  Hypermaps were introduced as an algebraic tool for the representation of
embeddings of graphs on an orientable surface. Recently a bijection was given
between hypermaps and indecomposable permutations; this sheds new light on the
subject by connecting a hypermap to a simpler object. In this paper, a
bijection between indecomposable permutations and labelled Dyck paths is
proposed, from which a few enumerative results concerning hypermaps and maps
follow. We obtain for instance an inductive formula for the number of hypermaps
with n darts, p vertices and q hyper-edges; the latter is also the number of
indecomposable permutations of with p cycles and q left-to-right maxima. The
distribution of these parameters among all permutations is also considered.
