see no reason to doubt that it was he who made me drunk the
previous evening, and I know who did that."

"What was his name?"

"Jose Anacleto--'Jose the Wine-bag' we call him on the Plaza. I ought
to have smelt mischief when Jose paid. Never before had I seen him do
such a thing. And a good liquor, too. Dios, it must have cost him
dollars."

"What object had he in coming on board instead of you?"

"Ah, there you beat me, senorita. 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 Jose
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. Jose, 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 Jose
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 Jose the Wine-bag. Yet--

"Have you ever heard of a Senor Pedro Ventana?" she asked suddenly.

"Has he to do with mines?" inquired the Chilean, tentatively.

"Yes."

"I know him by sight