forelegs. ‘Well, I suppose I do not mind so much going, except that everyone else will be fighting without me,’ he said in resignation. ‘But the journey will be very interesting, and I suppose I would like to see China; only they will try to take Laurence away from me again, I am sure, and I am not going to have any of it.’
Hammond prudently did not engage him on this subject, but hurried instead to say, ‘How long this business of loading has all taken – surely it is not typical? I made sure we would be halfway down the Channel by noon; here we have not yet even made sail.’
‘I think they are nearly done,’ Laurence said; the last immense chest was being swung aboard into the hands of the waiting sailors with the help of a block and line. The men all looked tired and surly, as well they might, having spent the time it would take to load ten dragons, loading only one man and his accoutrements; and their dinner was a good half-hour overdue already.
As the chest vanished below, Captain Riley climbed the stairs from the quarterdeck to join them, taking his hat off long enough to wipe sweat away from his brow. ‘I have no notion how they got themselves and the lot to England. I suppose they did not come by transport?’
‘No, or else we would surely be returning by their ship,’ Laurence said. He had not considered the question before and realized only now that he had no idea how the Chinese embassy had made their voyage. ‘Perhaps they came overland.’ Hammond was silent and frowning, evidently wondering himself.
‘That must be a very interesting journey, with so many different places to visit,’ Temeraire observed. ‘Not that I am sorry to be going by sea: not at all,’ he added, hastily, peering down anxiously at Riley to be sure he had not offended. ‘Will it be much faster, going by sea?’
‘No, not in the least,’ Laurence said. ‘I have heard of a courier going from London to Bombay in two months, and we will be lucky to reach Canton in seven. But there is no secure route by land: France is in the way, unfortunately, and there is a great deal of banditry, not to mention the mountains and the Taklamakan desert to cross.’
‘I would not wager on less than eight months, myself,’ Riley said. ‘If we make six knots with the wind anywhere but dead astern, it will be more than I look for, judging by her log.’ Below and above now there was a great scurry of activity, all hands preparing to unmoor and make sail; the ebbing tide was lapping softly against the windward side. ‘Well, we must get about it. Laurence, tonight I must be on deck, I need to take the measure of her; but I hope you will dine with me tomorrow? And you also, of course, Mr. Hammond.’
‘Captain,’ Hammond said, ‘I am not familiar with the ordinary course of a ship’s life – I beg your indulgence. Would it be suitable to invite the members of the embassy?’
‘Why—’ Riley said, astonished, and Laurence could not blame him; it was a bit much to be inviting people to another man’s table. But Riley caught himself, and then said, more politely, ‘Surely, sir, it is for Prince Yongxing to issue such an invitation first.’
‘We will be in Canton before that happens, in the present state of relations,’ Hammond said. ‘No; we must make shifts to engage them, somehow.’
Riley offered a little more resistance; but Hammond had taken the bit between his teeth and managed, by a skilful combination of coaxing and deafness to hints, to carry his point. Riley might have struggled longer, but the men were all waiting impatiently for the word to weigh anchor, the tide was going every minute, and at last Hammond ended by saying, ‘Thank you, sir, for your indulgence; and now I will beg you gentlemen to excuse me. I am a fair enough hand at their script on land, but I imagine it will take me some more time to draft an acceptable invitation aboard ship.’ With this, he rose and escaped before Riley could retract the surrender he had not quite made.
‘Well,’ Riley said, gloomily, ‘before he manages it, I am going to go and get us as far out to sea as I can; if they are mad as fire at my cheek, at least with this wind I can say in perfect honesty that I cannot get back into port for them to kick me ashore. By the time we reach Madeira they may get over it.’
He jumped down to the forecastle and gave the word; in a moment the men at the great quadruple-height capstans were straining, their grunting and bellowing carrying up from the lower decks as the cable came dragging over the iron catheads: the Allegiance’s smallest kedge anchor as large as the best bower of another ship, its flukes spread wider than the height of a man.
Much to the relief of the men, Riley did not order them to warp her out; a handful of men pushed off from the pilings with iron poles, and even that was scarcely necessary: the wind was from the northwest, full on her starboard beam, and that with the tide carried her now easily away from the harbour. She was only under topsails, but as soon as they had cleared moorings Riley called for topgallants and courses, and despite his pessimistic words they were soon going through the water at a respectable clip: she did not make much leeway, with that long deep keel, but went straight down the Channel in a stately manner.
Temeraire had turned his head forward to enjoy the wind of their progress: he looked rather like the figurehead of some old Viking ship. Laurence smiled at the notion. Temeraire saw his expression and nudged at him affectionately. ‘Will you read to me?’ he asked hopefully. ‘We will have only another couple of hours of light.’
‘With pleasure,’ said Laurence, and sat up to look for one of his runners. ‘Morgan,’ he called, ‘will you be so good as to go below and fetch me the book in the top of my sea-chest, by Gibbon; we are in the second volume.’
The great admiral’s cabin at the stern had been hastily converted into something of a state apartment for Prince Yongxing, and the captain’s cabin beneath the poop deck divided for the other two senior envoys, the smaller quarters nearby given over to the crowd of guards and attendants, displacing not only Riley himself, but the ship’s first lieutenant, Lord Purbeck, the surgeon, the master, and several other of his officers. Fortunately, the quarters at the fore of the ship, ordinarily reserved for the senior aviators aboard, were all but empty with Temeraire the only dragon aboard: even shared out among them all, there was no shortage of room; and for the occasion, the ship’s carpenters had knocked down the bulkheads of their individual cabins and made a grand dining space.
Too grand, at first: Hammond had objected. ‘We cannot seem to have more room than the prince,’ he explained, and so had the bulkheads shifted a good six feet forward: the collected tables were suddenly cramped.
Riley had benefited from the enormous prize-money awarded for the capture of Temeraire’s egg almost as much as Laurence himself had; fortunately he could afford to keep a good table and a large one. The occasion indeed called for every stick of furniture which could be found on board: the instant he had recovered from the appalling shock of having his invitation even partly accepted, Riley had invited all the senior members of the gunroom, Laurence’s own lieutenants, and any other man who might reasonably be expected to make civilized conversation.
‘But Prince Yongxing is not coming,’ Hammond said, ‘and the rest of them have less than a dozen words of English between them. Except for the translator, and he is only one man.’
‘Then at least we can make enough noise amongst ourselves we will not all be sitting in grim silence,’ Riley said.
But this hope was not answered: the moment the guests arrived, a paralysed silence descended, bidding fair to continue throughout the meal. Though the translator had accompanied them, none of the Chinese spoke at first. The older envoy Liu Bao had stayed away also, leaving Sun Kai as the senior representative; but even he made only a spare, formal greeting on their arrival, and afterwards maintained a calm and silent dignity, though he stared intently at the barrel-thick
