"Fifty-seven varieties--all bad. Some have souls, I believe; others rank lower than the beasts. But what have I said now?" for he had sprung upright as if in a great hurry to get away. "Forgive me," he muttered. "I have just remembered some important letters I must write before we call at San Diego." "So," she communed, when he had vanished through the companion-hatch, "even Mr. John Darien Power can prevaricate at times. But he is a nice man. I wonder why some woman treated him badly. It must have been a woman. If it were a man, he wouldn't have run!" The two became firm friends. As the days passed, and the _Panama_ plodded south through tropic seas, Power learned so many details of the girl's life that he could have written her biography. Her father was an Englishman, who found a wife in Los Angeles. After being swindled by a nitrate company, he had the good fortune to recover from the assets a tract of land in the Chubut Territory of Patagonia. It contained no nitrate; but the discovery that it would grow good cattle came in the nick of time to save him from ruin. His wife was killed in the Indian raid which had left its disastrous record on his daughter; but Argentine troops had exterminated the Araucanian tribe responsible for the outrage, a rare event in that district, and the ranch had prospered. Each year or eighteen months Marguerite visited her maternal relatives in Los Angeles, and worked hard at the university for a term. By that device, it was evident, Sinclair salved certain twinges of conscience for keeping her bright intelligence pent in a Patagonian ranch. The two hated these breaks in their home life. However, they provided a middle way; so father and daughter made the best of them. Although the eastern route, via New York, was quicker, the girl herself elected for the long sea voyage down the Chile coast, and through the Straits of Magellan. She knew most of the ships plying in those waters, and felt more at home in them. She was a prime favorite on board the _Panama_--among the men; her sharp tongue and amazing outspokenness did not endear her to the women. Some of them resented her popularity, and tried to snub her, and the result was a foregone conclusion. Quite unconsciously, Power caused one of these brief combats. A pretty, but vapid, and rather rapid lady from Iquique thought that a good-looking young man like the American was devoting far too much time to Miss Sinclair, and resolved to detach him. She failed lamentably, and, in her pique, so far forgot herself as to inquire sarcastically what magnetic influence the girl exerted that she was able to keep Power in constant attendance. Marguerite surveyed her rival with bland unconcern. "You are mistaken," she cried. "He cares nothing for women's society." The other thought she saw an opening, and struck viciously. "So it would appear," she smirked. "You are the only woman on the ship he has spoken to." "Yes. Odd, isn't it?"