take his leave. "The master of the Miniver informs me he means to make port at Bombay," Tharkay said, "and I know the road from there to Istanbul." He smiled a little, twistedly. "Much of my intelligence may be a little old by the time I have got there, but I have promised to deliver it."
Temeraire did not see why Tharkay should have to go so far, only to deliver news; and particularly when he did not seem as though he wished to go, very much. "But if you must, you might come back," Temeraire said, "and if you see Bezaid and Sherazde, pray tell them that their egg hatched quite safely; I have often thought that I ought to send them word. It is not their fault, of course, that Iskierka is so very irritating."
"I think we must expect to regret you a longer time," Laurence said. " - there can be very little to call you back to this part of the world anytime soon."
Tharkay paused, then said, "We spoke some time ago of endeavors which might call you away from it, however. I would have opportunity to make inquiries, if you have decided."
Laurence did not answer immediately; then he said, "No; thank you, Tenzing. I cannot see my way to it. I am very grateful - "
Tharkay waved this away. "Then I will hope some other occupation finds you; you do not seem likely to me to lie idle." He drew out a handsomely embossed card from a case in his pocket. "My direction is likely to be, as always, uncertain; but you may write me care of my lawyers: if they cannot find me, they will hold the letters until I have called for them." He gave Laurence the card; they clasped hands once more and agreed on dinner, the following day, before Tharkay went down the slope away.
"I certainly hope that he is right," Temeraire said, with a little sigh; privateering did seem to him a splendid occupation, and it was a great pity Laurence felt it was not quite the thing. It did not seem to him that anything of interest should ever happen here, nor fair that everyone but himself and Laurence should go.
Tharkay and Laurence were away at dinner the next afternoon when the gunfire erupted, late in the evening. Temeraire had just woken to enjoy the cooler hours, and had been contemplating whether he might call it worth the effort to fly a little distance to the more shaded water-hole and have a cold drink; as the crack and whistle of musketry went off, Kulingile opened his eyes and sat up.
"Is it time to fight the serpents?" he inquired hopefully: his voice had not grown lower, but a great deal more resonant in an odd, echoing manner, so that when he spoke it seemed as though several people were talking at once, saying the very same thing.
"Of course it is not time to fight the serpents," Caesar said, peering down the slope, "my captain would have come for me, and my crew. There are men fighting one another: perhaps it is duels."
"It is not duels," Temeraire said, "no one fights duels at night, and with dozens of people against one another; one fights them at dawn. I do not see why there should be so much disorder in this town, and why Laurence must always be in the midst of it, somewhere I cannot see him; oh! they are firing again."
There were a great many men in uniforms in the street, struggling now against one another with bayonets and wrestling, their rifles held like staves and battering away. Temeraire rose and peered down the hill anxiously, looking to see if he could make Laurence out anywhere at all in the melee, but his brown coat would have been difficult to see in better light than they had, so that Temeraire did not see him was no comfort; if he had seen Laurence, he might at least have had the opportunity of snatching him away to safety.
"I am going to go down there," Temeraire said, decisively, " - no, Roland, I cannot wait; plainly Laurence might be anywhere, and perhaps they will stop if I should land among them - I will only knock over that low building, which is very rickety-looking anyway, and perhaps the one beside it."
"You are not to go anywhere," Rankin said, panting up the hill, in his heartlessly plain evening clothes and great disarray, with Blincoln and