gone round a few times and the younger midshipmen had drunk enough to lose their wooden manners. Laurence had the happy gift of easy conversation, and his table had always been a cheerful place for his officers; to help matters along further, he and Riley were fast approaching a true friendship now that the barrier of rank had been removed.
The gathering thus had an almost informal flavour to it, so that when Carver found himself the only one at liberty, having devoured his pudding a little more quickly than his elders, he dared to address Laurence directly, and tentatively said, ‘Sir, if I may be so bold as to ask, is it true that dragons can breathe fire?’
Laurence, pleasantly full of plum duff topped by several glasses of a fine Riesling, received the question tolerantly. ‘That depends upon the breed, Mr. Carver,’ he answered, putting down his glass. ‘However, I think the ability extremely rare. I have only ever seen it once myself: in a Turkish dragon at the battle of the Nile, and I was damned glad the Turks had taken our part when I saw it work, I can tell you.’
The other officers shuddered all around and nodded; few things were as deadly to a ship as uncontrolled fire upon her deck. ‘I was on the Goliath myself,’ Laurence went on. ‘We were not half a mile distant from the Orient when she went up, like a torch; we had shot out her deck-guns and mostly cleared her sharpshooters from the tops, so the dragon could strafe her at will.’ He fell silent, remembering; the sails all ablaze and trailing thick plumes of black smoke; the great orange-and-black beast diving down and pouring still more fire from its jaws upon them, its wings fanning the flames; the terrible roaring that was only drowned out at last by the explosion, and the way all sound had been muted for nearly a day thereafter. He had been in Rome once as a boy, and there seen in the Vatican a painting of Hell by Michelangelo, with dragons roasting the damned souls with fire; it had been very like.
There was a general moment of silence, imagination drawing the scene for those who had not been present. Mr. Pollitt cleared his throat and said, ‘Fortunately, I believe that the ability to spit poison is more common among them, or acid; not that those are not formidable weapons in their own right.’
‘Lord, yes,’ Wells said, to this. ‘I have seen dragon-spray eat away an entire mainsail in under a minute. But still, it will not set fire to a magazine and make your ship burst into flinders under you.’
‘Will Temeraire be able to do that?’ Battersea asked, a little round-eyed at these stories, and Laurence started; he was sitting at Riley’s right hand, just as if he had been invited to the gunroom for dinner, and for a moment he had almost forgotten that instead he was a guest in his former cabin, and upon his former ship.
Fortunately, Mr. Pollitt answered, so Laurence could take a moment to cover his confusion. ‘As his breed is not one of those described in my books, we must wait for the answer until we reach land and can have him properly identified; even if he is of the appropriate kind, most likely there would be no manifestation of such an ability until he has his full growth, which will not be for some months to come.’
‘Thank heavens,’ Riley said, to a general round of laughing agreement, and Laurence managed to smile and raise a glass in Temeraire’s honour with the rest of the table.
Afterwards, having said his goodnights in the cabin, Laurence walked a little unsteadily back towards the stern, where Temeraire lay in solitary splendour, the crew having mostly abandoned that part of the deck to him as he had grown. He opened a gleaming eye as Laurence approached and lifted a wing in invitation. Laurence was a little surprised at the gesture, but he took up his pallet and ducked under into the comfortable warmth. He unrolled the pallet and sat down upon it, leaning back against the dragon’s side, and Temeraire lowered the wing again, making a warm sheltered space around him.
‘Do you think I will be able to breathe fire or spit poison?’ Temeraire asked. ‘I am not sure how I could tell; I tried, but I only blew air.’
‘Did you hear us talking?’ Laurence asked, startled; the stern windows had been open, and the conversation might well have been audible on deck, but somehow it had not occurred to him that Temeraire might listen.
‘Yes,’ Temeraire said. ‘The part about the battle was very exciting. Have you been in many of them?’
‘Oh, I suppose so,’ Laurence said. ‘Not more than many other fellows.’ This was not entirely true; he had an unusually large number of actions to his credit, which had seen him to the post-list at a relatively young age, and he was accounted a fighting-captain. ‘But that is how we found you, when you were in the egg; you were aboard the prize when we took her,’ he added, indicating the Amitié, her stern lanterns presently visible two points to larboard.
Temeraire looked out at her with interest. ‘You won me in a battle? I did not know that.’ He sounded pleased by the information. ‘Will we be in another one soon? I would like to see. I am sure I could help, even if I cannot breathe fire yet.’
Laurence smiled at his enthusiasm; dragons notoriously had a great deal of fighting spirit, part of what made them so valuable in war. ‘Most likely not before we put into port, but I dare say we will see enough of them after; England does not have many dragons, so we will most likely be called on a great deal, once you are grown,’ he said.
He looked up at Temeraire’s head, presently raised up to gaze out to sea. Relieved of the pressing concern of feeding him, Laurence could give thought now to the other meaning of all that strength behind his back. Temeraire was already larger than some full-grown dragons of other breeds, and, in his inexperienced judgment, very fast. He would indeed be invaluable to the Corps and to England, fire-breath or no. It was not without pride that he thought to himself there was no fear Temeraire would ever prove shy; if he had a difficult duty ahead of him, he could hardly have asked for a worthier partner.
‘Will you tell me some more of the battle of the Nile?’ Temeraire said, looking down. ‘Was it just your ship and the other one, and the dragon?’
‘Lord no, there were thirteen ships of the line for our side, with eight dragons from the Third Division of the Aerial Corps in support, and another four dragons from the Turks,’ Laurence said. ‘The French had seventeen and fourteen for their part, so we were outnumbered, but Admiral Nelson’s strategy left them wholly taken aback,’ and as he continued, Temeraire lowered his head and curled more closely about him, listening with his great eyes shining in the darkness, and so they talked quietly together, long into the night.
They arrived at Funchal a day short of Laurence’s original three-week estimate, having been sped along their way by the gale, with Temeraire sitting up in the stern and eagerly watching from the moment the island had come into view. He caused something of an immediate sensation on land, dragons not ordinarily to be seen riding into harbour upon small frigates, and there was a small crowd of spectators gathered upon the docks as they came into port, although by no means coming very close to the vessel.
Admiral Croft’s flagship was in port; the Reliant was nominally sailing under his command, and Riley and Laurence had privately agreed that the two of them should report together to acquaint him with the unusual situation. The signal Captain report aboard flag went up on the Commendable almost the instant they had dropped anchor, and Laurence paused for only a moment to speak with Temeraire. ‘You must remain aboard until I return, remember,’ he said, anxiously, for while Temeraire was never wilfully disobliging, he was easily distracted by anything new and of interest, and Laurence did not have a great deal of confidence in his restraint while surrounded by so much of a new world to explore. ‘I promise you we shall fly over the whole island
