THEY HAD NO companion in their isolated quarantine-meadow but little Sauvignon, the French courier-beast, who had not even the solace of her captain's presence. He, poor child, had been marched away in irons against her good behavior, while she made piteous cries under the restraint of Temeraire's reluctant but irresistible hold upon her back, his great claw nearly pinning her to the ground entirely.
She huddled upon herself after he was gone, and was only gradually persuaded by Temeraire to eat a little, and then to talk. "Voici un joli cochon," Temeraire said, nudging over one of the spit-roasted hogs which Gong Su had prepared for him, lacquered in dark orange sauce. "Votre capitaine's'inquietera's'il apprend que vous ne mangez pas, vraiment."
She took a few bites, shortly proceeding to greater enthusiasm once Temeraire had explained to her that the recipe was a la Chinois: her naïve remark that she was eating "comme la Reine Blanche" and a little more conversation confirmed to Laurence that Lung Tien Lien, their bitter enemy, was now securely established in Paris, and deep in Napoleon's councils. The little courier, full of hero-worship for the other Celestial, was not to be led into exposing any secret plans, if she knew of any, but Laurence needed no revelations to tell him that Lien's voice was sure to be loud for invasion, if Napoleon required any additional persuasion, and that she would strive to keep his attention firmly fixed upon Britain and no other part of the world.
"She says Napoleon is having the streets widened, so Lien may walk through all the city," Temeraire said, disgruntled, "and he has already built her a pavilion beside his palace. It does not seem fair that we have such difficulties here, when she has everything her own way."
Laurence answered only dully; he cared very little anymore for such larger affairs, when he was to watch Temeraire die as Victoriatus had died, reduced to that hideous bloody wreckage; a devastation far more complete than any Lien might have engineered from the deepest wells of malice. "You were with them only a few moments; let us hope," Jane had said, but no more than that, and in her lack of encouragement Laurence saw Temeraire's death-warrant signed and sealed. All the sand-pit was surely thick with the contagion; the Longwings had been penned up there for the better part of a year, the effluvia buried in the sand along with their poisonous acid.
He understood, belatedly, why he had seen none of his former colleagues, why Berkley and Harcourt had not answered his letters. Granby came to visit him, once: they could neither of them manage more than half-a-dozen words, painfully stilted; Granby consciously avoiding the subject of his own healthy Iskierka, and Laurence not wishing in the least to speak of Temeraire's chances, especially not where Temeraire himself might hear, and learn to share his own despair. At present Temeraire had no concern for himself, secure in the confidence of his own strength, a comfort which Laurence had no desire to take from him before the inevitable course of the disease should manage the job.
"Je ne me sens pas bien," Sauvignon said, on the morning of the fourth day, waking herself and them with a violent burst of sneezing; she was taken away to join the other sick beasts, leaving them to wait alone for the first herald of disease.
Jane had come to see him daily, with encouraging words as long as he wished to hear them, and brandy for when he could no longer; but she reluctantly said, coming to see him on the unhappy day, "I am damned sorry to speak of this so bluntly, Laurence, but you must forgive me. Would Temeraire have begun to think of breeding yet, do you know?"
"Breeding," Laurence said bitterly, and looked away; it was natural, of course, that they should wish to preserve the bloodline of the rarest of all breeds, acquired with such difficulty, and now also in the possession of their enemy; yet to him it could be only a desire to replace what should be irreplaceable.
"I know," she said gently, "but we must expect it to come on him any day now, and mostly they are disinclined once they get sick; and who can blame them."
Her courage reproached him; she suffered as much herself with no outward show, and he could not yield to his own feelings before her. In any case there was no shading of the truth to be had; he could not lie, and was forced to confess that Temeraire had "grown very fond of a female Imperial, in the retinue of the Emperor, while we were in Peking."
"Well, I am glad to hear it: I must ask if he would oblige us with a mating, to begin as soon as tonight, now he has been without question exposed," Jane said. "Felicita is not very poorly, and informed her captain two days ago that she thinks she has another egg in her; she has already given us two, good creature, before she fell sick. She is only a Yellow Reaper, a middle-weight; it is not the sort of cross any breeder of sense would choose to make, but I think any Celestial blood must be better than none, and we have few enough who are in any state to bear."
"But I have never seen her in my life," Temeraire said puzzledly, when the question was put to him. "Why should I wish to mate with her?"
"It is akin to an arranged marriage of state, I suppose," Laurence said, uncertain how to answer; it seemed to him belatedly a coarse sort of proposal, as though Temeraire were a prize stallion to be set on to a mare, neither of their preferences consulted, and not even a prior meeting. "You need do nothing you do not like," he added abruptly; he would not see this forced on Temeraire, in the least, any more than he should have lent himself to such an enterprise.
"Well, it is not as though I expect I would mind," Temeraire said, "if she would like it so very much, and I am rather bored only sitting about all day," he added, with rather less modesty than candor, "only I do not understand at all why she should."
Jane laughed, when Laurence had brought her this answer, and went out to the clearing and explained, "She would like to have an egg from you, Temeraire."
"Oh." Temeraire immediately puffed out his chest deeply in gratification, his ruff coming up, and with a gracious air bowed his head. "Then certainly I will oblige her," he declared, and as soon as Jane had gone demanded that he be washed and his Chinese talon-sheaths, stored away as impractical for regular use, be brought out and put on him.
"She is so damned happy to be of use, I could weep," said Felicita's captain Brodin, a dark-haired Welshman not many years older than Laurence, with a craggy face which looked made for the grim and brooding lines into which it had presently settled. They had left the two dragons outside in Felicita's clearing to arrange the matter to their own liking, which by the sound they were doing with great enthusiasm, despite the difficulties which ought to have been inherent in managing relations between two dragons of such disparate size. "And I know I have nothing to complain of," he added bitterly, "she does better than nine-tenths of the Corps, and the surgeons think she will last ten years, at this rate of progress."
He poured out an ample measure of wine, and left the bottle on the table between them, with a second and third waiting. They did not speak much, but sat drinking together into the night, drooping gradually lower over their cups until the dragons fell quiet, and the shuddering aspen trees went still. Laurence was not quite sleeping, but he could not think of moving or even to lift his head, weighted with a thick smothering stupor like a blanket; all the world and time dulled away.
Brodin stirred him awake in his chair in the small hours of the morning. "We will see you again tonight?" he asked tiredly, as Laurence stood and bent back his shoulders to crack the angry muscles loose.
"Best so, as I understand it," Laurence said, looking at his hands in vague surprise: they trembled.
He went out to collect Temeraire, whose profoundly smug and indecorous satisfaction might have put him to the blush, were he disposed to be in any way critical of what pleasures Temeraire might enjoy under the present circumstances. "She has already had two, Laurence," Temeraire said, laying himself back down to sleep in his own clearing, drowsy but jubilant, "and she is quite sure she will have another; she said she could not tell at all that it was the first time I had sired."
"But is it?" Laurence asked, feeling slow and stupid, "Did not you and Mei...?" Belatedly the nature of the question stopped him.
"That had nothing to do with eggs," Temeraire said dismissively, "it is quite different," and coiling his tail neatly around himself went to sleep, leaving Laurence all the more confused, as he could not dream of prying further.
They repeated the visit the following evening. Laurence looked at the bottle and did not take it up again, but with an effort engaged Brodin upon other things: the customs of the Chinese and the Turks, and their sea-journey to China; the campaign in Prussia and the great battle of Jena, which he could re-create in considerable detail, having observed the whole cataclysm from Temeraire's back.
This was not, perhaps, the best means for relieving anxiety; when he had laid out all that whirling offensive, and the solid massed ranks of the Prussian army, in the form of walnut shells, were swept clean from the table, he and Brodin sat back and looked at one another, and then Brodin stood restlessly up and paced his small cabin. "I would as soon he came across while some of us still can fight, if only I could give more than ninepence for our chances if he did."
It was a dreadful thing to hope for an invasion, with unspoken the suggestion of a desire to be killed in one: perilously close, Laurence felt uneasily, to mortal sin, an extreme of selfishness even if it did not mean that England would be laid bare after, and he was troubled to find a sympathetic instinct in himself. "We must not speak so. They do not fear their own deaths, and God forbid that we should teach them to do so, or show less courage than they themselves do."
"Do you think they do not learn fear by the end?" Brodin laughed unpleasantly and short. "Obversaria scarcely knew Lenton, by the end, and he took her out of the shell with his own hands. She could only cry for water, and for rest, and he could give her none. You may think me a heathen dog if you like: I would thank God or Bonaparte or the black Devil himself for giving her a clean death in battle."
He poured the bottle, and when he was finished Laurence reached for it across the table.
"The breeders prefer two weeks," Jane said, "but we will be glad for as long as he feels himself up to the task," so Laurence dragged himself from his bed the next day, his sleep gone all to pieces, taken half in wine at Brodin's table and half during the early hours of the morning, and crept through his day, supervising the useless harness-work and lessons for Emily and Dyer, until it was time to go again. They repeated the engagement twice more, and then on the fifth day, while he sat lumpen and considering the chessboard dully, Brodin raised his head and said to Laurence abruptly, "Has he not yet begun to cough?"
"Perhaps my throat is a little sore," Temeraire said judiciously. Laurence was sitting, his head bent nearly to his knees, scarcely able to support the weight of hope resting so unexpectedly upon his shoulders, while Keynes and Dorset clambered over Temeraire like monkeys: they had listened to his lungs with a great paper cone placed against the chest, to which they put their ears, and stuck their heads in his jaws to examine his tongue, which remained a healthy and unspotted red.
"We must cup him, I think," Keynes said at last, turning to his medical satchel.
"But I am perfectly well," Temeraire objected, sidling away from the approach of the wicked curved blade of the catling. "It does not seem to me that one ought to be forced to take medicine when one is not sick; anyone would think you had no other work to do," he said, aggrieved, and the operation was only achieved by persuading him of the noble service which it should be, to the sick dragons.
It yet required a dozen attempts: he kept withdrawing his leg at the last moment, until Laurence convinced him not to look, but to keep his eyes turned in quite the opposite direction until the ready basin held by Dorset was filled, and Keynes said, "There," and clapped the cautery, waiting ready in the fire, to the nick at once.
They would have carried the steaming bowlful of dark blood away without another word, if Laurence had not chased after them to demand their verdict: "No, of course he is not sick, and does not mean to be, so far as I can tell," Keynes said. "I will say no more at present; we have work to do," and went away, leaving Laurence almost ill himself with reaction; he felt a man who had stepped out of the shadow of the gallows, two weeks of anxious dread giving way quite suddenly to this almost shattering relief. It was very difficult not to yield to the force of his emotions, with Temeraire saying, "It is not very nice to be cut open, and I do not see what good it will do at all," nosing experimentally at the tiny seared-shut wound, and then nudging him in alarum. "Laurence? Laurence, pray do not worry; it does not hurt so much, and look, it has already stopped bleeding."
Jane was writing papers before Keynes had half made her his report, her face lit with energy and purpose, the grey shroud of sorrow and weariness fully visible only now with its removal.
"Let us not have any rioting, if you please," Keynes said almost angrily. His hands were still gory with blood crusted under the fingernails; he had come straight from his work, in making comparisons of the samples of blood beneath his microscope. "There is no justification for it. It may very well be merely a difference in physiognomy, or an individual trait. I have said only there is the merest possibility, worthy of a trial - worthy of a small trial, with no expectations - " His protests were useless: she did not pause for a moment. He looked as though he would have liked to snatch away her pen.
"Nonsense; a little riot is just what we need," Jane said, without even looking up, "and you will write the most damned encouraging report ever seen, if you please; you will give no excuses to the Admiralty."
"I am not speaking to the Admiralty at present," Keynes said, "and I do not care to give unfounded hopes. In all likelihood, he has never had the disease - it is some natural resistance, unique to his breed; and the cold which he suffered last year merely coincidence."
The hope was indeed a very tenuous one. Temeraire had been ill en route to China, briefly, the sickness settling itself out of hand after little more than a week in Capetown, and so dismissed at the time and afterwards as a mere trifling cold. Only his present resistance to the disease had given Keynes the suspicion that the illnesses might perhaps have been one and the same. But even if he were not mistaken, there might be no cure; if there were a cure, it might not be easily found; if it were found, still it might not be brought back in time to save many of the sick.
"And it is by no means the least likely possibility," Keynes added peevishly, "that there may be no curative agent whatsoever; many a consumptive has found a temporary relief in warmer climes."
"Whether the climate or the waters or the food, I do not care two pins; if I must ship every dragon in England to Africa by boat to take the cure, you may be sure I will do it," Jane said. "I am almost as glad to find some cause to lift our spirits again as for the chance of a cure, and you will do nothing to depress them again," Little hope riches enough to those who until lately had none, and worth pursuing with every means at hand. "Laurence, you and Temeraire must go, though I hate to give you up again," she added, handing him his orders, hastily written and scarcely legible, "but we must rely on him to remember best whatever might have suited his taste, and be the foundation of the cure. The ferals come along as well as could be hoped, thank Heavens, and with this latest spy captured, perhaps we will be lucky, and Bonaparte will not be in such a hurry to send good dragons after bad.
"And I am sending along all your formation," she continued. "They are in urgent need, having been among the first to take sick; if you bring them back well, which God willing, you can hold the Channel while we treat the others."
"Then I may see Maximus and Lily again, now," Temeraire said jubilantly, and would not wait, but insisted that they go at once: they had scarcely set down outside the barren clearing where Maximus slept, before Berkley came striding out to them and seizing Laurence by the arms nearly shook him, saying ferociously, "For God's sake, say it is true, and not some damned fairy-tale," and he turned aside and covered his face when Laurence gave his assent.
Laurence pretended not to see. "Temeraire, I believe your harness is loose, there over the left flank, will you look at it?" he said firmly, when Temeraire would have kept peering at Berkley's bowed shoulders.
"But Mr. Fellowes was working on it only last week," Temeraire said, diverted, nosing over it experimentally. He delicately took up a bit of the harness between his teeth and tugged on it. "No, it lies perfectly well; it does not feel the least bit loose at all."
"Here, let's have a look at you," Berkley interrupted brusquely, having mastered himself. "A good twelve feet more since you sailed away to China, no? And you look well, Laurence; I expected to see you ragged as a tinker."
"You would certainly have found me so, when we had first returned," Laurence answered, gripping his hand. He could not return any compliment; Berkley had put off some six stone of weight, at first glance, and it did not suit him; his jowls hung loose from his cheeks.
Maximus looked still more dreadfully altered, the great scaly red-and-gold hide sagging in folds around the base of the neck, and forward of his chest with the massive fretwork of his spine and shoulders holding it up like tent-poles, and what Laurence supposed to be the air-sacs swollen and bulging from his wasted sides. His eyes were slitted nearly shut, and a thin raspy noise of breathing issued from his cracked-open jaws, a trail of drool puddling beneath them; the nostrils were caked over with dried flaking effluvia.
"He will wake up in a bit, and be glad to see you both," Berkley said gruffly, "but I don't like to wake him when he can get any rest. The blasted cold will not let him sleep properly, and he don't eat a quarter of what he should."
Temeraire, having followed them into the clearing, made no sound, but crouched himself down, his neck curved back upon itself like a wary snake, and sat there utterly still, his wide unblinking gaze fixed on Maximus, who slept on, rasping, rasping. Laurence and Berkley conversed in low voices, discussing the sea-voyage. "Less than three months to the Cape," Laurence said, "to judge by our last voyage; and we had some fighting off the Channel to see us off, which did not speed matters."
"However long, better on a ship to some purpose than lying about like this, if we all drown at it," Berkley said. "We will be packed by morning, and the lummox will eat properly for once if I have to march the cows down his gullet."
"Are we going somewhere?" Maximus said sleepily, in a voice much thickened, and turned his head aside to cough low and deep, several times, and spit into a small leaf-covered pit dug for the purpose. He rubbed each of his eyes against his foreleg, in turn, to clear away the mucus, and then seeing Temeraire slowly brightened, his head rising. "You are back; was China very interesting?" he asked.
"It was, oh, it was, but," Temeraire burst out, "I am sorry I was not at home, while all of you were sick; I am so very sorry," and hung his head, miserably.
"Why it is only a cold," Maximus said, only to be interrupted by another bout of coughing, after which he added regardless, "I will be perfectly hearty soon, I am sure; only I am tired." He closed his eyes almost directly he had said this, and fell again into a light stupor.
"They have the worst of it," Berkley said heavily, seeing Laurence away; Temeraire had crept very quietly out of the clearing again, so they might go aloft without disturbing Maximus. "All the Regal Coppers. It is the damned weight; they do not eat, so they cannot keep up their muscle, and then one day they cannot breathe. Four lost already, and Laetificat will not see summer, unless we find your cure." He did not say that Maximus would follow soon after, if not precede her; he did not need to.
"We shall find it," Temeraire said fiercely, "we shall, we shall, we shall."
"I hope to find you well, and your charge, when we return," Laurence said, shaking Granby's hand; behind him a great bustle and commotion were under way as the crew made their final preparations: they would depart tomorrow on the evening tide, the wind permitting, and needed to be well aboard by morning, with so many dragons and their crews to be stowed. Emily and Dyer were busily folding his clothing into his battered old sea-chest, which had only just survived their most recent voyage, and Ferris was saying sharply, "Don't think I do not see you with that bottle, Mr. Allen; you may pour it out directly, do you hear?"
He had a great many new men aboard, replacements for the unhappy number of his crew who had been lost in their year's absence. Jane had sent them all on trial, for his approval, but in the torment and anxiety of the past two weeks, and the heavy work of those before, he had grown only indifferently acquainted with them; now suddenly there was no more time, and he must make do with whomever had been given him. He was not a little sorry to be making his farewells to a man whose character he knew and understood, and upon whom he would have been happy to rely.
"I expect you will find us all to pieces," Granby said, "with half of England on fire, and Arkady and his lot celebrating in the ruins, roasting cows; it will be wonderful otherwise."
"Tell Arkady from me that they are all to mind properly," Temeraire said, craning his head over carefully, so as not to dislodge the harness-men scurrying upon his back, "and that we will certainly be back very soon, so he need not think he has everything all to himself, even if he does have a medal now," he finished, still disgruntled.
They were prolonging their conversation over a cup of tea when a young ensign came for Laurence. "Begging your pardon, sir, but there is a gentleman to see you, at the headquarters," the boy said, and added, in tones of amazement, "a black gentleman," so a very puzzled Laurence had to say his last farewells more abruptly and go.
He came into the officers' common room; there was no difficulty in picking out his guest, although Laurence struggled for a moment before recalling his name: Reverend Erasmus, the missionary whom Wilberforce had presented to him, at the party two weeks before - had it been so short a time? "You are very welcome, sir; but I am afraid you find me at sixes and sevens," Laurence said, beckoning to the servants, who had not yet brought him any refreshment. "We are leaving port tomorrow - a glass of wine?"
"Only a cup of tea, I thank you," Erasmus said. "Captain, I knew as much; I hope you will forgive me for descending on you at such a time, without notice. I was with Mr. Wilberforce this morning, when your letter of apology arrived, informing him you were bound for Africa: and I have come to beg you for passage."
Laurence was silent. He had every right, as a point of etiquette, to invite some number of guests; this being the prerogative of dragon captains aboard a transport as much as that of the captain of the ship herself. But the situation was not a simple one, for they would travel on the Allegiance, under a captain, who though one of Laurence's dearest friends, and indeed his former first officer, owed no small portion of his fortune to his family's substantial plantations in the West Indies, manned by slaves. Erasmus himself, Laurence realized with a sinking feeling, might even once have toiled in their very fields: he believed some of Riley's father's holdings were in Jamaica.
Aside from all the discomfort which any strong difference of politics among shipmates might ordinarily engender, in the close quarters of a journey, Laurence had on previous occasions failed to conceal his sentiments towards the practice, and some ill-feeling had unhappily resulted. To now inflict upon Riley a passenger whose very presence would seem a silent and unanswerable continuation of their argument, had the look of a calculated insult.
"Sir," Laurence said slowly, "I believe you said you had been taken from Louanda? We are bound for Capetown, far to the south. It will not be your own nation."
"Beggars cannot be choosers, Captain," Erasmus said simply, "and I have only been praying for passage to Africa. If God has opened a path for me that leads to Capetown, I will not refuse it."
He made no further appeal, but only sat expectantly, his dark eyes leveled steadily across the table. "Then I am at your service, Reverend," Laurence said, as of course he had to, "if you can only manage to be ready in time; we cannot miss the tide."
"Thank you, Captain." Erasmus rose and shook his hand vigorously. "Have no fear: in hopes of your consent, my wife has already been making our arrangements, and by now will already herself be on the road with all our worldly substance; there is not much of it," he added.
"Then I will hope to see you tomorrow morning," Laurence said, "in Dover harbor."
The Allegiance stood waiting for them in the cold sunny morning, looking oddly squat with her masts stubby and bare, the topmasts and yards laid out upon the deck, and the enormous chains of her best bower and kedge anchors stretching out from the water, groaning softly as she rocked on the swell. She had come into harbor some four weeks earlier, Laurence and Temeraire having reached England, in the end, scarcely any sooner than their ocean passage would have brought them, if they had sailed home with the Allegiance after all.
"You may not complain of your delays; I am too happy to find you alive and well and not skeletons in some Himalayan pass," Riley said, shaking his hand eagerly in welcome, nearly before Laurence had stepped off Temeraire's back. "And you brought us home a fire-breather, after all. Yes, I could scarcely help but hear of her; the Navy is bursting with the news, and I believe the ships on blockade take it in turn to go past Guernsey and watch her flaming away at that old rock heap through their glasses.
"But I am very happy we shall make shipmates again now," he continued, "and though you will be more crowded, I hope we will make shift to see you all comfortable; you are a party of seven this time?"
He spoke with so much earnest friendliness and concern that Laurence was stricken with a sense of dishonesty and said abruptly, "Yes, we are a full complement; and Captain, I must tell you, I have brought a passenger along, with his family. He is a missionary, bound for the Cape, and applied to me only yesterday afternoon - he is a freedman."
He regretted his words as soon as he had spoken; he had meant to make the introduction more gently, and was conscious that he had let guilt make him clumsy and indelicate. Riley was silent. "I am sorry I could not give you more warning," Laurence added, in an attempt to make apology.
"I see," Riley said only, " - of course you may invite anyone whom you wish," very shortly, and touching his hat went away without further conversation.
He made no pretense of courtesy to Reverend Erasmus when that gentleman came aboard a little later that morning, neglecting even a greeting, which would have offended Laurence on the part of any guest, much less a man of the cloth; but when he saw the minister's wife left sitting in the small and poky boat which had been sent for them, with her two small children, and no offer made to rig a bosun's chair over the side to bring them aboard, he had had enough.
"Ma'am," he said, leaning over the side, "pray be easy, and only keep hold of the children; we will have you aboard in a moment. I beg you will not be alarmed," and straightening said, "Temeraire, will you lift that boat up, if you please, so the lady may come aboard."
"Oh, certainly, and I will be very careful," Temeraire said, and leaning over the side of the ship - well-balanced, to her other side, by Maximus, still prodigious in weight despite his reduced state - he seized the boat carefully in one enormous forehand, and plucked it dripping from the water. The boat's crew were loud in their protestations of alarm, while the two little girls clung to their stoic-faced mother, who did not permit herself to look at all anxious; the entire operation scarcely covered the space of a moment, and then Temeraire was setting the boat upon the dragondeck.
Laurence offered his hand to Mrs. Erasmus: she silently accepted, and having climbed down, reached in herself to lift out the children, one after another, and then her own portmanteau and satchel. She was a tall, stern-faced woman, more substantial in build and considerably darker of skin than her husband, with her hair pinned severely down under a plain white kerchief. Her two small daughters, in perfectly white pinafores, having been admonished briefly to stay quiet and out of the way, clutched each other's hands tightly.
"Roland, perhaps you will see our guests to their cabin," Laurence said to Emily quietly, hoping her presence might comfort them. To his regret, it was time to give over any attempt to conceal her sex. The progression of a year and more having its natural consequences upon her figure, which bid fair to take after her mother's, it would soon be quite impossible anyone should be deceived, and he must henceforth simply brazen out any challenge, hoping for the best; thankfully, in the present case, it could not signify what the Erasmuses should think of her, or the Corps, as they were to be left securely behind in Africa.
"There is nothing to be afraid of," Emily informed the girls blithely as she led them away, seeing their stares, "at least, not the dragons; although we had some terrific storms on our last sea-voyage," which left them as easy in their minds as they had been; they looked very meek as they followed her below to their quarters.
Laurence turned back to Lieutenant Franks, commanding the boat's crew, who had gone silent, having been set down amidst seven dragons, even if these were mostly sleeping. "I am sure Temeraire would be happy to put the boat back in her traces," he said, but when that young man only stammered miserably, a pang of guilt made him add, "but perhaps you have another return to make," and on Franks's relieved assent, had Temeraire set the boat back down into the water.
He then went himself below, to his cabin, much reduced from the previous voyage, as the space was now divided with six other captains; but he had been given a forward room, with a share of the bow windows, and it was better than many a cabin he had endured in the Navy. He did not have to wait long; Riley came and knocked - unnecessarily, as the door was standing open - and begged the favor of a word.
"That will do, Mr. Dyer," Laurence said, to the young runner presently ordering his things, "pray go see if Temeraire needs anything, then you may attend to your lessons," as he wanted no audience.
The door was shut; Riley began stiffly, "I hope you are settled to your satisfaction."
" - I am." Laurence did not mean to begin the quarrel; if Riley wished to stand upon the point, he might do so.
"Then I am sorry to say," Riley said, not looking very sorry, only pale with anger, "I am very sorry to say, that I have received a report, which I could scarcely credit, if I had not seen with my own eyes - "
He was not speaking loudly, yet; the door swung open in the middle of his sentence, and Catherine Harcourt looked in. "Pray forgive me," she said, "but I have been trying to find you these twenty minutes, Captain Riley; this ship is too damned large. Not that I mean to complain of her in the least, of course: we are very obliged to you indeed for our passage."
Riley stammered a vague polite reply, staring very fixedly at the top of her head. He had not known her for a woman at the time of their first meeting, which had encompassed little more than a day, and that the day after a battle. Catherine was of a slimmer stature than Jane, and with her hair pulled back snugly in her customary plait, her wide pleasant face with its snub nose freckled and brown with sun and wind, she might more easily be mistaken by the unsuspecting. But the general secret had slipped out during their previous voyage to China, and Riley had been very much shocked and disapproving at the intelligence.
"And I hope you are comfortably - that your cabin - " he said now, at a loss for the form of address.
"Oh, my bags are stowed; I suppose I will find them sometime," Harcourt said briskly, either unconscious or deliberately blind to Riley's awkward constraint. "That makes no nevermind; it is these tubs of oiled sand, for Lily to rest her head upon. I am very sorry to have to trouble you, but we are quite at a loss where they are to be stowed: we must have them near the dragondeck, in case she should have a fit of sneezing and we must change them out quick."
As the acid of a Longwing was perfectly capable, unchecked, of eating through an entire ship straight down to the hull and sinking her, this topic naturally engaged all the interest which could be imagined, of the ship's captain, and Riley answered her with energy, his discomfort forgotten in the practical concern. They settled it that the tubs should be stored in the galley, directly below the dragondeck, and this decided, Catherine nodded and thanked him, adding, "Will you dine with us to-night?" - an inconvenient friendliness, but of course her prerogative: to make a technical point of the matter, she was Laurence's superior officer, as formally their assignment remained to form a part of Lily's formation, although Temeraire had operated under independent orders now for so long that Laurence himself scarcely remembered the fact.
But it was delivered informally, at least, so it did not seem offensive when Riley said, "I thank you, but I must be on deck to-night, I am afraid," a polite excuse, which she accepted on its face, and nodding her farewells left him alone with Laurence once again.
It was awkward to resume, with the first natural impulse of anger thus blunted, but with a will they rose to the occasion, and after only a few more moderate exchanges, Riley's "And I hope, sir, that I need never again see the ship's crew or her boats subjected to, I am sorry to call it so, outright interference, under not only the permission but the encouragement - " progressed very neatly to Laurence's reply,
"And for my part, Captain Riley, I would be glad to never again be witness to such a positive disdain not only for all the generally understood requirements of courtesy, but for the very safety of her passengers, from the crew of one of His Majesty's vessels - I will not say deliberate insult - "
They were soon in such fine form as might be expected from two men both in the habit of command, and of full voice, whose former acquaintance made it no difficulty to touch upon such subjects as might provoke the most dramatic reaction. "You cannot claim," Riley said, "not to have a proper understanding of precedence in these matters; you can make no such excuse. You know your duty perfectly well. You set your beast deliberately onto the ship's crew, without permission. You might have asked for a chair, if you wished one slung - "
"If I had imagined that such a request needed to be made, upon what I had supposed to be a well-run ship, when a lady was to come aboard - " Laurence said.
"I suppose we must mean a little something different by the term," Riley retorted, sarcastic and quick.
He at once looked heartily embarrassed, when the remark had escaped him; but Laurence was in no way inclined to wait for him to withdraw, and said angrily, "It would grieve me indeed to be forced to impute any un-gentlemanlike motive - any selfish consideration, which might prompt a gentleman to make remarks so nearly intolerable upon the character and respectability of a clergyman's wife, and a mother, wholly unknown to him and therefore offering no grounds whatsoever to merit his scorn - save perhaps as an alternative, preferable to the examination of his own conscience - "
The door flung open without a knock; Berkley thrust his head into the cabin. They stopped at once, united in appalled indignation at this perfect disregard for privacy and all shipboard etiquette. Berkley paid no attention to their stares. He was unshaven and gaunt; Maximus had passed an uncomfortable night after his short flight aboard, and Berkley had slept no more than his dragon. He said bluntly, "We can hear every damned word on deck; in a moment Temeraire will pull up the planking and stick his nose in. For God's sake go knock each other down somewhere quietly and have done."
This outrageous advice, more suitable for a pair of schoolboys than grown men, was not heeded, but the quarrel was necessarily ended by the open reproof; Riley begged to be excused, and went at once away.
"I must ask you to go-between for us, with Captain Riley, I am afraid, henceforth," Laurence said to Catherine, some time afterwards, when his temper had been as much relieved as could be managed by the violent pacing of the narrow length of his cabin. "I know we agreed I should manage it, but matters have arisen so that - "
"Of course, Laurence, you need say nothing more," she interrupted, in practical tones, leaving him in some despair of the discretion of all his fellow aviators; it was such a settled part of his understanding of shipboard life, that one should pretend not to have heard, even what of necessity had been perfectly audible, that he hardly knew how to answer their frankness, "and I will give him a private dinner, instead of making it a common one with all of us, so there will be no difficulty. But I am sure you will make up the matter in a trice. What is there worth arguing about, when we have three months of sailing together ahead of us? - unless you mean to entertain us all with the gossip of the thing."
Laurence did not in the least like to form the subject of whispers, but he drearily knew her optimistic hopes to be ill-founded. No unforgivable remarks had been made but many unforgettable ones, a good number by himself, he was sorry to recall, and if they did not need for honor's sake to avoid one another entirely, he felt they could hardly be on such terms of camaraderie as they had formerly known, ever again. He wondered if he was to blame, perhaps for continuing, too much, to think of Riley as his subordinate; if he had presumed too far on their relationship.
He went to sit with Temeraire as the ship made ready to weigh anchor: the familiar old shouts and exhortations strangely distant from him, and he felt a disconnect from the life of the ship such as he had never expected to know; almost as though he had never been a sailor at all.
"Look there, Laurence," Temeraire said; south of the harbor, a small ragged knot of dragons could be seen winging away from the covert: towards Cherbourg, Laurence guessed, by their line of flight. His glass was not to hand, and they were little larger than a flock of birds at the distance, too far to make out their individual markings, but as they flew, one among them briefly fired out a small exuberant tongue of flame, yellow-orange-hot against the blue sky: Iskierka set out with a handful of the ferals, for the first time on a real patrol; the measure of the desperate circumstances which they left behind.
"Are we not leaving soon, Laurence?" Temeraire asked; he was painfully impatient to be under way. "If we would make better speed, I would be very happy to pull, at any time," and he turned to look at Dulcia, presently lying in an uneasy sleep upon his back, coughing miserably every so often without even opening her eyes.
She and Lily, who lay with her head half-buried up to the bone spurs in a great wooden tub full of sand, were yet in much better state than the rest of the formation; poor Maximus had made the flight to the ship in easy short stages, and even so with much difficulty. He had been given all the far side of the dragondeck and was sleeping there already, heedless of the furious bustle around him as the last of the preparations to launch them commenced. Nitidus lay sprawled in exhaustion tucked against Maximus's side, where once the Pascal's Blue would have lain comfortably on his back, and Immortalis and Messoria, huddled to either side of Lily in the middle of the deck, were grown a sort of pale lemon yellow like milk custard.
"I could drag up the anchors in a trice, I am sure, much quicker," Temeraire added. The topmasts had been sent up, and the yards, and they were warping up to the kedge: fully four hundred men or more could heave on the massive quadruple-capstan at once, and all of them would be needed to bring up the massive weight of the best bower. The sailors on deck were most of them already stripped to the waist, despite the cold morning, to get about it; Temeraire certainly could have provided material aid, but Laurence was under no illusion how such an offer would presently be received.
"We would only be in the way," he said; "they will manage quicker without us." He laid his hand on Temeraire's side, looking away from the labor in which they could have no part, to the open ocean ahead.
