WHOLLY UNLIKELY - WHOLLY unlikely," Dorset said severely, when Catherine in despair suggested, two weeks later, that they had already acquired all the specimens which there were in the world.
Nitidus had suffered less than most of the dragons, although complained somewhat more, and he recovered with greater speed even than Dulcia, despite a nervous inclination to cough even after the physical necessity had gone. "I am sure I feel a little thickness in my head again this morning," he said fretfully, or his throat was a little sensitive, or his shoulders ached.
"It is only to be expected," Keynes said of the last, scarcely a week since he had been dosed, "when you have been lying about for months with no proper exercise. You had better take him out tomorrow, and enough of this caterwauling," he added to Warren, and stamped away.
With this encouraging permission, they had promptly renewed the search which had been curtailed by Chenery's injury, confining the sphere a little closer to the immediate environs of the Cape; but after two more weeks had gone by, they had met with no more feral dragons and also with no more success. They had brought back in desperation several other varieties of mushroom, not entirely dissimilar in appearance, two of which proved instantly poisonous to the furry local rodents which Dorset made their first recipients.
Keynes prodded the small curled dead bodies and shook his head. "It is not to be risked. You are damned fortunate not to have poisoned Temeraire with the thing in the first place."
"What the devil are we to do, then?" Catherine demanded. "If there is no more to be had - "
"There will be more," Dorset said with assurance, and for his part, he continued to perform daily rounds of the marketplace, forcing the merchants and stall-keepers there to look at his detailed sketch of the mushroom, rendered in pencil and ink. His steady perseverance was rewarded by the merchants growing so exasperated that one of the Khoi, whose Dutch and English encompassed only the numbers one through ten, all he ordinarily required to sell his wares, finally appeared at their gates with Reverend Erasmus in tow, having sought his assistance to put a stop to the constant harassment.
"He wishes you to know that the mushroom does not grow here in the Cape, if I have understood correctly," Erasmus explained, "but that the Xhosa - " He was here interrupted by the Khoi merchant, who impatiently repeated the name quite differently, incorporating an odd sort of clicking noise at the beginning which reminded Laurence of nothing more than some sounds of the Durzagh language, difficult for a human tongue to render.
"In any case," Erasmus said, after another unsuccessful attempt to repeat the name properly, "he means a tribe which lives farther along the coast and, having more dealings inland, may know where more is to be found."
Pursuing this intelligence, however, Laurence soon discovered that to make any contact would be difficult in the extreme: the tribesmen who dwelt nearest the Cape had withdrawn farther and farther from the Dutch settlements, after their last wave of assaults - not unprovoked - had been flung back, some eight years before. They were now settled into an uneasy and often-broken truce with the colonists, and only at the very frontiers was any intercourse still to be had with them.
"And that," Mr. Rietz informed Laurence, the two of them communicating by means of equally halting German on both sides, "the pleasure of having our cattle stolen: twice a month we lose a cow or more, for all they have signed one truce after another."
He was one of the chief men of Swellendam, one of the oldest villages of the Cape, and still nearly as far inland as any of the settlers had successfully established themselves: nestled at the foot of a sheltering ridge of mountains, which deterred incursions by the ferals. The vineyards and farmland were close-huddled around the neat and compact white-washed homes, only a handful of heavily fortified farmhouses more widely flung. The settlers were wary of the feral dragons who often came raiding from over the mountains, against whom they had built a small central fort bolstered with two six-pounders, and resentful of their black neighbors, of whom Rietz further added, "The kaffirs are all rascals, whatever heathenish name you like to call them; and I advise you against any dealings with them. They are savages to a man, and more likely will murder you while you sleep than be of any use."
Having said so much mostly under the unspoken but no less potent duress of Temeraire's presence on the outskirts of his village, he considered this final and was by no means willing to be of further assistance, but sat mutely until Laurence gave it up and let him go back to his accounts.
"Those certainly are very handsome cows," Temeraire said, with a healthy admiration of his own, when Laurence rejoined him. "You cannot blame the ferals for taking them, when they do not know any better, and the cows are just sitting there in the pen, doing no-one any good. But how are we to find any of these Xhosa, if the settlers will not help? I suppose we might fly about looking for them?" - a suggestion which would certainly ensure they did not catch the least sight of a people who surely had to be deeply wary of dragons, as likely as the settlers to be victims of the feral beasts.
General Grey snorted, when Laurence had returned to Capetown seeking an alternative, and reported Rietz's reaction. "Yes; and I imagine if you find one of the Xhosa, he will make you the very same complaint in reverse. They are all forever stealing cattle from one another, and the only thing they would agree on, I suppose, is to complain of the ferals worse. It is a bad business," he added, "these settlers want more grazing land, badly, and they cannot get it; so they have nothing to do but quarrel with the tribesmen over what land the ferals do not mind leaving to them."
"Can the ferals not be deterred?" Laurence asked. He did not know how ferals were managed, precisely; in Britain he knew they were largely induced to confine themselves to the breeding grounds, by the regular provision of easy meals.
"No; there must be too much wild game," Grey said. "They are not tempted enough, at any rate, to leave the settlements alone, and there have been trials made enough to prove it. Every year a few young hotheads make a push inland; for what good it does them, which is none." He shrugged. "Most of our adventurers are not heard from again, and of course the inaction of the government is blamed. But they will not understand the expense and difficulty involved. I tell you I should not undertake to carve out any more sizable territory here without at the least a six-dragon formation, and two companies of field artillery."
Laurence nodded; there was certainly no likelihood of the Admiralty sending such assistance at present, or for that matter in the foreseeable future; even apart from the disease, which had so wracked their aerial strength, any significant force would naturally be committed to the war against France.
"We will just have to make shift as best we can," Catherine said, when he had grimly reported his lack of success that night. "Surely Reverend Erasmus can help us; he can speak with the natives, and perhaps that merchant will know where we can find them."
Laurence and Berkley went to apply to him the next morning at the mission, already much altered since the last visit which Laurence had made: the plot of land was now a handsome vegetable-garden, full of tomato and pepper plants; a few Khoi girls in modest black shifts were tending the rows, tying up the tomato plants to stakes, and another group beneath a broad mimosa tree were sewing diligently, while Mrs. Erasmus and another missionary lady, a white woman, took it in turn to read to them out of a Bible translated into their tongue.
Inside, the house was almost wholly given over to students scratching laboriously away at writing on scraps of slate, paper too valuable to be used for such an exercise. Erasmus came walking outside with them, for lack of room to talk, and said, "I have not forgotten to be grateful to you for our passage here, Captain, and I would gladly be of service to you. But there is likely as much kinship between the Khoi tongue and that of the Xhosa as there is between French and German, and I am by no means yet fluent even in the first. Hannah does better, and we do remember a little of our own native tongues; but those will be of even less use: we were both taken from tribes much farther north."
"You still have a damned better chance to jaw with them than any of us do," Berkley said bluntly. "It cannot be that bloody difficult to make them understand: we have a scrap of the thing left, and we can wave it in their faces to show them what we want."
"Surely having lived neighbor to the Khoi themselves," Laurence said, "there may be those among them who speak a little of that tongue, which would allow you to open some communication? We can ask only," he added, "that you try: a failure would leave us no worse than we stand."
Erasmus stopped before the garden gate, watching where his wife was reading to the girls, then said low and thoughtfully, "I have not heard of it, if anyone has brought the Gospel to the Xhosa yet."
Though barred from much expansion inland, the settlers had been creeping steadily out along the coast eastward from Capetown. The Tsitsikamma River, some two long days' flight away, was now a theoretical sort of border between the Dutch and the Xhosa territories: there were no settlements nearer than Plettenberg Bay, and if the Xhosa were lurking in the brush five steps beyond the boundaries of the outermost villages, as many of the settlers imagined they were, no-one would have been any the wiser. But they had been pushed across the river in the last fighting, it was a convenient line upon a map, and so it had been named in the treaties.
Temeraire kept to the coastline in their flight: a strange and beautiful series of low curved cliffsides, thickly crusted with green vegetation and in some places lichen of bright red, cream and brown rocks spilling from their feet; and beaches of golden sand, some littered with squat penguins too small to be alarmed by their passage overhead: they were not prey for dragons. Late in their second day of flying they passed the lagoon of Knysna sheltered behind its narrow mouth to the ocean, and arrived late in the evening on the banks of the Tsitsikamma, the river driving its way inland, deep in its green-lined channel.
In the morning, before crossing the river, they tied onto two stakes large white sheets, as flags of parley, to avoid giving provocation; and set these streaming out to either side of Temeraire's wings. They flew cautiously onwards into Xhosa territory, until they came to an open clearing, large enough to permit them to settle Temeraire some distance back, and divided by a narrow, swift-running stream: no obstacle, but perhaps enough of a boundary to provide comfort to someone standing on the other side.
Laurence had brought with him, besides a small but substantial heap of gold guineas, a wide assortment of those things which were commonly used in the local barter, in hopes of tempting out the natives: foremost among them several great chains of cowrie shells, strung on silk thread; in some parts of the continent these were used as currency, and the sense of value persisted more widely; locally they were highly prized as jewellery. Temeraire was for once unimpressed: the shells were not brightly colored enough nor glittery nor iridescent, and did not awaken his magpie nature; he eyed the narrow chain of pearls which Catherine had contributed to the cause with much more interest.
The whole collection the crew laid out upon a large blanket, near enough the edge of the stream to be visible plainly to an observer on the other bank, and with these hoped to coax out some response. Temeraire crouched down as best he could, and then they waited. They had made enough noise, to be sure, but the region was vast: they had flown two days to reach the river, and Laurence was not sanguine.
They slept that night on the bank with no response; and the second day also passed without event, except that Temeraire went hunting and brought back four antelope, which they roasted on a spit for dinner. Not very successfully: Gong Su had remained back at the camp, to feed the other dragons who yet continued ill, and young Allen, detailed to turn the spit, grew distracted and forgot, so that they were scorched black on one side and unappetizingly raw on the other. Temeraire put back his ruff in disapproval; he was, Laurence sadly noted, becoming excessive nice in his tastes, an unfortunate habit in a soldier.
The third day crept onward, hot and clinging from the first, and the men wilted gradually into silence; Emily and Dyer scratched unenthusiastically at their slates, and Laurence forced himself to rise at intervals to pace back and forth, that he would not fall asleep. Temeraire gave a tremendous yawn and put down his head to snore. At an hour past noon they had their dinner: only bread and butter and a little grog, but no one wanted more in the heat, even after the debacle of the previous evening's meal. The sun dipped only reluctantly back towards the horizon; the day stretched.
"Are you comfortable, ma'am?" Laurence asked, bringing Mrs. Erasmus another cup of grog; they had set her up a little pavilion with the traveling-tents, so she might keep in the shade: the little girls had been left back at the castle, in the charge of a maid. She inclined her head and accepted the cup, seeming as always quite careless of her own comfort. A necessary quality, to be sure, for a missionary's wife being dragged the length of the globe, yet it felt uncivilized to be subjecting her to the violence of the day's heat for so little evident use; she did not complain, but she could not have enjoyed being packed aboard a dragon, however well she concealed her fears, and she wore a high-necked gown with sleeves to the wrist, of dark fabric, while the sun beat so ferociously that it glowed even through the leather of the tent.
"I am sorry we have imposed upon you," he said. "If we hear nothing tomorrow, I think we must consider our attempt a failure."
"I will pray for a happier outcome," she said, in her deep steady voice, briefly, and kept her head bowed down.
Mosquitoes sang happily as dusk drew on, though they did not come very close to Temeraire; the flies were less judicious. The shapes of the trees were growing vague when Temeraire woke with a start and said, "Laurence, there is someone coming, there," and the grass rustled on the opposite bank.
A very slight man emerged in the half-light on the far bank: bare-headed, and naked but for a small blanket which was draped rather too casually around his body to preserve modesty. He was carrying a long, slim-hafted assegai, the blade narrow and spade-shaped, and over his other shoulder was slung a rather skinny antelope. He did not come across the stream, keeping a wary eye on Temeraire; he craned his neck a little to look over their blanket of goods, but plainly he would come no farther.
"Reverend, perhaps if you would accompany me," Laurence said softly and set out, Ferris following along doggedly behind them without having been asked. Laurence paused at the blanket and lifted up the most elaborate of the cowrie chains, a neck-collar in six or seven bands of alternating dark and light shells, interspersed with gold beads.
They forded the river, shallow here and not coming over the tops of their boots; Laurence surreptitiously touched the butt of his pistol, looking at the javelin: they would be vulnerable, coming up the bank. But the hunter only backed away towards the woods as they emerged from the water, so in the dim light he was very nearly invisible against the underbrush, and could easily have dived back into the obscurity which this afforded: Laurence supposed he had more right than they to be alarmed, alone to their large party, with Temeraire behind them sitting cat-like on his haunches and regarding the situation with anxiety.
"Sir, pray let me," Ferris said, so plaintively Laurence surrendered the neck-chain to him. He edged cautiously out across the distance, the necklace offered across his palms. The hunter hesitated, very obviously tempted, and then he tentatively held out the antelope towards them, with a slightly abashed air, as if he did not think it a very fair exchange.
Ferris shook his head, and then he stiffened: the bushes behind the hunter had rustled. But it was only a small boy, no more than six or seven, his hands parting the leaves so he could peek out at them with large, curious eyes. The hunter turned and said something to him sharply, in a voice which lost some of its severity by cracking halfway through the reprimand. He was not stunted at all, but only a boy himself, Laurence realized; only a handful of years between him and the one hiding.
The small boy vanished again instantly, the branches closing over his head, and the older one turned back to Ferris with a defiant wary look; his hand was clenched sufficiently on the assegai to show pale pink at the knuckles.
"Pray tell him, if you can, that we mean them no harm," Laurence said quietly to Erasmus. He did not wonder very much what might have lured them here to take a risk perhaps others of his clan had preferred not to run; the hunter was painfully thin, and the younger boy's face had none of the soft-cheeked look of childhood.
Erasmus nodded, and approaching tried his few words of dialect, without success. Retreating to more simplistic communication, he tapped his chest and said his name. The boy gave his as Demane; this exchange at least served to make him grow a little easier: he did not seem quite so ready to bolt, and he suffered Ferris to approach him closer, to show him the small sample of the mushroom.
Demane exclaimed, and recoiled in disgust; with no little cause: its confinement in the leather bag during the day's heat had not improved its aroma. He laughed at his own reaction, though, and came back; but though they pointed to the mushroom, and the string of shells in turn, he continued to look perfectly blank; although he kept reaching out to touch the cowries with rather a wistful expression, rubbing them between thumb and forefinger.
"I suppose he cannot conceive anyone should want to trade for it," Ferris said, not very much under his breath, his face averted as much as he could.
"Hannah," Erasmus said, startling Laurence: he had not noticed Mrs. Erasmus come to join them, her skirts dripping over her bare feet. Demane stood a little straighter and dropped his hand from the shells, very like he had been caught at something by a schoolteacher, and edged back from her. She spoke to him a little while in her low voice, slowly and clearly; taking the mushroom from Ferris, she held it out, imperiously gesturing when Demane made a face. Once he had gingerly taken it from her, she grasped him by the wrist and showed him holding it out to Ferris. Ferris held out the shells in return, miming the transfer, and comprehension finally dawned.
A small voice piped up from the bushes; Demane answered it quellingly, then began to talk volubly at Mrs. Erasmus, a speech full of the odd clicking, which Laurence could not imagine how he produced, at such speed; she listened, frowning intently as she tried to follow. He took the mushroom and knelt down to put it on the ground, next to the base of a tree, then mimed pulling it up and throwing it on the ground. "No, no!" Ferris sprang only just in time to rescue the precious sample from being stamped upon by his bare heel.
Demane observed his behavior with a baffled expression. "He says it makes cows sick," Mrs. Erasmus said, and the gesture was plain enough: the thing was considered a nuisance, and torn up where it was found; which might explain its scarcity. It was no wonder, the local tribesmen being cattle-herders by livelihood, but Laurence was dismayed, and wondered where they should look for the enormous quantities necessary to their cause if it had been the settled practice of generations, perhaps, to eradicate what to them was nothing more than an unpleasant weed.
Mrs. Erasmus continued to speak to the boy, taking the mushroom, and miming a gesture of stroking it, gently, to show him they valued it. "Captain, will you have the crew bring me a pot?" she asked, and when she had put the mushroom into it, and made stirring motions, Demane looked at Laurence and Ferris with a very dubious expression, but then shrugged expressively and pointed upwards, drawing his hand from horizon to horizon in a sweeping arc. "Tomorrow," she translated, and the boy pointed at the ground where they stood.
"Does he think he can find us some?" Laurence asked intently, but either the question or the response she was unable to convey, and only shook her head after a moment. "Well, we must hope for the best; tell him if you can that we will return," and the next day, at the same hour near dusk, the boys came out of the brush again, the younger now trotting at Demane's heels, perfectly naked, and with them a small raggedy dog, its mongrel fur mottled yellow and brown.
It planted itself on the bank and yapped piercingly and continuously at Temeraire while the older boy attempted to negotiate for its services over the noise. Laurence eyed it dubiously; but Demane took the mushroom piece again and held it out to the dog's nose, then kneeling down covered the dog's eyes with his hands. The younger boy ran and hid the mushroom deep in the grass, and came back again; then Demane let the dog go again, with a sharp word of command. It promptly returned to barking madly at Temeraire, ignoring all his instructions, until, looking painfully embarrassed, Demane snatched up a stick and hit it on the rump, hissing at it, and made it smell the leather satchel where the mushroom had been kept. At last reluctantly it left off and went bounding across the field, came trotting back with the mushroom held in its mouth, and dropped it at Laurence's feet, wagging its tail with enthusiasm.
Having decided, very likely, that they were fools, or at least very rich, Demane now turned up his nose at the cowries, wishing rather to be paid in cattle, evidently the main source of wealth among the Xhosa: he opened the negotiations at a dozen head. "Tell him we will give them one cow, for a week of service," Laurence said. "If he leads us to a good supply of the mushroom, we will consider extending the bargain, otherwise we will return the two of them here with their payment." Demane inclined his head and accepted the diminished offer with a tolerable attempt at calm gravity; but the wide eyes of the younger boy, whose name was Sipho, and his rather excited tugging at Demane's hand, made Laurence suspect he had even so made a poor bargain by local standards.
Temeraire put his ruff back when the dog was carried squirming towards him. "It is very noisy," he said disapprovingly, to which the dog barked an answer equally impolite, by the tone of it, and tried to jump out of its master's arms and run away; Demane was no less anxious. Mrs. Erasmus sought to coax him a little closer, and reached out to pat Temeraire's forehand to show there was no danger: perhaps not the best encouragement, since it drew his attention to the very substantial talons: Demane pushed a more interested than alarmed Sipho behind him, the wriggling dog clutched against him with his other arm, and shaking his head vocally refused to come nearer.
Temeraire cocked his head. "That is a very interesting sound," he said, and repeated one of the words, mimicking the clicking noise with more success than any of them but still not quite correctly. Sipho laughed from behind Demane's shoulder and said the word to him again; after a few repetitions Temeraire said, "Oh, I have it," although the clicking issued a little oddly, from somewhere deeper in his throat than the boys produced it; and they were gradually reconciled by the exchange to being loaded aboard.
Laurence had learnt the art of carrying livestock aboard a dragon from Tharkay, in the East, by drugging the beasts with opium before they were loaded on, but they had none of the drug with them at present, so with a dubious spirit of experimentation they put the whining dog aboard by main force instead, and strapped it down. It was inclined to squirm and struggle against the makeshift harness, making several abortive attempts to leap off into the air, until Temeraire lifted away; then after a few yelps of excitement, it sat down on its haunches with its mouth open and tongue lolling out, thrashing its tail furiously with delight, better pleased than its unhappy master, who clung anxiously to the harness and to Sipho, although they were both well hooked on with carabiners.
"Proper circus you make," Berkley said, with a snort of laughter Laurence considered unnecessary, when they landed in the clearing and set the dog down; it promptly went tearing around the parade grounds, yelling at the dragons. For their part they were only interested and curious until the dog bit a too-inquisitive Dulcia on the tender tip of her muzzle, at which she hissed in anger; the dog yelped and fled back to the dubious shelter of Temeraire's side; he looked down at it in irritation, and tried unsuccessfully to nudge it away.
"Pray be careful of the creature; I have no idea how we should get or train another," Laurence said, and Temeraire at last grumbling allowed it to curl up beside him.
Chenery limped out to eat with them that evening in the parade grounds to reassure Dulcia of his improvement, professing himself too tired for any more bed-rest, so they made a merry meal of optimism and roast beef, and passed around the bottle freely; perhaps too freely, for shortly after the cigars were passed, Catherine said, "Oh, damnation," and getting up went to the side of the clearing to vomit.
It was not the first time she had been ill lately, but the bout was an enthusiastic one. They politely averted their faces, and in a little while she rejoined them at the fire, with a dismal expression. Warren offered her a little more wine, but she shook her head and only rinsed her mouth with water and spat on the ground, and then looking around them all said heavily, "Well, gentlemen, I am sorry to be indelicate, but if I am going to be sickly like this all the way through, you had better know now. I am afraid I have made a mull of it. - I am increasing."
Laurence only gradually realized that he was staring, with an intolerably rude gaping expression. He closed his mouth at once and held himself rigidly still, fighting the inclination to look at his fellow captains, the five of them sitting around the fire, and study them in the light of candidates.
Berkley and Sutton, both senior to him by ten years, he thought stood more in the relation of uncle to Catherine than anything else. Warren also was older, and had been matched to his rather nervous beast Nitidus for the very steadiness of his nature, which made it difficult to easily imagine him in the light of a lover, under their present circumstances. Chenery was a younger man of high and cheerful spirits, thoroughly innocent of any sense of decorum, and made more handsome by his smiles and a rough careless charm than his looks deserved, being a little thin in the chest and face, with an unfortunately sallow complexion and hair generally blown straight as straw. He was perhaps in personality the most likely, although Immortalis's captain Little, of a similar age, was the better-looking, despite a nose which was inclined to be beaky, with china-blue eyes and wavy dark hair kept a little long in a poetic style; but this, Laurence suspected, was due more to a lack of attention than any deliberate vanity, and Little was rather abstemious in his habits than luxurious.
There was of course Catherine's first lieutenant, Hobbes, an intense young man only a year her junior, but Laurence could scarcely believe she would engage herself with a subordinate, and risk all the resentment and difficulties which he had known similar practices, albeit of a more illegal nature, to produce aboard ship. No; it must be one of them; and Laurence could not help but see, from the corner of his eye, that Sutton and Little at least bore expressions more or less of surprise, and that he was being looked at with the same spirit of speculation he himself had been unable to repress, exhibited more openly.
Laurence was unhappily conscious that he could not object. He had committed an equal indiscretion, without ever considering what he should say, or do, if he and Jane were to similarly be taken aback. He could hardly imagine his father's reaction and even his mother's, on being presented with such a match: a woman some years his senior, with a natural-born child, of no particular family wholly aside from her complete sacrifice of respectability to her duty. But marriage it would have to be; anything else should be as good as offering insult, to one who deserved from him the confusion of respect of a gentlewoman and a comrade-in-arms, and exposing her and the child to the censure of all society.
Therefore to just such a dreadful situation he had willingly hazarded himself, and he could hardly complain if he were now to suffer a share of that pain on another party's behalf. Only the one who knew himself guilty could know the truth, of course; and so long as he remained unconfessed, Laurence and his fellow captains should all jointly have to endure the curiosity of the world, however unpleasant, without remedy.
"Well, it is damned bad luck," Berkley said, setting down his fork. "Whose is it?"
Harcourt said easily, "Oh, it is Tom's, I mean Captain Riley; thank you, Tooke," and held out her hand for the cup of tea which her young runner had brought her, while Laurence blushed for all of them.
He passed an uncomfortable and wakeful night, suffering the incessant shrill barking of the dog outside, and, within, all the confusion which could be imagined: whether to speak to Riley, and on what grounds, Laurence scarcely knew.
He felt a certain responsibility for Catherine's honor and the child's; irrational under the circumstances, perhaps, when she herself seemed wholly unconcerned. But though she might not care for the good opinion of society or feel herself dishonored, nor her fellow aviators, Laurence was well aware that Riley could claim no such disdain for the eyes of the world. All Riley's odd constraint, towards the end of the voyage, now bespoke a guilty conscience; certainly he had not approved the notion of women officers, and Laurence did not for a moment imagine that his opinion had altered in consequence of this affair. Riley had only taken personal advantage where it became available to him, and with full knowledge had entered into what for him must be seen as the ruin of a gentlewoman, an act selfish if not vicious, and deserving of the strongest reproof. But Laurence had no standing whatsoever in the world to pursue it; any attempt would only make a thorough scandal of the whole, and as an aviator he was forbidden to enter into personal challenges in any case.
To complicate matters still further, he had a wholly separate motive for speaking, and that to give Riley intelligence of the child's existence, of which he might well be ignorant. Jane Roland, at least, thought nothing of her daughter Emily's illegitimacy; by her own admission she had not so much as seen the father since the event of conception, nor seemed to think he had anything to do with the child in the least. This perfect lack of sensibility Catherine evidently shared. Laurence had not dwelt long on this pragmatic ruthlessness before the event; but now he put himself in Riley's place, and felt that Riley at once deserved all the difficulties of the situation, and the opportunity of rising to meet them.
Laurence rose undecided and unrested, and without much enthusiasm entered into their first attempt to take out the dog. Seeing them make ready, the cur did not wait to be carried aboard, but leapt onto Temeraire's back and settled itself in pride of place at the base of his neck, just where Laurence ordinarily sat, and barked officiously to hurry the rest of their preparations. "Cannot it ride with Nitidus?" Temeraire said, disgruntled, craning his neck to give it a repressive hiss. Familiarity had already bred contempt; the dog only wagged its tail back at him.
"No, no; I do not want it," Nitidus said, mantling his wings in resistance. "You are bigger, it does not weigh on you at all." Temeraire flattened his ruff against his neck and muttered.
They crossed over the mountains again and settled themselves just past the leading edge where the settlements petered out, on a slope lately somewhat bared by a rockslide, which offered the dragons the best opportunity to land deep in the undergrowth. Nitidus managed to wedge himself into a gap left among the trees, where a larger had fallen, but Temeraire was forced to try and make himself a landing place by trampling down the smaller but more stubborn shrubs which had invaded the space. The acacia thorns were long and slender enough to probe between his scales, and catch the flesh beneath, so he flinched to one side or another several times before at last he had something like sure footing and could let them clamber down off his back, to hack themselves out some room and pitch the tents once again.
The dog made itself a nuisance while they made camp, inclined to frolic and startle up the fat brown-and-white pheasants, which ran away from it unhappily, their heads bobbing; until all at once it went very quiet, and its lean rangy body stiffened with excitement. Lieutenant Riggs raised his rifle to his ear, and they all froze, remembering the rhinoceros; but in a moment a troop of baboons came out from among the trees. The largest, a grizzled fellow with a long sour face and a shining rump of bright scarlet protruding from his fur, impossible to ignore, sat back on his haunches and gave them a jaundiced eye; then the band ambled off, the smallest clinging to their mothers' fur and turning their heads around to stare with curiosity as they were carried away.
There were few large trees; the thickness was made rather of yellow grass everywhere, higher than a man's head, which filled in every gap the green thornbrake allowed. Above, the thin trees threw up little cloud-like clusters of branches, which gave no relief from the sun. The air was close and hot and full of dust, crumbled grass and dried leaves, and clouds of small birds twitting each other in the brush. The dog led them on an aimless straggling path through the ferocious underbrush; it more easily than they could work through the tangled shrubs and deadwood.
Demane gave the dog occasional encouragement by lectures and yelling, but for the most part gave the cur its head. He and his brother followed on its heels closely and quicker than the rest of them could manage, occasionally disappearing up ahead. Their young clear voices came calling back impatiently to guide them, now and then, and at last, in the mid-afternoon, Laurence came stumbling out of the brush and caught them up to find Sipho proudly holding out one of the mushrooms for their inspection.
"Better by far, but we will still need a week at this rate to get enough for the rest of the formation alone," Warren said that evening, offering Laurence a glass of port in front of his small tent, with an old stump and a smooth rock serving them as formal seating. The dog had found three more mushrooms on the way back to camp, all of them small ones which would have escaped attention otherwise. They were of course happily collected; but they would not make much of the posset, or the draught.
"Yes, at least," Laurence said tiredly; his legs ached from their unaccustomed labor. He unfolded them with an effort towards the heat of the small twiggy fire, smoky from the green wood but pleasantly hypnotic.
Temeraire and Nitidus had made good use of their idleness to improve upon the camp, trampling down the earth of the slope to make it more level and tearing up several trees and bushes to clear more ground. Temeraire had rather vengefully hurled the bristling acacia far down the slope, where it could now be seen, incongruously, sitting caught upon two tree-tops with a great clump of dirt around its roots in mid-air.
They had provided also a couple of antelope for the party's dinner, or had meant to; but the hours had dragged, and with nothing better to do they had eventually eaten most of the kill themselves, and were found licking their chops and empty-handed at the end of the day. "I am sorry, but you were so very long," Temeraire said apologetically. Happily, Demane showed them the trick of catching the plentiful local pheasants, by driving them towards a waiting collaborator with a net, and these, roasted quickly on a spit and rounded out with ship's biscuit, made the company a dinner pleasant enough: the birds not the least gamy, having fed evidently only on the local grass-seeds and berries.
Now the dragons had curled around the borders of their camp; protection enough to ward off any nightly dangers; the crews had arranged themselves for sleep on beds of crumpled brush, coats used haphazardly for pillows, or were playing at dice and cards in distant corners, murmuring their wagers and occasionally a cry of victory or despair. The boys, who had been eating like wolves, and already looked rather better fleshed, were stretched upon the ground at Mrs. Erasmus's feet. She had persuaded them to put on some loose duck trousers, sewn by girls from the mission; her husband was methodically laying out for them on the ground, one at a time, stiff picture-cards showing objects to be identified in their language, and rewarding them with doled-out sweetmeats while she noted down the answers in her log-book.
Warren prodded the fire with a long branch, idly, and Laurence felt at last that they were near enough alone to satisfy discretion; that he might speak, however awkwardly.
"No; I did not know about the child," Warren said, with not the least discomfiture at the inquiry, but gloomily. "It is a bad business: God forbid she should come to a bad pass here; that little runner of yours is the only girl we have, and she is no wise ready to make a captain, even if Lily would have her. And what the devil we should do for Excidium if she did, I would like to know; the admiral cannot be running about having another child now, with Bonaparte on the other side of the Channel, ready to toss his glove across at any minute.
"I damned well hope you have been taking precautions? But I am sure Roland knows her business," Warren added, without waiting for reply; just as well, as Laurence had never been asked a question he would have less liked to answer; all the more as it had abruptly and appallingly illuminated certain curious habits of Jane's, which he had never brought himself to inquire into, and her regular consultations of the calendar.
"Oh, pray don't take me wrong," Warren said, misunderstanding Laurence's fixed expression. "I don't mean to carp in the least; accidents will happen, and Harcourt has had every excuse for distraction. Bad enough for us, these last months, but what the devil was ever to become of her? Half-pay would keep body and soul together, but money don't make a woman respectable. That is why I asked you, before, about the fellow; I thought, if Lily died, they might make a match of it."
"She has no family?" Laurence asked.
"None left, none to speak of. She is old Jack Harcourt's daughter - he was a lieutenant on Fluitare. He cut straps in the year two, damned shame; but at least he knew she'd been tapped for Lily, by then," Warren said. "Her mother was a girl down Plymouth way, near the covert there. She went off in a fever when Catherine was scarce old enough to crawl, and no relations to take her in: that is how she was thrown on the Corps."
Laurence said, "Then, under the present circumstances - I know it is damned officious, but if she has no one else, ought one not speak to him? Of the child, I mean," he added awkwardly.
"Why, what is there for him to do?" Warren said. "If it is a girl, God willing, the Corps needs her with both hands; and if it is a boy, he could go to sea instead, I suppose; but whatever for? It can only hurt him there, to be a by-blow, and meanwhile a captain's son in the Corps is pretty sure to get a dragon, if he has any merit of his own."
"But that is what I mean," Laurence said, puzzled to find himself so misunderstood. "There is no reason the child must be illegitimate; they might easily be married at once."
"Oh, oh," Warren said, dawning wonder, confusion. "Why, Laurence, no; there's no sense in it, you must see that. If she had been grounded, it might have answered; but thank God, no need to think of that anymore, or anything like," and he jerked his chin gladly at the tightly lidded box which held the fruits of their day's labors, to be carried back to Capetown in the morning: Lily would certainly be the next recipient. "A comfortable wife she would make him, with orders to follow and a dragon to look after; I dare say they would not see one another one year in six, him posted to one side of the world and she to the other, ha!"
Laurence was little satisfied to find his sentiments so unaffectedly laughed at, but more so for the uncomfortable sensation that there was some rational cause for so dismissive an answer; and he was forced to go to sleep with his resolution yet unformed.