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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.

CHAPTER TWO
    'The boat ahoy?' roared the Leopard's Marine sentry, meaning 'What boat is that? Whom does it convey?'
    The question was unnecessary, since La Flèche lay not a cable's length to windward, and all the Leopards with time to look over the side had seen her captain get into his gig in reply to the Admiral's signal, pull ashore in splendour, return an hour later with an official package, certainly despatches, go aboard on the larboard side of his ship, silently reappear with a parcel of quite a different shape, and pull straight for the Leopard. A question unnecessary for information, but nevertheless of great importance, since nothing but the coxswain's answering roar of 'La Flèche' could set the proper ceremony in train.
    The performers were pitifully shabby, the ship herself devoid of paint, but the rite was carried out in every detail, side-boys as brown as Malays and almost as bare darting down to offer the man-ropes with hands ludicrously gleaming in white gloves, run up by the sailmaker, the bosun's call wailing as he and his mates piped the side, the rugged Marines presenting their bright arms as Captain Yorke set foot aboard and saluted the quarterdeck. Byron, the officer of the watch and therefore as respectable as his means would allow, received him, and a moment later Jack Aubrey, having had time to clear the cabin of wombats and to put on a pair of whole trousers, emerged from his cabin. 'Yorke!' he cried. 'Welcome aboard. I am delighted to see you.'
    They shook hands, and Jack introduced his officers, Babbington, Moore, and Byron, and those of his midshipmen who were at hand, while all the time Captain Yorke studiously avoided seeing the Leopard's squalor, and then led him aft. As soon as the cabin door closed behind them Yorke said, 'I have a letter for you, Aubrey,' - pulling it from his pocket - 'I took the liberty of waiting on Mrs Aubrey on my way down to Portsmouth, thinking that just in case the Leopard had - that is to say, had reached the East Indies, you might like news of her.'
    'What a good fellow you are, Yorke, upon my soul,' cried Jack, growing suddenly red with delight. He took the letter and stared at it with his bright blue eye. 'You could not have given me greater pleasure, short of bringing her out to me yourself. Amazingly good-natured in you: I take it very, very kindly. How was she? How did you find her? How did she seem to be going along?'
    'Most uncommonly well, I do assure you. Overflowing spirits; came downstairs singing; I have never seen her look so well. She had a bran-new baby in her arms, and kept laughing at it for being so perfectly toothless and bald.'
    'Oh,' said Jack.
    'A new nephew or niece of yours; I forget quite which. I had put on a pretty solemn face, I can tell you, what with that ugly tale of the boats, and with Leopard being so damnably overdue; so I was taken aback to find her brimming over with spirits - even more so when she laughed and said she would be obliged to me if I would bring you out some warm stockings. Indeed, I was so put about, that I could hardly follow her explanation; but it seems she had had a letter from America to say that all was well. I forget the details, though she showed me the letter - she had it in her bosom. Not that she had needed it, she said; she had