William and I lit cigarettes and waited. At 10.42 MacTavish walked
into us, his lamp had given out and he wanted a new battery.

"Who won?" we inquired.

"Won?" he asked. "They haven't started yet, have they?"

"Left here about ten minutes ago," said William. "Do you mean to say
you've seen nothing of them?"

At that moment two loud voices, accompanied by the splash of liquid
and the crash of tin, struck our ears from different points of the
compass.

"Sounds to me as if somebody had found a watery grave over to the
left," said the Babe.

"Sounds to me as if somebody had returned to stables over to the
right," said I.

We trotted away to investigate. 'Twas as I thought; Ferdinand had
homed to his Isabella and was backing round the standings once more,
trailing the infuriated Albert Edward after him, sheets of corrugated
iron falling about them like leaves in Vallombrosa.

"Bolted straight in here and scraped me off against the roof," panted
the latter. "Suppose the confounded apple-fancier won ages ago, didn't
he?"

"He's upside down in the Tuning Fork trench system at the present