Empire of Ivory Page 0,97

began to make questions of her, demandingly; she flinched back, and only shook her head, refusing. At last he left off, and cast his eyes southward, sitting up on his haunches like a coat of arms: a dragon sejant erect, gules; then slowly he settled himself back down; he spoke to her once more, and pointedly shut his eyes.

"Well, I don't suppose we need ask what he thinks of letting you go," Chenery said, when she had crept around to them.

"No," she said, speaking low to keep from rousing the dragons up again, "and matters are only worse: I spoke of my daughters, and now Kefentse wants nothing more than to go back for them also."

Laurence was ashamed to feel an eager leap of hope, at a situation which naturally could cause her only the greatest anxiety; but such an attempt would at least reveal to the rest of the formation the identity of their captors. "And I assure you, ma'am," he said, "that any such demand would be received with the utmost scorn: I am confident that our fellow officers and General Grey will consider your children their own charge."

"Captain, you do not understand," she said. "I think he would be ready to attack all the colony to get at them. He thinks there may be more of their stolen kindred there, too, among the slaves."

"I am sure I wish them much luck, if they like to try it," Chenery said. "Pray don't be worried for the girls: even if these fellows have another few beauties like this grandfather of yours at home, it would take a little more than that to crack a nut like the castle. There are twenty-four-pounders there; not to speak of pepper guns, and a full formation. I don't suppose he would like to come back with us, instead; to England, I mean?" he added, with a flash of cheerful optimism. "If he has taken to you so strong, you ought to be able to persuade him."

But it was very soon clear that Kefentse, whatever else he meant by calling himself her great-grandfather, certainly considered himself in the light of her elder; even though she thought now, that she vaguely recalled his hatching. "Not well, but I am almost sure of it," she said. "I was very young, but there were many days of feasting, and presents; and I remember him often in the village, after," which Laurence supposed answered for her lack of fear of dragons; she had been taken as a girl of some nine-years' age, old enough to have lost the instinctive terror.

Remembering her only as a child, Kefentse, far from being inclined to obey, had instead concluded from her efforts to secure their freedom that she was their dupe, either frightened or tricked into lying for their sake, and he was grown all the angrier for it. "I beg you do not risk any further attempts at persuasion," Laurence said. "We must be grateful for his protection of you; I would have you make no more fruitless attempts, which might cause him to reconsider his sentiments."

"He would do nothing to hurt me," she said, a strange certainty; perhaps the restoration of some childhood confidence.

Having breakfasted on roasted hippo, they flew on some hours more and landed again only a little while before dark, beside what seemed to be a small farming village. The clearing where they descended was full of children at play, who shrieked with delight at their arrival, and ran eagerly around the dragons, chattering away at them without the slightest evidence of fear; although they peered very nervously at the prisoners. A broad spreading mimosa tree stood at the far end of the clearing, giving pleasant shade, and beneath it stood an odd little shed with no front, raised several feet from the ground and housing within it a dragon egg of substantial size. Around it a circle of women sat with mortar and pestle, pounding grain; they put aside their tools and patted the dragon egg, as if speaking to it, and rose to greet the visitors as they leapt down from the smaller dragons' backs, and to stare with curiosity.

Several men came in from the village, to clasp arms with the handlers and greet the dragons. An elaborately carved elephant's tooth hung from a tree, the narrow end cut open to make a horn, and one of the villagers took this down and blew on it, several long hollow ringing blasts. Shortly another dragon landed