Tongues of Serpents Page 0,53

and to persuade Iskierka to do the same, before I should - " and Temeraire stricken said, "Oh - oh, he has found - a bit of the egg - "

"No," Laurence said, "no, my dear; quite the contrary, but you must not disturb the trail, nor lose it. Tharkay thinks they were here, only last night, and that they kept the egg here on this low hillock of sand: but he cannot be certain - "

"They are near, then!" Iskierka exclaimed, rearing up on her hind legs.

"Stop, stop!" Temeraire said, and leaping pinned down several of her coils to the ground. "You must not flap and stir the ground, otherwise he will lose everything; we must wait. Tharkay, can you tell at all where they have gone?"

His wings wished to tremble with excitement; all the grimy sense of despair quite swept away. They had not failed: the thieves had not got clear with their prize. "Why, we have only been flying a few hours this morning," Temeraire said, exultantly, "and stopping so often; surely we must find them and catch them up before to-day is spent, after all. And you are quite sure, I hope, that the egg was well when they were here?" he asked. "Was it near their campfire, perhaps, could you tell?"

"I have already provided you the best part of a phantasy," Tharkay said, "to speculate the egg was here at all," but that was only his dry way, Temeraire decided.

Iskierka was all for going at once, with all speed on a direct course, but Granby and Laurence were insistent on the subject: they had to keep flying their sweeps, for the thieves likely should know by now that they were being so closely pursued. "It is very inconvenient that we should be so large, and they so small," Temeraire said to Laurence unhappily, "for I dare say they are hiding somewhere in the trees looking at us this same instant, thinking, There they are, and they cannot see us at all! in a very unpleasant gloating way."

"I will go so far as to assure you," Laurence said, "that if the thieves are anywhere and under any sort of cover imaginable, where they can see you and the treatment you have been meting out to the surrounding vegetation, they are not in the least inclined either to gloating or laughter. Prayer might be more to the point."

Temeraire could no longer complain at all whenever Tharkay wished them to stop again, and neither could Iskierka; instead they peered over his shoulder, at whatever speck of dirt or dust he might be inspecting, and tried to work out whatever traces he had found. Temeraire saw nothing at all, himself, although he nodded and tried to look wise when Tharkay should point at some perfectly indistinguishable patch of ground and call it a footprint, or at an unremarkable bush and call it a trace of passage.

A few days later, still at the creeping sluggish pace, they had struck away into open country away from the river, only creeks and smaller tributaries left: traveling north-west. The forests were clearing out of the way into scrubby grassland, so Temeraire could not mind the dust, however much there was of it: which was a great deal; he coughed and sneezed as he flew, and when they stopped for the nights.

Laurence was anxious on the subject of water. Temeraire could not let such small concerns distract him, and though it was certainly not as convenient to leave behind the river, if the smugglers had done so, then there must be water. "That does not mean we may find it as easily as have they, my dear," Laurence said, when the last little stream dried away and fell behind them as they flew, "and you must consider: a small party of men may carry their own supply of water for several days, where we have not that luxury."

"But there is so much less cover, too," Temeraire said, "and so it must be easier to see the water even from quite far away, and the thieves, too; if only we can find them, we needn't worry about anything else."

"We'd best worry about it, I warrant," Jack Telly said to the other men, from the belly-netting. "If there's water found, there's some gullets as it'll go down first, and maybe none left for the rest of us."

Temeraire snorted in disdain at this. "And there is a perfectly nice water-hole directly there," he added, "so you need