Tongues of Serpents Page 0,91

for a proper fight, instead of hiding away - Temeraire could not quite see his way clear to leaving the bunyips a kangaroo.

"It is no more thrown away than letting that one stuff it into his gullet," Caesar said, meaning Kulingile, but for his part, Temeraire felt he should rather feed Kulingile twenty kangaroos than see the bunyips profit from one, when he had hunted it down.

"If we had begun by tearing up their homes," he said, "I might see the justice in it, but after all, we did not; we did not even know they were there, until after they had stolen some of our men, and eaten them, which is barbarous anyway. If anyone were to be apologizing and giving presents, it ought to be them and not us; instead they are only quarreling more, by stealing the water, now, too."

"If they have brought the water there in the first place, it seems to me they aren't the ones doing the stealing," Caesar said, but that was plainly absurd; it was not as though the bunyips had made the water. The water was there, and they had only moved it to a place most convenient for themselves, to trick people into coming near their traps; another part of a low sneaking strategy which deserved not the least bit of credit.

"Anyway, they might have said something if they did not like us to drink. They set the water out on purpose, and make it look as though it is not theirs, so it does not seem to me they can complain if we treat it like any other water," Temeraire said.

But it was very tiring and inconvenient to have to stop, over and over, to drink what little they could get at any one water-hole. It was not even restful, for one could not feel refreshed with so little to drink, and his throat ached all the worse. Temeraire still felt a deep unpleasant ache in his forelegs and hindquarters after his ordeal, and it was more of an effort than it ought to have been to spring aloft every time.

He sighed a little; and they must again fly sweeps, to watch for any fragment of pottery or silk or anything else which might have been brought from China; of course he was glad to have found the trail again, but there was no denying it was pleasanter flying when they could only guess, and go on flying straight.

However, watching the ground as they drew near yet another half-dry water-hole, he did at length near the end of the day catch sight of a little movement: a shadow which did not quite fit the rest of the ground, and Temeraire realized all at once it was one of them, the bunyips. He dived at once, stretching, and the bunyip burst suddenly into motion, skittering away across the sand towards a bare patch of ground, and as Temeraire reached, it squirmed itself madly beneath the earth, casting up a cascade of sand at its heels as it burrowed.

It was astonishingly quick: Temeraire landed and stuck his claw inside the freshly dug tunnel, and could not reach it; he sat back on his haunches and hissed in displeasure. "Come out, you wretched craven thing," he called into the tunnel, and looked back. "Laurence, are you quite sure you would not like us to smoke them out? I am certain we could quite easily manage them, if they did not squirm and run away so."

"And so ensure an endless sequence of attacks," Laurence said, "further delaying our search for the egg; pray let us continue on, my dear."

"You may consider," Dorset said, peering over, "that it is in their nature to hunt from their burrows, and the consequence of our own venturing into a country we do not know; and after all, you are eating the game on which they depend for sustenance. We are as foolish to resent their predation as cattle would be to despise you."

This argument swayed Temeraire to some extent; at least he was persuaded to fly onward without further molesting the bunyips. Later in the evening, Temeraire said thoughtfully, contemplating the stew which Gong Su was brewing, with the meager haul of kangaroos, "I have never before considered the feelings of a cow: I suppose they must not care for us at all."

"They are only dumb beasts," Laurence said, "and such thought surely beyond them; any animal will defend its life and young, but that is not