Black Powder War Page 0,141

ears, but the sky ahead was opening up to a fierce deep cloudless blue, an endless road of wind and water before them.

A signal was flying from the mast of the Vanguard. "Fair wind, sir," Turner said, as they passed the ships by. Laurence leaned into the cold sea-wind, bright and biting; it scrubbed into the hollows of Temeraire's sides to clean away the last of the pooled eddies of smoke, spilling away in grey trailers behind them. Riggs had given the riflemen the order to hold their fire, and Dunne and Hackley were already calling habitual insults to each other as they sponged out their barrels and put their powder-horns away.

It would be a long road still; as much as a week's flying, with this contrary wind in their faces and so many smaller dragons to keep in company; but to Laurence it seemed he already beheld the rough stone coast of Scotland, heather gone brown and purplish-sere and the mountains mottled with white, past the green hills. A great hunger filled him for those hills, those mountains, thrusting up sharp and imperious, the broad yellowing squares of harvested farmland and the sheep grown fat and woolly for winter; the thickets of pine and ash in the coverts, standing close around Temeraire's clearing.

Out ahead of them, Arkady began something very like a marching-song, chanting lines answered by the other ferals, their voices ringing out across the sky each to each; Temeraire added his own to the chorus, and little Iskierka began to scrabble at his neck, demanding, "What are they saying? What does it mean?"

"We are flying home," Temeraire said, translating. "We are all flying home."

Extracts from a letter published in the

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society,

April 1806

March 3, 1806

Gentlemen of the Royal Society:

It is with trepidation that I take up my pen to address this august body regarding Sir Edward Howe's recent discourse upon the subject of draconic aptitude for mathematics. For an amateur of so little distinction as myself to make reply to so illustrious an authority must smack of vainglory, and I tremble at the notion of offering offense to that gentleman or his many and justly deserved supporters. Only the sincerest belief in the merits of my case, and, beyond this, a grave concern for the deeply flawed course upon which the study of dragons seems bent, would suffice to overcome the natural scruple I must feel at setting myself in opposition to the judgment of one whose experience so greatly outstrips my own, and to whom I would show unhesitating deference, if not for evidence I must consider irrefutable; which, after much anxiety, I herein submit to the consideration of this body. My qualifications for this work are by no means substantial, my time for the pursuit of natural history being sadly curtailed by the demands of my parish, so if I am to persuade it must be with the force of my argument alone, and not through influence or impressive references....

By no means do I intend any disparagement of those noble creatures under discussion, nor to quarrel with any man who would call them admirable; their virtues are manifest, and among the highest of these the essential good-humour of their nature, evident in their submitting to the guidance of mankind for the sake of affection, rather than through a compulsion it were quite impossible for any man to bring to bear upon them. In this they have shown themselves very like that more familiar and most amiable creature the dog, who will shun the company of his own kind and cleave in preference unto his master, thus displaying almost alone among the beasts a discrimination for the society of his betters. This same discrimination dragons show, greatly to their credit, and certainly no one can deny that with it is matched an understanding superior to virtually all of the animal world that renders them arguably the most valuable and useful of all our domestic beasts....

And yet it has been some years now since many eminent gentlemen, unsatisfied with these considerable encomiums, have begun to put before the world, cautiously and in measured stages, a body of work which in its sum total, almost as if by joint intention, leads the thinking man to the inevitable and seductive conclusion that dragons rise beyond the animal sphere entirely: that they possess, in full measure equal to man, the faculty of reason and intellect. The implications of such an idea I scarcely need enumerate....

The foremost argument