CHAPTER ONE

The warm monsoon blew gently from the east, wafting HMS Leopard into the bay of Pulo Batang. She had spread all the sails she could, to reach the anchorage before the tide should turn and to come in without discredit, but a pitiful show they made - patched, with discoloured heavy-weather canvas next to stuff so thin it scarcely checked the brilliant light - and her hull was worse. A professional eye could make out that she had once been painted with the Nelson chequer, that she was a man-of-war, a fourth-rate built to carry fifty guns on two full decks; but to a landaman, in spite of her pennant and the dingy ensign at her mizen-peak, she looked like an unusually shabby merchant ship. And although both watches were on deck, gazing earnestly at the shore, the extraordinarily bright-green shore, and breathing in the heady scent of the Spice Islands, the Leopard's crew was so sparse that the notion of her being a merchant-man was confirmed: furthermore, a casual glance showed no guns at all; while the ragged, shirt-sleeved figures on her quarterdeck could hardly be commissioned officers.

These figures all gazed with equal intensity down the bay, to the green-rimmed inlet where the flagship rode, and beyond it to the spreading white house that had been the Dutch governor's favourite wet-season residence: a union flag flew over it at present. As they gazed a signal ran up on a second flagstaff to the right.

'They desire us to heave out the private signal, sir, if you please,' said the signal-midshipman, his telescope to his eye.

'Make it so, Mr Wetherby, together with our number,' said the Captain; and to his first lieutenant, 'Mr Babbington, round-to when we are abreast the point and start the salute.'

The Leopard glided on, the wind singing gently in her rigging, the warm, still water whispering down her side: otherwise a total silence, the hands bracing her yards without a word as the breeze came more abeam. And in the same silence the shore contemplated the Leopard's number.

She was abreast of the point; she came smoothly to the wind, and her single carronade began to speak. Seventeen feeble puffs of smoke, and seventeen little bangs like damp squibs over the miles of deep blue sea; when the last faint yelp had died away, the flagship began her deep, full-throated reply, and at the same time another hoist ran up on shore. 'Captain repair to flag, if you please, sir,' said the midshipman.

'Barge away, Mr Babbington,' said the Captain, and walked into his cabin. Neither their landfall nor the presence of the flag was unexpected, and his full-dress uniform was laid out on his cot, scrubbed and brushed to remove the stains of salt water, iced seaweed, antarctic lichen and tropical mould until it was threadbare in some places and strangely felted in others; yet the faded, shrunken blue gold-laced coat was still honest broadcloth, and as he put it on he broke into a sweat. He sat down and loosened his neckcloth. 'I shall get used to it presently, no doubt,' he said, and then, hearing the voice of his steward raised in blasphemous, whining fury, 'Killick, Killick there: what's amiss?'

'Which it's your scraper, sir, your number one scraper. The wombat's got at it.'

'Then take it away from him, for God's sake.'

'I duresn't, sir,' said Killick. 'For fear of tearing the lace.'

'Now, sir,' cried the Captain, striding into the great cabin, a tall, imposing figure. 'Now, sir,' - addressing the wombat, one of the numerous body of marsupials brought into the ship by her surgeon, a natural philosopher - 'give it up directly, d'ye hear me, there?'

The wombat stared him straight in the eye, drew a length of gold lace from its mouth, and then deliberately sucked it in again.

'Pass the word for Dr Maturin,' said the Captain, looking angrily at the wombat: and a moment later, 'Come now, Stephen, this is coming it pretty high: your brute is eating my hat.'

'So he is, too,' said Dr Maturin. 'But do not be so perturbed, Jack; it will do him no harm, at all. His digestive processes -,

At this point the wombat dropped the hat, shuffled rapidly across the deck and swarmed up into Dr Maturin's arms, peering at close range into his face with a look of deep affection.

'Well, I can keep it under my arm, together with my reports,' said the Captain, picking up a bundle of papers and carefully fitting them round his gold-laced hat to conceal the tear. 'What now, Mr Holles?'

'Barge alongside, if you please, sir.'

The Leopard in fact possessed no barge: nothing more than a little clinker-built jolly-boat, patched and pieced until scarcely an original plank was to be seen. It was rated barge for the occasion, but it was so small that the Captain's bargemen (once ten of the most powerful Leopards, all dressed alike in Guernsey frocks and varnished hats) amounted to no more than two, his coxswain Barrett Bonden and an able seaman by the name of Plaice: still, this was the Royal Navy, and the jolly-boat, like the Leopard's deck, had been sanded and holystoned to a state of unearthly lustre, while the bargemen themselves had done all that naval ingenuity could devise in the article of whole duck trousers and white sennit hats. Indeed, the Leopard herself took on an almost naval appearance for a moment as her captain came on deck: the Marine officer and his few remaining men had put on their dim pink or purple coats, once a uniform scarlet and they stood as straight as their own ramrods while the Captain went down the side to what remnant of ceremony the Leopards could provide.

'Aubrey!' cried the Admiral, rising as the Captain was shown in and taking him by the hand. 'Aubrey! By God, I am glad to see you. We had given you up for dead.' The Admiral was a stout, thickset sailor with a Roman emperor's face that could and often did look very forbidding; but it was now suffused with pleasure, and again he said, 'By God, I am glad to see you. When you were first reported from the look-out I thought you must be Active, a little before her time; but as soon as you was hull-up I recognized the horrible old Leopard - I sailed in her in ninety-three - the horrible old Leopard come back from the dead ! And tolerably clawed about, I see. What have you been at?'

'Here are all my letters, reports, returns, and statements of condition, sir,' said Jack Aubrey, laying his papers on the table, 'from the day we left the Downs until this morning. I am truly sorry they are so tedious long, and I am truly sorry to have taken such a time in bringing you the Leopard, and in such a state, at that.'

'Well, well,' said the Admiral, putting on his spectacles, glancing at the heap, and taking them off again. 'Better late than never, you know. Just give me a brief account of what you have been at, and I will look through the papers later.'

'Why, sir,' said Jack skiwly, collecting his mind, 'as you know, I was directed to come out by way of Botany Bay, to deal with Mr Bligh's unfortunate situation there: then at the last moment it was thought fit to put a number of convicts aboard, and I was to carry them out as well. But these convicts brought the gaol-fever with them, and when we were about twelve degrees north of the line and becalmed for weeks on end, it broke out in a most shocking fashion. We lost more than a hundred men, and it lasted so long I was obliged to bear away to Brazil for provisions and to land the sick. Their names are all here,' he said, patting one of the sheafs. 'Then, a few days out of Recife, and shaping our course for the Cape, we fell in with a Dutch seventy-four, the Waakzaamheid.'

'Just so,' said the Admiral, with ferocious satisfaction. 'We were threatened with her - a goddam nightmare.'

'Yes, sir. And being so short-handed and out-gunned, I avoided an engagement, running down to about 41° South, a long, long chase. We shook her off at last, but she knew very well where we were bound, and when we turned north and west for the Cape some time later, there she was again, to windward; and it was coming on to blow. Well, sir, not to be tedious, she ran us down to 43° South, the wind rising and a very heavy following sea; but by getting hawsers to the mastheads and starting our water we kept ahead, and a shot from our stern-chasers brought her foremast by the board, so she broached-to and went down.'

'Did she, by God!' cried the Admiral. 'Well done, well done indeed. I heard you had sunk her, but could scarcely credit it - no word of the circumstances.' He could see it all now: he knew the high south latitudes well, the enormous seas and the winds of the forties, the instant death of any ship that broached-to. 'Well done indeed. That is a great relief to my mind. Give you joy of it with all my heart, Aubrey,' he said, shaking jack's hand again. 'Chloe, Chloe there,' - raising his voice and directing it through a partially open door.

A slim honey-coloured young woman appeared: she was wearing a sarong and a little open jacket that revealed a firm and pointed bosom. Captain Aubrey's eyes instantly fixed upon this bosom: he swallowed painfully. He had not seen a bosom for a very long while indeed. The Admiral had, however, and with no more than a benign glance he called for champagne and koekjes. They came at once on trays, borne by three more young women of the same mould, tithe, smiling, cheerful; and as they served him Captain Aubrey noticed that they brought with them a waft of ambergris and musk; perhaps of cloves too, and nutmeg. 'These are my cooks, by land,' observed the Admiral. 'I find they answer very well, for country dishes. Well, here's to you, Aubrey, and your victory: it ain't every day a fifty-gun ship sinks a seventy-four.'

'You are very kind, sir,' said Jack. 'But I am afraid that what I have to tell you next is not so pleasant. Having started all our water bar a ton or so, I stood south and east for floating ice: there was no point in beating back a thousand miles to the Cape, and with the wind steady in the west I hoped to push straight on to Botany Bay as soon as we had completed our water. We found the ice further north than I had expected, a very large island of it. But most unhappily, sir, we had scarcely filled more than a few tons before the weather grew so thick that I had to call in the boats; and then in the fog we struck stern-first upon the ice-mountain, beat off our rudder and started a butt under the larboard run. The leak gained prodigiously in spite of fothering-sails, and it was then, sir, that the guns were obliged to be thrown overboard, together with everything else we could come at.'

The Admiral nodded, looking very grave.

'The people behaved better than I had expected: they pumped until they could not stand. But when the water was well above the orlop, it was represented to me that the ship must settle, and that many of the people wished to take their chance in the boats. I told them we must try one more fothering-sail, but meanwhile I should have the boats hoisted out and provisioned. But I very much regret to say, sir, that a short while after this some hands broke into the spirit-room: and that was the end of all order. The boats left in a deplorable condition. May I ask, sir, whether any of them survived?'

'The launch reached the Cape - that is how I knew about the Dutchman - but I have no details. Tell me, did any officers or young gentlemen go with them?'

Jack paused, twirling his glass in his fingers. The girls had left the door open, and in the courtyard beyond he saw five tame cassowaries hurry across on tiptoe, as intent as hens and very like them; but hens five feet tall. This sight scarcely brushed his conscious mind, however: he said, 'Yes, sir. I had directly given my first lieutenant leave to go; and my words to the men certainly implied permission.' He was aware that the Admiral was watching him from under a shading hand, and he added, 'I must say this, sir: my first lieutenant behaved in a most officerlike, seamanlike manner throughout, I was perfectly satisfied with his conduct: and the water was knee-deep on the orlop.'

'Hm,' said the Admiral. 'It don't sound very pretty, though. Did any other officers go with him?'

'Only the purser and the chaplain, sir. All the other officers and young gentlemen stayed, and they behaved very well indeed.'

'I am glad to hear it,' said the Admiral. 'Carry on, Aubrey.'

'Well, sir, we got the leak under some sort of control, rigged a steering-machine and bore away for the Crozets. Unhappily we could n9t quite fetch them, so we proceeded to an island a whaler had told me of, that a Frenchman had laid down in 49°44' South - Desolation Island. There we heeled the ship and came at the leak, completed our water, took in provisions - seals, penguins, and a very wholesome cabbage - and fashioned a new rudder from a topmast. For want of a forge we were unable to hang it; but fortunately an American whaler put in, that had the necessary tools. I am sorry to have to report, sir, that at this point one of the convicts managed to get aboard the whaler, together with an American I had rated midshipman; and they escaped.'

'An American?' cried the Admiral. 'There you are - all of a piece! Damned rascals - convicts themselves, for the most part, piebald mongrels for the rest - they lie with black women, you know, Aubrey; I have it on good authority that they lie with black women. Disloyal - hang the whole lot of them, the whole shooting-match. And so this fellow you had rated midshipman deserted, and seduced an Englishman too, into the bargain. There's American gratitude for you! All of a piece - we protected them against the French till sixty-three, and what did they do? I'll tell you what they did, Aubrey; they bit the hand that fed them. Scoundrels. And now here is your American midshipman luring one of your convicts away. A fellow condemned for parricide, or gross immorality, or both, I make no doubt -birds of a feather, Aubrey, birds of a feather.'

'Very true, sir, very true; and if you touch pitch, you cannot very well get it off again.'

'Turpentine will remove pitch, Aubrey: Venice turpentine.'

'Yes, sir. But to do the fellow justice - and I must say he did us justice during the pestilence, acting as surgeon's mate - it was a female American prisoner, a privileged prisoner, berthing alone, that he went off with, an uncommonly handsome young lady, Mrs Wogan.'

'Wogan? Louisa Wogan? Black hair, blue eyes?'

'I did not notice the colour of her eyes, sir; but she was an uncommonly handsome woman; and I believe her name was Louisa. Did you know her, sir?'

Admiral Drury went a dusky red - he had just happened to meet a Louisa Wogan - an acquaintance of his cousin Vowles, the junior lord of the Admiralty - an acquaintance of Mrs Drury - no possible connection with Botany Bay

- a very common name: mere coincidence - not the same woman at all - besides, now that the Admiral came to recollect, his Mrs Wogan's eyes were yellow. However, they would not go into all that now: Aubrey might carry on with his account.

'Yes, sir. So having shipped the new rudder, we proceeded to Port Jackson - to Botany Bay. Two days out we caught sight of the whaler, far to windward; but I was advised - that is to say, I considered it my duty not to chase, in view of the fact that• Mrs Wogan was an American citizen, and that in the present state of tension, taking her off an American vessel by force might lead to political complications. I suppose, sir, that they have not declared war on us?'

'No. Not that I have heard of. I wish they would: they do not possess a single ship of the line, and three of their fat merchantmen passed Amboyna last week - such prizes!'

'To be sure, a prize is always welcome, sir. We proceeded, then, to Port Jackson, where we found that Captain Bligh's problems had already been dealt with, and that the authorities could not accord us a single gun, nor any sailcloth, and precious little cordage. No paint, neither. So despairing of getting anything out of the military men in charge - they seemed to have taken against the Navy since Mr Bligh's time in command - I discharged our remaining convicts and proceeded to this rendezvous with the utmost despatch. That is to say, considering the state of the ship under my command.'

'I am sure you did, Aubrey. A very creditable feat, upon my soul, and very welcome you are, too. By God, I thought you had lost the number of your mess long ago -lying somewhere in a thousand fathoms and Mrs Aubrey crying her pretty eyes out. Not that she gave you up, however: I had a note from her not a couple of months ago, by Thalia, begging me to send some things on -books and stockings, as I remember - to send them on to New Holland, because you were certainly detained there. Poor lady, thought I, she has been knitting for a corpse. Such a pretty note; I dare say I have it still. Yes,' said he, rummaging among his papers, 'here we are.'

The sight of that familiar hand struck Jack with astonishing force, and for a moment he could have sworn he heard her voice: for this moment it was as though he were in the breakfast-parlour at Ashgrove Cottage, in

Hampshire, half the world away, and as though she were there on the other side of the table, tall, gentle, lovely, so wholly a part of himself. But the figure on the other side of the table was in fact a rather coarse rear-admiral of the white, making a remark to the effect that 'all wives were the same, even naval wives; they all supposed there was a penny post at every station where a ship could swim, ready to carry and fetch their letters without a moment's delay. That was why sailors were so often ill-received at home, and blamed for not writing oftener: wives were all the same.'

'Not mine,' said Jack; but not aloud, and the Admiral went on, 'The Admiralty did not give you up, either. They have given you Acasta, and Burrel came out months and months ago to supersede you in the Leopard; but he died of the bloody flux, together with half his followers, like so many people here; and what I shall do with Leopard I cannot tell. I have no guns here but what I can take from the Dutch, and our balls, as you know very well, don't fit Dutch guns... and without guns, she can only be a transport. Should have been turned into a transport these ten years past - fifteen years past. But that is nothing to do with the present case: what you will have to do, Aubrey, is to get your dunnage ashore as quick as you can, because La Flèche is due from Bombay. Yorke has her. She just touches here, the time to pick up my despatches, and then she flies home as quick as an arrow. As quick as an arrow, Aubrey.'

'Yes, sir.'

'Flèche is the French for an arrow, Aubrey.'

'Oh, indeed? I was not aware. Very good, sir. Capital, upon my word. Quick as an arrow - I shall repeat that.'

'I dare say you will, and pass it off as your own, too.

And if Yorke don't delay, if he don't hang about in the

Sunda Strait, whoring after prizes, you should still have the monsoon to carry you right across - a famous passage.

Now give me a quick idea of the state of your ship. Of course, she must be surveyed, but I should like to have a general notion at once. And tell me just how many people you have aboard - you would scarcely credit how hungry I am for men. Ogres ain't in it.'

There followed a highly technical discussion in which the boor Leopard's shortcomings were candidly exposed

- the state of her futtocks, her deplorable knees - a discussion from which it appeared that even if the Admiral had had the guns to arm her, she could hardly bear them, her timbers being so strained, and the rot having spread forward from her stern to so shocking a degree. This discussion, though melancholy, was perfectly amicable: no harsh words were heard until they reached the subject of followers, the officers, young gentlemen, and hands who, by the custom of the service, accompanied a captain from one command to another. With a false air of casualness, the Admiral observed that in view of the exceptional circumstances he proposed retaining them all. 'Though you may take your surgeon with you,' he said. 'In point of fact I have had several orders to send him back by the first ship; and he is to report to Mr Wallis, my political adviser, at once. Yes: you may certainly take him with you, Aubrey; and that is a very great indulgence. I might even stretch a point and allow you a servant, though La Flèche could certainly supply any number you may need.'

'Oh, come sir,' cried Jack. 'My lieutenants - and Babbington has followed me since my first command - my midshipmen, and all my bargemen, in one fell sloop? Is this justice, sir?'

'What sloop, Aubrey?'

'Why, as to that, sir, I do not mean any specific vessel: it was an allusion to the Bible. But what I mean is, that it is the immemorial custom of the service...'

'Am I to understand that you are questioning my orders, Mr Aubrey?'

'Never in life, sir, Heaven forbid. Any written order you choose to honour me with, I shall of course execute at once. But as you know better than I, the immemorial custom of the service is that...'

Jack and the Admiral had known one another off and on for twenty years; they had spent many evenings together, some of them drunken; their collision therefore had none of the cold venom of a purely official encounter. It was none the less eager for that, however, and presently their voices rose until the maidens in the courtyard could clearly make out the words, even the warm personal reflections, direct on the Admiral's part, slightly veiled on Jack's; and again and again they heard the cry 'the immemorial custom of the service'.

'You always was a pig-headed, obstinate fellow,' said the Admiral.

'So my old nurse used to tell me, sir,' said Jack. 'But surely, sir, even a man with no respect for the immemorial customs of the service, an innovator, a man with no regard for the ways of the Navy, would condemn me, was I not to stand by my officers and midshipmen, when they stood by me in a damned uncomfortable situation - was I to let my youngsters go off to captains that do not give a curse for their families or their advancement, and desert a first lieutenant who has followed me since he Was a reefer, just when I have a chance of getting him on. One stroke of luck with Acasta, and Babbington is a commander. I appeal to your own practice, sir. The whole service knows very well that Charles Yorke, Belling, and Harry Fisher followed you from ship to ship, and that if they are commanders and post-captains now, it is thanks to you. And I know very well that you have always taken good care of your youngsters. The immemorial custom of the service...'

'Oh, f - the immemorial custom of the service,' cried the Admiral: and then, appalled at his own words, he fell silent for a while. He could, of course, give a direct order; though a written order would be an awkward thing to have shown about. But then again, Aubrey was not only in the right, but he was also a captain with a remarkable fighting reputation, a captain who had done so well in prize-money that he was known as Lucky Jack Aubrey, a captain with a handsome estate in Hampshire, a father in Parliament, a man who might end up on the Board of Admiralty, too considerable a man for off-hand treatment: besides, the Admiral liked him; and the Waakzaamheid was a noble feat. 'Oh well, a fig for it, anyhow,' he said at last. 'What a sullen, dogged fellow you are to be sure, Aubrey. Come, fill up your glass. It might get a little common good nature into you. You may have your mids for all I care, and your first lieutenant too; for I dare say that if you formed them, they would wrangle with their captain on his own quarterdeck, every time he desired one of them to put the ship about. You remind me of that old Sodomite.'

'Sodomite, sir?' cried Jack.

'Yes. You who are so fond of quoting the Bible, you must know who I mean. The man who wrangled with the Lord about Sodom and Gomorrah. Abraham, that's the name! Beat the Lord down from fifty to five and twenty and then to ten. You shall have Babbington and your mids and your surgeon, maybe even your coxswain, but let us hear no more about your bargemen. It is great nonsense and presumption on your part and anyhow there ain't room for another soul in La Flèche, so that's an end on it. Now tell me, among your remaining people, can you scrape together a decent eleven for a game of cricket? The squadron is playing ship against ship, for a hundred pound a side.'

'I believe I could, sir,' said Jack, smiling: in the very instant the Admiral uttered the word, he resolved a minute problem that had been nagging some remote corner of his mind - what was that absurdly familiar sound that came from the spreading lawn behind the house? Answer: it was the crack of bat meeting ball. 'I believe I could, sir. And, sir, I believe you mentioned mail for the Leopard?'

The Admiral's political adviser was a man of singular importance, for the British government had a mind to add the whole of the Dutch East Indies to the possessions of the Crown, and not only did the local rulers have to be persuaded to love King George, but the well-entrenched Dutch and French systems of influence and intelligence had to be counteracted and, if possible, eradicated; but he lived in a small, obscure house and he assumed no state at all, not half as much as the Admiral's secretary; and he dressed his subfusc person in a snuff-coloured coat, his only concession to the climate being a pair of nankin pantaloons, once white. His was a difficult task; yet since the Honourable East India Company had a great interest in eliminating their Dutch rivals, and since several members of the cabinet were holders of the Company's stock, he was at least well supplied with money. Indeed, he was sitting upon one of several chests crammed with small silver ingots, the most convenient currency in those parts, when his visitor was announced.

'Maturin!' cried the politico, whipping off his green spectacles and grasping the doctor's hand. 'Maturin! By God, I am glad to see you. We had given you up for dead. How do you do? Achmet!' - clapping his hands

- 'Coffee.'

'Wallis,' said Maturin, 'I am happy to find you here. How is your penis?' At their last meeting he had carried out an operation on his colleague in political and military intelligence, who wished to pass for a Jew: the operation, on an adult, had proved by no means so trifling as he or Walls had supposed, and Stephen had long been haunted by thoughts of gangrene.

Mr Wallis's delighted smile changed to gravity; a look of sincere self-commiseration came over his face, and he said that it had come along pretty well, but he feared it would never be quite the member it was. He related his symptoms in detail while the scent of coffee grew, pervading the little dirty room; but when the coffee itself appeared, in a brass pot on a brass tray, he broke off and said, 'Oh, Maturin, I am a mere weak monster, prattling about myself. Pray tell me of your voyage, your shockingly prolonged and I fear most arduous voyage - so prolonged that we had almost abandoned hope, and Sir Joseph's letters, from ecstatic, grew anxious, and at last melancholy to a degree.'

'Sir Joseph is in the saddle again, I collect?'

'More firmly than before; and with even wider powers,' said Wallis, and they exchanged a smile. Sir Joseph Blame had been the very able chief of naval intelligence; they both knew of the subtle manoeuvres that had caused his premature retirement, and of the even more subtle, far more intelligent manoeuvres that had brought him back.

Stephen Maturin supped his scalding coffee, the right Mocha berry, brought back from Arabia Felix in the pilgrim dhows, and considered. He was naturally a reserved and even a secretive man: his illegitimate birth (his father was an Irish officer in the service of His Most Catholic Majesty, his mother a Catalan lady) had to do with this; his activities in the cause of the liberation of Ireland had more; and his voluntary, gratuitous alliance with naval intelligence, undertaken with the sole aim of helping to defeat Bonaparte, whom he loathed with all his heart as a vile tyrant, a wicked cruel vulgar man, a destroyer of freedom and of nations, and as a betrayer of all that was good in the Revolution, had even more. Yet the power of keeping his mouth shut was innate: so perhaps was the integrity that made him one of the Admiralty's most valued secret agents, particularly in Catalonia - a calling very well disguised by his also being an active naval surgeon, as well as a natural philosopher of international renown, one whose name was familiar to all those who cared deeply about the extinct solitaire of Rodriguez (close cousin to the dodo), the great land tortoise Testudo aubreii of the Indian Ocean, or the habits of the African aardvark. Excellent agent though he was, he was burdened with a heart, a loving heart that had very nearly broken for a woman named Diana Villiers: she had preferred an American to him - a natural preference, since Mr Johnson was a fine upstanding witty intelligent man, and very rich, whereas Stephen was a plain bastard at the best, sallow with odd pale eyes, sparse hair and meagre limbs, and rather poor. In his distress. Maturin had made mistakes in both his callings - mistakes that might have been attributed to over-indulgence in the tincture of laudanum to which he was at that time addicted - and when it so happened that Louisa Wogan, an American acquaintance of Diana Villiers, was taken up for spying and sentenced to transportation, Stephen Maturin was required to go with her, as surgeon of the Leopard. The mission was of no importance compared with some he had undertaken, and at the time it seemed clear that Sir Joseph was merely putting him out of the way. Yet his connection with Mrs Wogan had taken a curious turn... How much should he tell Wallis? How much did Wallis already know?

'You used the word ecstatic in alluding to Sir Joseph's letters, I believe?' he said. 'A warm expression.'

This was a signal for Wallis to display his hand if he wished the game to continue on a reasonably candid level; he did so at once. 'None too warm, Maturin, I assure you,' said he, reaching for a file. 'Upon receiving your communication from the Brazils, from Recife, he wrote to say that you had brought off a splendid coup, that you had extracted all the information the lady possessed in far less time than he had expected; that he had a tolerably complete picture of the Americans' organization; and that he would endeavour to bring you back from the Cape by a despatch sent in the first ship bound for that station, but that even if that could not be accomplished, he should count the time of your absence well spent. This was already strong language from Sir Joseph, but it was nothing in comparison of the panegyric he wrote when your papers reached him from the Cape.'

'So the boats survived?'

'One boat. The launch, conducted by a Mr Grant, who delivered your papers to the naval officer commanding.'

'Were they damaged, at all? I was up to my knees when I wrote them.'

'There were water-stains, and there were blood-stains

- Mr Grant had trouble with his people - but except for two sheets they were entirely legible. Sir Joseph extracted the main lines for my benefit, together of course with all that was relevant to the situation here. At the same time he sent you this letter,' - handing it to Maturin - 'and desired me to look upon you as an exemplar in deceiving and dividing the enemy. I was, said he, to emulate your proceedings, as far as it was possible in this sphere. Other despatches followed, each with a letter for you: their tone, as I said, changed to anxiety and, as time went on, almost to despair, but they always had the same tenor - you were to return at once, to exploit the confusion caused in the French services to the utmost, and to renew your activities in Catalonia. I have a condensed report for you, on the present situation there.'

Wallis was an old, tried colleague, with no vices but the parsimony, meanness, and cold lechery so usual in intelligence; it was clear that he was acquainted with nearly all the essentials; it was also clear that as Stephen Maturin had very nearly perished on the outward voyage, he might quite well perish entirely homeward-bound. The sea was a treacherous element; a ship but a frail conveyance -fragilis ratis - tossed by the billows at their whim, and subject to every wind that blew. It was as well that Wallis should know.

'Listen,' he said, and Wallis leant his best ear forward, his face expressive of the most intense interest and curiosity. 'Now the beginning of it you know, the arrest of Wogan with Admiralty papers in her possession?' Wallis nodded. 'She was an agent of no great importance, but a loyal, well-plucked one, not to be bought; and naturally she did her best to let her chief know how she had left the situation - who was compromised and who was not. It so happened that she had a lover aboard, a compatriot, an ingenuous scholarly young man by the name of Herapath, who had stowed himself away to be with her. She used him to convey her information: I intercepted it, at Recife. That was my first communication. At the beginning of the voyage I had an assistant called Martin, a Channel-Islander brought up in France: he died, and it occurred to me that with his antecedents he made a very convincing secret agent. I therefore fabricated a general statement of the position, purporting to have belonged to him and dealing with our intelligence in Europe, with references to the United States and to a separate document covering the East Indies. I did not possess enough information to make an East Indian report convincing to an expert, so I did not attempt it; but I flatter myself that my analysis of the European situation, and my passing remarks about the United States, would persuade even so sceptical a man as Durand-Ruel. I need scarcely tell you, my dear Wallis, that my paper contained details of double agents, of bribes, of sources of information in the various French ministries and those of their allies - indeed, it was calculated to confound their politics, to put their best men out of action, and to ruin their mutual confidence. This document was found among the dead officer's effects; it aroused suspicion; copies were to be made for the authorities at the Cape, to be sent home. Herapath and I were the only men aboard conversant with French; my time was taken up, and the task therefore fell to Herapath, who had become my assistant. I was convinced that he would tell his mistress and that Wogan's empire over him was such that in spite of his honourable reluctance, of his scruples, a copy would pass to her and that she would send it to America from the Cape. The copy did pass, and she encoded it -I have the key to their code, by the way - but we did not touch at the Cape, since at that time we were being pursued by a Dutch vessel of superior force. I comforted myself with the reflection that she would certainly contrive to send it from Botany Bay, and that the loss of those months, though infinitely regrettable, was not disastrous, since until there was a state of open, declared war between the United States and England, we could not be quite certain that the Americans would pass the information on to their French allies, or at least to their French co-belligerents. Though indeed it was probable, even in peace-time, that the usual good offices would convey the essence if not the entirety, in an informal way. Their Mr Fox sees a great deal of Durand-Ruel. But tell me, has this war been declared?'

'Not by our latest advices. Though I cannot see how it can be long delayed, if Government pursues its present course. We are strangling their trade, as well as abducting and abusing their seamen.'

'An absurd, unnecessary, immoral, blundering course,' said Stephen angrily. 'And apart from all other considerations a war would lead to a deeply stupid dispersal of our force and efforts. Can Government really mean to give that scoundrel Bonaparte a respite, merely to recover a few alleged deserters - who, by definition, are unwilling to serve - and to gratify an old ignoble spite? It is stark staring madness. But I wander. Mrs Wogan was to send the document from Botany Bay: excellent, had she ever reached that settlement. She did not. Our ship struck upon a mountain of ice and very nearly sank: some of the people went away in boats, and to these I entrusted what I could copy of my statement, so that in the event of their reaching the Cape, Sir Joseph should have some notion of what was afoot, and take his measures accordingly. That was my second communication. At the time I had little doubt that Captain Aubrey would bring us through; but I must say that the delay was a torment to my heart. You may imagine my delight, therefore, when an American whaler put in to the island where we had taken refuge - Desolation Island, a place that I shall not attempt to describe - such birds, such seals, such lichens, Wallis! It was a Paradise to me. An American whaler, homeward-bound for Nantucket. With infinite pains I induced Herapath and Wogan to go aboard this vessel, carrying the report, and to sail away. The wear of spirit, as Herapath wavered between love and honour, you cannot easily conceive, Wallis; nor the extreme difficulty of concealing my manipulation of him from his mistress. And even then, the zeal of my captain very nearly defeated me: this whaler, clearly recognizable on the horizon, appeared early one morning before I was about, and it was only by representing to him that I should certainly hang myself from the mainyard-spritsail-gubbins or something of that sort if he did not desist that I persuaded him to resume our course for New Holland, that interesting continent. When we lost sight of her, the whaler was speeding, all sails abroad, in the general direction of America; and before now, I trust, Louisa Wogan will have presented her poisoned gift with the most perfect, and wholly convincing, conviction of good faith.'

'She has!' cried Wallis. 'She has, and its effects can already be discerned as I am sure you will see from Sir Joseph's letters. He tells me that Cavaignac has been shot; and that following up your hint he has sent tolerably easily detected presents to several members of Desmoulins's bureau by way of Prussia, for favours received; from which he confidently expects a pretty holocaust. Clearly, the good offices have been in operation. Lord, Maturin, what a coup!'

Stephen's eyes glittered. He loved France and the French idea of how life should be lived, but he hated Bonaparte's intelligence service with a consuming hatred: moreover, he had been interrogated by some of its members, and he would carry the marks to his grave. 'It was a happy chance that threw Louisa Wogan in my path,' he said, 'and I have not told you of perhaps the most important event in our intercourse. She was aware that I was a friend to liberty, but it may be that she placed a false interpretation upon the words, for just before she left she desired me, with a significant look, to call upon a friend of hers in London, Mr Pole of the Foreign Office.'

'Charles Pole - the American department?' cried Wallis, changing colour.

Stephen nodded. They exchanged a look, more significant by far than Mrs Wogan's, and Stephen stood up, quite satisfied with the effect of his words. 'May I beg you to give me Sir Joseph's other letters?' he said. 'I could wish to exult for a short while, in the privacy of my cabin.'

'Here they are,' said Wallis, passing the letters after a silent pause. 'Here they are. Your private post will be at the secretary's office. It is in the Residence, the large white house: should you like me to send a boy?'

'You are very good, but I believe I shall walk there myself,' said Stephen. 'I long to see a cassowary.'

'There is every likelihood of your seeing a whole drove, or company, of them at the Admiral's. His Dutch predecessor was a cassowary-fancier, and had them brought from Ceram. It is the large white house with the flag-poles; you cannot miss it. Lord, Maturin, what a coup!'

Stephen did not miss it, but he did miss his cassowaries; they were timid birds, and the sight of a party of seamen returning from the cricket-field had caused them to hurry away on their enormous feet and stand in the shade of the sago-palms. The sailors were nominally in charge of a stunted young gentleman from the Cumberland, but the democracy of the game was still upon them, and they called out 'What cheer, Leopard?' 'Do you want any paint?' and 'Borrow a couple of muskets off of us, and set up for a man-of-war, ha, ha, ha,' waving their bats and laughing at their own wit with a vehemence that drowned the midshipman's shrill piping, and caused the cassowaries (though tame from the egg) to retreat further into the shade, pursing their beaks.

The cricketers were scarcely out of sight before Stephen met Captain Aubrey, coming down the steps with a parcel under his arm. 'Why, Stephen,' cried he, 'there you are! I was just thinking about you. We are ordered home instantly. They have given me Acasta. Here are your letters.'

'What is Acasta?' asked Stephen, glancing at the meagre bundle without much interest.

'A forty-gun frigate, pretty well the heaviest in the service, bar Egyptienne; and Endymion and Indefatigable, of course, with their twenty-four-pounders. And the finest sailer of the lot, on a bowline. Two points off the winds, she could give even dear old Surprise foretopgallant, at least. A true, copper-bottomed plum, Stephen; I was sure the next would be some dull ship of the line, to and fro for ever off Brest, or polishing Cape Sicié. My time with frigates is pretty well up.'

'What is to happen to the Leopard?'

'She is to be a transport, as I have been telling you ever since Port Jackson. And when the Admiral sees the state of her futtocks, I doubt he will transport anything very valuable in her: the ice gave her as cruel a wrench as ever a ship could have and still swim. No, she will end her days as a transport, and God help the man who commands her if it comes on to blow.'

'Do you mean that we are to go home at once?' cried Stephen angrily.

'As soon as La Flèche comes in for despatches. Tomorrow or perhaps the next day she comes in, lies under the cape there, backing and filling, not to lose a moment of the monsoon, just long enough for Yorke to pull ashore to pick up the Admiral's billets doux and a couple of men that are invaliding and us, and then away, trembling in every limb.'

'A notoriously fragile ship, I find: very well - it is all of a piece.'

'Quivering, I meant to say. The arrow quivering. Do you smoke it?'

'How can you speak with such levity, when with the same breath you tell me that we are to go home without a chance to look at the wealth of the Indies - the flora and fauna passed by in frigid indifference, completely unexamined? The fabled upas-tree itself unseen. Can this be really so?'

'I am afraid it is. But you did have a fine run at 'em on Desolation, you recall - stuffed seals, penguins, albatross's eggs, those birds with curious beaks - Leopard's hold is crammed with them. And you did not do so badly in New Holland neither, with your God-damned wombats and all the rest.'

'Very true, Jack: do not think me ungrateful. And to be sure, I shall be glad to get my collection home as soon as possible; the giant squid is already in an advanced state of decomposition, while the kangaroos grow fractious, for want of a proper diet. But I did long to see a cassowary.'

'I am sorry for it, indeed; but the exigencies of the service...' said Jack, who dreaded a fresh influx of Sumatran rhinoceroses, orang-utangs, and infant roes. 'Stephen, I do not suppose you are much of a hand with bat and ball?'

Why should you make any such injurious supposition? I had not my equal with the hurly, or bat as you call it, from Malin Head to Skibereen.'

'I only meant that you might be above such things; but I am very glad to hear what you tell me. The Admiral challenges us to a match, and there are precious few Leopards to make up the side.'

The Captain of the Leopard, though an early riser, did not find his surgeon at the breakfast-table: nor did he find the officer or midshipman of the watch. This was scarcely odd, since, being deep in his correspondence from home, he had for once invited neither; but Dr Maturin was his invariable companion, and he called out to learn the reason for his absence. 'Killick, there. Where's the Doctor?'

'Which he gone ashore in a bumboat before the crack of dawn,' said Killick with a lewd grin; in Killick's mind there was, only one valid reason for going ashore, apart from getting drunk. He would have ventured some facetiousness had the Captain looked his usual pink cheerful morning self rather than grey-yellow and old, as though he had passed a sleepless night.

'Oh well, never mind,' said Jack, in such a tone that Killick glanced at him with real concern: he poured himself a pint mug of coffee, spread his letters on the table, and arranged them as nearly as he could in chronological order - a difficult task, for in spite of all his pleas Sophie rarely remembered to put the date. There were accounts among the letters, and from time to time he added up a sum, whistled, and looked graver still.

Killick sidled in with a dish of kidneys, the Captain's favourite relish, and placed it silently among the papers. 'Thankee, Killick,' said Jack, absently.

The kidneys were still there, as cold as the tropical sun would ever allow them to be, when Dr Maturin came aboard in his usual elegant manner, kicking the port-lids, cursing the kind hands that propelled him up the side, and arriving breathless on deck, as though he had climbed the Monument at a run. He was deeply laden, and his despondent shipmates thought they detected a python in one of the round flat covered baskets.

There were few shipmates to help him or to examine his baggage, however; only the maimed or crippled Leopards could be spared; the rest were busy. The ship's remaining midshipmen were gathered on the larboard gangway, furiously bowling spun-yarn sailcloth-covered balls at Faster Doudle, the Leopard's wicket-keeper, who seized them as accurately as a terrier might seize a rat, and with much the same ferocious concentration, while the whole watch below and all the Marines passed sharply critical remarks. For although the Leopard might lack paint and even guns, as well as men, they were determined that she should come off creditably in the match with those sods of the Cumberland - they might even wipe the buggers' eye! There were several Kent and Hampshire men among them, nurtured on the green; and Mr Babbington, their first lieutenant, had distinguished himself by notching forty-seven runs against the Marylebone club on Broad Halfpenny Down itself. He was very active among them - the ordinary forenoon tasks had been laid aside - adjuring them 'to pitch it up, pitch it up' and 'for God's sake to keep a length'; and catching sight of Stephen, he cried, 'You have not forgot the match, Doctor?'

'Never in life,' said Stephen, waving a white, new-cut piece of wood. 'I have just cut my hurly from a noble upas-tree.'

He made his way to the carpenter's and thence to the cabin, and he was giving an account of the upas-tree

- 'quite exploded, of course - not the least small smell of a corpse in the neighbourhood.- but an interesting sight: he conceived it to be cousin to the fig' - when he noticed his friend's face, and broke off. 'I trust you have good news from home, my dear?' he said. 'That Sophie and the children are quite well?'

'Blooming, Stephen, I thank you,' said Jack. 'That is to say, the mumps ravaged the nursery shortly after we left, and George had the red-gum at Christmas; but they are better now.'

'The mumps: very good. The earlier the better. Had we stayed longer, I should have suggested leading them all into some stricken cottage. I could wish that Government would infect every child, above all every male child, at a very early age. An orchitis that takes an ugly turn is a melancholy spectacle. And Sophie is quite well?'

'She was, by her latest letter - she sends you her love in each, as I should have said before - but it was wrote a great while ago, and how she has been standing the anxiety since then I cannot tell.'

'Had she heard of Grant's bringing the boat safe to the Cape?' Jack nodded. 'She had your letters from Brazil, so she knows that you were dissatisfied with Grant. She knows that he must represent the situation as having been desperate in order to justify himself: reasoning on the basis of these two facts, she will discount his words. She will have a total confidence in your dealing with the situation. She will, if anything, underestimate the peril.'

'You are quite right, Stephen. That is exactly what she has done, and she writes to me as though she had certain knowledge I was alive; and maybe she has, too. Never shows the least doubt of it, in any of these letters, bless her. And I hope to God that by now mine have reached her from Port Jackson. But even if they have, there is still the anxiety of this God-damned fellow Kimber. That is what I was really talking about.'

At these words Stephen's heart sank low. The Goddamned fellow Kimber had led Jack Aubrey to believe that there was silver in the dross from the ancient lead-mines on his land; that this dross could be treated by a secret process so that it would yield the residual metals; and that if a certain amount of money were spent on the undertaking, the eventual returns would be enormous. From what little Stephen understood of metallurgy, the thing itself was not physically impossible, but both he and Sophie looked upon Kimber as an impostor, one of the many land-sharks who hung about sailors on shore. Stephen knew that on his element Jack Aubrey was immensely capable, and that in warfare he was as cunning and foresighted as Ulysses, often deceiving, rarely deceived; but he had little opinion of his friend's wisdom or even common sense by land, and he had done his best to warn him against the projector. 'You did tie him up very rigorously, however, as I recall,' he said, looking attentively at Jack's face.

'Yes,' said Jack, avoiding his eyes. 'Yes, I did follow your advice; or some of it. But the fact of the matter, Stephen - the fact of the matter is, that in the hurry of leaving, and of seeing to the horses and the new stables,

I signed some papers he brought me after dinner without quite attending as much as I should have done. From the way he is carrying on - new roads, cuttings, drifts, steam-engines, buildings, even some idea of a stock company -you would think one of them was a power of attorney.'

'You did not read them through, I collect?'

'Not quite through, or I should have smoked it, you know. I am not such a flat as all that.'

'Listen, Jack,' said Stephen, 'if you brood upon it now, without all the data or learned advice, you will do no good, and you will make yourself sick. I know your constitution: who better? It is not one that can withstand prolonged, and above all useless, brooding. You must discipline your mind, my dear. For you are to consider, that thanks to this blessed order, you will be home sooner than the swiftest messenger - you are yourself the swiftest messenger - and that therefore it is your present duty to be reasonably gay, or at least to affect the motions of gaiety. You are to indulge in field-sports, such as the game this afternoon, until La Flèche comes in. Be not idle; be not alone. I speak in all gravity, brother, as a physician.'

'I am sure you are right, Stephen. Moping and cursing don't answer: I shall spring about on shore until La Flèche is on the wing. By rights I ought to sit mewed up with the ship's books, to pass my accounts - muster-book, slop-book, sick-book, gunner's, bosun's, and carpenter's returns, general and quarterly accounts of provisions, order-book, letter-book, and all the rest. But they went overboard: everything but the log and my remarks and a few others, that I took up to the Admiral. So I can play with a clear conscience, at least. Though I tell you what, Stephen, La Flèche can't come in too soon for me, though I dearly love a game of cricket. If it had not been that we are already ordered home, I should apply for leave, or invalid, or even throw up the service to be back.' He considered for a while, looking very grim; and then, with an obvious effort at disciplining his mind, he said, 'Is that your bat, Stephen?'

'It is I have just roughed it out with the carpenter, and am about to work upon the distal extremity with a bone-rasp, to deepen the recess.'

'It is rather like my grandfather's bat at home,' said Jack, taking it in his hand, 'curling out sideways at the end like that. Don't you find it a trifle light, Stephen?'

'I do not. It is the heaviest hurly that ever yet was cut from the deadly upas-tree.'

The match began precisely on the hour, by Admiral Drury's watch: Jack won the toss, and elected to go in. The game was democratic, to be sure; but democracy was not anarchy; certain decencies were to be preserved; and the Captain of the Leopard, with his first lieutenant, led the way, while the Admiral opened the proceedings, bowling downhill to Babbington. He took the ball from his chaplain and polished it for a while, fixing the lieutenant with a steely glare; then, taking a skip, he bowled a wicked lob. It pitched well up outside the off stump, and Babbington played back; but as he played, so the ball broke in towards his vitals, and jerking back further still he spooned the ball neatly into the Admiral's hands, to a roar of applause from the assembled Cumberlands.

'How is that?' said the Admiral to the chaplain.

'Very pretty, sir,' said the chaplain. 'That is to say, Out.' Babbington returned, downcast. 'You want to watch the Admiral,' he said to Captain Moore, of the Leopard's Marines, who succeeded him. 'It was the most devilish twister you ever saw.'

'I shall play safe for the first hour or so, and wear him out,' said Moore.

'You want to dart forwards and catch 'em full-toss, sir,' said Doudle. 'That's the only way to knock him off his length - that's the only way to play them lobs.'

Some Leopards agreed; others felt that it was preferable to bide one's time, to get used to the feel of the wicket, before setting about the bowling; and Captain Moore walked off with a wealth of contradictory advice pursuing him.

Having never watched a cricket-match before, Stephen would have liked to see what course Moore pursued, and what indeed the game consisted of - it obviously differed in many respects from the hurling of his youth. He would also have liked to go on lying on the grass in the shade of the majestic camphor-tree, gazing at the brilliantly-lit expanse of green with the white figures arranged upon it in the pattern of a formal dance or perhaps of a religious ceremony - perhaps of the two combined - a resplendent field surrounded by a ring of figures, some all in white, some with blue jackets, some with brilliant sarongs; for the Cumberlands had already supplanted the Dutch soldiers in the affections of the local fair. But at this moment a messenger appeared with a note: Mr Wallis was truly grieved to importune Dr Maturin, but his confidential clerk had fallen sick; there was a most important despatch to be enciphered before the arrival of La Flèche; and if his dear Maturin were at leisure, Mr Wallis would be infinitely grateful for a hand.

'I am not quite at liberty, colleague,' said Stephen, reaching the dirty little office. 'My ship is engaged in a match of cricket, and I am to take my part. However, Captain Moore stated that he should play safe for an hour or so; though for the life of me, I cannot conceive how he can spend... Never mind: let you read it out en clair and I will cipher. You are using thirty-six with the double shift, I take it?'

Slowly the despatch rolled out; in a dull, toneless, uninterested voice it related the devious proceedings of Mynheer van Buren at the court of the Sultan of Tanjong Puding, the surprising steps that Mr Wallis had taken to counteract them - Stephen had never known that Wallis was quite such a man of blood, nor that he had such enormous sums at his disposal - concluding with an objective statement of the case for and against a British occupation of Java, from the political point of view. 'The ethics they may sort out for themselves,' said Wallis. 'That is not my concern. What do you say to a glass of negus?'

'With all my heart,' said Stephen. 'Thirty-six, with the double shift, is dry work.' But he was fated never to drink his negus.

'Sir, sir,' cried a scarlet young gentleman from the Leopard - an absurdly beautiful child called Forshaw who had always been very kind and protective towards Dr Maturin - 'I have found you at last. You are in! Doudle is out - you are in - and we are all at a stand -the Admiral told me to run - I ran to the hospital, and I ran to Madame Titine's - nine wickets down and we have only notched up forty-six - we are in a terrible way, sir, terrible.'

'Calm yourself, Mr Forshaw,' said Stephen. 'It is but a game. Forgive me, Wallis; this is the engagement of which I spoke.'

'How grown men can think of playing bat and ball in this weather,' said Wallis to the closing door, as he drank Stephen's negus, 'I cannot tell.'

'Oh pray, sir, come on,' cried Forshaw over his shoulder. 'The Admiral is skipping up and down: and we are in a dreadful way. Mind the branch, sir. Nine wickets down, and only forty-six. Mr Byron got a duck, and so did old Holles.'

'How came you to think I should be at Madame Titine's, Mr Forshaw?' asked Stephen. 'And you are never to go there yourself, either.'

'Oh pray do come on, sir,' cried the child again, dodging behind Stephen to urge him to a run. 'Let me carry your bat. We absolutely depend on you. You are our only hope.'

'Well, I shall do my best, sure,' said Stephen. 'Tell me,

Mr Forshaw, the aim is to beat down the opposing wicket, is it not?'

'Of course it is, sir. Oh pray come on. All you have to do is to keep your end up and let the Captain do the rest. He's still in, and there's still hope, if only you will keep your end up.'

They emerged from the tropical vegetation, greeted by a general cheer. Stephen advanced, carrying his hurly: he was feeling particularly well and fit; he had his land-legs again, and no longer stumped along, but walked with an elastic step. Jack came to meet him, and said in a low voice, 'Just keep your end up, Stephen, until your eye is in; and watch out for the Admiral's twisters,' and then, as they neared the Admiral, 'Sir, allow me to name my particular friend Dr Maturin, surgeon of the Leopard.'

'How d'ye do, Doctor?' said the Admiral.

'I must beg your pardon, sir, for my late appearance:

I was called away on -,

'No ceremony, Doctor, I beg,' said the Admiral, smiling: the Leopard's hundred pounds were practically in his pocket, and this man of theirs did not look very dangerous. 'Shall we begin?'

'By all means,' said Stephen.

'You go down to the other end,' murmured Jack, a chill coming over him in spite of the torrid sun.

'Should you like to be given a middle, sir?' called the umpire, when Stephen had walked down the pitch.

'Thank you, sir,' said Stephen, hitching at his waistband and gazing round the field, 'I already have one.'

A rapacious grin ran round the Cumberlands: they moved much closer in, crouching, their huge crab-like hands spread wide. The Admiral held the ball to his nose for a long moment, fixing his adversary, and then delivered a lob that hummed as it flew. Stephen watched its course, danced out to take it as it touched the ground, checked its bounce, dribbled the ball towards the astonished coverpoint and running still he scooped it into the hollow of his hurly, raced on with twinkling steps to mid-off, there checked his run admist the stark silent amazement, flicked the ball into his hand, tossed it high, and with a screech drove it straight at Jack's wicket, shattering the near stump and sending its upper half in a long, graceful trajectory that reached the ground just as the first of La Flèche's guns, saluting the flag, echoed across the field.