that he was not a careless guardian of his crew, despite all their trials amongst the Inca and since.
Certainly Ferris was happier than when he had first come back to them in New South Wales; he was not so weary-looking, and the ruddy blotches which had marred his face then had cleared. He looked nearer his four-and-twenty than he had, and if he did not wear a green coat—Temeraire did not understand why Hammond had not straightened out that matter yet—at least the coat which he did wear, brown, was neat and trim and with silver buttons; and he took excellent care of his linen, which was properly white.
“You ought have taken Forthing,” Ferris said abruptly.
“Oh, Forthing,” Temeraire said, with a flick of his ruff. “Whyever for? I do not see why I ought to be giving Forthing any special notice: he is very well, I suppose, for ordinary work.”
“He is an officer of the Corps,” Ferris said, “and I—I am not; he is your first lieutenant.”
“You were, before him,” Temeraire said, “except for Granby; whom I cannot ask to come away from Iskierka under the circumstances. I do not take any notice of what some silly court-martial may have said, Ferris: I hope you do not think I do, and you ought not, either. Why, they declared Laurence should be put to death; you cannot imagine their judgment holds any water with me, or anyone of sense.”
Ferris was silent, and then he said, “You wouldn’t be taking Forthing up, no matter what, I suppose.”
“Taking him up?” Temeraire said. “I am perfectly happy for him to ride, when the rest of the crew do,” although this was not entirely true: with as much opportunity as Ferris had been given, during their brief stay in Brazil, Forthing had not bothered to repair any of his wardrobe but what had outright holes in it; his green coat was faded almost to grey, his neckcloth a disgrace, and his trousers frayed at hem and seams. It was an embarrassment, and all Temeraire’s hinting had gone unheeded entirely.
“No, I mean,” Ferris said, hesitated, and said, “if Captain Laurence—if we should not—”
Temeraire was still quite puzzled a moment; then he understood, and indignation swelled his breast. “I should not take that slovenly third-rate—piker for my captain if he were the last person to be had on the earth,” he said, heatedly. “Oh! Him, to succeed Laurence: I should like to see it! If the Admiralty should dare to propose it, I should go to Whitehall and bring the Navy Offices down about their ears.
“Anyway,” he added, in the teeth of his own anxiety, “I am sure Laurence will look after himself very well, until we can come get him: oh! Why are they taking so very long about getting aloft?”
The flight was not a long one, the coast rising ahead of them as they flew, the waters still depthless blue-black beneath. Dulcia and Nitidus sped on ahead in spite of Hammond’s cries of protest, but they circled back to meet the rest of them shortly before they all came over the coast: they had seen a few small fishing-boats, they reported, and a great many large half-drowned rice fields, with the beginnings of green shoots.
“But nothing very nice to eat,” Nitidus said sadly. “Why, I did not even see a sheep, or a goat.”
“Thank Heaven,” Temeraire could overhear Hammond say, foolishly: it would have been nice to know sheep might be had, even if they could not easily be got.
Captain Warren fetched Nitidus a buffet to the shoulder, and raised his speaking-trumpet to call over from his back, as they fell back into formation, “More to the point, there’s a bay straightaway three points to the north, with pine-trees as handsome as you could like.”
The bay was isolate, the glossy black water’s surface broken with a great many lumpy protruding rocks which likely made it inconvenient for fishing-boats, and showed no signs of use except a low stone wall which did not seem to have any purpose at all; it only ran along the shore in either direction. Hammond let himself down from Churki’s back clumsily but with haste the instant they had landed, and hurried to inspect: it was overgrown with a carpet of pale short green grass. “I see no sign of any other sort of traffic,” he said, with great relief, when he had straightened up, “so now pray let us get the trees and be away: at once, at once. I shall account all arrears of Fortune paid off, if only we should escape without notice.”
Lily cocked her head, considering, and said, “I suppose we should like them to fall inwards: stand back, all of you, if you please.”
“And to the north,” Captain Harcourt added, from her back, looking at the narrow wind-socks which stood up from Lily’s harness at various points. “Sing out when you are all safe away.”
Temeraire waited until Hammond with the rest of the company was moving, hastily, out of any chance of Lily’s acid spattering, and then announced, “I will go aloft, and see if I can make out anything more of the countryside: I should not like to disappoint Iskierka.”
In point of fact, he was quite willing to disappoint Iskierka if there were no cows to be had; but so long as they were here on land, Temeraire did not see any reason not to have a look around for Laurence. “Of course we are not likely to see him,” he added to Ferris, over his shoulder, as he flew quickly away before he might have to hear Hammond shouting protests after him, “but if only we should happen to, how convenient that would be: even Hammond could not complain, then. And even if we do not, we will have saved some time, later; we will not have to search here again. We will not go far, we will only go along the coast—”
Indeed, he did not go so far that he did not hear the thundering crash of the first pine, coming down; he did not wish to risk overlooking any sign. The coast was mostly rocky, save for a few other inlets and narrow streams coming down, but not very high. “I do not think it would be excessively difficult to get safely ashore, for a man swimming,” Temeraire said to Ferris.
Ferris said, “There aren’t cliffs, at least,” in a consoling way. “Shan’t we turn back, now? Those fishermen there are sure to see us if only they look up, and I think that must be a harbor over there—”
“But there are a few more beaches in this direction,” Temeraire said. “We shall go and have a look at those, from the air: I am sure they are too busy fishing to pay any attention to—”
He was interrupted in this optimistic speech by a sudden bellowing roar, loud and strangely gargled: he turned back hurriedly. “I do not see anyone in the air,” Temeraire said, uncertainly, peering in every direction: the day was clear, and he could not imagine where the roar had come from. “Perhaps it was only another pine coming down—”
“That noise was no tree-fall,” Ferris said, urgently, and Temeraire could not disagree however much he wished to do; he turned back towards the bay and crested the trees just in time to find, to his appalled surprise, Maximus and Lily and the others all mantling towards a monstrous sea-serpent rearing itself up out of the bay. The rocks were not rocks at all; they were a part of its body, and it was twice as big as Maximus even only in the parts which Temeraire could see.
And then Temeraire realized he was wrong: it was not a serpent; it was a dragon, with forelegs out upon the sand: only it was very long, and with stubby wings. It opened its mouth and made another roaring noise, a deep angry growling demand at the formation, which carried over the water clear enough, but in some language which Temeraire did not recognize.
They stood all amazed a moment, regarding one another, very much like figures upon a war-table from Temeraire’s distant view. When none of them answered, the serpent-dragon reached for the second tree, which had struck partway into the
