Kamanako halted as abruptly as though he had been challenged by a sentry.  As he saw the young captain a dark, red flush crept into the cheeks of the little, brown man.

“You talk much,” sneered the Japanese his anger rising.

“I say what I think about spies and fellows who would steal other men’s secrets,” retorted the young submarine captain.

“You will hold tongue better, if you please,” snapped Kamanako.

“I?  Hold my tongue for any scamp like you?” taunted Jack Benson.

The taunt had the effect for which Jack wished.  Kamanako, looking furious, dropped his dress suit case and ran angrily forward.

Just in time, as the Japanese bounded through the fringe of weeds, Captain Jack dodged adroitly to one side.

So Kamanako plunged past him—­and, the next instant, there came a smothered yell from the inside of the well shaft.

“Oh, that was a shame!” came indignantly, from one of the women in the party of strangers.

But Jack, paying no heed to her, had stepped back to the edge of the well shaft.  Dimly, down at the bottom, he could make out Kamanako, standing in slimy water that reached nearly up to his arm-pits.

“Is the water fine, eh?” Jack called down, laughingly.

“I show you—­some time!” came the answer, in smothered rage.

“You showed me Japanese jiu-jitsu,” mocked Benson “so I had to do something to return your courtesy.  What I have just shown you is called—­American strategy!”

By now Kamanako had succeeded in pulling himself part way out of the water, using his hands and feet on projecting bits of the old masonry.

“You’ll get out, in time, for you’re a patient fellow,” Jack called down, in a tantalizing kind of encouragement.  “Don’t forget the name that I have just given you—­American strategy.  And, the next time a fellow tries to make you mad, don’t let him do it until you’ve looked the ground over.  American strategy—­yes, that’s the name.”

Laughing, as he straightened up, Jack turned away from the shaft

“And aren’t you going to throw him down a rope, or do something to help the poor fellow out?” demanded the same indignant woman.

“Not in view of his line of offense, madame,” Benson replied, raising his cap.

“Offense?  What did he do?”

To the whole party Jack explained how Kamanako, that same morning, had been caught spying upon the controlling mechanisms of the submarine boat.  All the young skipper’s hearers were satisfied, then, to leave the Japanese there to work his own way out, since no one feels any sorrow over the punishment of a spy.

“Gunpowder and doughnuts!  But you did get square,” chuckled Eph, as the submarine party turned back to the automobiles.

“So that Japanese was a spy, you said?” murmured Mlle. Nadiboff, in a low tone, as they walked along.

“Yes, beyond a doubt,” Jack assured her.