Empire of Ivory Page 0,139

us."

"I beg your pardon," Laurence said, making sense at last he thought of the preoccupation, and with dismay, "is there reason to believe the disease has been communicated to the Continent? Are the French dragons taken ill?"

"We hope so," Nelson said, "although we yet lack confirmation upon the point; but the spy-courier, the Plein-Vite whom we captured, was sent over to them two days ago, and we hope any day to receive word that they have been inoculated with the disease."

"The only damned silver lining to the bloody mess," Gambier said, to a general murmur of agreement. "It will be some reparation to see the Corsican's face, when his own beasts are all coughing blood."

"Sir," Laurence managed; beside him Catherine was sickly-wan with horror, the back of her hand pressed to her mouth. "Sir, I must protest against - " He felt as though he were choking. He remembered little Sauvignon, who had kept Temeraire company that long dreadful week when they thought all hope was lost; when Laurence had expected to see his dragon coughing blood, at any moment.

"I should damned well hope so," Jane said, standing up. "This is why you had her sent to Eastbourne, I suppose, and none of closing the quarantine-grounds at all; a splendid creeping business. Will we be driving a plague-ship into their harbor, next, pray tell me, or poisoning their convoys of grain? Like a parcel of damned scrubs - "

Musgrave, straightening outraged in his chair, snapped, "Ma'am, you are out of order," and Admiral Gambier said, "This is what comes of - "

"Why damn you, Gambier, come around here and say so," she said, putting her hand to her sword, and the room devolved very quickly to shouting and scorn, so even the Marines outside the door put in their heads timidly.

"You cannot mean to do this," Laurence said. "Your Grace, you have met Temeraire, spoken to him; you cannot imagine they are not thinking creatures, beasts to be put to the slaughter - "

Palmerston said, "Tenderhearted womanish folly - " seconded by Gambier, and Ward; " - the enemy," Nelson said, over the noise, trying to reply, "and we must seize the opportunity which has been offered us, to level the distinction between our aerial forces and theirs - "

The sly, underhanded way it had all been managed, proved well enough that the commissioners had expected opposition, and chosen to avoid it; they were not more ready to be harangued after the fact, and when Jane had shortly grown a little louder, they had reached the limits of their tolerance. " - and this," Jane was shouting, "is how I am told, days past the event; when the stupidest scuttling crab might conceive that, as soon as Bonaparte knows what has happened, as soon as he sees his beasts growing sick, he will come across at once; at once, if he is not a gawping fool - and you drag me here to Dover, with two Longwings and our Celestial, and the damned Channel hanging open like Rotten Row - " when Musgrave rising beckoned to the guards, to stand open the door.

"Then we must not keep you," he said, rather icily, and added, when Jane would have gone on, "You are dismissed, madam," holding out the formal orders for the defense of the Channel, the papers crumpling savagely in Jane's fist as she stormed out from the room.

Catherine leaned heavily on Chenery's arm as they left, pale with her lip bitten to dark red. Nelson, following, stopped Laurence in the hall before he could go far after them, with a hand to his arm; and spoke to him at length: about what, Laurence did not entirely follow; a cutting-out expedition which he proposed to make, to Copenhagen, the Danish fleet to be seized there. "I would be glad to have you, Captain," he finished, "and Temeraire, if you can be spared from the defense of the Channel, at least for a week's time."

Laurence stared at him, feeling heavy and stupid, baffled at Nelson's easy manner: he had met Temeraire, had spoken with him; he could not plead ignorance. He might not have been the prime mover of this experiment; but he was no opponent of it, whose opposition might have been everything, would have been everything, surely.

The silence grew strained, then oppressive. Nelson paused, said, with a little more hauteur, "You are fresh from a long voyage, and I am sure tired from all this questioning; I have considered