Sun Kai, the younger envoy, leapt easily down from the bosun’s chair and stood a moment looking around the busy deck thoughtfully. Laurence wondered if perhaps he did not approve the clamor and disarray of the deck, but no, it seemed he was only trying to get his feet underneath him: he took a few tentative steps back and forth, then stretched his sea-legs a little further and walked the length of the gangway and back more surely, with his hands clasped behind his back, and gazed with frowning concentration up at the rigging, trying evidently to trace the maze of ropes from their source to their conclusion.
This was much to the satisfaction of the men on display, who could at last stare their own fill in return. Prince Yongxing had disappointed them all by vanishing almost at once to the private quarters which had been arranged for him at the stern; Sun Kai, tall and properly impassive with his long black queue and shaved forehead, in splendid blue robes picked out with red and orange embroidery, was very nearly as good, and he showed no inclination to seek out his own quarters.
A moment later they had a still better piece of entertainment; shouts and cries rose from below, and Sun Kai sprang to the side to look over. Laurence sat up, and saw Hammond running to the edge, pale with horror: there had been a noisy splashing. But a few moments later, the older envoy finally appeared over the side, dripping water from the sodden lower half of his robes. Despite his misadventure, the grey-bearded man climbed down with a roar of good-humored laughter at his own expense, waving off what looked like Hammond’s urgent apologies; he slapped his ample belly with a rueful expression, and then went away in company with Sun Kai.
“He had a narrow escape,” Laurence observed, sinking back into his chair. “Those robes would have dragged him down in a moment, if he had properly fallen in.”
“I am sorry they did not all fall in,” Temeraire muttered, quietly for a twenty-ton dragon; which was to say, not very. There were sniggers on the deck, and Hammond glanced around anxiously.
The rest of the retinue were heaved aboard without further incident, and stowed away almost as quickly as their baggage. Hammond looked much relieved when the operation was at last completed, blotting his sweating forehead on the back of his hand, though the wind was knife-cold and bitter, and sat down quite limply on a locker along the gangway, much to the annoyance of the crew. They could not get the barge back aboard with him in the way, and yet he was a passenger and an envoy himself, too important to be bluntly told to move.
Taking pity on them all, Laurence looked for his runners: Roland, Morgan, and Dyer had been told to stay quiet on the dragondeck and out of the way, and so were sitting in a row at the very edge, dangling their heels into space. “Morgan,” Laurence said, and the dark-haired boy scrambled up and towards him, “go and invite Mr. Hammond to come and sit with me, if he would like.”
Hammond brightened at the invitation and came up to the dragondeck at once; he did not even notice as behind him the men immediately began rigging the tackles to hoist aboard the barge. “Thank you, sir—thank you, it is very good of you,” he said, taking a seat on a locker which Morgan and Roland together pushed over for him, and accepting with still more gratitude the offer of a glass of brandy. “How I should have managed, if Liu Bao had drowned, I have not the least notion.”
“Is that the gentleman’s name?” Laurence said; all he remembered of the older envoy from the Admiralty meeting was his rather whistling snore. “It would have been an inauspicious start to the journey, but Yongxing could scarcely have blamed you for his taking a misstep.”
“No, there you are quite wrong,” Hammond said. “He is a prince; he can blame anyone he likes.”
Laurence was disposed to take this as a joke, but Hammond seemed rather glumly serious about it; and after drinking the best part of his glass of brandy in what already seemed to Laurence, despite their brief acquaintance, an uncharacteristic silence, Hammond added abruptly, “And pray forgive me—I must mention, how very prejudicial such remarks may be—the consequences of a moment’s thoughtless offense—”
It took Laurence a moment to puzzle out that Hammond referred to Temeraire’s earlier resentful mutterings; Temeraire was quicker and answered for himself. “I do not care if they do not like me,” he said. “Maybe then they will let me alone, and I will not have to stay in China.” This thought visibly struck him, and his head came up with sudden enthusiasm. “If I were very offensive, do you suppose they would go away now?” he asked. “Laurence, what would be particularly insulting?”
Hammond looked like Pandora, the box open and horrors loosed upon the world; Laurence was inclined to laugh, but he stifled it out of sympathy. Hammond was young for his work, and surely, however brilliant his talents, felt his own lack of experience; it could not help but make him over-cautious.
“No, my dear, it will not do,” Laurence said. “Likely they would only blame us for teaching you ill-manners, and resolve all the more on keeping you.”
“Oh.” Temeraire disconsolately let his head sink back down onto his forelegs. “Well, I suppose I do not mind so much going, except that everyone else will be fighting without me,” he said in resignation. “But the journey will be very interesting, and I suppose I would like to see China; only they will try to take Laurence away from me again, I am sure of it, and I am not going to have any of it.”
Hammond prudently did not engage him on this subject, but hurried instead to say, “How long this business of loading has all taken—surely it is not typical? I made sure we would be halfway down the Channel by noon; here we have not even yet made sail.”
“I think they are nearly done,” Laurence said; the last immense chest was being swung aboard into the hands of the waiting sailors with the help of a block and line. The men looked all tired and surly, as well they might, having spent time enough for loading ten dragons on loading instead one man and his accoutrements; and their dinner was a good half-an-hour overdue already.
As the chest vanished below, Captain Riley climbed the stairs from the quarterdeck to join them, taking his hat off long enough to wipe sweat away from his brow. “I have no notion how they got themselves and the lot to England. I suppose they did not come by transport?”
“No, or else we would surely be returning by their ship,” Laurence said. He had not considered the question before and realized only now that he had no idea how the Chinese embassy had made their voyage. “Perhaps they came overland.” Hammond was silent and frowning, evidently wondering himself.
“That must be a very interesting journey, with so many different places to visit,” Temeraire observed. “Not that I am sorry to be going by sea: not at all,” he added, hastily, peering down anxiously at Riley to be sure he had not offended. “Will it be much faster, going by sea?”
“No, not in the least,” Laurence said. “I have heard of a courier going from London to Bombay in two months, and we will be lucky to reach Canton in seven. But there is no secure route by land: France is in the way, unfortunately, and there is a great deal of banditry, not to mention the mountains and the Taklamakan desert to cross.”
“I would not wager on less than eight months, myself,” Riley said. “If we make six knots with the wind anywhere but dead astern, it will be more than I look for, judging by her log.” Below and above now there was a great scurry of activity, all hands preparing to unmoor and make sail; the ebbing tide was lapping softly against the windward side. “Well, we must get about it. Laurence, tonight I must be on deck, I need to take the measure of her; but I hope you will dine with me tomorrow? And you also, of course, Mr. Hammond.”