“Perhaps there will be some good fishing there,” Granby suggested. “It would be worth giving up a week, to lay in some stores.”
But the island, as it drew nearer, gave no evidence of particular fecundity: some green jungle carpeting a central peak, which could not be convenient to dig through; and the visible shore mostly black rock and sand through the spyglass lens: a scattering of palm-trees and scrub, sea-birds diving. There were some seals, but they cleared out with great speed after the dragons first set upon them, and did not leave behind enough numbers to make any landfall worth the while, Laurence thought. In any case he could not understand the French making so great a delay, when they might as easily have put the British dragons on shorter commons if they feared at all for their own beasts’ health.
De Guignes joined him on the deck the next day, at the railing. “Ah, Captain Laurence, you see we have come upon this island,” he said, clasping his hands behind his back and studying it meditatively: a black slash upon the ocean, with the dragons rising and falling over it in their hunting.
“Sir, I do,” Laurence said, polite and baffled.
De Guignes nodded. “I am desolate,” he said, “but here we must part, for a little while; I am assured,” he added to Laurence’s stare, “that there is fresh water—assured of it; M. Vercieux, the ship’s master, has once before made landfall here—”
THE SHORE WAS NOT MORE HOSPITABLE seen close up: the sand barely a crusting over a heart of hard, salt-pitted rock, and no animals to be seen but birds and small scurrying crabs that fled from the boats. De Guignes intended nothing heartless: the French landed for their provision several rain-barrels, in case the small stream should not be sufficient, and enough salt pork and biscuit to sustain the men at least for months; even a tub of preserved lemons.
“I hope you will not be excessively uncomfortable,” he said. “I trust you will not, indeed; the climate, I think, is most tolerable.”
He said it smiling, full of courtesy; but there was steel beneath, and Laurence did not imagine there was any use in Hammond’s stammering, astonished protests. “Monsieur, we of course will return, in due course,” De Guignes said, “on our way back to France: I beg you do not doubt it for a moment,” and Laurence did not doubt it. De Guignes would be only too pleased to come back and retrieve a party of thin and demoralized men and beasts to be carried off to France as prize—however many of them had survived.
“But this must end our parole?” Temeraire said hopefully to Laurence, while they stood upon the shore watching the Triomphe haul her boats back aboard. “Surely we cannot be considered their prisoners anymore: they have let us go.”
“I should not consider us as obliged to them further, no,” Laurence said, dryly, “for what good that may do us.”
A series of attempts, never flying more than a day out from the island, might hope to discover some other land in reach; and repeating the method even in time bring them to the continent—in theory. But the dragons had been stripped of harness and all gear; not a tarpaulin was left them. Even if they had wished to try such a blue-water crossing, there would be no way for the dragons to take more than a few men with them, carried in their talons.
“They have abnegated all their duty,” Hammond said bitterly, watching the ship go. “Outrageous—without decency—”
Laurence could not so easily castigate the French, when the act might have been excused merely for the sake of their own beasts without the further provocation which had been offered them; and in a more cynical vein he could scarcely be surprised, either, that De Guignes had chosen not to convey them to the Inca. Maila even now looked wistfully back towards Iskierka from the dragondeck, as the Triomphe made sail and began to draw away.
They had been left a few dull-edged hatchets, which would serve to fashion some kind of shelter from the meager supply of wood; the salt pork might be eked out further with fishing, and perhaps some supply from the interior of the island, though Laurence doubted whether there would be much in the way of edible vegetation. He surveyed without pleasure the crowd of sailors, who, having made a muddy wreck of the basin where the stream emptied itself, had now disposed of themselves across the beach in sullen idleness, casting sidelong looks at the barrels and casks: Laurence did not doubt that but for the dragons there should instantly have been mutiny and folly along with it.
“Mr. Ferris,” he said grimly, “let us have a little industry here, if you please.”