“I thought it would help, sir,” Roland called down: all three of the dragons were taking it in turn to pick off the worst of the drunkards, clearing the deck.
“Well done,” Laurence called back, before he fell to coughing; he took one quick swallow from the rain-barrel to rinse his mouth, then with Granby joined the rest of the aviators in herding the worst of the drunkards forward to their doom, to be piled in on one another in the netting, a mass of arms and thrashing legs.
“Only be careful!” Temeraire called, not without cause: shot was rolling loose over the deck, knocking men off their feet and going overboard with gulping splashes, or tumbling into the hatches. The sailors had the advantage of liquored stupidity, which made them thoroughly unpredictable: careened into one another and pulled on the ropes, knocked over water-casks, slapped and shoved and yelled. The men on duty in the rigging, not drunk themselves and sorry for it, were jeering and throwing down handfuls of greasy slush scraped off the sails with indiscriminate aim.
The swell was not high—that was to say, not high for the Southern Ocean; only twenty feet—and the Allegiance rolled and pitched wildly from her crew’s neglect. “Look out there!” Purbeck shouted, from the helm: one of the cannon had burst loose from its tackle, and as the ship heaved majestically over the next crest, the snub-nosed iron monster eased out of her traces and began trundling towards them at deceptive pace, wheels of the gun-carriage a hollow grumble over the deck.
Granby was trying to guide some men towards the reaching dragons: the carpenter and three of his mates, amiable drunks swaying deeply and keeping their feet only with the practiced balance of long-time sailors, arm in arm with one another and hiccoughing with laughter. The cannon slid into them sideways at the waist and knocked them over the barrel: expressions more of surprise than alarm as it swept onward with them.
Laurence had only time to seize Granby by the arm, and be dragged alongside with him by the inexorable weight: a corner of his coat was hooked over and pierced by the broken iron ring that had set the gun-carriage loose. Sliding over the deck behind the gun, Laurence managed to set his boot-heels to the railing and stop himself with a jolt as the gun crashed with ease through the oak. The cannon went over; the carpenters went, too, at the last yelling in fear as they fell. Granby screamed once, a shocked cry wrenched out of him, and his arm came queerly loose in Laurence’s grip.
The fine silk slid through Laurence’s fingers, embroidery snarling upon his rough calluses; the sun was in his eyes and dazzling on the cloth-of-gold. Granby had clenched shut his jaw, but his hand did not grip back, and he was sliding over the edge. Abruptly Ferris was beside them, dropping to his knees with a knife in his hands. He put it to the back of Granby’s coat and thrust it through, ripping up, and the cloth sheared away.
Laurence tumbled backwards with Granby, who gasped only, very pale under his sunburnt color; the arm still hung limp when Laurence and Ferris had set him on his feet.
“Granby, Granby!” Iskierka was shrilling, leaning deeply over the dragondeck railing and reaching for the mainmast to support herself, trying to get to them: in a moment she would have clawed through the rigging.
Ferris called back, “I’ll bring him to you, Iskierka; don’t snatch at him or you’ll jar his arm worse,” so she subsided back in hissing anxiety; Laurence nodded to Ferris, who ducked under Granby’s other arm and helped him across the deck.
There was no sign of the other men over the side; the ocean was beaten into a froth all around the ship. No more jeering came from the rigging. All the ship’s officers and her Marines were now awake and on the deck, Riley calling orders from the stern and his servant Carver hovering behind him with a neckcloth flapping in the wind like a white banner, attempting now and again to dart in and tie it for him, over Riley’s impatient jerked hand.
“Laurence, are you well?” Temeraire was calling, with not much less anxiety than Iskierka. Laurence wiped his streaming eyes. Smoke still seeped up from the creeping fire below, and Riley was sending the more coherent of the men down in groups under an officer, to go at it with buckets and pails; he needed hands now, and badly.
“I am very well,” Laurence said, “and pray take those men in your belly-netting and go dunk them half-a-dozen times in the ocean; we will see if they can be sobered enough for work.”
Then he was suddenly looking at the Allegiance as through a window of old mazed glass, green and rippled, with a sunset behind her: fascinated he watched her growing darker and more distant, red and gold color swallowed up by murk; he felt curiously light and free, like flying but without wind.