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.
"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 jaw. Saki was not a common type of Jap. He was heavier, less obsequious and smiling, more sure of himself.