The wind blew his coat aside as he stooped over, and Ned saw that, pinned within it, the Jap had a peculiar decoration. Ned knew what it was. He had seen similar ones in the Far East on the world cruise.
It was the badge denoting that the wearer belonged to Samurai, or warrior caste of Japan. It also was conferred as a decoration on certain leaders after the Russo-Japanese war.
This Saki, then, was not the ship's steward, as he had been masquerading. Instead, he was a soldier and a veteran, and evidently, too, of high rank.
The whole thing came over Ned in a flash. What a fool he had been not to see through the plot before. The Jap, whose creature Kenworth plainly was, had seized the opportunity of the great naval maneuvers to smuggle himself into the midst of things and secure information about Uncle Sam's fighting ships and war methods that he could have gained in no other way.
The careful maps that Kenworth was drawing were destined to be sent across the Pacific, for what purpose Ned could guess. He turned eyes that blazed slow fires of contempt upon Kenworth.
The latter laughed harshly.
"Thinking you'd like to nail me, aren't you?" he sneered. "But you'd have to get up a little earlier in the morning to do that. We knew every one of your plans long ago. Saki got them in your cabin——"
The Japanese held up a warning hand.
"No talk any more. Hurry up your map," he urged.
"Pshaw! what harm does it do to tell him a few wholesome truths?" snarled Kenworth. "He's had a swelled head too long altogether. This is the time that he learns he's not as smart as he thinks, by a whole lot."