Just then he thought he heard a slight noise from the hall. Swiftly and noiselessly as a great cat he crossed to the door and opened it.
Ishida sat in his place scratching laboriously with a foreign pen.
Bersonin's glance of suspicion altered. "What are you working at so industriously, Ishida?" he asked.
The Japanese boy displayed the sheet with pride.
It was an ode to the coming Squadron. Bersonin read it:
"Welcome, foreign men-of-war! Young and age, Man and woman, None but you welcome! And how our reaches know you but to satisfy, Nor the Babylon nor the Parisian you to treat, Be it ever so humble, Yet a tidbit with our heart! What may not be accomplishment Rising-Sun?
Bersonin laid it down with a word of approbation. "Well done," he said. "You will be a famous English scholar before long." He went into the dressing-room, but an instant later recollected the papers on the table. The servant was in the laboratory when his master hastily reentered; he was methodically removing the coffee tray.
Alone once more, Ishida reseated himself at his small desk. He tore the poem carefully to small bits and put them into the waste-paper basket. Then, rubbing the cake of India-ink on its stone tablet, he drew a mass of Japanese writing toward him and, with brush held vertically between thumb and forefinger, began to trace long, delicate characters at the top of the first sheet, thus:
[Japanese: Ouryuu no fusetsusuirai ni oyobosu eikyou hidarino toori kinji]
In the Japanese phrase this might literally be translated as follows:
cross-current of, laying water thunder on, work-effect left hand respectively
A STUDY OF CROSS-CURRENTS IN THEIR EFFECT ON SUBMARINE MINES SUBMITTED WITH DEFERENCE
This finished, he sealed it in an envelope, took a book from the breast of his _kimono_ and began to read. Its cover bore the words: "Second English Primer, in words of Two Syllables." Its inner pages, however, belied the legend. It was Mahan's _Influence of Sea-Power on History_.
Yet Lieutenant Ishida of the Japanese Imperial Navy, one time student in Monterey, California, now in Special Secret-Service, read abstractedly. He was wondering why Doctor Bersonin should have in his possession a technical naval chart and what was the meaning of certain curious markings he had made on it.