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better camp over here, and have a look in the morning, before we go blundering in," Granby said, his voice kept low not to carry, and Laurence nodded; there was not much chance of hiding Temeraire or Iskierka, but they found a heap of rock which the dragons might curl themselves around, and so have at least a little camouflage against a quick glance in the dark. They put up the small tents around them.

"It is something to think we have crossed the whole continent," Granby said thoughtfully, while they drank their tea, "but Lord! What a waste of time it will have been, if the egg has already hatched."

"If it has not hatched," Rankin said, "I wonder what you propose to do to find it and extract it; you seem to imagine that only because we have found some native village, we have found the end of our search." He stalked away to Caesar's side.

"Whether we have found the egg or not," Laurence said, "I think we have found the end of our road: it must be hatched, or very soon, and when we have reached so clear a terminus I hope they will not demand further pursuit, so vainly." He looked where Temeraire lay sleeping, silent but for the rasp of his breathing.

He slept by Temeraire's side; in the morning roused and said tiredly, "Yes?" before he realized he was being looked over by a native man: tall, with a curly beard gone a little to grey; he was otherwise built like a much younger man than his face would have had him, sinewy and muscled, with a spear held casually in hand; he wore a braided belt, from which was slung a loincloth, and nothing else. Two younger men, rather more wary, hung back a little way behind him.

"Laurence, perhaps he has seen the egg, or the other dragon?" Temeraire said, peering interestedly down, which despite the proximity of his teeth did not seem to disconcert their visitor. "Have you?" he asked, and began to repeat his question over in French and in Chinese.

"We will have to try and manage it with pantomime, and whatever O'Dea and Shipley can work out of their language, if anything," Laurence said, pulling himself up to Temeraire's back to see where the men had got to. "Mr. O'Dea," he called, and that gentleman turned and came down from the ridge, where he had been standing with several other of the convicts, looking down at the sea.

"Sir," O'Dea said as he scrambled down, "we should like to know if we have got to China properly at last."

"Certainly not; we have only reached the coast," Laurence said. "I had not thought to find you turned credulous, O'Dea; you can read a map."

"Well, Captain," O'Dea said, "I can; but I have seen Chinamen, too, and there are four of them down the hill there."

"What?" Laurence said, as the native man answered Temeraire, in fragmentary but recognizable Chinese.

"Galandoo says there are two dragons here," Temeraire said, turning his head around.

Laurence caught hold of the harness and scrambled down from Temeraire's back, and went to the top of the hill. Below in the harbor, a small, narrow-hulled junk was floating at anchor with lanterns at her stern and bow, still lit in the early-morning light. A small open pavilion of wood and stone stood some distance up the shore, all the corners of the roof upturning towards the sky, with small dragons carved and crouching on every one.

Chapter 14

LAURENCE COULD NOT HAVE IMAGINED any more awkward and inconvenient period to their journey than to be kowtowed to in his plain and travel-stained gear by a dozen men better dressed, on the damp sand of the shore, when Temeraire had said, "I am Lung Tien Xiang, and this is the Emperor's adopted son, William Laurence," in Chinese, before Laurence could forestall any such introduction.

The adoption had made a useful and face-saving diplomatic fiction at the time of its promotion, on both British and Chinese sides; to use it for personal gain in the present circumstances felt to Laurence at once dishonest and wretchedly embarrassing. Now these men could not fail to perform any of the formal obeisance which their court etiquette demanded - however visibly, however plainly inappropriate when directed at Laurence - without showing disrespect to their own Emperor, a crime punishable by death.

The ritual had for audience Galandoo and several other of the native men, who looked on with interest. What structures of a