and attempted to throw them into the thickest groups. But the people, already alarmed, were on the _qui vive_, and few of the explosions in the cafés did really effective work. The Macedonians are well drilled in scurrying into their houses, and, recognising the attack at last, they did not linger till the troops came. The dynamiters tried to catch some ‘on the wing,’ but a bomb is a poor weapon for use against the individual.