Tongues of Serpents Page 0,79

anyone in it," he said, poking his snout inside, and then drawing out, "so I expect they have run off."

Temeraire tossed aside the covering and said, "We had better make sure there are no more, however, before any of you should come down," and raking his claws through the knotted, clumped grass hit upon another.

They went scarcely a few strides before they had found a fresh opening after this, and throwing aside the vegetation in great heaps began to tear up all the border of the water-hole: the gaping dark holes began to show themselves everywhere, as they worked, and the oasis began to have a strange, nightmarish ant-hill quality, as the full honeycombed extent of the tunnels became clear. The bunyips never showed themselves, but their presence was everywhere: as though the water-hole itself was but a shining lure in the midst of a vast and malevolent trap, its real nature concealed beneath the earth, and they had haplessly been throwing themselves within all along.

Some of the tunnels further from the water's edge were in worse repair, disused and half-crumbled; in other places the concealing mats had dried up and were thin and fragile things that broke when Caesar and Temeraire pulled upon them. Others however were fresh and strong, requiring real effort on Temeraire's part to drag them loose: this was no abandoned complex. "How many of the creatures could there be, to build to such an extent?" Laurence said, a little horror-stricken to envision armies of the creature which he had glimpsed so briefly; and if they should survive here, in the desert, he wondered, what of their possible presence within the countryside nearer the colony - ?

Temeraire stopped to turn his head aside and cough raggedly; they had stirred up a great deal of dust and dirt, in tearing up the mats and the stubborn clinging roots. "I don't suppose we must keep going," Caesar said, pausing to take another drink himself. "We might fill these in, what we've found already, and then we can have a rest if we only stay on this side of the water-hole. It is getting dark, and it will be too hard to spot them soon."

They all warily disembarked, and unloaded the dragons; then Temeraire reared up on his hind legs and set his claws into the side of the rising dune and pulled it down, cascading sand and the narrow trees sliding askew, to bury all the dark gaping mouths: the tunnels vanished beneath the spill of darker red earth, and they all beat down upon it with the backs of shovels, to trample it flat and smooth, and then without any orders, the men began to roll over whatever rocks of any size they could find, and the toppled trunks, to make an entrenched border around the site.

They posted a watch of four men, holding pistols: not much use, Laurence privately thought, against the sort of creature he had seen, unless a man should be exceedingly lucky in his shot; but comforting to the spirit nevertheless. He stood by the water's edge with his own pistols drawn and ready, while they filled their water-jugs by twos and threes, and when Demane came back over the ridge, Laurence said to him, "You will not go away without permission again and alone: we do not know how far from the water-holes these creatures may travel."

"But I have to hunt," Demane said, "or else he will eat everything we have: he has already eaten half the salted meat I found the day before."

Laurence had not realized that Demane had given Kulingile still more food during the flight, but a consultation of their stores confirmed the truth. "Well, I call that greedy," Caesar said, disapprovingly, "and a waste, too. Now what are we to eat, and when we have been doing all the work?"

"I have done the work of finding the meat," Demane flashed, "so I may feed it to anyone I want."

"That is enough, Demane," Laurence said. "All our stores are held in the common interest, and we must ration a little better than this; if you permit him to gorge in excess to-day, he is too likely to starve tomorrow, when we are in strange territory with such uncertain supply."

Demane subsided, and his latest gleanings were shared out. Temeraire at least did not quarrel over his portion, but as his restraint came from lack of appetite, Laurence was not disposed to be glad. Gong Su dug out a cooking-hollow in