He did not know exactly how old he was—probably about three score. His dreadlocks were black at the tips but gray at the roots. He had circumnavigated the terraqueous globe and knew more languages than most Englishmen knew drinking-songs. He was an officer of a merchant ship, and better dressed than any member of the Kit-Cat Clubb. And yet this! This piece of paper on his thigh. Charles White had printed it up, but any Englishman could have done the same. This particular configuration of ink upon the page had made him into a hounded fugitive, laid him at the mercy of a loathsome street-corner tout, forced him to flee from a coffee-house. And it had put a cannonball in his stomach. Was this how Daniel Waterhouse had felt when a stone the size of a tennis ball had dwelt in his bladder? Perhaps; but a few minutes’ knife-work and such a stone was gone. The cannonball in Dappa’s stomach was not so easy to remove. Indeed he knew that it would return, every time he recalled the last few minutes’ events, for the remainder of his days. He might be able to reach Minerva and sail out of range, but even if he were in the Sea of Japan, Charles White’s cannonball would hit him in the belly whenever his mind was idle and his thoughts returned to this day. And return he would, like a dog to his vomit.