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halfway and traveling now in company they had resumed their course for Dover. "She refused to see why the Navy ought to get all the prizes; and I am afraid she has suborned those damned ferals. I am sure she has them secretly flying the Channel at night looking for prizes, without reporting them, and when they tell her of one, she pretends she has just taken it into her head to go in such and such a direction. They are as good as any prize-crew ever was; the sailors are all as meek as maids, with one of them aboard."

The remainder of the ferals were aloft, singing lustily together in their foreign tongue, and larking about with satisfaction. Iskierka however had crammed herself in among the formation, and in particular had seized the place along the starboard rail where Temeraire preferred to nap. She was no small addition: having gained her full growth in the intervening months since they had seen her, she was now enormously long and sprawling, the heavy coils of her serpentine body at least as long as Temeraire, and draped over anything which happened to be in her way, most inconveniently.

"There is not enough room for you," Temeraire said ungraciously, nosing away the coil which she had deposited upon his back, and picking up his foot out of the other which was slithering around it. "I do not see why you cannot fly back to Dover."

"You may fly to Dover if you like," Iskierka said, flicking the tip of her tail dismissively. "I have flown all morning, and anyway I am going to stay with my prizes. Look how many of them there are," she added, exultant.

"They are all our prizes," Temeraire said.

"As it is the rule, I suppose we must share with you," she said, with an air of condescension, "but you did nothing except come late, and watch," a remark which Temeraire rather instinctively felt the justice of, than disputed, and he hunched down to sulk over the situation in silence.

Iskierka nudged him. "Look how fine my captain is," she added, to heap on coals of fire; and much to poor Granby's embarrassment: he was indeed a little ridiculously fine, gold-buttoned and-beringed, and the sword at his waist also hilted in gold, with a great absurd diamond at the pommel, which he did his best to conceal with his hand.

"She fusses for days, if I will not, every time she takes another prize," Granby muttered, crimson to the ears.

"How many has she taken?" Laurence said, rather dubiously.

"Oh - five, since she set about it in earnest, some of them strings like this one," Granby said. "They strike to her right off, as soon as she gives them a bit of flame; and we have not a great deal of competition for them: I do not suppose you know, we have not been able to hold the blockade."

They exclaimed over this news with alarm. "It is the French patrols," Granby said. "I don't know how, but I would swear they have another hundred dragons more than they ought, on the coast; we cannot account for them. They only wait until we are out of sight, and then they go for the ships on blockade: dropping bombs, and as we haven't enough dragons well yet to guard at all hours, the Navy must stand ship-and-ship, to fend them off. It is a damned good thing you have come home."

"Five prizes," Temeraire said, very low, and his temper was not improved when they reached Dover, where upon a jutting promontory above the cliffs Iskierka now had a large pavilion made of blackened stone, sweating from the exhalations of her spines and surely over-warm in the summer heat. Temeraire nevertheless regarded it with outrage, particularly after she had smugly arranged herself upon the threshold, her coils of vivid red and violet displayed to advantage against the stone, and informed him that he was very welcome to sleep there, if he should feel at all uncomfortable in his clearing.

He swelled up and said very coolly, "No, I thank you," and retreating to his own clearing did not even resort to the usual consolation, of polishing his breastplate, but only curled his head beneath his wing and sulked.

Chapter 14

HIDEOUS SLAUGHTER AT THE CAPE

Thousands Slain! Cape Coast Destroyed!

Louanda and Benguela Burnt!

It will require yet some time before a complete Accounting will render final all the worst fears of Kin and Creditors alike, throughout these Isles, as to the extent