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Dick related his suspicions about the coaling company, and described what he had seen at Adexe and the visit of the black-funnel boat, but before he had gone far, realized that he was wasting his time. The Vice-Consul's attitude was politely indulgent. "This is a rather extraordinary tale," he remarked when Dick stopped.
They looked round, but the sea was now dark and empty and they let the matter drop. When they crossed the Adexe bight no steamer was anchored near, but a cluster of lights on the dusky beach marked the coaling wharf. "They're working late," Dick said. "Can you see the tug?" "You'd have to run close in before you could do so," Jake replied.
"You were hurt when I passed you at Adexe," she remarked, without looking at him. "You must, however, see that friendship between us is impossible while you think me a thief." "I must try to explain," Dick said slowly. "When I recovered my senses at your house after being ill, I felt I must get away as soon as possible, though I ought to have remembered only that you had taken care of me.
His reason for visiting the Adexe wharf had been guessed. He had been watched when he went to the Vice-Consul, and it was plain that his enemies thought he knew enough to be dangerous. The difficulty was that he did not know who they were. He hated to think that Kenwardine was a party to the plot, but this, while possible, was by no means certain.
There was something suspicious about this coal deal, but he could not tell exactly what his suspicions pointed to, and by and by he took up the plan of a culvert they were to begin next morning. A few days later, Jake and he sat, one night, in the stern of the launch, which lay head to sea about half a mile from the Adexe wharf.
In calculating the circumference of the peak of Teneriffe in a curve passing through the port of Orotava, Garachico, Adexe, and Guimar, and setting aside the prolongations of its base towards the forest of Laguna, and the north-east cape of the island, we find that this extent is more than 54,000 toises. The height of the Peak is consequently one twenty-eighth of the circumference of its basis.
Kenwardine to meet you?" he asked. "No. I was told the launch was going to Santa Brigida, but didn't know that she was yours." Dick eyes twinkled. "I am going to Santa Brigida and the boat is one we use, but my colored fireman refused to leave the fiesta. Now you can't stay at Arenas, and I doubt if you can get a mule to take you home, because they'll all have gone to Adexe.
"The first man might have told the truth, if they had let him, but somebody pulled him away. My opinion is that the tug's not at Adexe and didn't go there." They went back to the hotel, and Dick sat down on a bench in the patio and lighted his pipe. "There's something very curious about the matter," he said.
"Of course," he said at length, "you needn't talk if you'd sooner not. But you gave me the cut direct in Adexe, and although I may have deserved it, it hurt." "I don't see why it should hurt," Clare answered coldly. "Don't you?" he asked.
Dick gave the newspaper to the next man and sat still with knitted brows, for his suspicions were suddenly confirmed. The raider had a black funnel, and was no doubt the ship he had seen steering for Adexe. An enemy commerce-destroyer was lurking about the coast, and she could not be allowed to continue her deadly work, which her resemblance to the Spanish vessels would make easier.
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