THE VERDICT. 203 asunder, and the keel was only held together bv the flat plates bent into a reversedV-shape. The bow of the ship and the structure for some feet behind it was little injured,but this enormous mass of metal had been twisted round so that the stem lay at right angles with the generalline of the ship. All this was taken to represent the effect of anexploding mine under the port side well forward, lifting the whole ship, blowing up the keel and bottom plates through the lowerdecks, firing the great magazines forward, and thus completing the destruction of the ship in front of the funnels, the double explosion nearly cutting her in two and forcing bow and stern into the right-angled position in which the wreck lay with decks awashin HavanaHarbour.

indicated the place where the Maine was to be moored, and their officers were in charge of the torpedoesin the harbour, if such existed. Thus, though the report named no one as guilty of the destruction of the Maine, it was generally taken to point to the Spaniards as directly or indirectly responsible. At the same time, it must be remembered to the credit of all concerned that, from Consul-General Lee downwards, every responsible American joined in declaring that they werequite sure that if there was a plot, Marshal Blanco and his colleagues in the government at Havana were ignorant 01 its existence.

The deed was popularly attributed to the partisans of the old regime of repression, which had been in full force in the days of General Weyler's rule— men who looked on any con-It was argued that aninternal explosionwould SECTION OF THE "MAINE," SHOWING HOW THE KEEL WAS BROKEN have forced the plates outward, and, if anything, driven the keeldown into the mud. The force that bent it in the opposite direction must, therefore,have been outsideofandbelowit. As to the mine, to produce such effects it must have carried aconsiderable charge of somehigh explosive, something of the dynamite class. Though the report fixed the blame on no one, the public argued that such a mine could not have been obtained or made by an individual fanatic, norcould he have placed it in position. The act must have been the work of experts, having access to some store of torpedo and mining materials. Even if Spanish officials were not in the plot, there must, it was urged, have been culpable negligence on their part to make its execution possible. Another theory suggested that the mine was originally laid down to defend the harbour, and that some hater of all things American had got access to the battery controlling it. This, again, would imply a double negligence on the part of the Spanish authorities, for it was they that had cession to the insurgents or to the UnitedStates as a treason to Spain, and who regarded the very presence of the United States warship as an insult to the Spanish arms. A few Americans, and among them a well-known inventor, suggested that if there had been a plot, it was possibly the work of fanatics— not on the Spanish,but on the Cuban, side— men who saw in the rapprochement between the governments of Madrid and Washington, the growingpopularity of Blanco,and theintroduction of a system of local government at Havana, the end of their hopesof an independent Cuban Republic. TheCubans had amongthem experts in dynamite work who had blown up railway bridges and trains, and who even claimed to have destroyed a Spanish steamer. Spain, it was argued, had no interest in wrecking the Maine, but these men gained by bad blood between the two nations most concerned. This theory has,however, few supporters;and those who insist so strongly on the unprofitableness of the deed to Spain forget that no onesupposes