For the time being there was no opportunity to investigate the case of the eavesdropper. It was important that they should get under way at once. Herc hastened on deck after a few hurried words with Ned.

Just at that moment two bells—one o'clock—sounded in the slow, deep, mellow tones of the ship's bell. Simultaneously there appeared, through a doorway at one end of the wardroom, the figure of a dapper Japanese, dressed in white garments.

"Hullo! Who are you?" demanded Ned, looking up from a reverie into which he had fallen, following Herc's departure.

"Me Saki. Officer steward. Me getee lunch for honorable capitan," rejoined the Jap with a low bow.

[Pg 98]

"Mr. Summerville made no mention to me of you," said Ned, looking the Jap over.

"No doubt, sir, no doubt," was the reply; "me only joinee ship in New York."

Ned said no more, but, telling the steward to summon him when the meal was ready, he resumed his meditations. Truly the young skipper of the Seneca was in need of time to think and ponder.

This command of his, of which he had been so proud, evidently was not going to prove any sinecure. Then, somehow, the face of the Jap floated before his mind. He had seen it somewhere before, he was certain. Perhaps it was on some other naval craft, for Japanese stewards are much affected in the United States Navy.

It was a striking face, too: thick, bushy hair brushed up above a massive forehead, far squarer and more prominent than Jap's foreheads usually are, forming a sort of bristly aureole for a yellow face with dark, forbidding eyebrows and a heavy[Pg 99] jaw. Saki was not a common type of Jap. He was heavier, less obsequious and smiling, more sure of himself.

But such thoughts quickly flitted from Ned's mind as the problem of Kenworth put itself forward. Mated with this reflection came the image of Rankin. Both were men who disliked and, in one case at least, hated Ned and Herc.

True, Rankin had no cause but a purely unreasonable one—as it were—for his antipathy to the young captain of the Seneca and his first officer, but it was none the less plain, even without taking the overheard conversation on the bridge into account, that the man had made up his mind to do all the harm he could.

How soon he would strike, of course, Ned had no idea; nor what form his malice would take. That Ned had concluded that Kenworth had purposely run upon the shoal, we already know, but with how much justice he had arrived at such a deduction, he could not determine.

[Pg 100]

The course was soon worked out and Ned proceeded to the chart house. He summoned Herc and gave him his sailing directions, and then proceeded to make an inspection of the ship. On his return from this duty, he suddenly recollected that he had left the door of his stateroom unlocked.

He descended the stairs swiftly and almost noiselessly. As he reached the foot of ............