Jack had served an apprenticeship in the art of practical joking in the _Ariadne_. Not for nothing had he been for two years a "youngster" in a midshipman’s mess. He knew that the best way to discourage the gentle sport in others was to take summary vengeance on the joker—if he could get at him. He picked himself up in a trice, dashed into the alley-way—so narrow that there was scarcely room for more than one to pass at a time—and saw before him the back of a hulking form disappearing into the dusk, and hiding, as Jack judged from the clumping of heavy boots, a number of his fellow conspirators in front. The fugitive was tall, but his clumsy body seemed too heavy for his short legs, and he moved slowly. Jack was upon him just as he emerged from the narrow alley into the open square of the village. Catching sight, with the readiness of one accustomed to use his eyes, of a convenient muck-heap—there were always convenient muck-heaps in town or country a hundred years ago, when sanitary inspection was still undreamed of—Jack neatly tripped the burly figure into its soft and odorous embrace. There was a great yell from the other fugitives, who stopped their flight when they found that they were not in immediate danger; and as they closed in toward the spluttering victim, now slowly raising himself, Jack saw that they were some of the boys and youths of the village, whose eyes he had often noticed upon him as he passed through. And there was something strangely familiar in the attitude of the hobbledehoy struggling clumsily to his feet. He was not a fisher lad; where had Jack seen him before? The cries of the crowd enlightened him. "Fight un, Bill Gudgeon!" "Heave un into midden, Billy." "Black his eyes!" "Give un a nobbier!" But Bill Gudgeon, like his father, was inclined to keep himself to himself. "Not if I knows it," he said slowly, as he sheered off. "Maister and me be quits now." "Chok’ it all!" cried one of his companions, a sturdily built, black-browed, bullet-headed fisher youth of some eighteen years. "If so be you woan’t fight, Billy Gudgeon, I will, so there then. Be you afeard, maister?" "No, I don’t think I’m afraid of you," said Jack, "but I don’t see what we’ve got to fight about. As your friend yonder said, we’re quits. And I’m in a hurry. Good night." "Boo! boo!" yelled the rest, encouraged by this seeming display of the white feather. "Rare plucked un to fight Boney! Afeard of Jan Lamiger! Boo! boo!" Jan Lamiger slouched forward as Jack was turning away, and as an earnest of battle cleverly flicked off his hat. Jack was round in an instant. "Very well, Jan, or whatever your name is, if you’re set on fighting, I suppose I must oblige you."