of the water for the great clouds of mist and fog rising from the waves. No one else had even seen the brief struggle. Behind him, the bell was clanging again for the turn of the glass.
Too confused with fatigue to make any sense of the murderous attack, Laurence said nothing, other than to briefly tell Riley the men had been lost overboard; he could not think what else to do, and the storm occupied all the attention he could muster. The wind began to fall the next morning; by the start of the afternoon watch, Riley was confident enough to send the men to dinner, though by shifts. The heavy mass of cloud cover broke into patches by six bells, the sunlight streaming down in broad, dramatic swaths from behind the still-dark clouds, and all the hands privately and deeply satisfied despite their fatigue.
They were sorry over Leddowes, who had been well-liked and a favorite with all, but as for a long-expected loss rather than a dreadful accident: he was now proven to have been the prey of the ghost all along, and his messmates had already begun magnifying his erotic misdeeds in hushed voices to the rest of the crew. Feng Li's loss passed without much comment, nothing more than coincidence to their minds: if a foreigner with no sea-legs liked to go frolicking about on deck in a typhoon, there was nothing more to be expected, and they had not known him well.
The aftersea was still very choppy, but Temeraire was too unhappy to keep bound; Laurence gave the word to set him loose as soon as the crew had returned from their own dinner. The knots had swelled in the warm air, and the ropes had to be hacked through with axes. Set free, Temeraire shrugged the chains to the deck with a heavy thump, turned his head around, and dragged the oilskin blanket off with his teeth; then he shook himself all over, water running down in streams off his hide, and announced militantly, "I am going flying."
He leapt aloft without harness or companion, leaving them all behind and gaping. Laurence made an involuntary startled gesture after him, useless and absurd, and then dropped his arm, sorry to have so betrayed himself. Temeraire was only stretching his wings after the long confinement, nothing more; or so he told himself. He was deeply shocked, alarmed; but he could only feel the sensation dully, the exhaustion like a smothering weight lying over all his emotions.
"You have been on deck for three days," Granby said, and led him down below carefully. Laurence's fingers felt thick and clumsy, and did not quite want to grip the ladder rails. Granby gripped his arm once, when he nearly slipped, and Laurence could not quite stifle an exclamation of pain: there was a tender, throbbing line where the first blow from the pry-bar had struck across his upper arm.
Granby would have taken him to the surgeon at once, but Laurence refused. "It is only a bruise, John; and I had rather not make any noise about it yet." But then he had perforce to explain why: disjointedly, but the story came out as Granby pressed him.
"Laurence, this is outrageous. The fellow tried to murder you; we must do something," Granby said.
"Yes," Laurence answered, meaninglessly, climbing into his cot; his eyes were already closing. He had the dim awareness of a blanket being laid over him, and the light dimming; nothing more.
He woke clearer in his head, if not much less sore in body, and hurried from his bed at once: the Allegiance was low enough in the water he could at least tell that Temeraire had returned, but with the blanketing fatigue gone, Laurence had full consciousness to devote to worry. Coming out of his cabin thus preoccupied, he nearly fell over Willoughby, one of the harness-men, who was sleeping stretched across the doorway. "What are you doing?" Laurence demanded.
"Mr. Granby set us on watches, sir," the young man said, yawning and rubbing his face. "Will you be going up on deck then now?"
Laurence protested in vain; Willoughby trailed after him like an overzealous sheepdog all the way up to the dragondeck. Temeraire sat up alertly as soon as he caught sight of them, and nudged Laurence along into the shelter of his body, while the rest of the aviators drew closed their ranks behind him: plainly Granby had not kept the secret.
"How badly are you hurt?" Temeraire nosed him all over,