Duty remained: his country’s need stood above his own concerns. “I am much better, indeed,” he said. “I beg you have no concern for me. How is your own health?”
“Oh!” Temeraire said, “I am perfectly well, now; I have been a little ill, but that is quite done with; I am quite recovered. Laurence,” he added urgently, leaning his massive head down to the deck, and peering at him with one anxious slitted eye, “of course you know that I would have come for you at once—I would not have permitted anything to interfere—if it had not been for the egg. I am so dreadfully sorry.”
The rest of the afternoon was consumed in displaying this prize for him: the dragon insisted on Laurence’s being taken below, on the crate and all its careful packing being undone to display the egg. It might have been made of gold and diamonds for the degree of passionate interest which Temeraire gave it, and not only he: the fire-breather, evidently the dam, roused herself and watched with equal attention, so that Laurence could scarcely make out the unremarkable shell for having one enormous eye peering in at either porthole, blocking the light.
He was invited to touch the shell, with great care and an open palm: a tender softness not unlike the head of his nine-day-old nephew, when that child had been laid carefully in his hands by a watchful mother. Having returned to the dragondeck and being pressed for his opinion, he used very much the same expressions as on that occasion. “A remarkable egg,” he said, “perfectly hearty, and the size prodigious: I congratulate you both extremely, and I am sure it will do very well; extraordinarily well.” He meant his compliments wholeheartedly: he could well imagine the worth to England of such a cross-breed. His effusions could not have satisfied Temeraire, however, if they had been ten times as enthusiastic, until Laurence gradually came to realize that half of the dragon’s anxiety was to be sure that Laurence did not blame him, for not having come to his rescue.
“You could scarcely have found me, if you had tried,” Laurence said. “I do not think I had been on shore half-an-hour before I was taken up.”
“I would have contrived, somehow,” Temeraire said. “I found you in Africa, after all, when—oh; I am not meant to speak of that, am I? But in any case, Laurence, so long as you are satisfied—so long as you do not suppose I would have allowed any lesser cause to weigh with me.”
Laurence was not entirely satisfied: the lesser causes had evidently included abandoning the ship, their mission, and perhaps even setting off a war with Japan: all for his sake, and here was Temeraire making apology to him for not doing any of these things. He began to feel there was an almost dreadful responsibility inherent in the r?le, a r?le for which nothing had prepared him, and which he felt wholly unsuited to carry out. The distance between this and a ship’s command seemed a vast yawning gulf.
But he could not chide the dragon for his affection; particularly not when Temeraire had been under so great a strain, its evidence marked in the dull hide and the weary look in the dragon’s eyes: his eyelids were heavy again already. Laurence lay his hand against Temeraire’s warm breathing hide, its peculiar combination of resilience and softness at once familiar and not so. “I have been restored to you in defiance of all expectation and without, I hope, any evil consequence to our mission; we must both be satisfied with that outcome, and I beg you believe me so.”
Temeraire sighed deeply, and lowered his head to his forelegs. “I am very glad to hear you say so,” he said. “I was sure, Laurence, that you would not think it right of me to leave the egg—that you would tell me, if you were here, that it was my own responsibility, and I could not leave it to others no matter how much I might wish to go looking for you, not when the egg was not perfectly safe. I was quite sure, but oh! It was dreadful nonetheless, and I did fear that perhaps I had judged wrongly.”
“You did not, at all,” Laurence said, with a good deal of relief: so a dragon need not be insensate to duty at all. And then he was at a loss: what ought he do else, for the beast? Should he order aerial exercises? He did not see the other dragons engaged in such work, and indeed it might have been a provocation to the Japanese, to do so in harbor; besides this, he knew nothing of what his duties should be.
He looked for one of the ship’s boys: a small creature was darting by him on the dragondeck, head full of yellow curls and in a patched green coat. When Laurence caught him by the shoulder, the boy looked up and said in a piping voice, “Aye, Captain?”
“Light along to my cabin and fetch my log-book, if you please,” Laurence said, and pausing added, “And tell me your name again.”