“Ah, there you beat me, señorita. I have twisted my poor brain with thinking of that. We only earned a dollar a head, and bunkering a ship from a flat is hard work while it lasts, whereas one would expect José to ride twenty miles the other way to escape such a task. But he was in the plot, and he shall tell me why, or—” By force of habit, Frascuelo put his right hand to his belt, but his sheath knife had been taken from him. He smiled sheepishly; yet his black eyes twinkled. “Plot! Why do you speak of a plot?” asked the girl, hoping that the word betokened some more promising clue than she could discern thus far. “Why did the furnaces blow up? Tell me that, and I can answer you. Good, honest coal isn’t made of gunpowder. José, or some one behind him, meant to sink the ship, and, as I might have proved awkward, they were willing that I should go down with her. Maybe I shall meet José if we get out of this rat-trap; then we shall have a little talk.” Again his hand wandered towards his waist, but he bethought himself, and bent in pretense that the bandage on his leg needed readjusting. Despite the man’s shrewd guess as to the cause of the accident in the stoke-hold, Elsie was at a loss to connect the freak of some Valparaiso loafer with the deep-laid scheme which contemplated the destruction of the _Kansas_. She had followed the discussion in the chart-room with full appreciation of its significance. Valuable as the ship and cargo were, there was far more at stake in the effect of the loss on the copper markets of the world. The most important copper-exporting firm in Chile would practically be ruined, while the Paris “ring,” of which she had read in the newspapers, would have matters its own way. Financial interests of such magnitude would hardly be bound up with the carousals and quarrels of Frascuelo and José the Wine-bag. Yet— “Have you ever heard of a Señor Pedro Ventana?” she asked suddenly. “Has he to do with mines?” inquired the Chilean, tentatively. “Yes.” “I know him by sight, señorita.” “Would he be acquainted with this man, Anacleto, do you think?” “Can’t say. José would know anybody whom he could touch for a few pesetas.” She left him, promising to visit him daily in the future. As she walked back towards the bridge companion, she met Dr. Christobal. His fit of ill-humor had gone: he was all smiles; but Elsie, having extracted such information as Frascuelo possessed, was bent on adding to her store of knowledge. Incidentally, she meant to widen the doctor’s views. “Why have you taken to lecturing me?” she asked, with a simple directness which Christobal was not slow to profit by. “Because, though old enough to be your father, or your elder brother, as you were kind enough to put it, I have not yet reached years of discretion.”