large one goes, it reaches a larger gap, and then by the time it reaches the next wave it is already breaking, and it only falls upon the rest of the waves and does no good to anyone."
Kulingile ate another bite of his raw cassowary, which he had managed to catch for himself that morning - they were now obliged to fend for their own meals again, without the very material assistance of the Larrakia hunters, who even if they had not brought something pleasant back would at least reliably be able to tell where one might find game - and piped, "But if it takes so long to make, and you do not sink the ships, won't they only wait until it is gone and then shoot afterwards?"
"Well," Temeraire said - but it would at the very least disrupt any immediate attack, and very likely make them confused. "And anyway they will have a time beating back up into position; if only the wind should not be in the right quarter, that is, but I do not see why it should be."
"What are you working on?" Iskierka said suspiciously as she came landing with her own dinner, and looked over the figures; of course she did not understand a thing of mathematics, but only to be safe, Temeraire swept his tail-tip over the diagramme.
"It is none of your affair," he said loftily; he did not intend to confide in Iskierka, of whom he felt a little wary; one could not rely on her to have the right sort of opinions in such circumstances as these; Granby was still in the service, of course, and so their interests might not be perfectly aligned.
He felt rather more uncomfortable over having so far also avoided the subject with Laurence; but he thought they might better discuss the matter a little later, once Temeraire had already worked out how to make the great waves - after all, so long as he could not do it, then there was nothing really to be spoken of; and when he had, he might then demonstrate the technique to Laurence, which would certainly be a source of great relief and pleasure to him. Laurence had not said anything on the subject directly, but he had encouraged the experiments, and asked Temeraire to consider how one might defeat a similar effort, another time. And if Temeraire should happen to demonstrate it somewhere the ships could also see, perhaps this Willoughby person would be afraid, and Temeraire would never even need to use it directly upon them at all.
He did not just yet think over what he would do otherwise - what else Laurence might say. It seemed after all a great waste of time - one might even consider such ruminations to be an attempt to shirk the certainly very difficult work of learning how to make the wave. And there was no time to be wasted: the ships were almost surely only waiting for the tide to come in that night, so they might come further into the harbor, and do their worst.
"I am going to go find something more to eat," Temeraire announced, therefore, and flew out to make another attempt. It was not after all false: if there were any fish about when he worked the divine wind upon the water, they often came directly up, dead already or at least so confused that one might just collect them without any difficulty. He had already made a handsome meal of them on his first pass, and the sea-serpents had been pleased enough to take the leavings; he could see their heads breaking the water in the distance, peering at him in anticipation of more, even if they did stay properly and respectfully clear.
He had more success this time in regulating the interval between the waves, and having sent out a series of them pursued with one large final roar: which did make his throat ache dully, and he was forced to stop and cough a little, but oh! what was any of that, for abruptly a great glassy hill was rising up out of the water. The swell went rushing away from him, eating every one of the little waves - climbing higher and higher, until it would certainly have gone to the topmasts at the least, thirty feet and shining pale green, and Temeraire was compelled to fly around in several circles to express his delight as the whole struck upon the hidden reef