Grig gave a start when Temeraire came down. “They aren’t Russian dragons, at all,” he said, ruffling his wings to his back, and indeed Temeraire had scarcely landed before a man, very portly and red-faced, in high boots and a brown waistcoat and no coat at all, was stomping over with an angry expression, from the waggons, to shout in broad colonial English, “I’ve already told you fellows to be off: they aren’t for sale, and I’ll be damned if—” only to halt in some surprise when he saw that neither Grig nor Temeraire had any officers.
“Why, you are Americans,” Temeraire said, rather doubtfully. “Whatever are you doing here?”
“You may be sure we aren’t here by any choice of mine, that is blasted certain,” the sweating man said. “Where else can we be, with Oudinot and Saint-Cyr in St. Petersburg all but confiscating goods, and standing between us and our ship? I would rather get thirty cents on the dollar for my wares than ten; but if you scaly brutes and your rotten pack of whip-happy overseers don’t keep off Josiah and Linden, I will take my cargo back to Boney’s gang and make them welcome to it, and I’ll call in my ship and sell them every last bale of wool in the hold, too, see if I don’t.”
It seemed that the Russians had already made several attempts to buy the merchant’s dragons, who eyed Temeraire with some understandable nervousness and edged back from him, refusing to say a word, even though he explained quite clearly he had not the least interest in delivering them to the Russian service. “I don’t suppose,” he said at last, “that you are acquainted with John Wampanoag?” which produced something of a thaw.
“We are out of New Jersey, ourselves,” the fat waistcoated merchant said, mopping his forehead, when he had at last sat down, somewhat more assured of their peaceable intentions, “but I have heard his name, of course; I don’t suppose there’s many Yankees who haven’t. Well, if you are a friend of John Wampanoag, I guess you are all right; and it’s true you don’t have a look of those other big fellows, always snapping and yelping in that queer gabble of theirs that a man can’t fit his tongue around. But what are you doing mixed up in this business, then?”
Explanations made, Temeraire wished to be introduced to Josiah and Lindy, but they only spoke a language called Unami and not English; their employer was a Mr. Calvin Jefferson, and when Temeraire tentatively asked that man, he stridently denied their having any interest in taking part in the battle. “Get themselves shot, all for someone else’s quarrel; I should think not,” he said, bristling.
“Well, I will not pretend to understand it,” Temeraire said, somewhat doubtfully; he wondered if maybe the dragons would have expressed different sentiments, if only they could have spoken for themselves in the matter, “but naturally they should not fight if they do not like; I suppose the Shen Lung will not be fighting, either. Only it seems a shame for them to be here, just when we are sure to win a splendid victory, and not have a share in it.”
Jefferson snorted. “It’s soon enough to brag of your victory after you’ve won it,” he said. “I don’t set myself up as an expert on the matter, but it seems to me that Bonaparte’s done pretty well for himself on these occasions in the past.”
He gave them a very nice cup of tea, however, and he had some very fine woolen cloth, of which he made Temeraire a present large enough to make Laurence a new coat; as a sample, he said. “I have three thousand bales of it,” he said very mournfully, “sitting just out of cannon-shot of St. Petersburg harbor; and if these Russian fellows would only make me a reasonable offer, I guess I could land it north of the city, and they could ship it down to Tver: if the French don’t take that, pretty soon.”
“I do call that handsome,” Temeraire said to Grig, as they flew back to his own camp, very pleased with the use of his afternoon, “and I am sure I do not know why your people have not bought his wool.”
“Well, he has no-one else to sell it to,” Grig said, “except Napoleon, who is offering less,” which was a point that Temeraire had not quite considered. “Of course, I do not know much about these things,” Grig added.
Laurence received the gift with pleasure, although he professed himself surprised by the presence of the traders. “I suppose I ought not be,” he said. “They seem to be everywhere in the world, these days; and in the article of speed their ships are scarcely to be outmatched. Blaise told me he crossed paths with one of their schooners, in his Atlantic crossing to Brazil, and he would have sworn she was doing fourteen knots, in a light wind.
“But this merchant may have gambled badly,” Laurence added, “if he was hoping to see his price driven up: God willing, we may end the war tomorrow. Come, my dear, you must try and get some rest.”