Tongues of Serpents Page 0,122
with self-importance.
"Well, we are glad enough to find you," Willoughby said - Nesbit Willoughby, captain of the Nereide, having supplanted Corbet in that position after, he said, the successful taking of Reunion, which had been undertaken, under Commodore Rowley, to secure a port in place of the lost Capetown; but Laurence could not take any great comfort in the substitution: Willoughby had himself been charged with cruelty before a court-martial, in his previous command, and the ship did not have a happy air; there was a lowering stiffness everywhere, and Caesar was looked upon with a wariness more intimate than mere reflexive anxiety: these were men who feared punishment, and feared it might grow worse.
"Not," Willoughby continued, "that I imagine we will have any great difficulty. I wonder at them, indeed: planting themselves here cool as you please, not a single possession nearer than four thousand miles and only that one floundering mess of a junk to defend it; other than the dragons, of course, and I am relieved to hear they have only the one they stole. I believe we cannot expect to recapture her?" he inquired.
"Sadly," Rankin said, "I am afraid the beast has been too thoroughly suborned to permit us to entertain any such hope: several of my officers," some effrontery in that, which Laurence controlled himself from remarking upon, "have attempted to entice her back, but she has rejected wholly all the lures: her egg was in their possession too long."
Willoughby nodded. "Well, it is a shame," he said, "but at least we cannot be too worried about her, new-hatched and untrained. I suppose they will strike their colors at once when we have made clear the situation, in any case."
"And what is that situation?" Laurence said, a little sharply, and Willoughby looked at him with disfavor.
"I do not much care for your presence at this conference in any case, Mr. Laurence," he said, "and I will thank you to keep silent. I do not propose to answer to the inquisition of a convicted traitor."
"Captain Willoughby," Laurence said, too impatient to tolerate this, "I must beg you to imagine my own interest in either your feelings or your opinion of myself, when I have allowed no similar consideration for those who had greater claims by far to alter my course; and if you dislike my company, you may be shot of it all the sooner if you will not stand upon some notion of preserving ceremony, in circumstances so wholly irregular and unexpected: unless you imagine that a twenty-ton Celestial will have any more patience for it than do I."
Rankin looked away, as though to express silently his mortification at Laurence's crudeness; Captain Tomkinson of the Otter covered his mouth and issued a cough, soft and uncomfortable. Granby only did not see anything awkward in the speech, and added, "And speaking of whom, if you do mean to make some noise, you oughtn't be glad to have found us; Temeraire won't in the least sit still for your having at these fellows, and I don't suppose any of the other beasts would care to disoblige him. I don't know what Captain Rankin may have said about seniority, which is a right-enough mess between us presently, but he knows very well that it don't make a lick of difference to them. What are your orders?"
Willoughby frowned: he was a narrow-faced man, whose hair had already crept back along the curve of his skull, and he was not particularly well-dressed: his clothes were those of a man who had been at sea for eight months, and lodging in irregular shelters. But Granby had given him an excuse, and it was to Granby he answered: "Our orders," with emphasis, "are to take the port. And if it will not be surrendered, gentlemen, I will take it; I will take it if I have to shell it to the very earth."
Willoughby's authority was quite real: the orders, which he allowed Granby to read, were from Commodore Rowley and indeed specific: the port, if it existed, could not be tolerated, and must be taken before it were fortified; the grounds for doing so a mere bagatelle of a technicality: the Regent had ordered the remainder of the continent claimed on the basis of Fleming's circumnavigation, which might as easily have given France a claim by the journeys of La Perouse.
"There's no sense arguing it with him, anyway," Granby said, when they had flown back to shore. "He has the bit in