"Looks like an Owl, eh?" asked Jack.
"He is an Owl!" roared the Englishman. "He works for me, an' he wants to sleep all day an' sit up all the bloomin' night. He's an Owl all but the wise look."
"You loaver!" cried Hans, well knowing that Hamblin would not be permitted to attack him again. "You starf mine pelly! You put bugs to sleep in mine ped! How should the nights get me sleep when the ped is one processions of pugs?"
Jack now called Ned aside and told him of the meeting of the conspirators at the Hamblin store, of the sealed packet, and of the seeming quarrel, as described by Hans. Ned turned to the Englishman.
"They met there by appointment," he asked, "the man from the Shark and the man who waited for him?"
"Yes, by appointment."
"It was about papers?"
"Yes, and gold."
"Where did the man who waited here come from?"
"Some point in China."