Empire of Ivory Page 0,129

me, do you find - " Jane began, and shortly Laurence sprang up, and went to interest himself in the map of the Channel which was laid out on Jane's desk, striving rather desperately not to hear the rest of their conversation.

The map was not as distressing in the visceral sense, although this was perhaps rather a sign of improper sensibility on his part, as the circumstances it depicted were as unfortunate as could be imagined. All the French coastline of the Channel was now littered with markers, blue representing companies of men, white for the individual dragons: clustered around Brest there were fifty thousand men at least, and another fifty at Cherbourg; at Calais a force half that number again; and scattered among these positions some two hundred dragons.

"Are these figures certain?" Laurence asked, when they had finished their exchange, and joined him at the table.

"No, more's the pity," Jane said. "He has more; dragons, at any rate. Those are only the official estimates. Powys insists he cannot be feeding so many beasts, so close together, when we have the ports blockaded; but I know they are there, damn them. I get too many reports from the scouts, more dragons than they ought to be seeing at a time; and the Navy tell me they cannot get a smell of fish but they catch it themselves, the price of meat has gone so dear across the way. Our own fishermen are rowing over to sell their catches.

"But let us be grateful," she added. "If the situation were not so damned dire, I am sure they would keep you in Whitehall a month, answering questions about this business in Africa; as it is, I will be able to extract you without much more than a day or two of agony."

Laurence lingered, when Catherine had left; Jane filled his glass again. "And you would do as well with a month at the seashore yourself, to look at you," she said. "You have had rather a dreadful time of it, I find, Laurence. Will you stay to dinner?"

"I beg your pardon," he said. "Temeraire wishes to go up to London while it is still light out." He thought perhaps he ought to excuse himself; he rather felt that he wished to talk to her, more than knew what he wanted to say, and he could not be standing there stupidly.

She rescued him, though, saying, "I am very grateful to you, by the bye, for the compliment to Emily. I have sent on to Powys at Aerial Command to confirm her and Dyer in rank as ensign, just so there should be nothing havey-cavey about the business; but there shan't be any trouble about that. I don't suppose you have any likely boys in mind for their places?"

"I do," he said, steeling himself, "if you please: the ones I brought from Africa."

Demane had passed the weeks after their escape from Capetown deep in delirium, with his side, where the bayonet had gone in, swelled out beneath the small scabbed cut as if an inflated bladder had sat beneath the skin; and Sipho, too distressed even to speak, refusing to leave the sickbed except to creep away and fetch water or gruel, which he patiently fed his brother spoon by spoon. The southern coast had slipped rapidly away to starboard, taking with it any hope of kin to whom they might have been returned, long before the ship's surgeon had informed Laurence that the boy would make a recovery. "It is to your credit, sir," Laurence had said, even while wondering whatever was to be done with the boys now; by then the Allegiance had seen Benguela, and there could be no question of turning back.

"It is no such thing," Mr. Raclef had retorted, "a wound in the vitals of this sort is invariably fatal, or ought to be; there was nothing to be done but make him comfortable," and he went away again muttering, vaguely offended at having so obvious a diagnosis defied.

The patient persisted in his defiance, making good proofs of the resilience of youth, and very shortly had reacquired the two stone of weight lost in his illness, and another for good measure. Demane was dismissed the sick-bay before they had crossed the equator, and the two were installed in the passenger quarters together, in a tiny curtained-off compartment scarcely large enough to sling their one small hammock: the older boy's wariness would not permit them to sleep at the same